Earning an S+ Rank on Professional Difficulty is the toughest challenge in Resident Evil 4 Remake. If you can finish the story in less than 5 hours and 30 minutes while saving less than 15 times total, you can conquer the highest peak of RE4 and unlock the infinite ammo cat ears accessory. As long as you’re skipping cutscenes and blazing through the story, you can safely complete the game in a little over 4~ hours, and we’ve collected lots of tips to help you crush the Illuminados with time to spare. Here are the simple tricks to get you on track.
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Professional S+ Rank Guide | What You Need To Know
Professional Difficulty is the highest difficulty in RE4. It is unlocked by completing a single run of the story. On Professional Difficulty all knife parries must be perfect — the timing is much tighter. Autosaves are also disabled.
- How To Earn S+ Rank: Complete all 16 chapters in less than 5 hours and 30 minutes. Auto-saves are disabled, and you are limited to 15 saves total.
To overcome the challenge, I highly recommend completing Hardcore and a normal Professional run as practice. It isn’t required — you can brute force through long sections between saves — but the extra bonuses will help. Here’s what you need to know before attempting your S+ Run.
- All cutscenes can be skipped. Skip everything — including conversations. Those can be skipped too.
- Auto-sort your case and don’t use it often. Time in your attaché case is counted on the clock. If you need to think about what you’re going to do next, you can Pause to stop the timer.
- Upgrade Knife Durability. Do this first. The knife is incredibly important for defense.
- Skip as many fights as you can. Kill the one enemy carrying the key item and move on. If you can skip a fight, skip it!
- Memorize treasure locations. You don’t need every treasure but grab as many as you can while sprinting through each area. Sell them at their maximum value.
- Use Flash Grenades often. They don’t harm you and will stun enemies long enough to let you sprint past them.
- Purchase the Rocket Launcher to instantly kill Verdugo, Salazar and Saddler. These three bosses take too much time, ammo and health. Take them out instantly to save yourself multiple minutes and a huge headache. Sell all your weapons except one if you don’t have enough cash for Saddler — you won’t be needing the weapons anyway.
- Get the Handcannon in the Castle. This extremely powerful Magnum, once upgraded, is invaluable for your run.
- Equip the Deer Antlers, Wolf Tail, and Chicken Hat accessories to give yourself an edge. These accessories are unlocked by completing runs on different difficulties with high ranking. They make your knife stronger, melee more powerful, and increases Leon’s defense.
You’re limited to 15 saves total. Here are my recommendations for best places to save. You can change your plans, but I also recommend saving less often in the early game and saving your saves for later. The early game is the hardest — it becomes slightly easier once you gain access to the Handcannon and can quickly kill most threats you absolutely must deal with to get key items.
- Recommended Save Points:
- Chapter 2: After recovering your gear in the Abandoned Factory.
- Chapter 4: After the Del Lago boss.
- Chapter 5: After the Cabin defense sequence.
- Chapter 6: After the Chief Mendez boss.
- Chapter 7: Before the Water Hall.
- Chapter 8: After the Armored Gigante on the Battlements.
- Chapter 10: After completing the Ashley sequence.
- Chapter 10: Before the Verdugo boss. (Use a Rocket Launcher here.)
- Chapter 11: Before the first Krauser boss.
- Chapter 12: Before the Salazar boss. (Use a Rocket Launcher here.)
- Chapter 13: Entering Facility 1 before encountering the Regenerators.
- Chapter 14: Before the Wrecking Ball sequence. (Use extra Grenades against the wall.)
- Chapter 15: Before the second Krauser boss.
- Chapter 16: Start of the Chapter.
- Chapter 16: Before the Saddler boss. (Use a Rocket Launcher here.)
You can change these save locations to better suit your playstyle — as long as you don’t exceed 15 saves, you’ll still earn an S+ Rank. Remember, you can repeat this sections as often as you want. If you think you completed a section too slow, reset and sprint through to try again. You can also memorize / note the treasures coming in each section before going for it. This is the toughest part of RE4. If you can pull this off, you can rightfully call yourself a Resident Evil 4 Pro.
