The highly anticipated ninth entry to the Resident Evil franchise was released on February 27th to immediate glowing reviews. The game follows FBI agent Grace Ashcroft and veteran Leon Kennedy, who discover a new virus strain created by Umbrella remnants and must return to Raccoon City and stop their plans.
The gameplay features two distinct types, with Grace’s sections playing like Resident Evil Seven and Resident Evil Eight’s focus on survival horror segments. In contrast, Leon Kennedy has more of an action focus, like Resident Evil Four. Overall, the game does an amazing job at balancing these gameplay sections. Grace’s sections are horrifying, and every enemy feels like a threat, while Leon’s mows down zombies with no issue. When I first heard about the two different kinds of gameplay, I thought that Grace’s Sections would be too slow, and I would only look forward to Leon’s. However, the mix of both makes an extremely fun gameplay loop where it scares us through Grace and gives us a major dopamine release with Leon’s action sections.
Visually, the game is probably the best Resident Evil has ever looked. The environments are uniquely creepy, and the zombies are probably the most horrifying they have ever been. The music, as usual, is very well done and even uses themes from the previous games to make brand new tracks.
Storywise the game does a good job at being emotional. In the opening of the game, Leon is shown to be suffering from a dormant strand of the T-virus and is dying. So the game feels like a race against the clock to not only stop the Umbrella remnants but to save Leon. As well as Grace, who is one of the best protagonists the series has seen.
Overall, Resident Evil Nine is a great entry in the Resident Evil series with some of the best aspects of all of the games combined into one experience.
10/10
