Weapons

You'll run across a number of weapons in Resident Evil 4. A few of these will be found in your travels, but most of them will only be found at one of the many weapon merchants you'll run across; you'll be forced to buy and sell weapons there to get rid of old weapons and obtain new ones. For instance, you start the game with the normal Handgun, but later on, you'll be able to trade it in for a Punisher, Red9, or Blacktail model of pistol. Each kind of a type of weapon has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, but in general, the best weapons aren't going to be available until later in the game.

The weapons merchant will also allow you to upgrade your weapons to make them more powerful. There are four categories of upgrades: firepower, which increases the damage each round or shell fired does; firing speed, which allows you to pop off shots with less downtime between each of them; reload speed, which will let you switch out clips more rapidly; and capacity, which determines how many bullets a weapon can fire before having to reload. Firepower is going to be your first priority for most weapons, followed by capacity (fitting more rounds in a weapon will help you conserve inventory space, and will allow you to reload less often), firing speed, and reloading speed.

In addition to these upgrades, most weapons have an Exclusive upgrade that's only available when you've completely upgraded the weapon to its maximum power. These super-expensive upgrades have a number of different effects, and are listed at the bottom of the following weapon sections.

If you want to buy a new weapon, but are reluctant to do so because you've already upgraded your old one a bit, you shouldn't worry too much about it; the merchant will give you back 50% of the cash value of a weapon when you sell it back to him, including the original purchase price of the weapon, all of the upgrades you've bought for it, and any ammo in the weapon. Thus, you won't take a complete wash when selling back a weapon you've upgraded a bit.

Pistols

Pistol ammo is probably the most commonly-found type during the first four chapters of the game, so you can expect to be using your pistol quite a bit during them. While your pistol will never be as powerful as a shotgun or fire as rapidly as your TMP, it does have a good balance of speed and accuracy, and will let you conserve ammo for your more powerful weapons until you really need it.

Sometimes even a single pistol shot can do a hell of a lot of damage.

In most cases, you're going to want to use your pistol for single enemies, or when a pair of enemies comes in through a narrow space, or to finish off enemies lying on the ground. It's relatively easy to get headshots with the pistol, due to the slow speed of most of the ganados; when you shoot a ganado in the head, he or she will stagger momentarily, allowing you to run up and kick them to the ground. While they're lying prone, you can either zoom in on their head and squeeze off a few more shots to kill them, or whip out your knife and slash them until they get up again. When facing off against three or more enemies, or against more powerful foes, you'll want to trade up for a shotgun; the pistol is decidedly poorer than that weapon at stunning the big baddies in the game.

Handgun

The basic handgun that Leon starts the game with is an able weapon, albeit one that lacks punch. For the purposes of getting headshots on ganados, though, it'll serve you well, at least until you manage to find or buy a more powerful pistol.

Inventory Spaces Required: 3x2

Firepower

Firing Speed

Reload Speed

Capacity

Exclusive: Weapon gets five times the chance to strike a critical headshot.