Capcom spent years trying to figure out what a modern Resident Evil should be. Resident Evil Requiem answers the question by refusing to pick one answer. The ninth main entry in the series splits itself between two playable characters with two completely different games underneath them, and it works far better than a premise that messy has any right to.
Released February 27, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, Requiem is the first Resident Evil built for ninth-generation consoles. It runs on the RE Engine. Koshi Nakanishi, who directed Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, directed this one. The project started life as an open-world online multiplayer game and had shifted to a conventional single-player title by 2021. That history shows in the best way: Requiem plays like a game made by people who argued about it for years and then settled on the harder, smarter answer.
Trailer, via Resident Evil.
Grace Ashcroft and the Wrenwood Hotel
Grace Ashcroft is an FBI intelligence analyst and the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, the reporter who served as a protagonist in Resident Evil Outbreak. She is not a fighter. Capcom describes her as an introverted bookworm who feels powerless because she lacks combat proficiency, and the game means it. Her sections are survival horror in the Resident Evil 7 and Village mode: scarce resources, limited inventory slots, supply boxes, puzzles, and a lot of running.
The Girl stalks her through the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center and the condemned Wrenwood Hotel. The monster is immune to normal damage. It can track Grace through walls and ceilings. Light damages it, which creates the sharpest tension in the game: your flashlight keeps you alive and also tells the Girl exactly where you are. Grace distracts enemies with glass bottles she collects and throws. She crouches, sneaks, and hides under tables.
On Standard (Classic) and Insanity difficulties, she saves at typewriters with ink ribbons, with few auto-saves in her sections. Those typewriters double as checkpoints on death. It is a deliberate throwback, and it lands.
Leon S. Kennedy picks up a hatchet
Leon’s half of Requiem is a different game. The DSO agent last headlined a main entry in Resident Evil 6 in 2012, and he returns redesigned to look older. His sections are action-oriented in the Resident Evil 4 mold: abundant ammunition, firearms, takedowns, and zombies to neutralize rather than avoid. He carries a hatchet with limited durability for parrying incoming attacks, and he can pick up enemy weapons and turn them on their owners.
His inventory is a briefcase rather than a slot grid, and it holds what fits. Sherry Birkin, the DSO agent he rescued from Raccoon City as a child, supports him as his handler. Leon is also suffering from Raccoon City Syndrome, the lingering T-virus mutations killing survivors of the 1998 incident. The game never lets you forget that its action hero is dying.
Both characters play in first person or third person. The alternation between them echoes Resident Evil: Revelations and Revelations 2, but the gap between the two halves here is wider.
A hotel, a hospital, and 28 years of history
Requiem is set in October 2026, 28 years after Raccoon City was destroyed. Grace is assigned to inspect a victim found in the derelict Wrenwood Hotel, the same building where her mother Alyssa was murdered eight years earlier. Inside, she recovers a data disk Alyssa left behind. Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella scientist hunting for Grace, abducts her.
Leon witnesses the escape, gives chase, and watches Victor infect civilians with the T-virus to cover his retreat. That outbreak is the engine of the campaign. Victor takes Grace to the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, where he infects staff and patients with a mutated T-virus strain, seals the facility, and separates the two leads. Grace frees Emily, a blind girl who was taken captive and experimented on. Victor is trying to carry out the will of Oswell E. Spencer, Umbrella’s dead founder. Zeno, an agent of the Connections syndicate who resembles Albert Wesker, opposes them both.
The cast includes Angela Sant’Albano and Shihori Kanjiya as Grace, Nick Apostolides and Toshiyuki Morikawa as Leon, Jane Perry and Kikuko Fujimoto as Alyssa, Antony Byrne and Yutaka Aoyama as Victor Gideon, and James Clyde and Ryūsei Nakao as Spencer. Eden Riegel and Maaya Sakamoto voice Sherry Birkin.
The Girl, the hatchet, and a split that shows
Here is the running order of what Requiem asks you to do, and how the two halves stack up.
| Section | Lead | Focus | Save system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wrenwood Hotel | Grace | Evasion, puzzles, limited slots | Ink ribbons at typewriters |
| Raccoon City outbreak | Leon | Firearms, takedowns, parries | Briefcase inventory |
| Rhodes Hill | Grace | The Girl, light, hiding | Ink ribbons at typewriters |
| Facility sealed | Leon | Zombie waves, picked-up weapons | Briefcase inventory |
The dual structure is the whole point, and it is also the source of the game’s worst stretches. Every time Grace’s half builds real dread, the game yanks you into Leon’s arsenal and the pressure evaporates. The reverse is worse: Leon’s combat is genuinely fun, and being dropped back into bottle-throwing and hiding can feel like a punishment for enjoying yourself. Requiem never solves this so much as manages it.
The Girl is the best monster the series has fielded in years and also the most mechanically rigid. Light damages it. That is the rule, and the game rarely varies it. Mr. X and Lady Dimitrescu worked because they could be escaped, delayed, or tricked. The Girl is closer to a thermostat.
What Requiem gets right
Requiem’s critical reception has been strong, and the praise is aimed at the right targets: the dark tone, the story, the atmosphere, and the balance between horror and action. The balance is real, even when the seams show. What matters more is that Capcom finally committed to a version of Resident Evil that trusts silence, scarcity, and a flashlight beam over spectacle.
Five million copies sold at launch is not a surprise. The series has an audience that will show up for anything with this name on it. The surprise is that Requiem earns the turnout. Grace Ashcroft is the best new protagonist the franchise has introduced since Leon himself, and the decision to make her weak, slow, and frightened is the most confident thing Capcom has done in a decade.
The Girl needs a sequel’s worth of refinement. Leon needs a game that does not undercut him. Both of those are problems worth having.
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