Resident Evil 3 wouldn’t be a proper Resident Evil game if it didn’t rank your performance, and hitting S-Rank is a true achievement. If you want to get the highest ranking available you will need to be both quick and conservative.
Each difficulty has separate yet similar S-Rank requirements.
In Resident Evil 3 you will be evaluated on how quickly you completed the game, and how many times you saved. Essentially, you need to blast through the game as rapidly as possible and only save a handful of time.
Each of the three difficulties (Assisted, Standard, and Hardcore) follow this mantra, but the requirements are a little more relaxed the lower down the totem-pole you go. Here are the S-Rank requirements for each:
- Assisted
- Clear Time – Two hours, thirty minutes
- Standard
- Clear Time – Two hours
- Hardcore
- Clear Time – One hour, forty-five minutes.
- Nightmare
- Clear Time – Two Hours
- Inferno
- Clear Time – Two Hours
To make S-Rank you also can’t save more than 5 times in a run, so you’ll need to use the auto-save feature to your advantage (unless playing Inferno, then God’s speed). The time shrinks up until Nightmare, where it increases (likely due to the much larger difference in difficulty). It may not seem like much, but enemies are harder to kill and ammo is more limited the harder the difficulty, which will inevitably slow you down.
Here is the twist: you can use Shop unlocks earned from completing Records. That means the attack boosting coins, unlimited ammo MUP, CQBR Assault Rifle, and more can be used to cheese your way through Resident Evil 3 for that sweet, sweet S-Rank. Hell, I’d argue they are required for Nightmare and Inferno S-Ranks.
Granted, purists will scoff at anything beyond beating the game with nothing but a knife, but these shop items makes earning an S-Rank more accessible to those who don’t live and breath Resident Evil.
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