General impressions
As a standalone Resident Evil game, it’s alright. Without Leon’s inclusion, I would consider it a subpar, mediocre title full of plot holes and nostalgia bait. With Leon, it becomes a slightly above‑average, memberberries‑heavy experience. There are only two areas where you can actually explore and enjoy the classic survival‑horror elements you’d expect from Resident Evil. The rest is dominated by forced walking sections, narrow hallway exploration, and an oversaturation of scripted animations. By my third playthrough, I was groaning.
That said, I did enjoy many of the references that weren’t tied to previous RE games—similarities to recent movies like The Gorge or Barbarian, and even The Walking Dead comics (Leon’s hatchet use is almost identical to Rick’s zombie‑dispatching panels). These nods were fun.
Story and characters
This is the weakest part of the game. Grace as a protagonist simply doesn’t make sense. Leon is fine, but just like in the RE4 remake, he’s written far too seriously. His one‑liners rarely land, and there are very few of them anyway. After Death Island, which was silly but at least fun, I thought we were getting Leon back on track.
The story and characters feel directionless. Or rather—they clearly want to be serious and dramatic, but Leon’s quips are inserted almost as an obligation. Returning franchise characters are extremely underutilized; they might as well not be there. The ending teases more returning characters for no real narrative reason, clearly to sell DLC.
The amount of nostalgia bait is overwhelming: bosses, lines, locations—almost half the game is recycled from older titles. There’s very little originality. The retcons are plentiful too, which I’ve sadly learned to accept in modern media that relies heavily on what we loved 20–30 years ago, while simultaneously rewriting it to fit a new narrative.
Gameplay
As mentioned, when the game gives you a classic open map with puzzles and enemies, it shines. Unfortunately, there are only two such areas. The rest is essentially a hallway simulator à la FFXIII, with forced dialogue and slow, scripted animations.
Grace is supposed to represent survival horror, and Leon is supposed to represent action. But if you have half a brain, you quickly figure out how to kill or avoid enemies as Grace, and the horror evaporates. With Leon, it’s just more enemies, more ammo, more shooting. He can upgrade weapons with attachments, but they barely make a difference—nothing like the upgrade systems in OG RE4 or the remake.
Grace’s “blood crafting” feels weak and unnecessary. I used it in my first playthrough, again for the achievement, and then ignored it entirely.
The game is also very short. My first playthrough took seven and a half hours, fully exploring everything and reading all notes. After three playthroughs, I had every achievement. Meanwhile, I have over 100 hours in RE4 Remake and still haven’t completed all achievements.
Overall
It’s a very mixed experience. I enjoyed the true Resident Evil‑style maps and the references to media outside the franchise. But the game is too short, too easy, offers little payoff for its buildup, and leans far too heavily on nostalgia.
If you’re a casual fan or someone who has only played the remakes, this game might work for you. But for me, the biggest sign of how weak the storytelling and characters were is that, after finishing it, the main question I had was not Where is the story going next, but: Who is Leon married to?
