Our Resident Evil 4 tips and tricks will do a lot to help players survive and rescue Ashley from the voracious villagers. The RE4 Remake is a tough game on any difficulty, with overwhelming foes, unreliable weapons, monstrous boss fights and hidden treasures and collectibles all to deal with. That's why we've played ahead and put together this list of tips for the Resident Evil 4 Remake, with advice on not just how to survive, but thrive.
1. Use mobility and range to deal with enemies and mobs
As you'll discover when you try to survive the village in Resident Evil 4, most of the enemies you encounter in Resident Evil 4 are slow and melee-focused - they'll try to grab, bite or stab you ninety percent of the time. For that reason, the best thing you can do is keep moving and focus on keeping your foes at a distance. That's not to say they never throw things, but they telegraph these attacks clearly and can generally be avoided by just sidestepping at the right moment. Prioritise keeping targets at a distance - attack the moment they're in view, go for a melee attack if they get too close, and try not to go any place that you're backed into a corner.
2. Repair your knife often or use it carefully
The Resident Evil 4 knife is no longer an unlimited-use item in the Remake and can wear out and break as you use it. Parrying attacks with a well-timed L1/LB press as the enemy attack lands, or to finish stunned enemies, affects its durability the least. While using it to instantly break out of the damaging chokeholds that enemies will put affects durability the most.
Once it breaks, if you don't have any spares in your inventory, you'll have no parry option until it's repaired and be unable to quick escape grabs. So, depending on how you want to play you'll either need to make sure you repair it every time you see the merchant. Or, if you don't want to spend the money, use it sparingly.
3. Search everywhere and remember you can double back
Before leaving a room or area in the Resident Evil 4 Remake, make sure to search it thoroughly - breakable yellow crates and boxes, drawers or lockers that can be opened, loose resources or locked containers, these will all get marked on your map when you're close enough. Grab whatever you can, and keep a mental note of whatever you can't! Sometimes you'll find containers that need specific keys, only to find the keys later, requiring you to come back. For the most part you can back entire levels before passing a point of no return and the merchant will warn you when that's about to happen.
4. Always have a pistol and upgrade it as a main weapon option
There are several pistols to pick from in Resident Evil 4 - the starting SG-09 R, the Red9, the Punisher and more - but while opinions on the best one vary (it's the Red9), you should always have a handgun of some sort on you! Pistols are the reliable backbone of any build - ammo for them is plentiful and cheap to craft, so you should always be able to scrounge up bullets for it. It might not always be the best weapon overall but, because it's one of the Resident Evil 4 guns you'll be using more than any other, keep it close and always upgrade it when you get the chance so it's as good as possible.
5. Mix herbs when possible to save inventory
Mixing the herbs you find compresses them into a smaller space, meaning they take up less inventory. Both Red and Yellow Herbs don't actually do anything until mixed with another Herb either - the former acting like a Green when mixed with a Green and the latter boosting your overall health when consumed as part of a mix. So there's no reason not to combine them whenever possible, otherwise you'll end up with a suitcase full of untapped leafy potential.
6. Attache case inventory upgrades are always worth the effort
Your Attache case serves as your inventory (where does Leon carry that on him?), so the bigger it gets, the more you can carry on you, whether it's weapons, ammo, herbs or raw eggs. For that reason, the best thing you can do is to always buy upgrades for it from the Merchant, who will periodically have inventory expansion upgrades for sale. Admittedly, they're always very expensive - but they're still worth it. Buy them the moment you can. You can also make use of the Resident Evil 4 shooting gallery charms on your case to add small buffs to crafting and Merchant transactions.
7. Flash grenades can be more lethal than the regular kind
The Flash Grenades stun regular enemies, leaving them dazed for a moment, but more interestingly, they're completely lethal on ANY kind of parasite! The Las Plagas bugs and head-poppers - anything insectile - are all either killed immediately or take massive damage when hit by a Flash Grenade. Use this to your advantage - you can clear a room of giant parasites in a single well-placed throw!
8. Hold onto gemstones for inlaying into other treasure to earn more cash
Gemstones are valuable in any form, but they're worth a LOT more when inlayed into treasures you find that have empty slots (visible in the treasure menu next to your regular inventory). Not only that, but certain combinations of gemstones are worth a lot more, laid out in the Gemstone bonuses menu accessible with Square/X. These bonuses act as a multiplier on the total value of the treasure, and can hugely increase how much it's worth when sold to the merchant. Rather than selling Gemstones individually, try mix-and-matching them in treasure slots to see how much you can make! There's an achievement for selling an object worth more than 100,000 Pesetas!
9. Animals can be harvested for bonus items
Leon can hunt animals as much as zombie monsters, even excluding the nightmarish demon dogs with the wide smiles. Fish can be shot or stabbed, turning them into health items you can put in your inventory, crows drop random resources when killed (try throwing a Flash Grenades into a flock), and chickens lay eggs you can eat if you wait long enough. Not only that, but there's regular "Pest Control" requests that ask you to kill rats in the area, so make sure you squash any rodents you see!
