What is Resident Evil Requiem?
Resident Evil Requiem is the ninth mainline entry in Capcom’s survival horror saga, and its defining idea is duality. Half of the campaign puts you behind FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft as she picks through a condemned hotel in Raccoon City, chasing both a fresh bioterror outbreak and answers about her mother, the reporter Alyssa Ashcroft. The other half hands the reins to veteran agent Leon S. Kennedy for louder, faster, more combat-driven sequences. Capcom Development Division 1 weaves the two threads together so the horror and the action constantly reframe each other.
Getting started
Requiem sits across three genres at once — shooter, puzzle and adventure — and that mix is the key to approaching it. You are never just clearing rooms; you are reading the environment, collecting documents, and working out how one locked door relates to a key you saw three rooms ago.
A sensible first session looks like this:
- Play the opening stretch at the standard difficulty. It teaches resource scarcity honestly, and you can always lower it later if a boss wall stops you.
- Walk, don’t sprint. Rushing a corridor usually means missing a document, a supply cache, or a puzzle hint.
- Treat every room as a two-pass job: first pass to learn the layout and what’s locked, second pass to actually solve it.
- Check your inventory before every door. Three healing items and no ammo is a bad hand to be holding.
Because Grace’s sections and Leon’s sections play so differently, expect to re-learn your rhythm whenever the game switches perspectives. That’s intentional, not a difficulty spike.
Tips for beginners
- Ammo is a budget, not a resource. In survival horror, every enemy you avoid is ammo saved for one you can’t.
- Read everything. Files, notes and memos carry puzzle solutions and story context. Skipping them makes the adventure layer far harder than it needs to be.
- Craft and combine early. If you have spare components, spend them at a safe point — not while you’re being surrounded.
- Keep one slot free. Inventory pressure is a design feature, not an oversight. Leave room for whatever the next room offers.
- Learn enemy tells. Most creatures telegraph a lunge. Sliding sideways beats trading hits.
- Map your backtracking. Adventure-style puzzles routinely send you back through cleared areas; knowing the shortcut saves real time.
- Save before you experiment. Try the risky route, reload if it goes wrong. Curiosity is free.
Is it worth playing?
Yes — comfortably. An 89.4 critical rating puts Requiem among the strongest entries in the series, and the dual-narrative structure gives it a hook that pure horror or pure action games can’t match. If you enjoy slow, tense exploration and a well-built firefight, this is one of the few games designed to deliver both without shortchanging either. It’s available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, so there’s no platform excuse. And if you’ve never touched Resident Evil before, this is a fine entry point: the story stands on its own, and the game explains what matters as it goes.