Resident Evil: Survival Unit
Developer: JOYCITY Corporation
Publisher: JOYCITY, Aniplex, Capcom
Platforms: iOS, Android (Reviewed on both platforms)
Release Date: November 18, 2025
Price: Free-to-play (with in-app purchases) – Available Here
Overview
Resident Evil: Survival Unit is Capcom’s attempt to fuse the iconic survival horror franchise with a modern mobile war-game in the vein of titles like State of Survival. On paper, it sounds like an interesting twist: build your base, train troops, rally with your alliance, and command heroes like Leon, Jill, and Claire while fighting B.O.W.s and rival alliances in a city overrun by Umbrella’s experiments. In practice, however, the experience from soft launch to global release has been overwhelmingly disappointing, especially for players who have invested serious time and money. I’ve been playing since soft launch, I understand the mechanics, and I’ve participated in almost every major event the game offers. Despite all that, the game feels unfinished, unstable, and increasingly skewed against the very players who support it most.
Story
For a Resident Evil title, the weakest and most surprising aspect is the story, or more accurately, the lack of one. Survival Unit teases a new narrative set in the franchise’s universe, but the actual story content is minimal and has barely changed since soft launch. There are roughly one or two brief chapters or levels, and then the narrative simply stops. Even after the game’s official release, no proper continuation or conclusion has materialised.
For fans of Resident Evil who expect tense narrative arcs, character development, and a sense of progression through story missions, this is a major letdown. The game feels as if it was pushed out before its story mode was even close to finished. After months of playing, it still comes across like a tutorial slice of a campaign that never got completed, which is unacceptable for a branded Resident Evil product.
Gameplay
Mechanically, Resident Evil: Survival Unit is a full-fledged mobile war-game, operating very similarly to State of Survival. You upgrade your base, gather resources such as lumber, food, iron, and petrol, train troops, and unlock heroes who can be developed in two tracks: field skills and exploration skills. Heroes can be equipped with special weapons, treasure, and jewellery, all of which contribute to your overall power rating.
The game is saturated with events. Vaccine Raid functions like Reservoir Raid from State of Survival, where alliances clash in a large real-time battle. The Battle for Saint Vale has alliances fighting for control of Umbrella’s headquarters in long, draining sessions that can last from three to six hours, with the winner being the group that can hold the HQ the longest. A weekly event called Ace’s Proof tasks players with accumulating points by doing almost everything: collecting resources, upgrading treasure and jewellery, enhancing troops, heroes and weapons, and more. There are themed events like the Barry Burton event, where you hunt Mr. X to gain Barry files, and the Alliance Bond event, which has you complete small tasks such as killing a set number of B.O.W.s to earn personal and alliance rewards.
On top of that, you have Genome Center and Security Center battles that function like smaller versions of Saint Vale, granting buffs and rewards to the alliances that occupy them. The Tactical Alliance Championship (T.A.C.) introduces a board-game style confrontation across three lanes, where alliances field 20 positions per side to earn TAC coins that can be spent in the T.A.C special shop. Alligator Hunt is a recurring rally event every 48 hours, where alliances group up to attack a giant alligator for resources and weapon upgrade materials. The Kill House and Arena modes let you send five of your strongest heroes against teams from other players to earn Arena Badges and shop currency. Exploration mode provides a pseudo-tower-defense experience, putting three heroes against waves of zombies and a boss. In that mode you can manually trigger iconic skills such as Leon’s rocket launcher or Jill’s rail gun, provided you’ve upgraded them through exploration skill books.
If this all sounds like a huge amount of content, it is—but content alone doesn’t make for a good experience. The game is riddled with bugs and design decisions that undermine almost every one of these systems. The Vaccine Raid bug is one of the worst offenders: troops were not properly recovered after battles, and in my case it effectively wiped out my forces. That single bug crippled my ability to participate in Alligator Hunt and, more importantly, destroyed my chances in Ace’s Proof. In previous runs I finished 9th and 3rd, obtaining a small amount of Leon files as a reward; this time I slipped to 12th purely because I was hamstrung by a game-breaking bug, losing the opportunity to obtain important Leon fragments and higher-tier rewards.
The Arena is similarly unreliable. There are cases where winning a match results in lost points, and even a successful defence can sometimes cost you ranking. When you combine that with the impact rankings have on rewards, this behaviour is beyond frustrating. Compensation for these issues has been incredibly underwhelming, typically just some basic resources that don’t come close to covering the time, speed-ups, and event opportunities lost. Being double-charged for an in-game pack and having that brushed off as a normal transaction only adds to the sense that the systems and support structures around this game are not fit for purpose.
Visuals
Visually, Resident Evil: Survival Unit does an adequate job at first glance. Base camp map has the familiar bleak, infected atmosphere you’d expect from a Resident Evil title, and hero portraits and key art look sharp and respectful of the characters they portray. Some of the UI and event screens are nicely presented, and watching your alliance swarm around major objectives can be visually impressive—at least when the game is cooperating.
The problem is that the game struggles badly whenever things get busy. Events like Alligator Hunt, Saint Vale, or massive alliance rallies are often plagued by severe lag, with animations stuttering or grinding almost to a halt. This is especially noticeable and disappointing when it happens on flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro. When your phone is more than capable, but the game still stutters every time more than a few things are happening on screen, it’s hard not to blame poor optimisation.
Audio
The audio design is functional but forgettable. There are weapon sounds, menu clicks, some ambient noise, and music that attempts to capture a tense mood, but nothing really stands out as iconic. There are none of the memorable stingers or atmosphere-building sound cues that made classic Resident Evil games so effective. Because the story content is so limited and the focus is overwhelmingly on timers, menus, and map navigation, the audio rarely gets a chance to carry a scene or elevate the experience. It’s simply there, doing the bare minimum, which feels like a missed opportunity for a franchise known for its soundscape.
Overall
The deeper you go into Resident Evil: Survival Unit, the more it becomes clear that the game leans heavily into pay-to-win design, often in ways that feel predatory rather than just optional. Heroes like Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy are locked behind a slow and expensive VIP paywall. To access them properly, you must raise your VIP level through purchases and limited diamonds, with pack prices escalating from modest amounts to eye-watering figures like $149.99 AUD. Each new VIP level unlocks the “privilege” of paying more for these heroes. To make matters worse, Leon has been slightly nerfed in arena after players spent both time and money to secure him through Ace’s Proof and VIP purchases, leaving a supposedly premium hero feeling underwhelming and devalued.
The same pay-to-win philosophy runs through treasure and jewellery upgrades, hero weapons, and weapon mods. Every system is technically accessible to free-to-play users, but the pace is painfully slow unless you spend, and even then, the gains can be undercut by bugs, poor balance decisions, or subsequent nerfs. I personally spent a fair amount of money on this game to make sure I could cover every aspect, not counting the countless hours of active play, event participation, and alliance coordination. To receive only basic resource compensation for game-breaking issues, to be double-charged and dismissed by the customer service, and to see heroes I worked hard to obtain nerfed after the fact, has left me feeling not just disappointed but disrespected.
Being in a strong alliance is practically mandatory, and to the game’s credit, this can be the one genuine positive. Working with others to coordinate rallies, defend positions, and push for rankings can be fun and fosters a real sense of community. You make friends, rivals, and sometimes enemies in classic war-game fashion. But no amount of community goodwill can fully compensate for a product that feels unfinished, unstable, and aggressively monetised.
As it stands, Resident Evil: Survival Unit is a game with plenty of systems and a powerful brand behind it, but it squanders both. The lack of a complete story, the severity of the bugs, the poor compensation, the paywalling and nerfs of premium heroes, and the constant pressure to spend more make it hard to recommend, especially to fans who value their time and money. As a long-term player from soft launch to release, I find it heartbreaking to say that despite some bright spots in alliance play, my overall experience has been overwhelmingly negative.