Resident Evil 9: Requiem

It’s been a long, winding, out-of-order road to get here but tonight we cracked open that Resident Evil Generation Pack for the Switch 2, popped in the Game-Key Card™, started the download and made popcorn. Our efforts of pushing through RE4 and the two remakes, RE2 & RE3 have finally paid off - the saga of Raccoon City and Leon Kennedy are about to conclude… probably. I never get fed into hype quite like I had for this Resident Evil game. Obviously big titles that tick my fandom boxes I’m there day one; Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom, any Suda51 or Yoko Taro game, but generally I’m a “play what you feel” kind of guy. But seeing the reception and the excitement around RE9 along with the simultaneous launch on a Nintendo console especially as I was coming out of anesthesia was too much for my primitive little FOMO brain to fight off. So now, almost exactly ONE MONTH post launch, we dive into the latest in the series, Resident Evil 9: Requiem!

Opening up in the FBI offices as a mousy, shy analyst works away on her computer they begin to setup the tone of the game. Grace is not an action hero. Grace isn’t even really a people person. She seems to like her work and has a tough time interacting with others. She is a great protagonist for a horror game. As you come to learn, there is a comfort that comes with a protagonist that can confidently kill a zombie. There is distress when you play a character that is constantly afraid. It’s a cool strategy and with the history of dual protagonists throughout the series, I don’t think they’ve taken this approach before. Ethan was very scared but nothing like Grace. Your two characters generally play out as more of the same just with different ammo and slightly different speeds, or one can take more bites than the other. The difference between Grace and Leon was described perfectly by Catrena

When you play as Grace, you’re afraid of the zombies. When you play as Leon, the zombies are afraid of you.

Grace creeping around the hotel and later the hospital (sanitorium?), it’s tight and claustrophobic, presented in first person view. I’m one of the people that LOVED the jump to first person with Resident Evil 7. I thought that game was great and it may be up for a replay on switch.

But I also love OG Resident Evil 4 and third person shooters and character action games and oh-ho-ho does Leon want to be in a character action game so bad. With him you’ve got guns and melee weapons and they are both equipped and you can use them. By hitting L you can swing your hatchet, and if you keep pressing it he kind of strings together a sudo-combo. It’s amazing! Leon’s got finishers! He’s got a parry! I keep seeing people compare this to Doom Eternal (which I haven’t played) because of the parry but to me it’s also like Doom 2016; do enough damage and Leon can perform a finisher. It combines a lot of what was fun about RE4 but amped up. Leon is old & angry (not that I can relate). This is also especially fun after struggling my way through RE2&3 with zombie ammo sponges that WOULD NOT DIE.

I’ve also noticed that zombies are more unique in this entry than ever before. They are twitchy and move erratically. A fight with 4 or 5 of these things plays out more like a high-frame action movie than a horror game - it’s like they crank the frame rate up to 60 when engaging in battle. I fought off a zombie doctor with a chainsaw and was able to parry with my axe (which now requires sharpening mid battle, thank you Monster Hunter). When that doctor fell… a different zombie picked up the chainsaw! And they weren’t able to wield it correctly right away! It caused them to fall over and he and the chainsaw flailed around on the ground like a dropped uzi in a Naked Gun movie. Its all very chaotic! But the thing is… Leon can also pick up the chainsaw…

This is all to say that I am VERY much enjoying my time with the game so far. Catrena is too! We had the lights low and the sound up and there were plenty of screams and yelps coming from us. Grace’s second sections of the game finds her in a scary hospital. As we begin to explore, we move through light and dark areas. Sometimes she finds a light switch that makes the lights only flicker, sometimes she finds a lamp that will turn on. At one point she finds a hand-drawn picture book in what looks like a daycare room. The book tells the tale of the Shadow Monster and it starts to become clear that something is lurking in the dark. So far we’ve only had to run from one zombie - the police officer that helped us into the hotel in the beginning.

All of our fears have been our imagination or the wind or a precariously placed stack of buckets. Pulling from those environmental changes in RE7 - a chair falling over, something in the room feels different - as opposed to RE2/3 where a dead body falls from the ceiling or a floor above. Eventually we make our way down the largest stretch of dark room looking for some tool and open a door and BLAM are greeted by a dead body falling through a doorway, trapping us underneath. PHEW we thought it was a OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

The shadow monster. She’s here. She’s terrifying and she will not leave us alone. Think back to the storybook! The light! Get to the light! So now we begin to circle back but my god she can go through the giant holes that are in the ceiling. This section was much scarier than anything we’ve played recently. The tension of Grace being completely cut off from anyone, the lights flickering on and off, knowing that light is your only chance of respite. It was so well done and was such a great kick-off to this huge, spooky hospital we are about to spend the game in. Really excited to get back to it tonight.

Mar 30, 2026 / 8:24 pm

Just a warning there will be spoilers from here out. I have a general spoiler warning on the front of the games section but just in case you wander here by some chance and don’t see that

We’ve been having an incredible time with this game, so much so I haven’t felt like writing about it! I’ve sure been talking about it, given the chance. I’m really enjoying it so far. Grace is such a great character, she’s sheepish and scared and has to really push herself to keep going in this big scary sanatarium full of giant monsters that want to eat her. The more we get to play as Grace the more I really like her as a Resident Evil protagonist. She’s curious (but scared) and selfless (also terrified) and really wants to help Emily get out of the facility. From the first moment we met Emily I could have assumed that she would turn into some kind of giant lab-grown monster; that cell she was held in was pretty high tech and the empty one had a giant hole chewed through it. The shadow monster is referred to as “THE GIRL” and I just had assumed it was whatever burrowed out of that empty cell though it had not been confirmed in any narrative ways.

The puzzles in the mansion Rhode’s Hospital are pretty good, I like the setting and think the environment is great. This new blood-letting mechanic of Grace’s fits right in and is a pretty interesting way to push crafting forward in RE. Gunpowder be damned, we’ve got blood now! I love that she make Molotovs, but could also just throw the empty bottle to cause a distraction. I have to confess that I’ve been hoarding the high end scrap metal to make the Requiem’s ammo for when “I need it”, a classic RE strategy - hoard the magnum ammo and oops game’s over I forgot to use it. Hopefully I still have a chance.

They paced out Leon’s interstitial sections in the first two acts extremely well. At one point you grab Emily out of her cell and have to carry her to an office on the other side of the map. It’s very tense, because you can’t DO anything with Emily in your hands. You can run, use your flashlight and heal… and that’s it. By the time you make your way around all the walkers you couldn’t kill because they would take too much ammo and the huge zombie baby thats been stalking that wing, you get into an office where Emily needs to read some braille to solve a puzzle. Great! We’ve done it! We’re through and BAM OH MY GOD THE SHADOW MONSTER IS BACK AND BLASTED THROUGH THIS WALL AND STOLE EMILY. God dammit, she took her down… way down into the basement through this giant hole. Well, it’s time and Grace jumps in and LEON. I was not looking forward to crawling around a dark creepy basement, this reprieve was perfectly timed out. I get to do a little exploring and a whole lot of Zombie shredding. His section’s aren’t even that long. I also appreciate that because while playing as Leon is pretty cool and fun, I want to see where Grace’s story is going.

Oh my god I forgot - and I don’t understand HOW I could forget this - but looking back through my screenshots reminded me of the most fucking insane section of this game so far. So we’re in the basement, and we’re trying to find three electrical plugs so we can power up a section of this basement and get Emily out of a cage the Shadow Monster put her in (just go with it, okay).

In order to get this plug we need access it from the other side, and in order to get through the other side we have to crawl around in what I can only describe as a dry cleaner’s carousel full of wrapped and unwrapped dead bodies. You turn it on and it starts moving and you have to wait for a spot to get in and hope your rotating neighbor doesn’t come to life and try to take a bite.

And then it dumps you off into a pool (which you drain) and at one end of the pool is a giant shredding device and a conveyor belt! You have to survive the shredding of all these bodies, some of which come back to life to eat you - it’s one of the most brutal things I think I’ve seen in a Resident Evil game, just deranged shit, and it happens to Grace! She doesn’t deserve this, but she survives!

Welcome to Raccoon City

I am now into the third act, playing as Leon. Grace has made her decision to leave Leon behind because he put a few rounds into the chest of Monster Emily. Wandering around devasted Raccoon City is pretty cool, but this section feels like it’s stacking a lot of things onto Leon’s to-do list. Okay, we need to get to the city center so we first need to …

Wait a minute hold on… What the fuck is with this giant spider? When in the Resident Evil franchise, especially RECENTLY, have we found just like a NORMAL thing? This was a spider… just big. It wasn’t a mutated person that had its genes spliced with a black widow, no just like a big spider. Considering that Raccoon City was sterilized using a Thermobaric Missile, there should be no radiation to cause a mutation. I wonder if they are going to explain this later.

Anyway, this section so far feels like a prototype for an open world Resident Evil game. Give you a big map, and each section needs a series of MacGuffins sourced to open it up. There are plenty of enemies here and they are pushing the story along but it does feel like a hat on a hat on a hat. Maybe it just feels that way because we are outside in the day and not shoved into a weird old building full of cryptic keys and medallions.