For decades, Leon S. Kennedy has been the franchise’s golden child and poster boy — from Resident Evil 2 to Resident Evil 4 and their RE:Make counterparts his entries consistently land among the highest‑rated in the series.
This is no surprise of course, considering even Capcom employees themselves are big fans of the hero.
Resident Evil: Requiem brings Leon back alongside newcomer Grace Ashcroft (Young FBI Agent and Daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft from the Resident Evil: Outbreak series) in the ninth mainline game. Early reviews suggest Capcom may have delivered another standout chapter carried by the sheer weight of Leon’s new jacked up arms.
Across major outlets, Requiem is scoring impressively, and boasts an 88 on Metacritic and 95% recommended on OpenCritic with critics widely agreeing that the dual‑protagonist structure, emotional storytelling, and classic survival‑horror tension make this one of the strongest modern RE titles.
The game retains its horror roots by splitting the campaign across two protagonists. As Grace Ashcroft, you’ll be struggling, hiding and barely scraping through the nightmare she wakes up in. Closely following in her footsteps, the perspective will switch to Leon, who after 28 years of dealing with monsters and an eternally-delayed retirement is more than happy to take his frustration out on them. With his foot.
The switch isn’t just thematic – it’s literal, as while playing Grace you’ll be living through the nightmare alongside her in first-person, much like the tension in Resident Evil 7. When the story pivots to Leon, the camera snaps back to the iconic third‑person perspective that defined Resident Evil 4, giving his action‑heavy sequences a familiar, destructive feel. This is configurable, and both protagonists can be played with in either perspective.
Some reviewers did find the sudden shift in perspective a little disorienting, while others praised it as a smart way to contrast Grace’s vulnerability with Leon’s seasoned brutality.
Here’s how the biggest gaming outlets are reacting to Capcom’s latest Resident Evil release:
Rock Paper Shotgun:
“It’s pulled in various test subjects, but the core elements are the skin-crawling dread of Resident Evil 7 and the karate-kicking action of Resident Evil 4 Remake. On the whole, Requiem’s Golem is a stronger hybrid than Resi 6. The initial six or so hours of its lifespan are a triumph, trapping me under the weight of its oppressive horror before letting me slip free to get sweet revenge in a flurry of hyper-violence. The game starts to disintegrate into messy chunks shortly after, but those opening few hours are absolutely worth letting this prototype out of the lab.” – Callum Williams
PC Gamer:
“Grace and provides some of the scariest horror sequences I’ve encountered in Resident Evil. My hands were clammy, my gut was tied in knots—turning every corner felt like I was peering over a cliff that I couldn’t see the bottom of. I had to switch Grace’s perspective to third-person for this part. I just couldn’t crawl around the dark and dingy corridors, avoiding roaming infected and the beast that haunts Grace, without corner peeking.” – Elie Gould
PCGamesN:
“The cycle of tension and release, so integral to the horror genre, is magnified to encompass Requiem’s entire structure through its dual protagonists. Grace’s sections are the tension; Leon’s, the release. Leon is, well, Leon, with just a dash of Chris Redfield for grizzled flavor. The one-liners come thick and fast, to the point where it becomes silly – and then they still keep coming, until they somehow become even funnier. Where Grace is forced to grapple with the average zombie with little more than a knife and a handful of bullets, Leon is taking down colossal beasties with all manner of shotguns, grenades, and sniper rifles. It’s RE4 all over again.” – Nat Smith
Eurogamer:
“Leon’s series-spanning journey from fresh-faced twink to world-weary muscle daddy sees him, here, recast as something like the ultimate action hero – pure, wisecracking testosterone in a skin-tight shirt. From the very first moment you hit the ‘melee’ prompt and watch him roundhouse kick a zombie across the street, to the point he’s motorcycling up the side of a skyscraper or casually batting rocket grenades out of the air, it’s clear Capcom isn’t so much embracing Resident Evil’s action heritage as revelling in it, with hatchet-wielding, viciously decapitating aplomb. And the balance feels right, Leon and Grace’s two distinct styles complementing rather than undermining one another.” – Matt Wales
GameSpot:
“For almost a decade, Capcom has been refining Resident Evil, finding ways to modernize the storied franchise and to maintain what has made it so beloved. With Requiem, Capcom has dialed in Resident Evil maybe as far as it can. The result is a game that leans too hard on past successes and nostalgia, and so doesn’t show its fans any new ideas. But it knows its hits backward and forward, and it plays them near-perfectly.” – Phil Hornshaw
