For as dark as Resident Evil 4 Remake can get at times, it’s not lost on me that Leon S. Kennedy is often just Sonic with bangs. (Maybe that's what the S stands for). At least, my Leon Kennedy is. That’s because, in addition to being way past cool, Mr. Kennedy loves searching for gems as much as the Blue Hedgehog loves hunting for Chaos Emeralds.
Leon loves all kinds of gems. There are the spinels, small gems which Leon gains in exchange for completing tasks for the Merchant. These little hunks of mineral can be traded in for various objects, so you can get some gunpowder if you're running low. But you need to collect a lot to get the good stuff. Want a yellow herb? Not too difficult. Want a really nice attaché case? A little harder. An upgrade ticket that grants you access to an exclusive boon for one of your weapons? What am I, a Vanderbilt?
While spinels are useful, I’m really invested in the named gems — the amethysts and emeralds and sapphires you can find hidden in crates and briefcases throughout the game. These are also occasionally dropped by some of the tougher enemies upon defeat. When I whipped out my rocket launcher for the duel Gigante fight, I was pleasantly surprised to find a jewel waiting for me by one of the beasts' scorched corpse.
Though the gems are nice and sparkly in their own right, the fun part about collecting them is in how they exponentially drive up the value of whatever item you slot them into. As you explore, you often find treasures that can be sold to the Merchant and, in a fun quirk, most of those treasures have slots for gems. Different slots require different kinds of gems, which drives the treasure hunter within me wild. When you find a tiara with two slots for rectangular gems, but then consistently find only oval-shaped gems, it can feel a little like the story about the pranksters who released pigs with one, two, and four painted on their flanks into a Walmart, prompting the management to search fruitlessly for the missing hog with a three. In this scenario, I am the Walmart manager and these gems are all the imaginary loose hogs I'll never find.
Typically, I don’t love games that ask you to equip gems into slots. Dealing with this system — where you can gain five percent defense by equipping the right stone in the right pauldron — has been my least favorite part of both of the recent God of War games. But that system isn't fun because it forces me to think about numbers in a more abstract way. In Resident Evil 4 Remake, each gem added to a treasure promises a major boost in the precious Pesetas paid out by the Merchant, and that's math I'm interested in doing.
Though the denizens of Castle Salazar were driven mad by imbibing the strange black liquid, I fear my own descent will be driven by my desperate search for gems. Why can't they be the right shape? Why?