Resident Evil Requiem Launches to 88 Metacritic Score as RE9 Earns Best Reviews for a New Entry in Over 20 Years
Resident Evil Requiem arrived on February 27, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2, and the verdict from critics is unambiguous: Capcom has delivered its strongest original survival horror game since Resident Evil 4 in 2005. The ninth mainline entry in the franchise holds an 88 Metascore across more than 100 PS5 critic reviews, making it the highest-rated game released in 2026 so far and the best-reviewed non-remake Resident Evil in more than two decades.
What Makes RE Requiem Different from Every Entry Before It
Resident Evil Requiem is built around two protagonists whose gameplay styles could not be more distinct. Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst and daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak's Alyssa Ashcroft, anchors the horror half of the experience. Her sections unfold in first-person perspective inside a decayed Raccoon City hotel, with almost no ammunition, an eight-slot inventory that forces constant resource decisions, and a blood-crafting system that lets players synthesize healing items and stealth-kill injectors from infected enemies. Leon S. Kennedy returns after a 14-year mainline absence — excluding remakes — handling the action-forward chapters in third-person, with weapon upgrade trees and melee combat directly descended from his Resident Evil 4 Remake moveset. Players can switch between first-person and third-person perspectives at any time, a feature no mainline entry has offered before.
The story is set in October 2026, 28 years after Raccoon City's destruction, and the game was directed by Koshi Nakanishi, who helmed Resident Evil 7. It spent six years in development, cycling through an abandoned online open-world concept before returning to a single-player structure after a 2021 reboot.
Resident Evil Requiem Review Scores and How Long It Takes to Beat
Critics praising the game most loudly point to the balance between Grace's suffocating stealth tension and Leon's kinetic action sequences, with several outlets awarding perfect scores. The minority of dissenting voices flag the back half of the campaign as slightly less assured, with tonal dissonance when the game pivots from psychological horror toward larger action setpieces. No review has rated the game below a 7. The score of 88 places Requiem above Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village and below only the 2019 and 2023 remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 within the modern era of the series.
Runtime lands between 9 and 15 hours on a first playthrough depending on difficulty and exploration pace, with the sweet spot for thorough players on Standard sitting around 12 to 14 hours. Capcom built a Speed Demon in-game challenge around a sub-four-hour clear, unlockable on repeat runs through New Game Plus. Completionists hunting every Mr. Raccoon memorial, Antique Coin, and document file should budget 25 hours or more. Insanity difficulty, the hardest setting, is locked behind clearing the campaign at least once.
Platforms, Launch Time, and What Comes Next for the Resident Evil Series
The game went live at midnight ET on February 27 across consoles and slightly earlier for PC users on the West Coast due to Steam's regional rollout. A day-one patch shipped alongside launch. Amiibo tied to the game are confirmed for a later release date, and Capcom has not announced additional modes such as Mercenaries at launch, though the studio's recent DLC patterns suggest post-launch content is likely. The Nintendo Switch 2 port drew particular attention, with technical reviewers noting that Capcom preserved the game's core visual identity despite the hardware gap — a result some described as the best technical achievement of the Switch 2's early library.
With 5 million wishlists accumulated before launch and reviews confirming the game as a credible franchise landmark, the question Capcom faces next is whether Requiem's ending — which critics have called both conclusive for long-running series threads and deliberately open-ended — signals a hard narrative reset or the foundation of another multi-game arc.
