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Resident Evil 4: How long to beat and how many chapters

Giovanni Colantonio
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Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 remake isn’t your typical video game double dip. Rather than taking a Dead Space approach and delivering a fairly faithful 1:1 remake, the new version of Resident Evil 4 is a radically reinvented version of the 2005 horror classic. Not only has the gameplay seen a major overhaul, but its story has too. Familiar beats have been entirely reimagined in some cases, which changes a few key things about the original’s structure.

You might be wondering how that impacts the remake’s length. Yes, there are some changes, especially to its chapter structure. Here’s how long it’ll take you to complete the remake and how many chapters you can expect.

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How long is Resident Evil 4?

Leon fights off a parasite in Resident Evil 4's remake.

The original Resident Evil 4 is a lengthier outing for the horror series. While it can be breezed through in 10 hours if you’re mainlining its story, some of its more open-ended areas give its playthrough window some flexibility. On average, the 2005 version takes about 15 hours to complete.

The 2023 version of Resident Evil 4 is almost exactly in line with that despite being a very different game. Our first playthrough took somewhere between 15 to 20 hours. Note that we didn’t 100% our save file either, leaving a few blue requests unfinished and not racking up perfect scores at the shooting range. If you’re looking to spend some time with it, you’ll be looking at close to 25 to 30 hours of gameplay.

And of course, that’s not even including New Game+, its challenge system, and the upcoming Mercenaries mode. True completionists can expect to spend a lot more time with it if they want to fully unlock every single thing it has to offer.

How many chapters are in Resident Evil 4?

The Garrador stands tall in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

The biggest change to Resident Evil 4 isn’t in its length, but in its chapter structure. The original game was split up into 19 chapters spread across five distinct acts. The opening village set piece, for instance, represents the first three chapters of the game.

By contrast, Resident Evil 4‘s remake has 16 chapters in total. If that sounds like you’re getting less content overall, don’t worry. The story has been reworked to combine and restructure some chapters. All the major beats of the original are still there — plus some — but in a slightly more streamlined manner.

Overall, you can expect a pretty similar experience in terms of how long it’ll take and the order in which events take place. If you’re playing along with the original, you’ll start to see chapters diverge in a major way around the halfway point, but you’ll still be on roughly the same track.

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Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni Colantonio
Section Editor, Gaming
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
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