Resident Evil Requiem Review: The Best Horror In Years
My first evening with Resident Evil Requiem ended with me crouched behind a trolley, holding my breath as a patient dragged an IV pole past, muttering to nobody. Later, the same game of a massive collection had me on a motorbike with a rocket launcher in my hands. Any Resident Evil Requiem review has to hold both of those at once.
I picked it up a few weeks after launch, and what I found was one of the finest survival horror stretches in the series bolted to a shooter I stopped fearing halfway.
One campaign alternates between Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst with shaking hands and almost no ammunition, and Leon S. Kennedy, who could probably parry a helicopter by now. Capcom released it on February 27, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X and S, Switch 2, and PC.
Resident Evil Requiem Summary
One campaign, two genres. Grace's chapters are scarce-resource survival horror in first person, Leon's a third-person action game, and either lead can switch view.
Grace's care center chapters are the high point and the scariest thing Capcom has shipped since the Baker house.
The new virus leaves zombies with fragments of memory, so infected staff mutter old routines until they notice you.
Leon's half gives him supply boxes, credits and upgrades, and the horror drains out fast once he can afford a rifle.
Post-launch support has been light: a free photo mode in March, the Leon Must Die Forever minigame in May, and a June rebalance.
Grace Ashcroft Carries The Best Horror Capcom Has Written In Years
The opening hours in Rhodes Hill are why I own the game. Grace wakes in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, run by former Umbrella researcher Victor Gideon, with no gun and an inventory grid that fills up if you sneeze. Her first firearm there comes off a dead security officer and is worse than the one she owned.
Save points are typewriters that eat ink ribbons on the classic difficulty and on Insanity, and autosaves are rare enough that every corridor became a decision. That pressure is doing more work than any monster design in the game.
She is also, by series standards, a terrible fighter, and the writing commits to it. Grace stutters, fumbles reloads and sounds frightened. Her hemolytic injector bursts a downed body and destroys the infected blood in it, which is how you stop a corpse coming back as something worse. My answer to most rooms became crouching, throwing a bottle down the far end, waiting, and walking the other way.
Her inventory barely grows, so I spent a real share of those hours walking keys, medallions and blood samples back to an item box through corridors I had cleared twice. That's padding, and it's why her half sags in the middle.
Then there is the Girl, the enormous thing that hunts Grace through those chapters. Nothing Grace carries kills her, she tracks by sound, and bright light's the only thing that makes her recoil. Most stalkers here become a routine you optimise. This one never did, mostly since the audio makes it impossible to tell whether she's one floor up or behind the door you're about to open. I replayed those chapters twice and still held my breath.
These Zombies Remember Their Lives
The virus leaves fragments of memory intact, and Capcom builds its best scares on that change. A maid keeps wiping the same patch of floor in the dark. Someone sings on a balcony until you put a foot wrong, and the singing stops. Nothing has lunged at you yet and the room is already wrong.
It also makes the bestiary read as people rather than health bars. Blister Heads are what a corpse becomes when you knocked it down and didn't finish the job, back on its feet faster and angrier than before. The Chef guards his kitchen with a cleaver like he still has a shift to finish. Chainsaw wielders flail with a physics-driven unpredictability I never got from the old Ganado.
Sadly the idea thins out as the game goes on. Once the story moves to the Raccoon City ruins, the roster leans on familiar silhouettes, Lickers, Garmr hounds, a trenchcoated Tyrant, and the muttering mostly stops. The last third trades the best original idea in the game for a greatest hits set, and the Licker hallway is the only part that got a reaction out of me.
Leon's Half Stops Being Scary
Leon gets supply boxes, credits earned from kills and upgrade trees, plus charms he finds in the world that hand out passive buffs. Within an hour I had a shotgun worth firing and a parry I trusted, and the game stopped asking me to be careful. How frightened can anyone be holding that? The combat is excellent on its own terms, with crisp headshot criticals and meaty melee follow-ups, and the charms are the part I liked most since you find them rather than buy them.
Judged as horror it never got to me, and I stopped treating ammunition as a resource. The set pieces get louder as they go, and that motorbike chase is the sort of thing you tell people about, though I was never worried about dying in it. His boss fights are the softest part of the package, and several of the named creatures I had been dreading folded in under two minutes without costing me a heal.
The perspective toggle is the part I expected to be a gimmick. Grace defaults to first person and Leon to third, and swapping either is a menu option from the start. I played Grace entirely in first person, which is how Capcom built the care center. Then I ran Leon's half in first person, where the corridors tighten considerably and his bosses got a little of their menace back.
Post-Launch Support Is Thin
Capcom said in March that it planned ongoing support and more content, off the back of six million units in under three weeks. By the end of July 2026 the figure had passed eight million, the fastest the series has sold. What has arrived is modest. A free photo mode landed in late March, the free Leon Must Die Forever minigame arrived in May, and a June patch rebalanced it. The Grace and Leon amiibo that followed in July hand over weapon skins when scanned, so that one asks you to buy a figurine.
That minigame is the best of the lot and worth the download. It opens once you finish the story and drops Leon into escalating stages with exclusive enhancer abilities, the closest thing here to a Mercenaries mode. It leans so far into what Leon's campaign was already doing that it pushes the package another step from horror.
Director Koshi Nakanishi laid out the post-launch plan, and the story expansion was the one item on it he left undated. Capcom has not named one since, and the official Capcom investor announcement commits to additional content only in general terms. Anyone waiting for a reason to return has a photo mode, a minigame and skins locked behind plastic.
Is Resident Evil Requiem Worth Buying Right Now?
Yes, and I would tell you to buy it for Grace. If the care center chapters had been the whole game I'd be arguing for a nine, since that stretch stands with the strongest horror the series has produced. I'd have paid full freight for those hours.
The game is stable and largely finished. It ran well on my ageing PC, and the Switch 2 version exists for people who want horror in handheld form. Challenge points carry across playthroughs and buy weapons, charms and outright cheats, so replays have a point.
Wait if you want the full package with its expansion attached, since that content still has no date. Series newcomers should start here either way, as the writing does enough legwork that you don't need twenty-eight years of lore. Everyone else has a complete game sitting there already.
FAQs About Resident Evil Requiem
Final Words
What stays with me is a corridor. Grace against a wall, a woman somewhere ahead humming a song she half remembers, and me weighing whether the door behind me was worth the noise. Capcom found something new in a genre it has rebuilt twice, then handed the back half of the game to a man who parries chainsaws for a living.
I don't think the two halves are a mistake, and the split is probably why this outsold everything else in the series. It does mean the game peaks early and spends its last hours being merely very good. If the expansion gives Grace the back half she earned, this score goes up.
Play Grace in first person, play her at night, and don't be proud about running away.
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