Which Difficulty Should You Choose in Resident Evil 4 Remake?

Resident Evil 4 ups the action compared to its predecessors, so your choice of difficulty matters a lot for your first playthrough. Keeping with tradition, the remake of Resident Evil 4 offers an easy, normal, and hard difficulty setting, but there’s a twist that capitalizes on the fact that this is a remake. The easy difficulty is exactly what you’d expect, offering less difficult combat and providing more plentiful resources for players who just want to experience the story, but the normal and hard difficulties expect players to put up with more than just more aggressive enemies.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Difficulty Settings Explained

There are three difficulty settings in Resident Evil 4. The first of which is Assisted, which makes the game much easier for those that just want to play through the story without worrying too much about combat or resource management. Resident Evil 4 is a gorgeous game with plenty of great moments, so there’s no shame in picking this option if you’re not a survival horror expert.

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The other two difficulty options are Standard and Hardcore, which are your typical normal and hard modes. However, the description for these modes shows that Capcom has more in mind for players than just throwing more enemies at them.

Standard vs. Hardcore Differences

The Standard difficulty is intended for players who have not experienced the original version of Resident Evil 4, while the Hardcore difficulty is intended for fans who have played the original at least once before. Hardcore mode not only features stronger enemies, scarcer resources, and more challenging combat, but the game also expects you to have some knowledge of the campaign and the encounters within it.

If this is your first time playing Resident Evil 4, you should choose the Standard difficulty. It’s still challenging and you’ll get a great experience. However, plenty of people have played Resident Evil 4 over and over again, and those people should choose the Hardcore mode.

Resident Evil 4 remake follows the original very closely and the Hardcore mode takes advantage of that. If you know a boss fight is coming up, you may want to save your ammo in the encounters leading up to it. Without any knowledge of the original game, even skilled players can suffer on Hardcore mode.