Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
There's a quiet damnation in having to follow a stellar act. The headliner that plays after a shockingly good opener. The main event match that can't quite gather the crowd after the tables, ladders, and chairs spectacle that preceded it. The finale episode that can't match the emotional energy of the climactic one before it. That doesn't mean what comes after is necessarily worse — but it almost requires a different eye, a different set of expectations.
Resident Evil 4 set the precedent incredibly high for this franchise. It was a new evolution for the genre and the series. It carved a new path forward, introduced new tools, explored new territory. How are you supposed to follow that? How are you supposed to manage expectations that large? The honest answer is that you can't. In this way, Resident Evil 5 was sort of given a raw deal from the very beginning — destined to be misremembered and underrated regardless of how good it managed to be.
But in isolation, the game is pretty great. Does it stand up to Resident Evil 4, or to the Resident Evil 1 remake? Not at all. But it does manage to put its own twist on the action framework that Resident Evil 4 established, extrapolating on the melee system to include more combos, pushing the combat to feel faster and more aggressive, and delivering a plot that is, frankly, absolutely bananas. While Resident Evil 5 starts out relatively grounded, it goes completely off the rails by the final hour or two, and it earns that craziness through the work it does in the earlier chapters.
The game sets its goals early — to wrap up the history of the series, to uncover its mysteries, to reveal where all of this really started. Simultaneously, in the present, we're closing out the stories of Chris, Wesker, and Jill. But the game refuses to stay in the box that conventional wisdom would put around it. Like a beast trying to bust free from a cage, it rattles against its restraints until the bars give way entirely. If the introduction is grounded, the finale is in orbit — and somehow, it works.
This is some of the most fun the series has ever had. And the game does manage to take itself seriously where it matters. Themes of partnership, progress, indifference turning to determination, and vengeance persist throughout. While Resident Evil 4 was the first mainline game in the series to feel like it had a genuinely substantial narrative, Resident Evil 5 is the first time the series actively tries to build its characters up with interesting motivations and real depth. Combining a light-hearted action story packed with insane twists and set pieces alongside characters who actually feel like they have interiority makes for an absolutely fantastic experience in the moments it gets right.
And in some ways, the systems Resident Evil 5 employs genuinely do work. The game feels fast-paced, the hordes can get overwhelming quickly, the weapons feel good to use, the upgrade system is engaging, and the action is fantastic. But in a lot of areas, Resident Evil 5 also feels like a step down from its predecessor. And that's not purely because Resident Evil 4 set the bar impossibly high. It's because Resident Evil 5 makes deliberate changes and removes upgrades that were so welcome in the previous game. The attaché case is gone, replaced by a nine-slot inventory system. The merchant is gone, with buying and selling relegated to a single screen between chapters. The treasure system has been nerfed, stripping away the ability to combine treasures for larger rewards. These are real regressions, and they matter...
There's a quiet damnation in having to follow a stellar act. The headliner that plays after a shockingly good opener. The main event match that can't quite gather the crowd after the tables, ladders, and chairs spectacle that preceded it. The finale episode that can't match the emotional energy of the climactic one before it. That doesn't mean what comes after is necessarily worse — but it almost requires a different eye, a different set of expectations.
Resident Evil 4 set the precedent incredibly high for this franchise. It was a new evolution for the genre and the series. It carved a new path forward, introduced new tools, explored new territory. How are you supposed to follow that? How are you supposed to manage expectations that large? The honest answer is that you can't. In this way, Resident Evil 5 was sort of given a raw deal from the very beginning — destined to be misremembered and underrated regardless of how good it managed to be.
But in isolation, the game is pretty great. Does it stand up to Resident Evil 4, or to the Resident Evil 1 remake? Not at all. But it does manage to put its own twist on the action framework that Resident Evil 4 established, extrapolating on the melee system to include more combos, pushing the combat to feel faster and more aggressive, and delivering a plot that is, frankly, absolutely bananas. While Resident Evil 5 starts out relatively grounded, it goes completely off the rails by the final hour or two, and it earns that craziness through the work it does in the earlier chapters.
The game sets its goals early — to wrap up the history of the series, to uncover its mysteries, to reveal where all of this really started. Simultaneously, in the present, we're closing out the stories of Chris, Wesker, and Jill. But the game refuses to stay in the box that conventional wisdom would put around it. Like a beast trying to bust free from a cage, it rattles against its restraints until the bars give way entirely. If the introduction is grounded, the finale is in orbit — and somehow, it works.
This is some of the most fun the series has ever had. And the game does manage to take itself seriously where it matters. Themes of partnership, progress, indifference turning to determination, and vengeance persist throughout. While Resident Evil 4 was the first mainline game in the series to feel like it had a genuinely substantial narrative, Resident Evil 5 is the first time the series actively tries to build its characters up with interesting motivations and real depth. Combining a light-hearted action story packed with insane twists and set pieces alongside characters who actually feel like they have interiority makes for an absolutely fantastic experience in the moments it gets right.
And in some ways, the systems Resident Evil 5 employs genuinely do work. The game feels fast-paced, the hordes can get overwhelming quickly, the weapons feel good to use, the upgrade system is engaging, and the action is fantastic. But in a lot of areas, Resident Evil 5 also feels like a step down from its predecessor. And that's not purely because Resident Evil 4 set the bar impossibly high. It's because Resident Evil 5 makes deliberate changes and removes upgrades that were so welcome in the previous game. The attaché case is gone, replaced by a nine-slot inventory system. The merchant is gone, with buying and selling relegated to a single screen between chapters. The treasure system has been nerfed, stripping away the ability to combine treasures for larger rewards. These are real regressions, and they matter...
