This review is an excerpt of most of my Medium review for Requiem, unfortunately I hit Steam's character limit near the end of the review. You can read the full review here.[medium.com]

A few years back, in a video essay on the now decrepit “The Escapist” YouTube channel, video game critic Yahtzee Croshaw proposed that the “Resident Evil” franchise was stuck in a cycle: it would make one great game, then proceed to ruin it in the following entries by repeating the motions, chasing its own tail. Yahtzee’s final, perhaps frivolous, prediction was that the franchise would go through the entire cycle next in just a single entry, in “a game that starts really good, and then Chris Redfield shows up halfway through and the final boss is multiplayer-only.” And while the franchise’s ninth mainline entry, “Resident Evil Requiem,” never reached the trenches of co-op mandated gameplay, Yahtzee’s prediction for the franchise seemed to be prophetic, as the brilliant opening hours of “Requiem” were followed by a rehash of “RE:4R” without the gameplay merits that made it a hit, while being sunken too deep in the established canon.

“Resident Evil Requiem” is mainly separated into two halves, one centered around series mainstay Leon Kennedy’s action gameplay and the other around division I stutterer and newcomer Grace Ashcroft (she’s great). Grace, a data analyst for the FBI, is investigating a murder case at the hotel where her mother was murdered years ago (rough job) when she’s kidnapped by former Umbrella Corporation researcher Victor Gideon. Coincidentally, a now middle-aged Leon, who’s searching for the same guy in order to find a lead on curing his unidentifiable illness, happens to arrive right as Gideon is hauling Grace away.

Gideon, of course, escapes, but Leon follows his tracks to the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center and after an opening interlude that teases the two’s gameplay mechanics, the care center gets put on lockdown as Grace and Leon are split up, and the real meat of “Resident Evil Requiem” begins. Poorly equipped with a dinky pistol that only stuns the undead, throwable bottles as distractions, and a punchy last-resort “Requiem” revolver initially filled with only one bullet, Grace is at the mercy of the environment as you must find three hidden quartz emblems throughout the treacherous hallways to get out of the care center. It’s this three-hour long section of the game that I adore.

The care center is brimming with hostile forces, and since the most Grace can do is stun an enemy with a couple of pistol shots and shove them away, as I found more and more rooms and pathways littered with the infected, all with slight differences to their behaviors along with a handful of particularly specialized zombies, learning the best ways to deal with the onslaught became vital as backtracking through the halls is necessary, and the need to confront or hide from the many threats of the center stayed a very effective thrill through the many treks.

But the dead can die, with enough shots or stabs expended or a stealthy puncture from a craftable hemolytic injector that’ll gorily blow the target up, most of the standard infected will be dealt with, but your capability of doing so is only as large as your limited capacity resources, letting expending extra resources to take down a particularly harrowing foe be a meaningful choice.

I initially overlooked Grace’s crafting system, which allowed her to create more healing or combat tools, eventually even bullets for the coveted “Requiem” revolver, using the multitude of scraps collected and the splattered gore Grace can siphon with her Blood Collector. But as the crafting palate expanded, it became an essential part of clearing out the care center. The crafting design really aided the game’s already brilliant transition from starting you completely disarmed and afraid to letting you hold your own through the corridors you’ve memorized. But the center still manages to hold tricks up its sleeve throughout its runtime and continued to engage me with more additions to its already packed halls.

But while it’s a very well-oiled machine, if you do try to bend things too far, you’ll find that it won’t budge much. One annoying example was once the zombie chef shifted from guarding his kitchen to patrolling a hallway leading to a specific room I needed to get to. When I attempted to lure Chef Gusteau back to the kitchen, despite him having formerly stalked the location, his updated pathing wouldn’t let him back into the area, forcing me into one of the “correct” ways of getting around the chef.

Fortunately, “Requiem” seemed to do a good job at subtly directing the player to the intended ways of dealing with getting around in most cases, so that annoyance didn’t come up much. Running through the corridors of the care center managed to stay thrilling, even as it took a detour underground with a new threat to strategize against, all the way up until Grace’s main segment ends, leaving me delighted but wanting more, especially when the rest of the game revealed itself.

After a far too long interlude swapping between Grace’s and Leon’s gameplay, giving Grace two sequences that lacked the previous meaningful threats and exploration, the brunt Leon’s gameplay actually begins and, unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to the fantastic precedent set by the care center. At this point, the story also starts revealing its grander ambitions, zooming away from the interpersonal stakes of Grace’s story to the wider scope of the “Resident Evil” franchise as Leon embarks into the series’ mainstay location, Raccoon City. I’ve never played a “Resident Evil” prior to this release (losing some of my credibility here), so I didn’t come to “Requiem” for the story, but as it steadily became more outlandish and referential (in accordance to Yahtzee’s proposed cycle), it felt mishandled overall.

A polar opposite to Grace’s methodical explorations of freakish corridors, Leon’s segments replaced the fear with gun-toting third-person action gameplay. But once Raccoon City pivoted to its main quest of retrieving a set of, yet again, three detonator parts to blow up a gate that he probably could’ve found a way to climb over, the level design takes a noticeable hit and exposes the combat’s lack of depth.

The city is mainly out in the open, which often lacked structures to work around with while having a severe lack of verticality, and the enclosed arenas don’t meaningfully choreograph the undead’s locations, leading to some awkward and annoying fights. And while the combat has a lot of juice on paper — Leon is equipped with a variety of powerful artillery, an axe that can be infinitely sharpened, and the dreaded parry mechanic that can block seemingly everything — it never feels quite as powerful as it should. Every weapon has a very obvious preferred range, and the pistol’s meager firing speed and power kept it feeling sluggish. It’s still not bad (barring a couple of very poorly designed areas), but the combat’s lack of flair is exemplified by the generally bland level design.

Leon also gets equipped with a “Tactical Tracker” wristband that rewards him with credits for every kill, which you can use to purchase an array of items and weapon upgrades, but the only upgrades that actually matter are an inventory size upgrade you can get immediately — which removed all need for inventory management, I never once ran out of space — and a bulletproof vest. Spending the rest of the credits then just comes down to buying out random menial weapon buffs and extra items with no real thought to it...

Continue reading on Medium.[medium.com]