Resident Evil Requiem drops two radically different characters in your lap and expects you to figure it out. Grace Ashcroft plays like a classic survival horror protagonist with barely any ammo and stalkers that hear you through walls. Leon Kennedy plays like RE4 on steroids, parrying chainsaws and suplexing zombies across the room. If you’ve never touched a Resident Evil game before, Requiem is designed as a fresh starting point, but the dual-protagonist system, infected blood crafting, and new enemy behaviors can overwhelm you fast. This Resident Evil Requiem beginner guide covers both characters, every major system, and the mistakes that will get you killed.
📋 In This Guide
📋 TL;DR
- Grace = stealth. Leon = action. Learn both playstyles or you’ll burn through resources.
- Crouch as Grace to avoid detection. Enemies track you by sound through floors and ceilings.
- Sharpen Leon’s hatchet regularly (L1 + Square). A dull hatchet can’t parry.
- Craft hemolytic injectors from infected blood. They’re Grace’s best weapon: silent one-shot kills that prevent zombie mutation.
- On Standard (Classic) difficulty, ink ribbons are required to save. Plan your save points carefully.
- Items and kills don’t carry between characters. What Grace uses, Leon can’t access later.
- First-person for stealth sections, third-person for combat. You can switch at any time.
Choose Your Perspective Wisely
Requiem lets you switch between first-person and third-person at any time for both characters. This isn’t just a cosmetic choice.
First-person works better during Grace’s stealth sections. You can spot environmental clues, read item labels, and navigate tight spaces more precisely. The trade-off is limited peripheral vision, which becomes terrifying when a stalker enemy is somewhere behind you.
Third-person is the stronger pick for Leon’s combat encounters. You get a wider field of view for tracking multiple enemies, better spatial awareness for parry timing, and you get to watch those German suplexes land. When Leon faces a crowd, third-person stops you from getting blindsided.
The default sets Grace to first-person and Leon to third-person. Stick with those defaults until you’re comfortable with both characters, then experiment.
Resident Evil Requiem Beginner Guide: Playing as Grace Ashcroft
Grace’s sections are pure survival horror. Ammo is scarce to the point where dumping a full clip into a single zombie feels wasteful because it is. Her hands shake while aiming, recoil hits harder than Leon’s, and she can’t melee her way through a crowd. You need to think differently here.
Stealth is your primary weapon. Crouch with R3 to reduce the noise you make. Enemies in Requiem track Grace by sound, and they can hear footsteps through floors and ceilings. Walking upright in a room above a zombie is enough to bring it running.
Use glass bottles. You’ll find them scattered throughout the Wrenwood Hotel. Throw one to create a noise distraction, then slip past while the enemy investigates. This is how you conserve ammo for encounters where stealth isn’t an option.
Watch zombie behavior patterns. Requiem’s zombies retain “fixations” from their former lives. A chef zombie obsessively chops at a counter. A janitor polishes the same mirror over and over. Learn these loops and you can predict their patrol routes, then sneak past during the safe window.
Hide under furniture. Tables, desks, and beds all work. If a stalker enemy like Mama is bearing down and you can’t outrun her, ducking under cover buys you time. Mama has an aversion to light, so running toward well-lit rooms keeps her at bay.
Your lighter is a double-edged tool. It illuminates dark areas so you can find items and navigate, but the light also attracts enemies. Use it in short bursts, not constantly.
Playing as Leon Kennedy
Leon’s gameplay pulls heavily from the RE4 Remake. He’s an action character with real firepower, melee options, and the confidence to walk into a room full of zombies and walk out covered in their blood. But he still needs strategy.
Master the hatchet. Leon’s hatchet replaces the combat knife and it’s significantly more powerful. Basic swings with R2 deal solid damage. The power spin (hold L1 + R2) requires a windup but staggers most enemies. The parry (L1) is the hatchet’s best feature: time it right and you can deflect incoming attacks, including chainsaw swings. You can also pry open locked cabinets and sealed doors with it.
Keep the hatchet sharp. Press L1 + Square when the sharpen prompt appears. The hatchet’s durability degrades with use, and while it never breaks completely, a dull hatchet loses its ability to parry. If you forget to sharpen and a chainsaw enemy charges, you’re done.
Leg shots into melee combos. Shoot a zombie in the legs to stagger it, then follow up with a melee finisher or suplex. This conserves ammo while dealing heavy damage. Shotgun blasts to stagger, then hatchet finishers, is Leon’s bread and butter.
Steal enemy weapons. When you parry a chainsaw-wielding enemy, shoot them to disarm, then pick up their chainsaw. It’s temporary but devastatingly effective against groups. Weaker enemies like nurse zombies sometimes lose grip on their chainsaw mid-swing, sending it flying. Grab it.
Leon’s firearms: The Alligator Snapper pistol is your bread-and-butter sidearm. The MSBG 500 shotgun handles crowd control. Hand grenades (Leon exclusive) clear tight spaces. The Requiem revolver hits like a truck but burns through limited ammo, so save it for bosses and emergencies.
The Infected Blood Crafting System
This is Requiem’s flagship new mechanic and it changes how you approach every encounter. Grace carries a syringe that collects infected blood from defeated enemies. That blood becomes your primary crafting material.
Combine infected blood with scrap materials to craft hemolytic injectors, shivs, healing items, and ammo. Hemolytic injectors are the standout: sneak up on a zombie and inject it for an instant stealth kill. Even better, injecting a downed enemy prevents it from mutating into something worse.
The catch? Collecting blood takes time. Grace has to stand over a corpse and extract it while enemies could be closing in. The syringe also occupies an inventory slot, limiting what else you can carry. Every extraction is a calculated risk.
This system forces a choice that old RE games never did: fight enemies to harvest blood for crafting, or avoid them to conserve health and ammo. There’s no universally right answer. If you’re low on healing items, you need blood. If you’re low on health, you need to avoid fights. Reading the situation on the fly is what separates good Grace players from dead ones.
⚡ Tip: New crafting recipes are hidden throughout the game. Find them and analyze them at lab stations before they become usable. Don’t skip side rooms in the sanatorium.
Leon’s Inventory and Weapon Upgrades
Leon uses a 7×10 grid attaché case, similar to RE4 Remake. You can rotate items, manually arrange them, or hit auto-sort to let the game handle it. Get comfortable navigating this quickly because swapping weapons mid-fight can save your life.
Weapon upgrades follow the RE4 Remake model: Power, Stability, Precision, Rate of Fire, Reload Speed, and Ammo Capacity. Prioritize based on your playstyle, but Stability on the pistol and Power on the shotgun are strong early investments. The muzzle climb mitigation attachment permanently reduces pistol recoil, which makes headshots far more consistent.
Leon can also craft ammunition from scrap and gunpowder. Stacked Hand Grenades (two grenades taped together) are a late-game recipe worth hunting down. Don’t neglect upgrades in the midgame. Director Nakanishi confirmed that later encounters are balanced around the assumption that you’ve been upgrading.
Resource Management and Save Strategy
Requiem has three difficulty settings. Casual gives you autosave and aim assist. Standard (Modern) plays like a balanced experience with autosave. Standard (Classic) is the old-school option: Grace needs ink ribbons to save at typewriters, and there’s no safety net if you die between saves.
| Difficulty | Save System | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Casual | Full autosave, aim assist | Story-focused players, newcomers |
| Standard (Modern) | Autosave | Balanced experience |
| Standard (Classic) | Ink ribbons at typewriters | RE veterans, max tension |
On Classic, save before boss fights, after finding key items, and before entering new areas. Ink ribbons are limited, so don’t waste them after routine exploration. If you’ve just cleared a room and haven’t progressed the story, keep pushing.
The most overlooked mechanic is cross-character persistence. Items you use and enemies you kill as one character stay used and dead for the other. If Grace burns through all the healing herbs in a section, Leon won’t find any when he passes through the same area later. Think of both characters as sharing a single resource pool spread across different timelines.
Common Beginner Mistakes
1. Playing Grace like Leon. Grace can’t tank hits or brute force encounters. If you’re emptying clips into every zombie you see, you’ll run out of ammo within the first hour. Stealth first, fight only when necessary.
2. Forgetting to sharpen the hatchet. A dull hatchet can’t parry. If you’ve been hacking through enemies without sharpening and a chainsaw-wielding zombie shows up, you’ve just lost your best defensive option.
3. Ignoring zombie fixation patterns. Those zombies repeating weird behaviors aren’t just set dressing. Their loops tell you exactly where they’ll be and when. Rushing past without observing is how you walk into an ambush.
4. Hoarding the Requiem revolver ammo. Don’t save it forever, but don’t waste it on regular zombies either. The Requiem revolver is your emergency exit for stalker encounters and boss phases where you need burst damage to buy breathing room.
5. Not collecting infected blood. It’s tempting to skip blood extraction because it takes time and feels risky. But hemolytic injectors are Grace’s most powerful tool. A few seconds of vulnerability now saves minutes of wasted ammo and health later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which difficulty should I pick for my first playthrough?
Standard (Modern) is the best starting point. It gives you the full survival horror tension without ink ribbon pressure. Casual trivializes combat and Classic punishes experimentation. Once you understand both characters, Classic is worth replaying for the original RE experience.
Do I need to play previous Resident Evil games first?
No. Requiem is designed as a new starting point with a new protagonist. Grace Ashcroft is a fresh character and the story stands on its own. Leon Kennedy returns from earlier games, but his role doesn’t require knowledge of his past missions. The story is self-contained.
Can I switch between first-person and third-person at any time?
Yes. Both Grace and Leon support both perspectives and you can toggle freely during gameplay. First-person defaults for Grace’s stealth sections and third-person for Leon’s combat, but you’re never locked in.
Does Resident Evil Requiem have multiple endings?
Reportedly yes. The “true” ending requires collecting all Artifacts of Ruin and Cryptic Files scattered throughout the game. Missing these collectibles leads to alternate, less complete conclusions.
How long is Resident Evil Requiem?
The main story runs approximately 16-18 hours. Completionists exploring every corner, collecting all files, and unlocking the true ending can expect 20-25+ hours. That’s nearly double RE Village’s length and comparable to the RE4 Remake.
Summary
Resident Evil Requiem rewards players who adapt to its dual-protagonist design rather than forcing one playstyle through the whole game. Grace demands patience, observation, and careful resource management. Leon rewards aggression, parry timing, and weapon mastery. The infected blood crafting system ties both halves together by making combat encounters meaningful beyond just clearing a room. Start on Standard (Modern), learn both characters’ rhythms, and don’t forget to sharpen that hatchet.