Resident Evil 9 Beginner’s Guide: Two Characters, Two Camera Modes, and the Difficulty Pick That Rations Your Saves

Grace Ashcroft plays Resident Evil 9 with eight inventory slots, a knife that breaks, and a flashlight as her main line of defense. Leon Kennedy plays the same game with a Resident Evil 4-style grid inventory, a hatchet that never truly breaks, and enough firepower to shoot his way out of most fights. Capcom built that split on purpose — the two campaigns are designed as near-opposite survival experiences rather than the same difficulty curve wearing two skins [2][5].

Before you touch a single setting, four choices decide how rough your first few hours feel: which difficulty mode, which camera perspective, how fast you learn the default controls, and how you play the character the game hands you. Get those right early and the rest of this guide is just execution.

Quick Start: Decide These Before You Hit “New Game”

Four decisions shape your entire opening stretch. Make them before the first cutscene ends, not after you’re already stuck in a room with no ammo.

1. Difficulty: Standard (Modern) if you haven’t played a Resident Evil game recently; Standard (Classic) only if you specifically want Ink Ribbons to matter [1].
2. Camera: Leave Grace on first-person and Leon on third-person for at least the opening area — those are the defaults Capcom tuned the pacing around [3][5].
3. Two buttons to know cold: Quick Turn and Flashlight. Both get used constantly and neither is intuitive on a first playthrough [2][4].
4. Inventory habit: Treat every item box as permanent storage from minute one. Grace especially can’t carry her way out of a bad decision later [2].
5. If you picked Classic: don’t spend an Ink Ribbon on a room you haven’t fully searched yet — you can’t get it back [1].

Pick Your Difficulty: What Modern vs. Classic Really Changes

Standard (Modern) and Standard (Classic) place the same enemies, items, and puzzles in the same spots. The only real difference between them is how you’re allowed to save [1].

Classic isn’t just a harder fight — it’s the same fight plus a save system that now competes with your inventory. Ink Ribbon Tins are craftable from Infected Blood [1], which is the same resource you need for healing items, so Classic mode forces you to budget your save file the way the game already forces you to budget bullets. That’s a deliberate tension add, not extra difficulty for its own sake, and it’s worth knowing what you’re opting into before your first typewriter.

First-Person or Third-Person? What 90% of Players Actually Chose

You can flip Grace and Leon between first- and third-person independently, at any point in the game, even for whichever character you aren’t currently controlling [12]. Capcom’s own post-launch numbers show almost nobody plays the two leads the same way: 90% of players kept Leon in third-person, while Grace split 60% first-person to 40% third [9].

That split isn’t an accident. Director Koshi Nakanishi built first-person around claustrophobia and limited visibility to maximize dread during Grace’s sections, while third-person exists specifically to show her panicked, stumbling body language — a reaction the camera can’t convey the same way when you’re looking through her eyes [3]. Leon’s near-universal third-person adoption likely comes down to familiarity: it’s the same perspective his Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 outings already used [9].

The Controls You’ll Actually Use

The default PC scheme is fully playable out of the box, and almost everything is rebindable if it isn’t [4]. For general PC performance tuning once you’re past the controls, our Resident Evil 9 best settings guide covers the graphics side; this general PC optimization guide covers everything below the game itself.

If you’re switching Leon into third-person combat and finding his aim sluggish, our guide to improving aim in third- and first-person games covers sensitivity tuning that applies directly here.

Grace vs. Leon: Two Survival Games in One

The two campaigns don’t just look different — they ask you to solve problems differently, and treating them the same is the most common beginner mistake [2].

If you’re stuck on a Grace section, the fix is almost never “find more ammo” — it’s route-planning around the enemy you’re avoiding. If you’re stuck on a Leon section, it’s almost always “use the hatchet finisher instead of another magazine,” since his handgun exists to stagger, not to kill outright [2].

The One Enemy Every New Player Underestimates: Blister Heads

Any zombie you leave without destroying its head or body can reanimate later in the campaign as a Blister Head — faster, more erratic, and hitting harder than the corpse you walked past [6][7]. The mechanic is first shown off through the Blister Borne boss in the Chapel, whose attacks can actively mutate nearby zombies mid-fight [6], but the same reanimation rule applies to ordinary zombies for the rest of the game, independent of that one encounter [7].

The reliable prevention tool is the Hemolytic Injector: used on a zombie that’s unaware, staggered, or already downed, it delivers a silent instant kill and permanently stops that specific corpse from mutating later [11]. It’s crafted from 1 Scrap and 60ml of Infected Blood, with the first one sitting in the Examination Room on the east side of the Care Center [11]. Once a Blister Head does spawn, community-tested kills without spending an injector include multiple shotgun blasts to the legs followed by a melee finisher to the head, or staggering it against a wall for a melee crush [7] — useful because injectors are a limited resource you’ll want to save for stealth kills, not cleanup.

Your First Hour: A Priority Checklist

Resource decisions in the opening area compound for the rest of the campaign, so prioritize in this order rather than looting everything you see:

1. Search every room before leaving it. The map tracks visited areas, but it won’t tell you what you missed inside them [2].
2. Keep the flashlight on at all times. Items and environmental notes are built to be easy to walk past in the dark [2].
3. Save headshots for confirmed kills, not staggers. Leg shots stagger cheaply; headshots should go to enemies you intend to finish [2].
4. Don’t finish off every zombie you stagger. If you’re playing Grace and don’t need the fight, disengage instead — avoidance is cheaper than ammo [2].
5. Bank your first few Ink Ribbons if you’re on Classic. Early rooms are small enough to re-clear from memory if something goes wrong; later ones aren’t [1].

Frequently Asked Questions

Should beginners play Standard (Modern) or Standard (Classic) on their first run?

Modern, unless you’ve already finished a Resident Evil game on a comparable difficulty before. Classic’s real cost isn’t tougher enemies — it’s identical enemies plus a save system that punishes exploration, and a first playthrough is exactly when you’re exploring the most [1].

Does switching camera perspective mid-game cause any problems?

No. Requiem tracks Grace’s and Leon’s camera settings independently and lets you change either one from the Settings menu at any point, even for the character you aren’t currently playing — there’s no run-ending downside to experimenting for an hour before settling [12].

Is it worth using ammo on a Blister Head instead of running?

As Grace, usually not — her ammo pool is too small to spend on an optional fight, and disengaging works [7]. As Leon, it depends on positioning: if you can stagger-and-finish in a corridor with an escape route, it’s worth it; if the Blister Head has room to close distance fast, disengaging is still the safer call [2][6].

Ready for the named fights? Our Resident Evil Requiem boss guide covers weak points and parry timings for all 8 bosses.

Sources

1. Video Games Chronicle. Resident Evil 9 Requiem: Difficulty modes explained, Modern vs Classic
2. TheGamer. Beginner Tips And Tricks For Resident Evil Requiem
3. Game Developer. Why Resident Evil Requiem Has Different Camera Angles
4. Game8. List of Controls — Resident Evil Requiem (RE9)
5. Wikipedia. Resident Evil Requiem
6. Game8. How to Beat Blister Borne — Resident Evil Requiem (RE9)
7. Steam Community. Is there any effective way to kill blister heads without using hemolytic injector?
8. Nintendo Life. Resident Evil Requiem’s Latest Update Is Now Live, Here Are The Full Patch Notes
9. Nintendo Life. Resident Evil Requiem Director Breaks Down Players’ Camera Preferences
10. Switchblade Gaming. Resident Evil 9 Best PC Settings
11. Game8. How to Get Hemolytic Injectors — Resident Evil Requiem (RE9)
12. Game8. How to Change POV: First Person or Third Person? — Resident Evil Requiem (RE9)

Verified against Resident Evil 9 (Requiem) update 1.3.1 (June 25, 2026). Ink Ribbon costs, difficulty behavior, and control defaults may shift slightly with future patches — the underlying structure covered here has held stable since launch [8].

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.