What is the best ammo strategy to use in Resident Evil 4 in Professional mode?

Question

When RE4 came out on PS2 I loved it, finished it on normal difficulty and forgot about it.

Now that it's come out on Xbox 360 (yay) and of course has achievements, I'm trying to complete the game in professional mode.

Honestly, it is pretty difficult, but obviously it is not impossible. I've mastered the use of the knife in previous games and normally end up with ridiculous amounts of ammunition at the end.

One of the keys to professional is using the continue points in the game to your advantage massively, in ways such as:

1. Restarting from a continue point when you've been struck too many times and thus used too many healing items / ammunition.
2. Walking through one, killing a couple enemies, walking out, walking back in to kill a couple more and repeat until you've cleared the room (enemies reset their positions when you leave).

The first point actually hinders me quite a bit because I always end up feeling like I've used too much ammunition and restart to try improve on what I've done. Sometimes it takes me over an hour to clear a single room and by that point I've managed to do the entire thing without using more than 2 handgun bullets or similar.

I realize this is pretty overkill, so I've been wondering - are there any guidelines around how much ammo I actually need at given points in the game? I always feel as though I'm going to eventually come up against something in pro that will need a lot of bullets to kill and I won't have enough.

Also, which bullets should I be using? I found myself at the end of normal mode having killed almost every boss with the mass handgun bullets I'd found + maxed out Red9 (because it's boss) with around 50-100 handgun bullets and then 600+ of rifle/shotgun bullets.

If anyone has any insight into the couple of points above, that would be awesome and help me stop being extremely overkill with my ammunition conservation and actually start playing the game.

Answer 1

Conserving ammunition in RE4 comes down to several things.

Aim for the head (or other vulnerable body part e.g. Tentacles)
Headshots cause the most damage to most types of enemies, more damage = less spent ammunition

Exploit context sensitive attacks
After shooting a Ganados in the head you have the opportunity to kick them in the chest causing a fair amount of damage. Later on in the game, Leon can perform a suplex on enemies after shooting them in the knee. Suplexes cause massive damage, as well as looking awesome, so do them as often as possible.

Hit em while they are down
After knocking an enemy down with a shotgun or a kick you can run up them and slash them with your knife. Balance this with the situation you are in as you may incur damage from being too reckless.

Upgrade your gun's damage as soon as possible
Self explanitory, more damage = less spent ammunition

Do not reload a gun unless you have to
Every time you upgrade a gun's ammunition capacity at the vendor it comes with a fully loaded clip regardless of how many bullets were in there to begin with. Therefore, only upgrade a gun's ammo capacity when the clip is empty.

Specialize your weapons
Each weapon has a role and may not be needed in a level, however, you may need ammunition for that weapon for a future level. In circumstances where you can get by with just your pistol. Store your shotty and just carry your pistol and your magnum in your inventory. This will cause magnum ammo to spawn at a greater rate than if you had a large assortment of guns in your inventory. Then you can store the whole lot at your next sanctuary where you'll need it for the next boss battle.

Use grenades
Like a suplex grenades are effective and awesome. If you can take out 3 or more enemies with a single grenade you are making money.

Buy the RPG
The RPG will save you a ton of ammunition on those difficult boss battles. The one that comes to my mind is that crazy plant child thing.

Answer 2

Go into any area where there is a wooden door. Shoot the door. When enemies come in as a group, go behind the door and use your knife. This trick will help you effectively kill the enemies while saving ammo, and is very useful in the villages. Use roundkick when enimies in groups.aim on the head nearest enemy. use kick or supplex for an enemy. Use reset game trick when you waste too much ammo. never waste ammo for crossbow enemy,krauser boss(quick knifing kill him in ten sec.),seddler(ada game),shot the chainsaw man and knife when on the ground,use RL to kill it and knife once he die,use grande as well as. as soon as upgrade firepower when ammo clip empety upgrade capicity, use tmp tap fire trick. use ledders,doors,heavy ashley for knifing. use bear traps. Fall trick when on bridges.

My weapons I hate headguns,never use always use tmp with stock. stricker with big capesity, sar for far target. never waste money for rl,headguns,mt,bar,magnum. never sell any treasure in Ist round for CT,inf rl.

Answer 3

If you hit genados in their feet while running they will fall and stay down for a period. Often long enough for you to finish them off with your knife. This results in 1 shot pr genado. A bit difficult to execute if you have several genados coming at you.

Genados that attacks you with a weapon (axes or fork) initiates the attack with a sound and a minor back step. At that moment you step back to avoid the oncoming assault. Then step forward to finish them off with your knife = no ammo used. In normal mode this strategy can be used with great success, at least in the willage. I have not tried it much in professional. But my first suggestion works good throught the whole game unless a plaga comes sticking up where their hed used to be.

If you manage to line up several genados you can shoot all of them with a rifle or use the punisher to pearce several enemies at one time.

Shot gun is used when enemies crowds up against you. Try to make then come against you in a narrow passage. Then hit all of them with a few well timed shells.

Grenades and fire grenades are good on crowds. Especially fire tends to finish off a genado at once.

Plagas sticking up from shoulders die immediately if you use a flash grenade.

Fighting the bosses with standard weapons tends to cost a sh**t load of ammo. By a rocket launcher. Most of the bosses will only need this except maybe for some initial rounds to make him vulnerable.

When you upgrade the capacity of a weapon the magazine will be filled up => try to not reload before you do this upgrade on a weapon.

In my experience, if you are able to clear a room or area just barley hanging on to your life and ammo, there will always be more ammo and herbs to be found further on in the game. I have actually never got stuck on a place unable to make any progress due to being low on ammo.

Answer 4

Especially with the Blacktail/Matilda try not to hold down the fire button because this will make the gun fast fire and use up more ammo than what you need to use.

Answer 5

Some tips: Shoot the head or knee once then initiate a QuickTime event to conserve ammo.(kicking,souflex) Never pass up placed barrels or ammo crates. Also look through rooms thoroughly for hidden items. There somtimes can be a hidden bar of gold up in the ceiling! (Don't shoot the barrels/crates.Knife them!) Be careful with getting arms that shoot from the hip, as they are less accurate. (Striker,TMP) USE EXPLOSIVES TO YOUR ADVANTAGE! These can take out multiple enemies at a time without much of a hassle. LASTLY,Knocking them down and slicing them with your knife can help save ammo!(One more thing. The birds and fish hold ammo and gold, which is super weird, and chickens hold eggs for healing purposes. Make sure you hunt them down. The birds and chickens can be located in the village, and the fish can be spotted in the water where the Giant Fish lives. Be careful, though!)