Resident Evil Requiem: Grace vs Leon — Differences and Who to Play First
Grace plays stealth and scarcity, Leon plays combat and upgrades. Here's how the two protagonists differ in Requiem and who new players should start with.
Two Protagonists, Two Completely Different Games
Resident Evil Requiem hands you two characters, and they don’t just look different. They play different. Grace Ashcroft is the FBI analyst at the center of the story, the daughter of a woman who died at the Wrenwood Hotel eight years before the game opens. Leon S. Kennedy is back, older, and carrying a lifetime of zombie-killing muscle memory.
If you go in expecting the second character to be a reskin of the first, you’ll get caught off guard. Grace and Leon have separate inventories, separate tools, separate combat options, and they ask different things of you as a player. The narrative cuts between the two, and you can switch viewpoints as the story moves. I think that switching is one of the smartest things Requiem does, because it forces you to learn two survival mindsets instead of one.
Here’s how they break down, and which one I’d put a first-timer on.
Grace Ashcroft: Stealth and Scarcity
Grace is the survival horror character in the old-school sense. She is not a fighter. She is someone who got dragged into something far above her pay grade and has to make it out with whatever she can scavenge.
A few things define how she plays:
Tiny Inventory
Grace carries an 8-slot bag. That’s it. You will spend a real amount of time deciding what stays and what goes, and that pressure is the point. You can’t hoard. Every herb, every shell, every key item competes for the same handful of slots, so you’re constantly weighing “do I need this now or later.”
No Weapon Upgrades
Whatever Grace’s guns can do, that’s what they do for the whole run. There’s no bench where you pour resources into bigger magazines or faster reloads. Her power doesn’t scale up the way an RPG character’s would, which keeps the tension flat and high. A zombie in the second hour is still a genuine threat in the tenth.
Blood Collector and Stabilizers
Grace’s kit leans on her own tools. The Blood Collector is something you want early, and Stabilizers are part of how she keeps herself together under pressure. Her gameplay loop is about avoiding fights, not winning them. Sneak past, slip through, save the bullets for the moment you absolutely can’t run.
Play Grace like you’re allergic to combat and you’ll do fine. Play her like Leon and you’ll burn through resources and die.
Leon S. Kennedy: Combat and Control
Leon is the power fantasy half of Requiem, relatively speaking. This is survival horror, so “power fantasy” still means you’re scared most of the time. But Leon can actually fight back, and the game gives him the tools to do it.
RE4-Style Grid Inventory
Leon uses the grid attaché case familiar to anyone who played Resident Evil 4. You’re playing inventory Tetris, fitting weapons and items into a shared space. It’s a different kind of management from Grace’s slots. You have more room to carry firepower, but you’re still organizing constantly.
Weapon Upgrades
This is the big one. Leon can upgrade his weapons. That means his arsenal grows over the course of his sections, and the resources you invest actually compound. You feel progression on Leon’s side that Grace never gets.
Axe Melee and the Parry
Leon carries an axe for close-quarters work, and he has a parry. A well-timed melee counter can flip a bad situation into a clean kill or a safe escape. Learning Leon’s parry timing pays off all run, especially when the game throws something at you that you can’t easily outshoot. His sections reward aggression in a way Grace’s never do.
Side by Side
| Grace Ashcroft | Leon S. Kennedy | |
|---|---|---|
| Playstyle | Stealth, evasion, scarcity | Combat, control, upgrades |
| Inventory | 8 slots | RE4-style grid case |
| Weapon upgrades | No | Yes |
| Signature tools | Blood Collector, Stabilizers | Axe melee, parry |
| Best mindset | Avoid fights | Win fights when you have to |
Who Should You Play First?
You don’t really get to pick a “first” in the loose sense. Requiem is a structured, linear story that moves between the two leads, so the order is largely set by the game’s pacing rather than a menu choice. There’s no chapter select and no free roam, which matters for how you approach the whole thing.
But in terms of who to emotionally lean into, here’s my take for a newcomer.
If you’ve never played a Resident Evil game before, Grace is your teacher. Her scarcity and stealth force you to learn the fundamentals that every RE veteran already knows: conserve ammo, avoid what you can, treat every zombie as a problem to be solved rather than mowed down. Those lessons carry over to Leon’s tougher encounters. A player who masters Grace’s “don’t fight unless you must” instinct will handle Leon far better than someone who tries to brute-force everything.
If you’re a returning fan, Leon will feel like home immediately. The grid case, the parry, the upgrades, it’s the RE4 and RE remake DNA you already know. You’ll slip into his rhythm fast and probably enjoy his sections as the release valve after Grace’s white-knuckle stretches.
My honest recommendation: embrace Grace’s sections as the real survival horror experience and treat Leon’s as the action breather. Don’t fight Grace’s design by playing aggressive, and don’t waste Leon’s upgrade economy by ignoring the bench. Each character is most fun when you play them the way they were built, and the contrast between the two is the whole reason Requiem works as well as it does.
The game also wants you collecting carefully on both sides. Because there’s no chapter select and no backtracking through open areas, anything you skip can be gone for good. If you’re a completionist, see our dedicated collectibles guide before you commit to a route, because picking up everything means going in order and not assuming you can return later.