Resident Evil 4 Remake offers special rewards if you manage to complete the game with an S+ Rank. Depending on the difficulty, this means finishing the game in under five or five and a half hours. Besides playing quickly, optimising your time and using strategies for the highest difficulty, you can also take advantage of skips or shortcuts to bypass entire sections or events. Here, we show you the best skips in the game and how to perform them.
It is worth noting that we will not include glitches such as the sniper rifle glitch or any of its variations, including the one that lets you skip the fight against the Village Chief. We will also exclude methods that require fully upgraded weapons before a specific battle, since those simply involve preparing in advance to finish a fight quickly—and there are plenty of other ways to do that.
The first skip allows you to bypass the Village Square fight, where all the villagers attack you, including the dreaded Dr Salvador—the chainsaw-wielding lunatic. This skip requires a sniper rifle with a scope or a rocket launcher, so you cannot normally perform it during your first playthrough. Start by entering the house containing the shotgun—the one to the north that triggers the cutscene in which Leon barricades the door before the chainsaw-wielding enemy enters. Go upstairs and climb through the window on the right.
After climbing out, turn right and step onto the small roof where you can find a Velvet Blue. This is the only place in the village from which you can see the bell tower, located in the distance behind a tree beyond the town hall.
Now use a sniper rifle—no other weapon can reach it except the rocket launcher, which is difficult to aim accurately—to shoot the bell.
If you hit it, the village battle will end immediately.
This skip allows you to bypass sections of the Castle Battlements without activating most of the sun and moon levers. You will still need the cannon at the end to blast open the gate.
When you see the first lever, activate it and climb the ladder. Now approach the gate and aim at this exact spot:
If you shoot the precise spot between the upper-left corner of the gate and the edge of the arch, you will hit the counterweight that raises the gate, allowing you to skip the first tower. Continue straight ahead and, upon reaching the next gate, throw a grenade towards the brazier on the left, on the other side of the portcullis.
Use the grenade's trajectory indicator to guide it through one of the openings. When it explodes, the gate will rise. You will have to complete the rest of the area normally by reaching and raising the cannon, then using it to defeat the giant and destroy the gate.
This skip allows you to bypass the Gallery ambush, where a zealot pulls a lever to lower the bridge leading to the Golden Lion Head.
As you cross the bridge, you must throw a grenade into the gallery at the far end as soon as you hear the zealots.
This will cause the zealot to die during the sequence in which he pulls the lever. You will not have to fight the wave of enemies on the lower floor, activate the lever or make your way back around. You will still have to deal with the enemies approaching from the other side of the bridge, but this is much easier than fighting them all at once—and you can simply flee the area if you prefer.
The Ashley skip simply consists of solving the grandfather clock puzzle in the room before the library. This allows you to skip searching for the necessary items and saves several minutes.
This skip takes place during the section where you must find the dynamite to blast through part of the Mines.
When you reach the wall where you are supposed to place the dynamite, you can instead use the Infinite Rocket Launcher to destroy the rock. Remember to move out of its path.
Technically, you could buy a standard Rocket Launcher during your first playthrough, but it would be an enormous waste of money, so we cannot recommend it.
This skip is performed during the section in which Ashley operates a wrecking ball. Throw two Heavy Grenades at the crack in the wall. The wall will then collapse after Ashley hits it just once, immediately stopping any more enemies from appearing.
This skip takes place during the combat helicopter sequence. When the helicopter retreats because of an anti-aircraft gun, you would normally have to head down, fight your way past numerous enemies and use a mounted machine gun to destroy it. However, you can destroy the emplacement with Heavy Grenades instead.
To do so, stand beneath the tower and aim high so that the grenade's trajectory passes over the edge and lands near the gun.
Two explosions are enough to destroy it, allowing the helicopter to continue supporting you.
The final skip is performed in the area with body bags hanging from the ceiling after the helicopter crashes. Here, you can avoid every fight against the Regeneradors and Iron Maidens. Simply crouch and move beneath the bags. After turning left, keep Leon pressed against the wall as you approach the crank to avoid the low-hanging bag containing an Iron Maiden. Turn the crank, then run back to the door and duck underneath it.
