We've been enjoying the fruits of CAPCOM's Resident Evil Renaissance (their REnaissance?) for several years now, and I feel like Resident Evil Requiem represents a fascinating culmination of everything the company has been trying to so since it revived the franchise with such ferocity back when Resident Evil 7: Biohazard dropped nearly ten years ago, now. Since then, the franchise has been split more-or-less in half: The Ethan Winters-focused duology of Biohazard and Village exploited their first-person perspectives and stories that were very loosely connected to the grand web of Resident Evil lore to deliver titles that prioritized genre experimentation and pants-crapping terror. To this day, the opening half of Resident Evil 7 is one of the scariest gaming experiences I've ever had, and I love the way that Village leaned into Gothic imagery and Hammer-esque camp. Meanwhile, a trilogy of exceptional remakes worked that RE Engine magic to create fresh and delightfully exciting new visions of RE 2, 3, and 4. Whether you're in it for the new flavors or the old-school nostalgia, if you're a Resident Evil fan, you've been eating like royalty for ages, now.

Resident Evil Requiem is at once something old and new, mixing all of the defining features of the last five entries to bring the “main” story of the series forward for the first time since Resident Evil 6 nearly killed the franchise in its tracks. Strangely enough, this game is also trying to replicate the sin that has made 6 such a black sheep for so long: In their efforts to provide the ultimate Resident Evil experience, CAPCOM has once again decided to provide multiple campaigns that offer completely different experiences. While Requiem makes a point of telling the player that either campaign can be played in first- or third-person with a simple toggle in the options menu, the developers' intentions are clear: Grace's story is meant to be a frightening blend of evasion and resource management that is all the more terrifying when limited to first-person, while Leon's story is meant to show off our buff zombie-killing gun-daddy in all of his three-dimensional glory.

Let's get this out of the way up front: Resident Evil Requiem is a much better attempt to blend the series' competing horror and action priorities. For one, the team at CAPCOM has learned that whittling things down to just two perspectives allows the differing gameplay focuses to breathe and develop themselves. The pacing is also a lot more effective. Grace's time in the Rhodes Facility genuinely is terrifying, thanks to some great, persistent threats that you must constantly duck and weave around while dealing with the usual undead fare and unlocking the manor's labyrinth of doors. Grace does have access to some firepower when needs must, including the titular (and supremely badass) Requiem revolver, but she is no Jill Valentine or Claire Redfield. Kudos to Angela Sant'Albano for embodying a protagonist who is believably shaken and scared without ever crossing the line into helplessness. Grace adds a much-needed shade of humanity to the roster of Resident Evil superheroes, and I hope CAPCOM continues to feature her much more in future titles.

Speaking of superheroes: Just when you start to feel like you could really use a break from all of Grace's item-box swapping and herb hunting, the story shifts to Leon S. Kennedy and his endless stable of agonizingly, beautifully terrible one-liners. With Leon's arsenal of badass guns and a very satisfying hatchet for melee action, you get to mow down hordes of bioterror baddies and experience the map from a new set of (third-person) eyes. As someone who actually appreciates Resident Evil 6 for the bloated and overambitious mess that it is, it has been very rewarding to see CAPCOM execute this redux of the horror and action fusion so well. His half of the story relies on the formula that was essentially perfected back in Resident Evil 4, and while I honestly wouldn't have minded if CAPCOM had gone for something a little more bold in regards to Leon's arsenal and encounters, I would be lying if I said I wasn't having a blast every second that I spent crushing skulls and cracking terrible jokes with him.

I also have to commend Resident Evil Requiem for nailing the atmosphere that has been so vital to the series' resurgence. In my opinion, the true failing that caused Resident Evil to crash out in the early '10s was the simple fact that the games just weren't scary anymore. Even when you're dishing out superman levels of zombie-exploding punishment as Leon, Resident Evil Requiem remembers that the player still needs to feel scared, even if the fear is coming more from the friction of so many monsters bearing down on you with just a clip or two of ammo left to spare. When you play as Grace, Resident Evil leans into a grimy yet modern aesthetic that feels like a perfectly balanced mix of OG RE metropolitan horror and the Winters games' fascination with more genre-influenced style. The Rhodes Facility isn't my personal favorite locale of the new RE games, but that mostly comes down to its puzzles and navigation feeling a bit too streamlined at times. When it comes to vibes, though, Resident Evil Requiem nails it.

A lot of credit has to go to the wizardry that CAPCOM has persistently managed to work with their RE Engine, which performs as capably in Requiem as it ever has. Outside of some very minor graphical glitches that could easily be patched up by the time this review is published, the only minor nitpick I really have is that I wish switching between the different camera modes could have been done with a simple button press instead of having to pause the game and dig through the menu. Otherwise, Requiem was a top-tier experience on my base PlayStation 5, technically speaking; I didn't find myself missing the usual options for either a “Performance” or “Resolution” mode, since the game looked crisp and ran at a buttery-smooth framerate from beginning to end.

That said, there are some flaws buried within all of the excellent survival-horror and action that rear their ugly heads as the roughly 15-hour-long campaign runs its course. This mainly has to do with the narrative, the specific details of which I will not spoil here. In the broad strokes, though, while I found myself very invested in both Leon's return and the new story elements introduced by Grace Ashcroft, I found myself disappointed with how many punches the story pulled by the time credits rolled, and how many seemingly obvious payoffs were ignored in favor of plot developments that were either underwhelming or just plain incomplete.

I've been playing Resident Evil games for decades, now, so I know that none of us are here expecting anything other than absurd, over-the-top, B-movie schlock when it comes to their stories. Still, Grace's story hits some surprising emotional notes in its early hours as we learn of how this woman has been defined by the worst night of her life, which left her an orphan, and even Leon is beginning to show a penchant for self-reflection and contemplation as his hair has started to gray. While there are definitely aspects of the game that effectively leverage the player's nostalgia for past games and our collective fondness for this ever-expanding cast of zombie hunters, I feel like Requiem loses sight of its story's potential to rise beyond the bounds of mere shlock by the time the game is barreling towards its explosive conclusion. It doesn't help that the game also temporarily loses sight of the excellent, balanced pacing that defined its first half, either. While the pacing issue does end up righting itself in Requiem's final hours, the story never fully recovers from its stumbles. While I still found the overall narrative of Requiem to be perfectly enjoyable and very dumb fun, it could have been so much more, which is a shame.

Then again, seeing as we're celebrating the franchise's big thirtieth anniversary this month, maybe it is appropriate that Requiem starts to fall apart a little as it goes along. Not only is this just too fitting for a zombie survival-horror video game, but pretty much every title in the series ends up jumping the shark before the credits roll. Or perhaps I should say that they all inevitably “punch the boulder?” Either way, I suspect fans will forgive Resident Evil Requiem for its recycled gameplay concepts and eye-rolling twists when the core experience is exactly the dread-inducing, adrenaline-pumping dose of popcorn entertainment that we crave. It may not be the best of the Resident Evil adventures to come out these last few years, but Requiem probably represents the most Resident Evil experience that this new generation has cooked up so far. In 2012, that was more of a threat to the Resident Evil fanbase than anything else. This time around, the promised transformation into a hybrid mutant of horror and action has actually worked out, for the most part.