The best handgun/pistol in Resident Evil 4 remake

Watcha packin’, stranger?

A good sidearm is important in the Resident Evil 4 remake. While there are fancier weapons to be had, pistol ammo is plentiful and requires relatively few resources to craft. Better yet, Resident Evil 4 features one of the best pistols ever featured in a video game: the Red9.

You can find the Red9 in chapter 4. After getting access to the boat, travel to the derelict ship in the center of the lake. In a chest near the bridge, you’ll discover this miraculous firearm.

The Red9 is the most powerful handgun in the game. Its might is offset by a slower firing rate and a lengthy reload. However, so long as you can hit your target with some regularity, it’s absolutely worth it.

Decked out to the max, the Red9 features a power level of 2.70. However, if you then upgrade everything and purchase the “exclusive” upgrade, its strength multiplies by 1.5. My calculator tells me that’s a whopping 4.05 on the power scale. If you purchase the stock from the merchant when it becomes available, you heighten the Red9’s accuracy, making it easier to put that power right into the face (or kneecap) of your foes.

The power scale might be a little abstract, but I can tell you that the Red9 never stops being a useful companion. Even on the highest difficulty, it can easily stagger a ganados in one or two shots. With its stock, it can hit targets at considerable range. While you’ll still want to keep a rifle or shotgun with you to take down bigger targets, the Red9 is your friend for everyday use.

As a personal note, it amuses me that you can fire a single shot and have Leon “Supplybox” Kennedy push another clip straight into its magazine. While video game logic means that the bullets already in there just don’t exist anymore, I prefer to imagine that the gun is becoming more and more swollen as he loads it with additional rounds. That’s a beefy sidearm.