[h1] The Definition of Two Cakes [/h1]
[b] spoilers [/b]
RE9 is the best example of giving the audience two cakes.
Do you want the 'horror' part of survival horror? Grace is there.
Want the action part of RE, from RE4-5? Leon is there.
Capcom at last decided to no longer compromise. You can have two cakes now. Two different gameplay styles, two different POVs, and above all, two different sets of storyline plots. No matter what kind of horror fan you are, there's two different ways to experience the same universe.
[h3] Graces's Part [/h3]
Grace is the newest main character in the Franchise, and she represents exactly what a normal person would feel if they were stuck in the hellhole that the RE universe is. She is nervous, paranoid, unbashedly afraid, her hands tremble holding her pistol and flashlight, jittery and jumpy at her enviroment, and is the perfect newblood Capcom can deliver and mold into a new main hero. Her gameplay segments are split into three things, the main effort of the game; Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, Mid-Point to Racoon City, and the ARK. Rhodes Hill was masterfully done, beautifully designed, and filled with infected that remember their old lives before you send them to the eternal sleep. The enviromental design was brilliant. You scrounge around the darkness barely fighting off zombies with your pathetic pistol, lockpicking cabinets to get rare metal to craft Requiem Rounds, explore to find blood pools to craft ammunition and key items to open the next section, and wander around confused and nervous of whatever could be hiding in those corners. You are weak, fragile, a true glass cannon. Yet, there, is where it stutters. The main "Monster" that does chase you around in Requiem (The Girl), is a brilliantly introduced threat at the start of the game that fills you with anxiety. After all, you think in your mind that the center has many parts with low-light that would make for perfect ambushes and chase sections. Yet here, Capcom hesitated. Instead of The Girl being the main threat, instead, you have two 'bosses' that are split into the Right and Left parts of the Care Center. The Right side has "The Chef" (that can be killed with 1-2 Requiem rounds or 1 insta kill serum) and a obese fat redditor that takes up the whole hallway. (just get behind his ass and inject him 3 times with the insta kill serum). Those are your only two threats in the whole building, aside from the generic infected. Nothing happens in the care center besides that, only at the start of the introduction of the game, and nothing else. You don't get hunted, get ambushed, or anything of the sort. It's actually off putting, in a way, and while that could have significantly helped the atmosphere by making you anxious "if it could happen" you just feel blue balled because Nothing Ever HappenedTM. Pretty big L. Beyond that, we have some mediocre puzzles around the center, probably the middest in the series, an Alzheimer's patient could probably use it to show he knows basic cognition, and afterwards comes the mid-point to RC, where to escape the Care Center you dare do the fatal mistake of riding a helicopter in Resident Evil games, which ends predictably as you expect, which leads you eventually beneath a secret lab, then eventually a secret hidden facility where you fight the Girl for real this time through the Darkness, before she meets her end by getting melted by the Sun. While all that is happening, Grace is [spoiler] attempting to rescue a little girl named Emily that looks 'suspiciously' similar to the Girl you are fighting, and you actually do get probably one of the best bamboozles in the whole franchise, in the essence she fails to save her and Leon has to come and put her mutated form down. [/spoiler] After all that, Grace [spoiler] gets pissed with Leon for killing children, then decides to just go with this games Antagonist, Victor Gideon (who kidnapped Grace to begin with and shoved her in the medical center, and Leon is the one looking for her) to Racoon City to activate the Ark, and you get jumpscared by "Zeno" (which is basically a clone of Albert Wesker) [/spoiler] After all that is said and done, and you pass Leon's 2/3's of gameplay, you finally play as her again, [spoiler] This time in the ARK, which is an underground Lab seperate off the OG Lab from RE2 in Racoon City. You navigate past Lickers, find some terminals, find more lore, and eventually you get showered with probably the best entire switch up in the series, which is that the goal of Gideon is to find Elpis, the MOAB of Bio weapons. Then when you actually do get to Elpis, it turns out that it is actually the reverse, a cure for the T Virus that the survivors of the incident have been dealing with all this time. Of course, you are nudged to destroy it, but to do so grants you the wrong ending, and if you do 'release' Elpis, you actually get treated to an awesome ending. It was a masterful rugpull. [/spoiler] To conclude, I truly did love Grace's part of RE9, and I think personally it is probably the better of the two in terms of storytelling, as she has more in-depth cutscenes than Leon, even if I'd like for Capcom to have made the Care Center a little more intense than what was offered.
[h3] Leon's Part [/h3]
Leon returns, this time driving a $200,000 Porsche SUV to biohazard zones, a 2000$ Hamilton watch, an axe that needs to be forever sharpened, and raw skill, decapitating reanimated freaks and dealing once again with Umbrella. [spoiler] By the way, when you return to Racoon City, Leon leaves his Porsche behind, and he never gets it back. [/spoiler] The gameplay style this time returns to raw aggression from RE4R, but it is much more fluid this time and depending on your Axe for Executions. Gunplay is extremely fluent and violent, as you can get point blank executions if you play fast enough and close enough. You also likewise are as fast, if not faster than RE4R. At this point, Leon is a full on CBRN Veteran, with all the experience he needs. He talks somberly, sometimes with his one liners, but never enough to pull you out of the experience. He doesn't hesitate anymore. He doesn't take things back. He acts, and lives with it. He dominates the other half of the game, after [spoiler] Grace agrees to leave with Zeno and Gideon and he is forced to return to Racoon City. [/spoiler] Capcom did an excellent job revisiting the location. Everything is run down, but not to a TLOU style of greenery returning to the cities. It's still a wasteland, roaming with giant mutated spiders, plants, and somehow still standing husked zombies all those decades later. It does a fantastic job at putting you in an otherworldy location from RE2, as if it is an entire different planet, but still belivable enough to suspend your disbelief. There is an argument to be made if Leon frankly dominates too much of the game, as he is entirely the other half of the game, but I felt Capcom balanced it more than enough, as the action you do with Leon is intense, fast paced, and returns the power to you, rather than having barely killed 2 infected as Grace beforehand, and switches up that gameplay style well enough that when you return to play as her in ARK you feel just as powerless as before.
[h3]Conclusion: It's peak [/h3]
