David Ely

Need help with fighting in Resident Evil 4

I finally got around to picking up Resident Evil 4 last week and I'm nearly at my wit's end. I just can't figure out how to properly fight in this game. Your character moves so slowly, making it a real pain to fight when you're surrounded by enemies.

Any tips?

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JasonMC

If you press the B button while walking, Leon will run. If you press "B" and down on the analog stick, Leon will turn around quickly. If you are in the village being attacked by dozens of villagers, it is better off to run around for a while than fight.

Hang in there, the game is awesome.

Chris Farmer

Jason is right, except one minor correction. To do a quick 180° turn, hold down on the analog stick, then tap B. If you hold B down first, you'll just back up quickly.

As for combat, first and foremost, distance is your friend. It gives you more time to react, enemies are less accurate at a distance, and if you're really good, you can blast their projectiles out of the air. Early on in the game, go for head shots. This will stagger the opponent, then run up to them. "Kick" will appear at the bottom of the screen. Tap the A button to make Leon let out a kick that will knock that character and any other characters in the vicinity to the ground. Use the knife if there's only a couple, or a gun if you're in a hurry, and finish them off when they're on the ground. If they get up, repeat. In addition, sometimes the kick will also decapitate whoever you hit, as well as a head shot. If you're getting mobbed and can't get away, a shotgun blast will knock everyone to the floor and give you some breathing room. At this point you can either run back to get some space and location, or you can run up and put some bullets in their head at point-blank. Finesse overall is the best option though. It conserves ammo, and Leon is invulnerable whenever a special attack animation is playing. There's way more ammo then you need as long as you're remotely careful, but it will get tight from time to time if you're not.

Later in the game, headshots will become a really bad idea, and will stay that way for the rest of the game. If you do headshot someone, bad things will happen. You'll know when it happens. When that happens, shoot your enemy in the kneecap instead. He'll drop to one knee, then use the same methodology to knock him to the ground. Once you reach the castle, the enemies will be replaced by a new type. At this point, instead of kicking multiple enemies, Leon will actually do a suplex that only hits one enemy, but frequently decapitate them, far more so then the kick. It's also worth noting that a decapitating kick or suplex will never cause a bad thing to happen.

Don't hesitate to use grenades on large groups of enemies. You don't have a massive number, but you generally get exactly enough if you're careful. If a bad thing happens, or if lots of bad things happen at once, a flash grenade will deal with them instantly. Incinerator grenades drop people to the floor quickly, but don't do enough damage later in the game. They make good openers to get a bunch of enemies on the floor before you rip a few shotgun rounds into the entire group though.

Weapons loadout is to your own choice. My recommendation is to keep, but don't upgrade, the initial handgun until you get the Punisher from the merchant (shoot all 15 medals instead of just 10 to upgrade its damage slightly), and then upgrade the Punisher and stock shotgun until you reach the castle. There, sell the Punisher for the Blacktail, add in a semi-auto rifle, and keep the shotgun. You'll find a magnum later in the level, and can sell the shotgun for the striker later as well. Save the money now though and you'll get more weapons and upgrades later, because there are not enough pesetas to upgrade every weapon in the game all the way your first time through unless you're very careful. Don't waste your money on rocket launchers, you can survive without them if you're careful.

As for specific weapon choices, that depends on what you like, but you'll want a pistol to initiate suplexes and kicks (damage is too low beyond that to really be a serious killing machine), a rifle for long distance kills (there are a few times one is just about mandatory), a magnum for bosses, and a short range high damage weapon. For pistols there are two choices, the Red 9 and the Blacktail. The Red 9 does more damage and is more stable for aiming, the Blacktail takes up way less space, has a higher capacity, and aims faster. My preference is for the Blacktail because by the time you get either damage fully upgraded, you're not using the pistol to kill people anyway. And besides, with the extra space you free up you more then make up for the lower damage with a lot more ammo. It's solely for kicks and suplexes. Rifles are harder, the bolt-action rifle is half the size of the semi auto, and when fully upgraded, does slightly more damage. However, the extra damage doesn't really matter as rifles are usually one shot kills, and it also has the huge disadvantage of taking you out of the scope after every shot, throwing your timing off. Especially with the exclusive, the semi-auto has a far higher rate of fire and a much bigger capacity. It is, however, twice the size. Decide what matters most to you. I went with the semi-auto. Close range weapons there are two choices, the striker and the TMP. TMP does low damage per bullet, but holds a gajillion and pumps them out really really fast. Striker also holds a gajillion, does a lot of damage per shot, but has no long range abilities. It also has a lot more stopping power then the TMP. Fire the striker (or any shotgun) and people go down. My preference was for the striker myself. Magnums its no choice. Broken Butterfly is free and when fully upgraded does far more damage then the Killer7. The mine thrower is a toy. If you actually have a full loadout of weapons you'll almost never get ammo for it, it's even a rarer drop then magnum ammo.

Mix herbs as soon as possible to free up space. Try to avoid though mixing greens with more greens. Mix them with reds and/or yellows. Mixing with greens requires three green herbs to fully heal you as opposed to just one green if mixed with a red. Combine all three colors when you can to maximize their use; you fully heal AND raise your max health. Good deal. Use tri-colored herbs first, then first aid sprays (you start with just one, but around chapter 4 you start finding them at every corner drugstore). Avoid using GR or GY herbs until you have to, because their effectiveness can be raised with the third color. Use them independently and you're not getting the full effectiveness out of either combination. Don't bother upgrading Ashley's health until your second play-through. For the most part she takes so little damage to kill that even maxed out she'll be dead before you can save her, or she would have survived the attack anyway. The extra health you can get her is rarely a difference-maker. It's better to triple up the herbs and sell them for 10k pesatas each.

Other then that, just have fun and relax. Don't let the enemies get near you, much less surround you. If there are guys throwing dynamite either kill them or blast the dynamite out of the air. The resulting explosion will kill everything in a 10 mile radius. Use pistols to get guys on their knees and then kick them to bring everyone down, then press your advantage. If you have a projectile coming your way, blast it out of the air. Shoot them in the arm to make them drop their weapons; shoot them in the legs while moving to make them trip. People on buildings can be knocked off with a good shot to the legs. The fall will either kill them outright or hurt them bad enough that one more shot will do the trick. Kill projectile guys first, they can hurt you from a distance. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it. The village is good, but once you reach the castle the game goes from good to incredible.

David Ely

Wow! Thanks for such a detailed post!!

It sounds like I'm going about the game all wrong. I think I'll wait a few days before playing again, as I've ben finding myself in a 'go in with guns blazing' mood. That method will obviously get me nowhere in the game.

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Chris Farmer

Guns blazing works and is a lot of fun, but not early in the game. You simply don't have enough ammo and powerful enough weapons to go head to head with a ton of opponents and survive. Later in the game though, right about when the striker shotgun becomes available, guns blazing is not only workable, but almost encouraged. Late in chapter 4 and for most of chapter 5, pistol ammo becomes far harder to come by, but shotgun and rifle ammo is far more common. Grenades are found all over the place. While sniping with the rifle is fun and productive, the shotgun is not a subtle weapon. You get in you opponent's face and blow him to pieces.

This isn't like previous Resident Evil games where you're out numbered, outmatched, and don't have enough ammo. Leon is well-trained, capable, and ready willing and able to take a lot of names and kick a lot of ass. You'll finish the game with nearly a thousand kills. The subtlety, especially early on is mainly there to help you conserve ammo and make the bullets count. Not because there aren't enough bullets, but because the bullets don't do much damage and you need to augment it. In addition, you do have mostly pistol ammo for the first half to two-thirds of the game, and no pistol available to you at that point does very much damage, so you rely on kicks and suplexes to finish enemies off. By the time they do do a lot of damage, the enemies are tough enough that it doesn't matter and you're still doing suplexes. It's when you get weapons that not only upgrade to a decent amount of damage but inherently do a lot themselves that the game picks up.

Richard Kim

Actually, flash grenades will (those blasted headshots), so you should only use them when faced with several enemies in this condition.

Also, shoot the hands of armed opponents to make them drop their weapons. They can still strangle you, but does less damage than a weapon.

DonRoeber

Wow, I had no idea that the flash grenades could do that. I've used them many times to great success, but never in that capacity. Awesome!

Luckily, right at that moment, an unconscious Argentinean fell through my roof.

He was quickly joined by a dwarf dressed as a nun.

Matthew_

It sounds like a great game!

Chris Farmer

My bad Richard, I meant to use "bad things happen" as a [semi-humorous] metaphor for your spoiler. I said earlier in my post that if you headshot past a certain point in the game, bad things will happen, and then tried to say that a flash grenade will instantly deal with it if a bad thing does happen. I guess it was a little bit too obtuse and obfuscated. I will say this though, it didn't reveal any spoilers. But yes, flash grenades are extremely useful for just that purpose, especially, for example, in one of the two grail rooms (don't remember which one) where you have a little gladiatorial style combat.