The ninth part of the Resident Evil horror series has been released. This is a very beautiful game with (as always) a silly plot and great characters

Only dedicated fans will be able to fully appreciate it.

At the end of February, Resident Evil Requiem was released - the ninth part of the famous horror series, which at one time laid many of the foundations of the genre. This time, the Japanese company Capcom tried to please two different audiences within one game: those who prefer the classic exploration of frightening and confusing locations, and those who prefer more “action-packed” episodes of the series. "Medusa" explains why Requiem was a great gift for fans of the series, but newcomers are better off starting with another Resident Evil title.

The text contains minor plot spoilers, most of which were known before the game's release. If you haven’t followed the Resident Evil Requiem announcements at all and want to find out everything yourself, put this material aside for the future.

FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft is involved in the investigation of a series of mysterious deaths. All the victims are former residents of Raccoon City, a small city in the Midwestern United States, in which a biological disaster occurred 28 years ago due to the fault of the Umbrella corporation. As part of the investigation, Grace goes to an abandoned hotel, where another body was found. From there, she is kidnapped by Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella researcher whose motives remain unclear to a certain point.

Leon Kennedy, an agent of one of the government organizations (and the hero of several previous Resident Evil installments), is conducting his own investigation into the same deaths. He witnesses Grace's kidnapping, but does not have time to save her. Therefore, he goes to the medical center owned by Gideon to find all the answers there. But he only encounters a crowd of aggressive zombies.

Even a brief retelling of the plot of Resident Evil Requiem can cause slight bewilderment - it’s okay, that’s how it should be. Despite the fact that the game introduces several new characters into the series and primarily focuses on Grace and her past, the developers expect gamers to have a general knowledge of the events that took place previously. Namely, that Raccoon City was destroyed by missiles, Umbrella's developments in one form or another still exist, and Leon Kennedy continues to clean it all up even after three decades.

True, at first his role seems secondary. Despite the fact that the plot constantly switches from one character to another and back again, there is a clear division in Requiem: in the first half more attention is paid to Grace, in the second Leon is the soloist. According to the developers, this solution should please two audiences at once - horror fans and action fans.

Gameplay as Grace involves exploring and finding new paths, solving puzzles and constantly playing hide and seek with opponents. For direct clashes with zombies, especially at first, she has too few resources, and only a pistol as a weapon. There is also a very powerful Requiem revolver, which Leon gives her during the first meeting. However, it is almost impossible to find cartridges for it - you have to save them for completely hopeless situations.

The space in the heroine's inventory is very limited, so she often has to return to a special room to send extra items to the box and make room for a plot artifact. Sometimes this path is dangerous: there are a lot of half-dead zombies all around, and in addition, locations are almost always patrolled by especially strong pursuing monsters, which are very difficult to get rid of.

It is also worth considering that Grace works as an analyst. She has no combat experience and her hands tremble when shooting. It is impossible to improve her weapon, and minimalist leveling allows her to only slightly increase her maximum health, slightly calm down her jumping aim, and slightly increase the damage dealt to enemies. But, even despite this, the player constantly experiences, if not fear, then at least a feeling of discomfort and uncertainty that he will be able to successfully overcome the next couple of rooms of the medical center.

It becomes a little easier when gamers are introduced to crafting, that is, the mechanics of creating objects from improvised means. Almost all recipes have one constant ingredient - infected blood, which can be collected from killed zombies or simply found. At the same time, it’s better not to wonder why exactly blood and how you can even create cartridges from it, but simply accept it as another crazy Resident Evil convention.

With the help of crafting, you will make more valuable and deadly items. For example, special injectors that immediately kill almost any creature. True, to do this you need to sneak up on him unnoticed or at least stun him. But even with such restrictions, surviving in the uncomfortable world of Requiem becomes a little easier.

But Leon has no such problems. An experienced agent has an extensive arsenal to destroy enemies: pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades. There is also a hatchet that allows you not only to effectively finish off zombies, but also to parry many attacks. Almost all weapons can be improved or exchanged for another, more powerful one. True, for this you will have to wait until the second half of the game, when Leon begins to encounter special boxes - electronic analogues of merchants from other parts of Resident Evil.

Leon does not need to collect blood for crafting; he uses gunpowder, which is more familiar from the earlier parts of the series. There is much more space in your inventory. True, Leon cannot hide unnecessary items in a special box, but throughout the entire playthrough this has never become a problem.

As well as a sharply increasing number of opponents. In the second half, Requiem turns from horror into dynamic action. Leon is much more efficient with weapons and can easily deal with several opponents at once.

Improvised items are also used. For example, explosive cylinders, sometimes found in locations, or weapons that the zombies themselves try to use. You can shoot one enemy, grab his ax and immediately throw it at another, then run up to him and finish him off with a kick. In some episodes they even let you run around with a chainsaw a little. After Grace's tense segments, it all feels like a well-deserved release before the inevitable return to the nightmare.

Requiem lacks balance. The episodes of Grace and Leon were too different

The creators of the game tried their best to emphasize the difference between the two heroes. It is even expressed in the position of the camera: while Grace needs to be played from a first-person perspective, Leon has the camera hanging behind his back, improving visibility. This can be changed in the settings, but the developers themselves recommend sticking to this particular scheme for better immersion in the game.

Still, it seems like they went a little overboard. The segments for different heroes contrast so much that it seems as if Requiem combines two completely different games. This also leads to a certain gameplay imbalance. For example, all boss battles, except one (and even then, very conditional) fall on Leon, that is, in the second half of the game.

A potentially good idea - to let one character go through a location, and then send a second character there - was never adequately implemented. The idea was that Leon could get into the main premises of the medical center after Grace, kill all the zombies remaining there and collect the items that the girl did not need. In theory, this would allow us to look at the same game situation through the eyes of two different characters with different capabilities.

In practice, the player is more likely to collect all the resources when he plays as Grace (this is logical, because she is practically defenseless and will need everything that comes to hand). And along the way, he will get rid of almost all the enemies with the help of shots and injectors, just to protect the heroine and give her more room to move. In this case, Leon will be greeted only by empty rooms, stained with blood, and a couple of secrets created especially for him.

Finally, the action sequences lack variety. For example, they are completely devoid of puzzles. It’s not that Grace has many of them either; here, in general, one can blame the developers for lack of inventiveness. But it would be possible to give Leon at least a little brain work, as, for example, in Resident Evil 4 and its recent remake.

All this can be attributed to minor shortcomings, but nevertheless they make it difficult to perceive Requiem as something whole. As well as drastic changes in location design. After spending several hours in the medical center, which looks more like a luxurious mansion, and its gloomy basements, the heroes go to Raccoon City. More precisely, what was left of it after a missile strike and thirty years of oblivion. And at this moment, an expensive, very beautiful game turns into a faceless card from some ordinary military shooter.

The color palette immediately becomes gray and dull, and the only thing that helps to somehow preserve the rapidly deteriorating atmosphere of horror is a powerful blow to nostalgia. Leon can visit familiar locations from the second part, see what they have become, and remember certain episodes from his past. True, this will only work for devoted fans of the series. Beginners will most likely see just faceless ruins.

But everyone will notice bright characters. Leon, who is already about fifty years old at the time of the events of Requiem, diligently portrays a cool action hero - he effectively throws around clumsy zombies, is cheerful despite a serious illness, rides a motorcycle and habitually makes sarcastic jokes at the expense of the villains. It seems that if he appears in any next Resident Evil game, his vocabulary will finally be reduced to only such phrases.

Grace, on the other hand, is a real find and one of the most lively and believable heroines of recent years. Having experienced severe psychological trauma (in the very hotel where she goes at the beginning of the game, her mother was killed in front of her eyes eight years ago) and not prepared for combat missions, especially for meeting the living dead, she displays a whole range of different emotions, without leaving her role for a second.

She is truly afraid, suffocates during panic attacks, sincerely empathizes with other heroes and is horrified when faced with the ghosts of the past. Certain events in the middle of the game break her character, but real transformation and maturation occurs only in the final scenes. You rarely see such integrity in games, especially Resident Evil.

It’s safe to say that Requiem is far from the most successful part in terms of the script, its integrity and logic. But it’s definitely one of the best in terms of how this scenario is played out by virtual heroes. It's funny that even the zombies here have some semblance of personalities - they utter snatches of phrases from a past life and, like the zombie cleaner, stick to their usual professions.

In the anniversary year for the series - the first Resident Evil was released in Japan on March 22, 1996 - Capcom released a game in which it collected all the ideas accumulated over these 30 years. Not all of them seem appropriate in Requiem, but we have to admit that the developers did not make any outright mistakes.

This is not just a game, it is a thank you to absolutely all the fans who have supported the series at different stages of its life all this time. But after this, Resident Evil will have to take the next step and reinvent itself again, for the third time.

Resident Evil Requiem was released on February 27, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. The game is completely translated into Russian.

Mikhail Gerasimov