The Resident Evil franchise has taken on many shapes and forms in its 30-year tenure, starting out as the progenitor of survival horror as we know it while shifting towards more ridiculous action in its later iterations.

The good news with Resident Evil Requiem, the latest game in Capcom’s beloved series, is that no matter which flavour of RE is your favourite, there will be something for you to like in its roughly 12-hour runtime. From expertly crafted corridor-skulking scares to bombastic action set-pieces complete with corny one-liners, this game has it all.

While neither end of the spectrum quite reaches the pinnacle of what the series has previously offered, Requiem is almost certainly a must-play for any horror fan, and serves as a fantastic celebration of Resident Evil as a whole.

Requiem begins with new protagonist Grace Ashcroft, a shy but likeable FBI agent tasked with looking into a series of mysterious murders, one of which she has a close personal connection to. It doesn’t take long before we’re plunged right into the horrific heart of what makes the more recent Resident Evil games tick with Grace thrown into a haunting medical facility filled with towering stalker enemies and countless zombies to boot.

It’s in these opening few hours that Requiem really shines as Grace’s first-person perspective provides a cramped and claustrophobic feel as you skirt through the old building’s corridors, often lit by dim torchlight alone. As you spend a good few hours scouting out its corridors, the classic formula of solving puzzles to unlock new areas rears its head.

After your fourth run around the block, you become intimately familiar with the location, slowly building your confidence as you figure out how to take down enemies without wasting resources. In this game, Zombies retain fragments of their former personalities, which can be used to your advantage when taking them down.

For example, a caretaker Zombie will constantly try to turn off the lights, so you can lure him to certain locations by flicking light switches and waiting for him to wander past. Other unlucky infected hate loud noises, and you can throw glass bottles to lure them towards other Zombies in the room, causing them to turn on each other.

While resources are scarce as Grace, there’s an innovative new crafting system to get to grips with that utilises Resi’s blood and gore to full effect. Remnants of plasma can be combined with other materials to craft either more ammunition and healing items, encouraging you to get close to the enemies you’ve already downed.

The trouble is, these enemies have a habit of coming back to life as ‘Blister Heads’, a much more powerful enemy that requires you to completely destroy their head to take them out. As massive resource sinks, these enemies are ones to avoid, and after encountering my first batch, it ratcheted up the tension even higher as I walked past old threats I thought I’d seen the last of, only to be caught off guard when I least expected it.

As a fan of Resident Evil Biohazard and Village, it’s Grace’s sections that I enjoyed the most – especially in the early hours where Capcom really doubles down on the scarier side of Resi.

However, Grace isn’t the only protagonist in this game. Leon Kennedy is back, and although pushing 50, he’s still very much got it.

In the early hours, Leon’s sections are a fantastic pacebreaker with the perspective swapping to third-person and the game practically throwing ammunition at you. Throw in an ability to wield chainsaws and throw melee weapons at enemies from afar, and the power fantasy needle swings wildly in the opposite direction when playing as him.

As Leon and Grace’s stories overlap, it felt fantastic to streak around the corridors at speed with Leon when I’d once been cowering in their same corners ten minutes prior.

It’s with Leon that most of the game’s big boss battles take place, with the game quickly outfitting him with an arsenal large enough to make Rambo weep. Again, it’s a huge tonal shift, but one that harkens back to the more lighthearted aspects of Resident Evil’s history.

Sadly, while the Leon sections feel well paced in the first half of the game, I can’t say quite the same for the second half. After heading to a new location that I won’t spoil, Grace quickly gets sidelined with Requiem becoming very much Leon’s game to dominate.

Exploring those latter locations is still a fun experience, but after spending much of my time swapping between the two characters every hour or so, I found myself hankering for another taste of classic horror while the action novelty started to wear off.

Your enjoyment of Requiem’s story will also entirely depend on your tolerance for fan service and callbacks to previous games in the series. Although the game starts out by presenting a story that could feasibly be enjoyed on its own, it very quickly steers into nostalgia bait territory with its latter half.

I’d go so far as to say that Resident Evil 2, and maybe even 3, are mandatory viewing before tackling Requiem. Otherwise, I fear that a lot of its later narrative beats won’t land anywhere near as well for newcomers.

Because of this, I don’t think Requiem will age quite as well as the other recent entries in the series. Biohazard will be remembered for its gross, maze-like house of horror. Village will forever have the shadow of Lady Dimitresque standing over it.

Requiem is great in its own right, but it doesn’t exist without the building blocks that came before it. Although it hits all the right notes, it does little to move the needle forward in the same way Capcom is known for doing in the past.

Despite this, I can’t deny that Resident Evil Requiem had me either hooked or grinning throughout the vast majority of its runtime. From locking in while evading menacing stalkers in the early hours to cackling at some stupid Leon one-liner, it feels a fitting tribute to one of gaming’s longest-running series.

4/5

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.