Resident Evil Requiem PS5 Review

I have been a massive fan of Resident Evil games ever since I played the first game back on the PS1

Coming from that era and having modern remakes of the entire series has been a roller coaster of emotions to say the least but I have enjoyed it nonetheless

Requiem or Resident Evil 9 is the series latest installment which takes place after seven years from the last game that was Resident Evil: Village or RE:8

For those uninitiated or haven’t played any RE game till now and wanted to get into it without playing all of them, I would highly recommend playing RE:2,3 and 4 to create a baseline before entering Requiem

Coming back into the review then, Capcom has made another masterpiece with this one

Not only did they make the best Resident Evil game till date but also overtook their most beloved game of all time, Re4 and took it even further with better animations, characters, graphics and evolving smooth gameplay

Both the characters, Leon and Grace, have exceptional detail in their facial expressions while maintaining their age-appropriate face animations which is a tough job to nail these days given how bad recent games have been when it came to facial animations

You get to play two sides of the same story from different perspectives. One being a scary Re7 style horror game and the other being a very mature action survival driven horror style gameplay from RE4.

This combination of gameplay from both Re4 and Re7 has given the game more depth and a new perspective into different characters and how they react to both the protagonists in their own way.

Gameplay wise, things are similar to RE4 but now every weapon kill and melee kill hits hard as Leon has evolved from a rookie cop to a DSO (Division of Security Operations) Agent.

Leon, now 51 years old, is a battle-worn legend ready to tackle what’s ahead of him and nothing he sees shocks him anymore. New melee attacks and finishers are now here and are more lethal than ever which is good to see.

Meanwhile, Grace’s portion of the game covers the slow horror perspective of the game with you having very limited bullets to kill enemies and mostly trying to avoid combat or use smart maneuvering to get through the game.

After some time, you get to meet Leon and from there, your gameplay keeps switching between him and Grace which keeps the gameplay loop absolutely new and fresh for all fans alike.

Halfway through the game, you get to buy and sell new weapons just like previous installments while also having the option to tune/upgrade them at your leisure.

Killing enemies or collecting bracelets kept lying around in the world grants you with points which you can use to upgrade or buy weapons. This, however, is present on Leon’s playthrough only.

You can swap between first person and third person camera angles at your leisure though I would highly recommend playing Grace in First person and Leon in third person perspective for the most immersive experience.

There are a lot of gaps between Village and Requiem and several years have already passed. We see some information on the lore by collecting pages but not everything is explained, giving more headroom to the developers for future releases.

No Resident Evil game is complete without a fun and thrilling chase sequence, and we have one here as well delivered in the highest quality possible. This is easily the best sequence in the game showing a lot of the open-world racoon city now in ruins after the explosion with an amazing view of the whole city.

Bosses and Mini bosses have improved this time around and there are a lot of returning enemies as well which I won’t spoil in this review, but smaller enemies are very consistent and lack variety as most of them are similar as compared to bigger ones in the series

Speaking of graphics and world detailing, Re9 looks absolutely stunning on my LG G3 OLED playing on my base ps5. The detailing in this game is just insane.

As you can see from the image below how big a difference it feels when playing on an OLED TV when compared with a normal screenshot captured from in-game.

Leon’s section from the midway through to the last part of the game feels like I am playing The Last of US Part 3 in some areas where you are running around in a post-apocalyptic racoon city and you get to go back to the areas from the previous games which is a huge nostalgia hit for me personally.

All the voice actors, sound designers and the background music artists have done a great job at capturing requiem’s energy from the beginning till the end.

Disclaimer: Huge thanks to Capcom for providing us with a review code for the game for the PS5 platform

Buy: Here