Catbus Resident Evil Requiem Review

The first half of the game, while not perfect, really impressed me with how well it blended short bursts of action heavy Leon segments to "de-stress" with Grace's more classic RE gameplay where the enemies are slightly more threatening and you have to think a bit about resource management, including when to save (I can't imagine playing on any of the difficulties that don't involve ink ribbons). The return of a crimson head-like enemy that gives you more to consider when deciding where and how to dispatch zombies was welcome! Early story beats were compelling enough and Grace is endearing. Gideon was a mysterious and entertaining antagonist and the first half of the game concludes with a hard hitting bit of drama that gets your mind spinning about where these characters might go from here. Things went mostly downhill for me from this moment. You're tossed into a very lengthy segment with Leon. Leon is no longer a tasty treat to break the tension but the main course for a good long while. Very little resource management, no ink ribbons, frequent auto-saves, drab level design and enemy encounter design, a shop for upgrading your weapons to trick you into feeling like you're still making choices that matter, and a completely different villain has now taken the spotlight. Everything that had me hooked in the first half of the game is basically gone at this point. Aside from one or two intensely ridiculous (in a fun way) moments this portion of the game really blended together into mush for me. The game finishes in a way that seems to signal that an era of RE has ended and the series has reached a conclusion (aside from a tease for the upcoming DLC), which feels oddly welcome. I say this as a big RE-head but I think the series probably needs a break, though that doesn't seem to be in the cards given that several more remakes are rumored to be in the works. As much as I enjoyed a large Chunk of the first half of the game (and a few bits in the back half), there are several things that made me uninstall this rather than dive right back in with a second playthrough. Much like some other recent RE games, Requiem has a prologue that plays out like a lengthy playable cutscene. These are always... "fine" the first time around but tiresome on replays and sadly un-skippable. There's another sequence like this later on involving running from bald murderous children that I'm not eager to play through again. There's also a serious lack of bonus content aside from a higher difficulty setting that seems to have been at least partially balanced with cheat items in mind if the tips that appear when you die suggesting you buy more cheat items and the fact that you can't attempt it on a fresh save file are any indication. - The care center section with Grace feels like a miniature RE game rather than something worthy of a $70 release. This was the strongest part of the game for me but feels like 40% of the total package here. - The Leon gameplay doesn't have the pacing and tight design of RE4 or the combat depth of RE6 to bring me back for more. - The game is constantly defanging itself in too many ways to mention for the sake of a frictionless modern experience. - The plot devolves into complete non-sense, even by RE standards. Normally you'd give this sort of thing a pass but the game presented things so seriously at first that you feel like a fool for becoming invested in anything going on by the end. PS: Huge respect for the game running well and looking incredible without any ray-tracing or path-tracing, which are incredibly expensive to run but do not offer much visual benefit in this game 90% of the time. The audio is also truly excellent.