Difficulty Differences and How to Change

The Resident Evil 4 Remake (RE4) offers three difficulty settings to accommodate players of all skill levels. Learn the difficulty differences between Assisted, Standard, Hardcore, and Professional, find out if you can change difficulties, and more!

Difficulty Settings and Differences

List of Difficulties

Difficulty Differences

Resident Evil 4 Remake Difficulty Differences
Assisted Mode Has Extra Ammo and Health Recovery Enemies Deal More Damage in Higher Difficulties Item Prices Are Increased in Higher Difficulties Autosave Disabled in Professional Difficulty Certain Rewards Are Difficulty-Locked

Assisted Mode Has Extra Ammo and Health Recovery

Assisted Mode's primary differences from the other difficulties are its increased ammo output when crafting and automatic health recovery while Leon is in the DANGER status. These two features greatly improve a player's quality of life during a playthrough and make the game less stressful.

Crafting Guide: How to Craft Items

Enemies Deal More Damage in Higher Difficulties

Going up in difficulty levels increases the health values and damage output of each enemy you fight. Players will have to be increasingly cautious when fighting foes in higher difficulties, as a few hits from even the weakest Ganados can quickly drain their health bar.

How to Dodge and Avoid Attacks

Item Prices Are Increased in Higher Difficulties

In addition, increasing the difficulty level also raises the price of specific items at the Merchant. These increased prices make efficient Pesetas spending more crucial in higher difficulties.

What to Buy First

Autosave Disabled in Professional Difficulty

Autosave is a convenient feature that allows you to start from specific checkpoints after death. However, this mechanic is disabled in Professional mode, making deaths much more punishing at higher difficulties.

How to Save

Certain Rewards Are Difficulty-Locked

You can only unlock specific Trophies, Challenges, and Bonus Weapons on certain difficulty levels, such as the Chicago Sweeper requiring an A Rank on Professional. Ensure that you're on the correct difficulty mode when aiming for achievements and unlockables like these.

How to Change Difficulty

Change Difficulty When Starting New Game Plus

You can change the game's difficulty setting when starting New Game Plus. Loading your New Playthrough save after beating the game for the first time will let you pick between Assisted, Standard, Hardcore, and Professional for New Game Plus.

New Game Plus Guide and What Carries Over

Change Standard to Assisted at Game Over

You can also change your game's difficulty mode from Standard to Assisted at the game over screen, letting players switch to an easier difficulty if they're having trouble with Standard's enemies and challenges.

However, note that you can't change your difficulty back to Standard after switching it to Assisted.

Cannot Change Other Difficulties Once Confirmed

Outside of these two situations, you cannot change your difficulty settings for the rest of the game after picking your preferred difficulty when starting a new game. You will have to start over with a new save file if you wish to change difficulties.

Difficulty Rank Requirements

Rank Requirements Per Difficulty

Each difficulty has a different cutoff time when ranking playthrough lengths. It can be assumed that anything more than the playtimes exceeding those along the A row would then be classified as B.

In addition, note that you can only reach S+ Rank on new games. You can't achieve this rank in New Game Plus playthroughs.

How to Get S+ Rank and All Rank Requirements

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