Resident Evil 4/Chapter 3-3

Back on track
After the diversions in the garden and with Ada, you'll finally be able to get back on Ashley's trail here. Search the bedroom for goodies (there's an expensive mirror in a cabinet behind the merchant), then upgrade your weapons and save your game before moving on.

Now, the next room features a bit of a branch in the path; the southern hallway and door leads to some goodies, but is just a way for you to return to the garden; you'll be using it later on, but you can grab the items down there now if you wish. Read some of the rather tempting writings on the wall. They give you clues to how to get to the next enterance, or shall i say EXIT. In order to reach the eastern exit, you'll have to ring the bell at the end of the long hallway, then shoot the bottle of wine on the picture that appears.

The chest in the room here may appear tempting, but it's actually a deathtrap; as soon as you get close to it, a cage will drop down from the ceiling, trapping you inside with cultists and another garrador, with a few more cultists on the outside of the cage to swing at you when you get too close to the edge. Now, if you're suicidal, you can try to deal with these guys from inside the cage, but a far, far better approach is to get the hell out of dodge ASAP. In order to do so, you'll need to shoot the lock off of one of the doors. They're hardy locks, though, so the only weapon that'll really do the job is the TMP, mostly because of the rapidity of its firing; trying it with your shotgun or pistol will require more time, thus increasing the chances that the gimp will come along and slice and dice you. Since the garrador jumps down in front of where you regain control of Leon, you'll want to immediately turn to the left and fire at the door there; you should be able to blast the lock off just before the gimp comes around and takes a swing at you. After the lock's off, get the heck out of the cage and return to the room nearby with all of the dining tables. The doorway here will act as a chokepoint, letting you shotgun the cultists as they chase you down; kill as many as you like, but be aware that there will always be at least one cultist here until you manage to kill the garrador himself. Luckily for you, the tables act as a perfect obstacle with which to block his attacks; if you can keep him on the far side of one, you'll have plenty of time to wait for him to start slowly walking before shooting him in the back. Since we had a lot of pistol ammo, we managed to take him down using only that; it took a while, but die he did. Of course, if you have a rifle or another powerful weapon that you want to use, feel free to do so. This strategy has the added bonus of keeping you far enough away from the cage so that any new cultists that appear there won't be hip to your presence; they'll stay in the cage, letting you take your time with the gimp.

After everyone's dead, grab the treasure from the chest in the cage, then walk down the hallway that the painting was in to grab some Magnum ammo before moving on.

A bug in my zombie
In the next room over, you'll have to drop down to flip the switch that will extend the walkway leading across to the far platform. Of course, there are going to be plenty of enemies to contend with, including four in the bottom portion of the room (easily taken out by shooting them as they climb the ladder), a pair that will pop out of the door through which you came after you flip the switch, some shield bearers that will pop out of a door on the far side of the platform after it's raised, and sundry others on the other side of the room. These last are kind of optional, but you'll probably want to kill them off to get to the stash they protect, which includes various ammo and a free rocket launcher. If you don't have room for the latter, there's a merchant near the exit from this area, who will either sell you a larger attache case or buy any excess items you have. You don't technically need the rocket launcher, but hey - it's free.

One of the new enemies you might run into here are the fly tentacles. These guys don't seem to have the long-range slashing attacks of previous tentacles, but when you kill their host body, the fly will detach from it and attack you on its own, necessitating more killing. On the plus side, you have two opportunities for item drops with these guys. As you leave this room, the chapter will end.