Resident Evil 4 Red 9 vs Blacktail: Which Do You Prefer?

[Murrdogg93]

Some prefer the Red 9 for its superior max upgraded firepower, some prefer the Blacktail for its superior max reload speed & firing rate...

Which gun do you like better in RE 4?

 

[UniqTeas]

I went with the Blacktail for the features you had mentioned earlier. In a game where you are tasked with survivng enemies coming from all directions and in lots of different ways, I find the Blacktail to be more comforting. The Red 9 is fine and has more damage, sure, but it leaves you vulnerable when too many enemies appear around you.

 

[Murrdogg93]

I went with the Blacktail for the features you had mentioned earlier. In a game where you are tasked with survivng enemies coming from all directions and in lots of different ways, I find the Blacktail to be more comforting. The Red 9 is fine and has more damage, sure, but it leaves you vulnerable when too many enemies appear around you.

I can see the benefits. I ask out of curiosity & I'm considering giving RE 4 another try. It's always been a game where I feel like I could enjoy it, but the weapon sway on aiming & babysitting Ashley have been turn offs for me, usually resulting in me giving up on it. But I keep wanting to retry sometimes.

 

[UniqTeas]

I would definitely suggest retrying it. Babysitting Ashley doesn't last long ever. And although it is an annoyance, these moments are geniunely the most tense in the series. I really love playing RE4 and it is a continuous treasure.

And for the record, I also prefer the Killer 7 over the Broken Butterfly for the same reasons I mentioned the Blackhawk over the Red 9.

 

[mjk321]

the Red9 for me. more damage = less shots to pop a head/stun an enemy and melee to death, less shotgun ammo to use and that nice "ping" when reloading. the Blacktail feels great to use though.

 

[Rain611]

I would much rather have the Red 9 for its power. When fully upgraded it has the same power as the starting shotgun, and if you're like me and headshots are what you do, there's really no other way.

This is off topic but my all time favorite gun in RE4 is the bolt action rifle. I did my professional runs exclusively with it (once I was able to acquire it anyway). As much as I wasn't a fan of RE4, those rifle runs were bomb.

 

[Murrdogg93]

I would definitely suggest retrying it. Babysitting Ashley doesn't last long ever. And although it is an annoyance, these moments are geniunely the most tense in the series. I really love playing RE4 and it is a continuous treasure.

And for the record, I also prefer the Killer 7 over the Broken Butterfly for the same reasons I mentioned the Blackhawk over the Red 9.

I'm in the middle of my retry for RE 4. I forgot about my other big annoyance with this game. The RNG for what is in the barrels & crates. It always treats me rather poorly. For example, currently, it's giving me a lot of money lately but hardly any ammo. Or the fact they give you ammo for weapons you might not even want to use.
Like right now, I'm in 1-3. I have almost 100,000 currency with plenty of healing items & a couple grenades still. But ammo wise...

5 Handgun bullets.
10 Shotgun Shells.
9 Rifle Bullets.
50 TMP, when I haven't bought it yet.

& my accuracy isn't trash. It's high 80's currently. Quite annoying.

 

[Turo602]

I'm in the middle of my retry for RE 4. I forgot about my other big annoyance with this game. The RNG for what is in the barrels & crates. It always treats me rather poorly. For example, currently, it's giving me a lot of money lately but hardly any ammo. Or the fact they give you ammo for weapons you might not even want to use.
Like right now, I'm in 1-3. I have almost 100,000 currency with plenty of healing items & a couple grenades still. But ammo wise...

5 Handgun bullets.
10 Shotgun Shells.
9 Rifle Bullets.
50 TMP, when I haven't bought it yet.

& my accuracy isn't trash. It's high 80's currently. Quite annoying.

Are you unloading all your bullets into the enemies? Good or bad accuracy, this game always gives you more than enough ammo. Always go for leg shots so you can melee enemies and when they're down, knife 'em. That's how you'll save ammo. Resident Evil 4 may be a more action oriented experience, but you still have to be careful about wasting ammunition.

 

[Murrdogg93]

Are you unloading all your bullets into the enemies? Good or bad accuracy, this game always gives you more than enough ammo. Always go for leg shots so you can melee enemies and when they're down, knife 'em. That's how you'll save ammo. Resident Evil 4 may be a more action oriented experience, but you still have to be careful about wasting ammunition.

Yes I was doing the kick & knife technique. I've always done that every playthrough attempt. At least where it was plausible without getting demolished with damage. I even saved ammo by running around the village instead of fighting everything. Then, looted the village thoroughly.
I got lucky & reached a point where it's fixed for ammo to be available. Near where the 1st El Gigante fight is. Plus I got the Punisher.
But the RNG on those crates has actually been the least ammo drops on any playthrough attempt I've done. This is my 3rd or 4th playthrough attempt. I've tested the RNG as well with opening crates & then reloading the save to retest the drops. It's completely random. Just pure luck whether you get money or ammo or just nothing at all.
RE 4 isn't a horror game. It's an Action game. But I feel like the RNG was sort of an attempt to make it feel like horror. But it's just not. It just makes it feel annoying. I feel like RE 5 got the loot RNG better, which is a fair comparison since they're both Action games. Because RE 5 would always give something & if it's ammo, it's for stuff you have.

 

[KevinStriker]

The Red9 for a fresh game (which are most of my playthroughs). Superior firepower and a stock means handgun ammo counts for much more, doing more accurate damaging shots. Nothing like a clean headshot from across the room.
On New Game Plus, I swing back and forth between the different semi-automatics, but lately I've stuck with the standard Handgun Leon magically always has in every cutscene.

 

[dasdasdasd]

I never used red9 or blacktail, I only used the punisher(is that what its name is? I don't remember). I liked its feature that it could go through two ganados. I found it useful. Then I put some coins into upgrading its firepower a little bit and most importantly the reload speed. Plus, they give you that weapon for free!
P.S I did this on normal difficulty, don't know if the same strategy will work for pro(probably not XD).

 

[Romero]

I did test all handguns, but I kept the pistol you start with (what was it called?), until the Blacktail became available. If I don't mix up the names after all these years, the Blacktail is the gun that becomes available at the start of the Castle. Blacktail was my favorite 9mm handgun, it is less powerful than Red9 but it is powerful, probably the 2nd most powerful 9mm handgun. I think the Blacktail was easy to aim too? I remember it as being good in every way.
I got twice the amount of ammo I needed so I did not need the power of Red9.

I'm in the middle of my retry for RE 4. I forgot about my other big annoyance with this game. The RNG for what is in the barrels & crates. It always treats me rather poorly. For example, currently, it's giving me a lot of money lately but hardly any ammo. Or the fact they give you ammo for weapons you might not even want to use.
Like right now, I'm in 1-3. I have almost 100,000 currency with plenty of healing items & a couple grenades still. But ammo wise...

5 Handgun bullets.
10 Shotgun Shells.
9 Rifle Bullets.
50 TMP, when I haven't bought it yet.

& my accuracy isn't trash. It's high 80's currently. Quite annoying.

If you are not very far into the game I doubt you see much of the crate bug, and you do find cash. Maybe it's just bad RNG, but you could reload and try again. The crates with random content will not give you ammo for guns you don't have (except some that are hard coded to give certain types of ammo). So if you have a gun that you won't use, you can get rid of it to stop getting ammo for it.

This I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but did not dead enemies (and possibly also crates) have a higher chance of dropping ammo if you were low on ammo?

The bug:
The game has a loot bug. If you smash many crates and do not pick up the items, it will limit what items you can get from crates later on. This is not usually a problem, because you'll pick up all loot you see. But there is a very bad catch: Getting NOTHING from a crate counts as loot too, and when you do not pick up nothing several times, it will limit what later crates can give you. Most crates can contain multiple types of items, including nothing. Unless you are willing to a lot of reloading, you will leave behind a lot of empty crates that contained nothing, which you of course did not pick up. For this reason a lot of crates late in the game, that should contain random items, will continue to serve you nothing even if you reload 1000 times.
Luckily many crates are hard coded to contain certain items so you will still find items.

New Game Plus

What does "Plus" mean when you talk about a new game?

 

[Rain611]

I did test all handguns, but I kept the pistol you start with (what was it called?), until the Blacktail became available

I always keep the starter handgun. The bonus Crit Rate upgrades make it worth 8t in the long run. You end up spending less ammo because it is easier to nail critical head shots.

What does "Plus" mean when you talk about a new game?

New Game + is where you start a new game from the completed save file and have all the weapons and stuff that you had when you previously completed the game.