Resident Evil Requiem’s Combat Is Too Good to Not Come With a Mercenaries Mode

Resident Evil Requiem indulges too heavily in its past. There are cameos and callbacks aplenty, enough to, sadly, drown out the narrative in the latter half and suffocate its better parts. Despite this slavish dedication to its history, Requiem doesn’t have all of the series’ past staples. The Mercenaries mode is one said staple, a feature that has been in the franchise off and on since Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Requiem currently has no such mode like that, and that’s unfortunate, especially for a game with combat this strong.

Requiem’s campaign does not make this case well, though. Leon Kennedy’s sections are divided up in first half in a way that downplays his more action-oriented style. Players get 10 minutes to kick in heads and cut zombies to shreds before being pushed to the next Grace level. The disorienting cuts don’t show off his potential and only offer brief snippets of what’s possible.

Resident Evil Requiem‘s Unannounced Mercenaries Mode Would Add Some Much-Needed Replayability

The absence of an upgrade system further hampers these parts. Players can’t tweak or enhance their guns until the second half, which neuters the sense of progression Resident Evil games have historically excelled at. And by the time players can beef up their arsenal, it only takes around two or so hours to max almost everything out. The lack of a more traditional “everything carries over” New Game Plus means players can’t even bask in this glory for too long, either. Requiem pushes its poorly paced upgrade system into one chunk of the game and mishandles everything else around it down to the soulless crate that dishes out these buffs. It couldn’t even be bothered to have a charismatic shopkeeper.

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Requiem’s combat only gets to shine when zooming in. Battles are mostly exciting because of the chaos that comes when zombies are crawling out of the dirt or wildly waving a chainsaw around. Smoothly chaining together headshots and pulling off last-second parries doesn’t feel quite as smooth as it did in the Resident Evil 4 remake — a byproduct of being left with weaker, unupgraded equipment for most of the time — but it’s still a blast when it all comes together. Even though Leon is slowly deteriorating in the campaign and hovering around 50 years old, he can still kick quite a lot of undead ass.

Adding The Mercenaries’ wave-based survival maps to Requiem would ideally help highlight these positives and let players loose in a way the campaign didn’t. Being able to strictly focus on fighting without a bunch of out-of-place cuts or low-quality guns could give players a decent amount of freedom if executed properly.

Resident Evil’s Mercenaries Mode Has Been a Staple For a Reason

How it’s added, though, will affect how thrilling it is. Going down the Resident Evil 4 remake route and just throwing a bunch of enemies into a pressure cooker with a ticking timer is the bare minimum here. But even this bare minimum would still be nice to have since this playground of destruction would be uninhibited by cutscenes and perspective shifts and allow players to more thoroughly test out the handful of guns locked to the extras menu. It’s a formula that worked well in many Resident Evil games and that success would likely continue here, too.

Capcom could also take more inspiration from Resident Evil Village’s The Mercenaries mode by adding in an economy and upgrades. Instead of merely killing, players were encouraged to sprint around and find perks before cashing in their money at the shop for upgrades between rounds. It was a welcome twist on the formula and was able to broaden the game’s combat and integrate the upgrade loop that’s crucial to its campaign.

Perhaps it would behoove Capcom to mix and match the styles: Village’s take could be for Grace’s levels, while Leon’s parts would emulate the blueprint from the Resident Evil 4 remake’s Mercenaries mode. This could yield more variety and allow room for both approaches to flourish. 

It doesn’t matter exactly how Capcom adds in a Mercenaries mode; it just matters that it gets one eventually. Capcom waited until launch day to announce one for the Resident Evil 4 remake yet hasn’t confirmed or denied that one is coming to Requiem. Requiem’s launch has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean it is too late. It’s a game that deserves some sort of combat-ready mode like this since the core campaign doesn’t let players flex in a way they should be able to. The game’s structure means it isn’t able to fully tap into its potential, which is a shortcoming The Mercenaries could help address. 

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