What Order to Play Resident Evil Games (2026 Guide)

Thirty games. Four full remakes, two remasters, a handful of rail shooters, and a timeline that doubles back on itself twice inside a single week of 1998. Asking what order to play Resident Evil in is a fair question, and most answers online make it harder than it needs to be by dumping all thirty titles into a list and wishing you luck.

Here is the short version. If you have never played a Resident Evil game, start with Resident Evil 2 Remake. Not Resident Evil 0, even though every chronological list on the internet puts it first. Not the 1996 original, even though it is where the series began. RE2 Remake is modern, it controls well, it is roughly eight hours, and it drops you into Raccoon City at the exact moment the story becomes worth caring about.

Everything below expands on that: a short route for newcomers, the complete in-universe timeline, every game in release order with a link to its full entry in our database, and an honest note on which games are genuinely hard to buy in 2026.

Quick Answer: Three Orders, Three Purposes

None of these is wrong. Chronological order gives you the cleanest narrative, release order shows you how survival horror mutated into an action series and back again, and the newcomer route simply gets you playing good games fast. Pick based on what you actually want out of it.

How Many Resident Evil Games Are There?

Counting is genuinely awkward here. There are nine numbered mainline entries (RE1 through Requiem, which is RE9 in all but name), plus Code: Veronica, which is mainline in everything except its title. Add the four RE Engine remakes, the two Revelations games, the light gun spin-offs, the multiplayer experiments and the handheld oddities, and the total climbs to around 30 releases, which is roughly what we track in our Resident Evil franchise database.

The good news is that you can ignore most of them. Somewhere between eight and twelve games carry the entire story. The rest are optional at best.

The Recommended Order for Newcomers

This is the route we would actually give a friend. Seven games, roughly seventy hours, in an order that never asks you to fight a twenty-year-old control scheme before you have decided whether you like the series.

1. Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019)

Resident Evil 2 Remake is the best-selling game in the franchise and the easiest recommendation on this list. Leon Kennedy on his first day as a cop and Claire Redfield looking for her brother, both trapped in a police station that is slowly filling with the dead, and a Tyrant in a trenchcoat who follows you between rooms. Two campaigns, both worth playing, and the tightest resource management in the modern series.

2. Resident Evil 3 Remake (2020)

RE3 Remake runs alongside RE2 in the same city over the same days, following Jill Valentine as Raccoon City collapses around her. It is short, around six hours, and Capcom cut content that was in the 1999 original, which the community has never let go of. Play it anyway, immediately after RE2, while the geography is still fresh.

3. Resident Evil HD Remaster (2015)

Now go back to the beginning. Resident Evil HD Remaster is the cleaned-up version of the 2002 GameCube remake, which is itself a near-total rebuild of the 1996 original. Fixed camera angles, tank controls if you want them, and the Spencer Mansion, which is still the best-designed environment in the series. This is where you find out whether classic-era Resident Evil is for you.

4. Resident Evil 4 Remake (2023)

RE4 Remake is, by most measures, the best game in the franchise. Leon, six years older and considerably calmer, is sent to rural Spain to recover the President’s daughter. The parry system alone justifies it. If you only ever play one Resident Evil game, make it this one.

5. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)

RE7 is the hard reset: first-person, a new protagonist with no connection to the old cast, and a Louisiana plantation house owned by a family that will not stay dead. It is the scariest game in the series by a wide margin and it needs almost no prior knowledge, which makes it a legitimate alternative starting point if pure horror is what you are after.

6. Resident Evil Village (2021)

Village picks up three years after RE7 and swaps the swamp for a snowbound Eastern European village run by four lords, including the one who broke containment on social media before the game even launched. It shifts genre every couple of hours: gothic castle, haunted house, factory, siege. Uneven by design, and mostly excellent.

7. Resident Evil Requiem (2026)

Requiem is the current entry, released February 27, 2026, and it returns to the ruins of Raccoon City twenty-eight years on. FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft and a visibly worn Leon Kennedy work parallel threads, and the game lets you switch between first and third person. It sold five million copies in its first week.

Two optional additions

Resident Evil 5 closes out Chris Redfield’s decade-long pursuit of Albert Wesker, so if you have gotten attached to that thread it is the payoff. It is barely a horror game and the solo AI partner is rough, but in co-op it holds up. And Code: Veronica is narratively essential and mechanically punishing in equal measure. Given that a full remake, Resident Evil Veronica, was announced at Summer Game Fest 2026 for a 2027 release, waiting is now a reasonable option.

One thing not to do

Do not start with Resident Evil 0. Chronological lists put it first because it opens the timeline, and it is a trap. RE0 removed the item box entirely, replacing it with a system where you drop items on the floor and remember where you left them, while swapping between two characters who each carry half your inventory. It is widely considered one of the two hardest games in the series. Play it fifth or tenth or never, but not first.

Full Chronological Order (In-Universe Timeline)

This is the order events actually happen in the story. Note the dates: almost everything important occurs across five months of 1998, and then the series jumps six years.

Two warnings before the table. First, RE3 overlaps RE2. Jill’s escape begins on September 28, RE2 happens on September 29, and RE3‘s second half runs to October 1. Splitting a playthrough in half to honour that is more trouble than it is worth, so play RE2 first and treat RE3 as the surrounding context. Second, where a remake exists, it replaces the original here. Same events, better version.

A note on Outbreak: it was optional for twenty years, and then Requiem made protagonist Grace Ashcroft the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, one of Outbreak‘s playable survivors. It still is not required, but it is no longer irrelevant.

The Chronicles games sit awkwardly in any timeline because they are rail shooters that retell earlier events with some new material bolted on. The Darkside Chronicles in particular is mostly a recap of RE2 and Code: Veronica with one genuinely new scenario, Operation Javier, set in 2002.

Full Release Order (Every Game, 1996 to 2027)

The complete list, including spin-offs, remasters and multiplayer experiments. Scores are Metacritic as listed in our database. Each title links to its full entry with platforms, store links and specs.

Resident Evil Re:Verse, a deathmatch mode bundled with Village, is not listed above. It never found an audience and is not worth tracking.

Original or Remake? Which Version to Actually Play

“Just play the remake” is the standard advice and it is right about half the time. Here is the nuance.

Resident Evil (1996 vs 2002 Remake): not a contest. The 2002 remake rebuilt the game from scratch, added Lisa Trevor and the Crimson Heads, and remains one of the best-looking pre-rendered games ever made. Play the HD Remaster, which is the same game on modern hardware. The 1996 original is a historical curiosity now.

Resident Evil 2 (1998 vs 2019 Remake): play the remake. It is a different game in structure, but it is the better one, and the 1998 original’s separate A/B scenario system is more interesting to read about than to play twice.

Resident Evil 3 (1999 vs 2020 Remake): the only genuinely contested one. RE3 Remake cut the clock tower, the park and the dodge-heavy encounter design that made the 1999 game distinctive, and reduced Nemesis from an unpredictable stalker to a scripted set-piece. It is still a good six hours. But if you liked the original‘s structure, you are not imagining the loss.

Resident Evil 4 (2005 vs 2023 Remake): both are worth playing, which is not true of any other pair here. The 2023 remake is the better modern game. The 2005 original has a specific comic tone, a different Merchant, and a directorial voice from Shinji Mikami that the remake deliberately does not reproduce. Start with the remake; come back to the original if you love it.

Code: Veronica: for now, the original is your only option, and it is rough: tank controls, brutal resource scarcity, and a mid-game point where you can lock yourself out of victory by spending ammo carelessly. With Resident Evil Veronica confirmed for 2027, waiting is now genuinely defensible.

The Spin-Offs: What You Can Safely Skip

Short version: almost all of them. Longer version, in descending order of how much you would miss.

Worth your time if the premise appeals: the two Revelations games. Revelations is Capcom’s deliberate step back toward classic horror, set on a derelict cruise ship, with the most replayable side mode in the series. Revelations 2 pairs Claire with Barry Burton’s daughter across a Kafka-referencing episodic story and has some of the most sincere character writing the franchise has produced.

Historically interesting, practically difficult: Outbreak and File 2 were online co-op survival horror in 2003, years ahead of the infrastructure that could support them. Official servers are long dead; fan-run private servers keep them alive. Now retroactively relevant thanks to Requiem.

For completionists only: the Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles rail shooters, Mercenaries 3D, Survivor, Dead Aim and Gaiden.

Skip: Operation Raccoon City (52), Resistance (64), and Umbrella Corps (38), which holds the distinction of being the lowest-scored game in franchise history.

Where to Actually Play These in 2026

This is where most guides get vague. The practical situation, by availability:

Easy to buy right now, on everything: RE2 Remake, RE3 Remake, RE4 Remake, RE7, Village, Requiem, RE HD Remaster, RE0, RE5, RE6, and both Revelations games. All are on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and mostly Switch, and all of them go on deep discount regularly. Capcom’s back catalogue drops to a few dollars several times a year.

Available but only in older form: the 2005 Resident Evil 4 is still on Steam as a separate product from the remake, so check which one you are buying. Code: Veronica exists as a PS2-era digital release on PlayStation and as physical discs; there is no modern port.

Difficult or effectively unavailable: Mercenaries 3D and the 3DS version of Revelations are stranded now that the 3DS eShop has closed, so physical cartridges are the only route. Survivor, Dead Aim and Gaiden never left PS1, PS2 and Game Boy Color respectively. The Chronicles games need a Wii or a PS3 with Move. Outbreak requires emulation and a private server. Umbrella Corps has been delisted.

Every game entry in our Resident Evil database lists current store links where they exist.

FAQ

Which Resident Evil game should I play first?
Resident Evil 2 Remake. It is modern, roughly eight hours, and requires no prior knowledge. If you specifically want to be frightened rather than to follow the story, Resident Evil 7 is an equally good starting point.

Do I need to play them in order at all?
No. Every Resident Evil game is designed to be playable on its own, and the series regularly recaps itself. Order matters for how much the returning characters land, not for whether you can follow what is happening.

Is every Resident Evil game connected?
The mainline entries share one continuity built around Umbrella, the Raccoon City outbreak and a recurring cast. RE7 and Village tell a mostly self-contained story with Ethan Winters that connects at the edges. Operation Raccoon City is explicitly alternate-canon and does not count.

What is the hardest Resident Evil game?
Resident Evil Zero and Code: Veronica, for the same reason: both punish inefficient resource use badly enough that a bad save file can leave you unable to progress.

Which Resident Evil game is the best?
By critical score, the 2005 Resident Evil 4 at 96 on Metacritic, still the highest in the series twenty years on. By modern playability, its 2023 remake at 93.

Where does Resident Evil Requiem fit?
Last, for now. It is set in October 2026, twenty-eight years after the destruction of Raccoon City, which makes it the furthest point in the timeline outside of a Village DLC epilogue.

Where to Go Next

If you have picked a starting point, every game above has a full entry in our database with platforms, store links, specs and franchise cross-references. Browse the complete Resident Evil franchise page for all thirty titles, or jump straight to Resident Evil 2 Remake and get started.