Resident Evil 4 Remake Review

After the Resident Evil 2 and 3 Remake, 4 was bound to happen. So how does the RE 4 Remake stack up to the other two? Check out our review here to find out.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Review

You play Leon Kennedy, a survivor of the Raccoon City incident and currently working for the president of the United States. The president’s daughter, Ashley, has gone missing somewhere in Europe, and you are sent to find her. You team up with a couple of local police and begin the search. Unfortunately, things go bad quickly when both your police allies are taken and killed, and you find out that a cult took the president’s daughter.

The whole area is swarming with villagers intent on stopping you from getting to Ashley. So it’s kill or be killed, and you have a job to do. Thankfully the villagers are kind enough to leave you weapons and ammo to help out. For a Resident Evil game, it’s a bit on the longer side, and I got through it in just under 14 hours on normal difficulty.

RE 4 Remake starts off very hard but gets easier as you go. Not expecting such a violent reception, Leon shows up with a flashlight, pistol, and knife. The first “boss” is an entire village and a guy with a huge chainsaw who wants to run you through. It is survival horror at its finest, and every shot must count. As you progress, it becomes more action-oriented, but that doesn’t mean you won’t run into challenges.

Combat is similar to the other remakes; you can move and shoot. Headshots do more damage, but you risk popping out a parasite mutation if you do that. You can also do knee shots and then make a melee attack to knock opponents to the ground. The knife parry returns, but your knife has limited uses before you need to repair it. As long as you have it, you can make sneak attacks and escape grapples with it as well.

The shopkeeper returns, and they did really well with him. He doesn’t sell bullets, only guns, very few healing items, and upgrades your weapons and gear. Whenever I thought I was swimming in coin, a new weapon or attachment would pop up, and I’d want to buy it. It was only at the end that I had money lying around. The shooting gallery also returns, but you get charms to attach to your inventory case this time. The charms give you extra ammo when you craft or help with knife crits and things like that.

Another thing the shopkeeper is in charge of is the side quests. As you go through the game, you will come across blue files that act as side missions—from killing elite enemies to shooting a bunch of blue medallions. These quests don’t reward cash or gear but give you a secondary currency, Spinals. You can spend those in a separate tab at the shop to get new weapons, cases, attachments, and treasure maps.

For weapons, you have multiple pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and magnums. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but for me, it was the Punisher with a laser sight and the Riot Shotgun. My pistol could shoot through multiple enemies, and if a large parasite ever spawned, I would blow it away with the Riot Gun. Although, admittedly, my pistol having penetration did have its downsides.

For parts of the game, you will have to escort Ashley. If she gets grabbed by an enemy, then you need to shoot the enemy, so it drops her. With my gun, the bullet would go through and kill Ashley in a shot, so be warned if you use the Punisher. You can’t park her in a spot and clear all the enemies out in the game, either. She has to stay mostly by you, except for a couple of lockers.

There are fewer puzzles than I remember, which isn’t bad. However, a couple of them stumped me for a while which is surprising for a Resident Evil game. The inventory management is streamlined now due to an auto-sort, so that puzzle has also been removed. And while you can’t buy bullets, you can craft them along with grenades and healing items.

Something I find annoying in any game is being cut off from places I’ve already visited. Unfortunately, RE 4 Remake has some of that, and you will likely miss treasures and even side quests as a result. It’s a minor blemish on a great game, but still one worth mentioning. I’d typically knock them for no Mercenaries mode, but that is coming quickly.

Tech-wise, I did have one crash but outside of that, no issues.

While I still think the Resident Evil 2 Remake is the king, Resident Evil 4 Remake is still a fantastic game. Fans of Resident Evil or survival horror, in general, should check it out.

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