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Essential Tips and Tricks
Resident Evil Requiem is finally here, and I know you’re probably excited to jump right in and start popping zombie heads with the sole of Leon’s shoe, but before you get to all of that, it’s good to have an idea of what you’re in for. So to that end, here are 11 things to know before you play Resident Evil Requiem.
Differences Between Grace and Leon
Like several other Resident Evil games, Resident Evil Requiem has a multi-protagonist structure. Unlike those other games, however, this time around you’ll be swapping the baton of player control back and forth between Grace and Leon all throughout the game, rather than them being separate campaigns. While Leon and Grace basically handle the same, there are some noteworthy differences between their playstyles that you’ll want to make sure you know:
- Leon’s inventory capacity is humongous, while Grace’s is very limited and requires the usage of classic RE magic boxes, more on that later.
- Leon has a permanent melee weapon in his hatchet that can lose durability, but can always be restored by holding L1 and pressing square. Grace, meanwhile, must find makeshift knives in order to protect herself against zombie grabs, or slash away at enemies from close range. These knives will eventually break, leaving her defenseless up close until she can find another. Also note that Leon’s hatchet can open up the warped doors on these little cabinets that usually hide some goodies, so don’t worry about them while you’re wandering the halls as Grace.
- Both characters have a melee attack when you stagger an enemy, but Grace’s is meant more as a way to knock a zombie down and run past it, while Leon’s can kill zombies outright, and remains a go-to method of saving ammo.
- Leon also can parry enemy attacks by pressing L1 right before an attack hits him, if his hatchet still has durability. Grace... can not.
- Leon can interact with dropped weapons, like chainsaws and fireaxes. Chainsaws can be wielded as a weapon, though you might wanna wait for them to stop spinning before you try to pick them up. Fire axes, meanwhile, can be automatically hurled at nearby enemies.
- While Grace’s weaponry is comparatively limited next to Leon’s, she starts with access to the best gun in the game, the titular Requiem magnum. More on this one later as well.
- Both characters can eventually craft, but Grace can only do so by mixing crafting parts with infected blood that she must harvest from either dead enemies or spots in the environment. Grace must also find Blood Specimens in order to learn new crafting recipes, while Leon just learns how to craft ammo types just by picking up new guns.
Difficulty Differences
Resident Evil Requiem comes with three starting difficulties to customize your experience. If you’re looking just to experience the story and have very limited friction from combat, you can select casual. Enemies don't take much to take down, and you won't encounter many ambushes by mutated zombies. Ammo is also more plentiful.
If you’re more accustomed to the modern style of Resident Evil, featuring unlimited saves and autosaves at pivotal moments, Modern is the difficulty for you. You can also drop difficulty down to casual at anytime while playing in this mode.
And finally if you’re all about the classic RE experience, you can select Standard (Classic). This is the difficulty designed for longtime fans looking for that added bit of extra challenge that comes from having to find and manage ink ribbons to save.
First Person vs Third Person
One new feature of Resident Evil Requiem (though it was added to Village post-launch) is the ability to choose whether you want to play in first person, ala Resident Evil 7 and 8; or third person, ala the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3, and Resident Evil 4. Capcom recommends playing in First Person while in control of Grace, and third person while using Leon.
This makes sense, as Grace’s are meant to be more about immersive horror, while Leon’s are much more about high tension action that benefit greatly from having a wider look at your surroundings. That said, the choice is yours.
Third Person has more gameplay benefit, as you’ll be able to see over and around objects without having to actually peak around them, and there are some cool moments that are unique to the perspective, like Grace tripping and falling when running away from a pursuing monster, but in first person, you get cool scripted moments like this one since the developers are able to know exactly where the camera is going to be pointed.
Change Your Settings To Meet Your Preferences
There are a bunch of settings in the options menu beyond just the First Person/Third Person perspective toggle that you’ll definitely want to know about. If you’re playing in first person and you’re getting motion sick from the "wobbling" that the camera does to simulate footsteps, you can turn that down, especially since the default maxes it out at 10. Beyond that, you can change your sensitivity, aim assist settings, and there are a host of accessibility presets, just to name a few of the things you might want to adjust before you start.
Manipulating Zombie Behavior
Zombies in Requiem maintain a smidge of their former human selves even in zombie form, which means you’ll have workers that obsess over turning the lights off, patients with IV stands that become aggravated by loud noises, and singers that can belt out screams that will stun and disorient you. Some of these behaviors can be manipulated and taken advantage of. For example, the Zombie that obsesses over the light switch. If he's blocking the way forward, try turning on a light elsewhere, hide for a little, wait for him to come over and flip it off, and then you can sneak by and get past him without having to waste resources.
The IV stand guys that get enraged over loud noises can actually be used to take out other zombies by tossing an empty bottle over by them. They’ll think they were the ones who made the noise and proceed to beat the crap out of them. Fun times.
Stalker Foes
One of the unique challenges that Grace must face in her gameplay sections are stalker type enemies (think Mr. X in RE2, Nemesis in RE3, the Bakers in RE7, etc.). These are extremely dangerous foes that roam around an environment and are extremely difficult to kill without a handful of well placed requiem bullets. Stealth is the name of the game here.
Always keep an ear out for their unique noises, and be careful about just sprinting around corners in areas you thought were clear, because you might just run right into one. If you have the bullets for your magnum, they are worth killing, as they’ll remove a persistent obstacle throughout a section of the map, and will also drop valuable charms.
The Chef can be even taken out with a single well placed Requiem shot on Modern difficulty (if you've upgraded your power with Stabilizers and he hasn't spotted you), or better yet -- a single Hemolytic Injection if you sneak up from behind. If spotted, expect these enemies to absorb anywhere from 3-5 Requiem shots before they go down. If you’re taking them out as Leon, you won’t have the magnum, but your expanded arsenal should nevertheless be able to bring them down without too much difficulty.
Using the Box
Just like in previous Resident Evil games, inventory management is key in Requiem. As mentioned earlier, Grace’s inventory is extremely limited, so you’ll have to use a storage box in order to avoid having to make the agonizing decision of whether or not you should discard something in your inventory and lose it permanently in order to pick up a critical item.
Some general things to keep in mind when managing your inventory: For one, always offload antique coins, ink ribbons, and any puzzle items or keys that you don’t know what to do with yet. Coins you can save until you get enough to buy something that you want from the parlor. You can either toss these in the box or just insert them into the parlor boxes, as you don’t have to pay the whole cost immediately. Ink ribbons, if you’re playing on on Classic difficulty, can be pulled out of your box whenever you want to save, since they’re always in the same room as a typewriter; and puzzle items or keys can be returned for, once you know the spot where they’re supposed to go. Thankfully, key items will be automatically disposed of once there’s no more use for them.
Aside from that, you should also only take what you need to survive. You don’t need two or three bundles of handgun ammunition on you at all times, nor do you need that lone green herb when you’ve already got a full heal injection, or that extra blood pack when you’ve already got full blood, or a ton of scrap metal for crafting. If you gear up like Rambo, you’re either going to waste a ton of resources on fights that could have been avoided, or you’re going to horde them and not have enough space to pick up any of the really valuable stuff. Generally I like to leave a safe room with a fully loaded gun, a single slot reserved for handgun ammo, and one or two full heals. Everything else can be picked up as you go, and dropped off at the next opportunity.
Bullets vs Injectors
As mentioned before, early on as Grace you’ll gain the ability to craft either handgun bullets or Hemolytic Injectors. The 8 shots of handgun ammo costs 40 blood and a piece of scrap, and the injector costs a little more at 60 blood and a piece of scrap. It may seem like the bullets are the greater value, but consider the fact that Injectors are an instant kill on unaware enemies, you can even use them on staggered enemies that you’ve shot just a few times in the leg, and they don’t leave a corpse behind that could eventually turn into a blisterhead.
Generally, I’d recommend crafting Injectors unless you’re completely out of handgun bullets, as they’re far more rare than handgun ammo, and they’re just more efficient when it comes to killing zombies.
Blister Heads
Speaking of Blister Heads, these are a new type of enemy that are very similar to the dreadful crimson head zombies from Resident Evil 1 Remake. When you kill a zombie, occasionally when you return to the room later on, the zombie will convulse and its head will transform into something that looks kind of like a Licker from RE2. These blisterheads are incredibly durable, extremely fast, love to dart out of the way when you start aiming at them, and can hit you with instant-kill moves.
If you’re playing as Grace, you may want to heavily consider just running the heck away once you hear them start transforming, as getting into a fight with a Blister Head is sure to cost you a lot of resources, whether that be ammo, health, or both. That said, if you’re looking for something to use your Requiem bullets on, Blisterheads are a worthwhile choice. If you’re Leon, they’re prime targets for your shotgun, grenades, and whatever other form of heavy weaponry you’ve got on you. Note that Leon can even parry their flurry of blows, and knock them down to chop off their head in a clean sweep.
Noteworthy Collectibles
There are three main collectibles that you’ll want to keep an eye out for as you’re playing. Bobbleheads are the main persistent collectible, and there’s a nice reward for collecting all of them throughout the game. These are not tracked on the map and are often fairly deviously hidden in nooks and crannies, so you’ll need to keep your eyes peeled for them.
Antique Coins are an exclusive collectible for Grace and are found all over the place, but you can usually expect to find them in safes, and by killing the singing zombies. You can spend them in the parlor on a handful of very useful upgrades, like a pouch to expand her inventory by two slots (which is super important and I recommend getting that immediately,) a health upgrade, a gun stabilizer that increases damage and handling, and an upgrade to your maximum blood storage capacity so you can fill up your injector with more blood for crafting. Note that Leon cannot pick up these coins, so make sure you find all of them as Grace and get all of these upgrades before moving on from Rhodes Hill.
And lastly there are lockpicks, which are used to unlock the various simple locks. These have been in prior Resident Evil games and are exactly the same in their function here. Generally they will have rare metals that can be used as crafting material for Requiem bullets, once Grace learns the crafting recipe.
Requiem
Usually in Resident Evil games, the Magnum is one of the last weapons you’ll get, but in RE9, Grace will get it pretty much right from the outset.
As you imagine, this is both your last resort in standard zombie encounters, and your first look when it comes to dealing with stalker-type enemies like The Chef, or Chunk. If you need to use it against regular zombies, make sure it’s in a fight against a bunch of them, and try to line up your shot so you can take out multiple enemies at once.
If you plan to use it to take down a Stalker, try to sneak up on them and target their head while they’re unaware. You’ll deal a lot more damage to an unknowing foe, and potentially may even be able to kill them in a single shot. If you shoot them while spotted, it’ll take around 3-5 Requiem shots to bring them down.
Things to Avoid
Some of the most essential tips are things you shouldn't do. See the video or our tips below on what you should keep an eye out for, and mistakes that can be easily avoided:
Leave No Door Unopened
Many doors that are locked won't show how they can be unlocked unless you get very close or interact with them. It can be very easy to get lost and not know where to go next if you can’t easily see on your map what is needed to unlock a door, so make sure to get close enough for the hollow circle "interact" prompt to appear so the unlocking method, or door name, gets noted on your map.
Don’t Just Rush Through a Closed Door
Speaking of doors, you can nudge them open to peek through and see if enemies are close by. You can also close doors by facing them and pressing the interact button, even if no prompt appears. Rushing through a door is a surefire way to run into a zombie, or worse, a stalker-type enemy like the Chef or Chunk, so make sure to test the waters before you just jump right in.
Safe Rooms Aren’t Always "Safe"
Unless they're light-sensitive zombies like The Girl that hunts Grace in the beginning, zombies can enter well-lit "safe rooms" such as the central hall and rooms with typewriters in them. They'll usually leave immediately after, but they will reach through the door and attack you if you're close enough. Make sure to step far enough into the room to avoid getting grabbed.
You Don’t Need to Fight Every Zombie
A big mistake that a lot of new Resident Evil players make is treating every zombie like a thing that must be killed right then and there the first time you come across it. Unlike RE4, where you often receive valuable drops from killing enemies, and Leon’s sections in this game where you are rewarded for killing everything (more on that later), you often will use more resources than you receive as Grace when taking out an enemy. Ammo and resources are scarce in Grace’s sections, so you’ll want to find ways to get around and avoid zombies rather than outright killing them when possible.
Fortunately, different zombies are attracted to either light or sound, meaning they can be lured where you want them to be by flipping lightswitches or making noise. The noise-sensitive zombies will attack an area where they heard a noise no matter what’s there, meaning you can throw bottles or create a ruckus near other enemies to have them attack each other.
Know Where To Shoot When You Shoot
Always think about where and why you're shooting a zombie. Ninety percent of the time, you'll want to either hit them in the head or the legs. Hitting them in the head does more damage, but the legs are easier to target, and can stagger them, meaning you can shove them over and run past them, or have an easier time popping off a few more headshots or injecting them with an instant killing hemolytic injector. Or, you can just knock them down and keep slashing at them with your knife. Zombies' heads and legs are also more vascular (meaning areas with higher blood flow), and will increase the amount of infected blood you can harvest from them after death.
Don’t Leave Resources Behind
A huge part of Requiem, especially during the Grace sections, is inventory management, and we have a few tips to help you out here.
First, you can retrieve your makeshift knives after using them to break free of a zombie grapple, but you have to kill the zombie you stabbed first. The small ceramic dishes you find on tables, along with the large vases, and boxes with yellow tape can all be broken, even when there’s no prompt like the big containers, and you often receive resources from them. Their contents aren’t marked on the map unless you break them, so make sure you’re being extra vigilant about looking out for these containers and don’t miss out on their loot.
Once you reach the parlor, you can spend Antique coins to unlock upgrades. We recommend grabbing the hip pouch first for the extra inventory space, and then the upgrade for the blood collector. There are permanent upgrades you can craft using blood, but they all require more than the base collector allows you to carry. This will also save you return trips to pick up blood you had to leave behind. If you need more antique coins, they’re often found in safes and on the bodies of the singing zombies.
Don’t Waste Your Bottles
You’ll find a few bottles as Grace that you can use to distract enemies, but they’re best used for crafting molotov cocktails later. Don’t waste them!
Don’t Engage Blister Heads Without A Plan
If you don’t destroy a zombie’s head or take them out with an injector, they’ll eventually revive themselves as a much stronger zombie, known as a Blister Head. It’s as gross as it sounds. These enemies are stronger, faster, have instant kill moves, and, most importantly, take several times the number of headshots as they would have previously.
For this reason, we strongly suggest avoiding them entirely if possible, or using a Hemolytic injector on them when they’re either knocked down or unaware of you. In a pinch, a single Requiem shot to the head should work too, and is much less resource intensive than using regular pistols.
Don’t Neglect Leon's Hatchet
It can be hard to switch out of the limited resource mindset from playing as Grace, but Leon’s hatchet will never break, it will only get dull. Resharpen it every time you have a moment to spare, as it costs nothing other than a few seconds of time– time you won’t always have with enemies bearing down on you.
Inflicting a finishing blow in melee with Leon's hatchet usually either destroys or severs the enemy's head, which will prevent them from getting back up. In high-traffic areas, it's worth making sure the zombies can't reanimate, so opt for the melee finisher when you can by shooting legs or the head and approaching the enemy for the finisher prompt. This also goes for stealth finishers.
You can also use the hatchet for defense. Raise it with L1 before an enemy attacks to parry the blow. This works on more attacks than you might think, including bosses and even regular zombie grabs. If you press L1 at the very last moment, Leon will perform a "perfect parry" that stuns the enemy and leaves them open to a melee follow-up attack. Note that you still take damage even on a parry, so if your health is critical, the best option is to just avoid getting hit in the first place.
Prioritize Enemies With Weapons
Another mistake that’s easy to make in Requiem is just autopiloting and not thinking about the order in which you take down enemies. When possible, always take out the zombies carrying weapons first. Not only are they more dangerous than the others, but you can press the interact button to throw whatever they drop at other enemies, usually scoring an instant kill or at least a knockdown you can follow up with a finisher. This is also a great way to save on ammo. Note that you need to have line-of-sight to the enemy you are throwing a weapon at, as a wall or object can interrupt the path.
This is especially important when you’re facing chainsaw wielding enemies. These guys need to be taken down quick, otherwise they can sneak up on you and cut you in half in a single swing. Not to mention, once you do bring them down, you’ll be able to take their chainsaw and wield as your own weapon. Just make sure you wait until it stops spinning before trying to pick it up.
Don’t Upgrade Weapons You’re Not Going to Use
Once you reach the second location with Leon, you unlock the ability to buy, sell, and upgrade weapons at his supply box. The currency that you receive for killing enemies and finding these post-apocalyptic... fitbits (apparently), is called credits, and it’s what you use for every purchase and upgrade other than equipping charms you gain through other means.
While upgrading a weapon will go a long way to making it more lethal and efficient, if you end up replacing it with something better later and selling that weapon, you won’t earn the extra credits back– you’ll just receive the amount for selling the base item. You can, however, buy the weapon back for the same price, and all the upgrades you already spent on it will come with it. So there’s no recouping the upgrade cost, but if you need a few more credits to buy something now, and then return to buy the weapon you sold later, you always have that option.