I don't know how to properly start this review, to be fairly honest. Silent Hill f is the latest title in Silent Hill franchise - all with the help of one peculiar author: ryukishi07.

Story-wise, Silent Hill f decides to leave behind the more familiar environments of America's most known and beloved city and take place in a quaint village in the Japanese countryside - from the first opening shot that exemplifies the small reality you are going to partake in, you can feel the pen of ryukishi07 shine through even the smaller details and callbacks to his more popular series When They Cry. In itself, the story explores threads of extreme significance and impact and the themes themselves were treated with the most careful of hands.

The divergence from 'simple' esotericism and a return to a more psychological form of horror was more than appreciated.

The only thing that made me want to stop playing altogether is the combat.

Differently from the true and tried formula of wanting to avoid combat in the hopes of a better ending and just generally being conservative with your items, Silent Hill f encourages players actively to engage with enemies head on. Now, I suck at stealthing, I think killing horrors beyond my comprehension is totally normal and I haven't felt particularly strongly about this diversion from what I was otherwise used to... if it weren't for the fact that the combat in itself is sloggish.

The mechanics remark a lot on what Silent Hill 2 Remake uses, expanding on it throughout the use of more weapons and putting emphasis on the slow motions and otherwise smaller movement of our main character - a teenager. I didn't find the mechanics in SH2RE particularly bad but you could feasibly run through a lot of the combat section and you could even outlast the Pyramid Thing by simply dodging his every shot until he got bored of you which made the otherwise slow and burdening mechanic of clubbing a mannequin dead on something you could do without.

Silent Hill f, most of the times, puts you in these dispositions where combat is impossible to avoid and encouraged in an overall manner, making full use of the same slog-and-burden mechanics of Silent Hill 2 Remake while offering you ways to "upgrade" your main stats if you do engage in these bouts of scuffle with the enemies.

I got to the point where I had to ask for active help on how to best beat these enemies and I got told builds to utilize in order to better take advantage of the Omamori mechanic they decided utilize - this puts the game in an awkward position of wishing to retain the more challenge oriented gamers and the Silent Hill aficionados while somewhat failing both of the at the same time.

The combat gameplay is too much of a focus and it actively distracts from the more salient and juicy points that the enemies are trying to represent "beauty in horror", "beauty in pain" and the crux of what the game is all about - this is all thwarted by the mere idea that I have to optimize certain stats and go through the game several times to reach a satisfying ending and understand the overall arching plot of the game (this would be fine if the combat wasn't the crux of my entire disappointment with the game, mind me).

I can't in good conscience say this is a "must play" for the fans because of both the price tag (79.99eur for the standard edition, 89.99eur for the deluxe edition), the need to finish the same game multiple times while retaining the same variety of enemies and the combat employed within it that I absolutely think needs to polish and shine.

Look, I really don't get the hate for this one. Yes, the SH2 remake is a better game, but not by that much, and those saying it doesn't fit the "Silent Hill" mythos, I'm just not buying it. Characters going insane, a town descending with monsters, and a story that you need to uncover by reading supplemental material and doing multiple endings? Seems pretty damn Silent Hill to me.

The most valid complaint I've seen is the combat, which has been likened to "we have dark souls at home". First of all, how in the world is this a soulslike game when everyone and their mother was saying Black Myth Wukong wasn't? Tangent aside, yes the combat is kind of mid, but it isn't that bad by horror standards. The dodge feels like you're breaking a hip every time you do it, and the enemies take way too long to die, and the whole process is pretty slow.

I'm pretty sure the "intended" way to do the game is to avoid combat however possible, which does improve the game. Yes, it is more stressful to navigate the enviorment with enemies chasing you, but that's kind of the point. That being said, as the game goes on there are too many points where combat is required, and that does make the combat both more noticable and grating.

That being said, the storytelling is on point here. The atmosphere is incredible, it has good pacing, and overall is a pretty great horror game. I'm just happy ryukishi07 is involved in a game that doesn't suck up 100+ hours of my time(umineko was great, Higurashi was better).

8.25/10

Silent Hill ƒ • 🌺 Absolutely stunning aesthetics, with fog that has never been executed so well: it desaturates distant colors and the lighting effects highlight realistic and meticulously crafted environments.

• 🔧 The item/inventory system feels a bit superficial and cumbersome: constantly having to go back and forth to use items as offerings to upgrade combat stats because of limited inventory space… is it really necessary? Especially since these upgrades aren’t always noticeable later, making them seem somewhat pointless.

• 📜 The story is very intriguing and keeps you constantly wanting to move forward to discover more, leading to an ending that is satisfying in essence (though somewhat predictable) but slightly abrupt in its execution. The originality of the subtexts through symbols, dialogues, and metaphors adds a refreshing touch to the horror genre in video games.

• 👹 Creature designs and animations are well done, though I have some reservations about the massive main monster, which is less inspired.

• ♫ Akira Yamaoka once again surpasses himself and manages to reinvent the soundtrack (perhaps with the support of other composers like Dai, Xaki, and Kensuke Inage?). In any case, the sound and musical ambiance is mesmerizing, rich, and evokes a full spectrum of emotions: rage, stress, anxiety, fear, curiosity… These layers blend beautifully with the stunning cutscenes, gameplay sequences, the intensity of the actors’ performances, and the environments.

• 👊 Combat suffers from camera issues and a system that is either too complex for what it offers… or not well utilized. They eventually give a feeling of repetition, breaking immersion and undermining the initial threat the monsters posed.

• 🗺️ Exploration is fairly linear, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, like the combat system, it swings between extremes: sometimes essential items for progression are unnecessarily hidden, while at other times the map overemphasizes an obvious next step, making it a bit too guided. The map itself is exemplary (and gorgeous!), just like the game’s interface.

• 🧩 The puzzles range from shaky to adequate. Overall, they are not the strong point of this installment: quickly forgettable and lacking inventiveness.

📌 In conclusion, Silent Hill ƒ is a very good horror game, but not a masterpiece of the genre. It inevitably suffers in comparison to its predecessors, Silent Hill 1 and 2, which, despite their flaws, offered something unprecedented at the time and knew how to capitalize on their strengths (atmosphere, uniqueness, puzzles, story) rather than dwell excessively on their weaknesses (combat). This episode remains solid, and just for its visuals, atmosphere, and direction, it is well worth experiencing. Overall, it provides a very enjoyable experience, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting much more for the first major project from Taiwanese developer NeoBards Entertainment. I will be watching their future productions closely, as the potential is very promising.

I will start this review by saying this is the first Silent Hill I've completed a run of. I have played SH2:RE as well, but that game is so oppressive that I've been unable to go past the Otherworld Hospital.

I say this because I intend to review f not as a game inside a series, but rather as a horror game on its lonesome.

Well, I say that, but I am immediately drawn to comparisons anyway. Specifically, one thing I could not help but reflect on as I played is why the world of f evoked less visceral fear than the aforementioned remake. Quality wise, I don't think f is less well-designed.

I came upon a theory: SH2:RE evokes so much more fear because its setting and its ambiance is generally closer to us. We've been to hospitals. We've been to or seen abandoned places. Cinemas. Parks. Maybe the similarities between those settings and the ones in our own life enhances the tension.

The setting of f is more immediately remote, at least for me. Obviously, not thoroughly so. Town. School. House. The essence of familiarity is still there, but they are maybe less immediately recognizable.

I digress. This is not mean to be a theoretical dissertation, but a review.

I think the game suffers a little bit from the story being a little too obtuse on a first go-around. It all definitely becomes clear on a second go (I've only just started NG+, but already I've gained some newfound understanding) but when you are just starting it can be hard to make sense of why things are going the way they are going. Afterwards, Hinako's actions and behavior make a little more sense, but at first, they lack some of what makes one get immediately invested in James' travails.

The art direction and sound design were top notch. The opening was amazing, as are the sounds that play in different circumstances, in battle, etc. They were all unsettling to some extent. I hear some people heavily disliked the bits where you wander through the foggy town, but I adored them. I also adored the monster designs. I think the combat was maybe a little too frequent for my liking, but it did add some controllable friction and tension.

There is one thing I despise, however, and its the necessity of new game+ing f in order to gain full understanding of the story. I am not at all fond of this conceit. I generally hate replaying games, and I am very afraid of having to go through scenes I already went through just because I am hoping I'll get something new out of it. Add to that the general obtuseness of the first playthrough story and the over-reliance combat, and you can see why I give the game only four out of five stars.

Silent Hill as a franchise has some of the highest highs, and some of the lowest lows. Starting out with the first few entries, it ushered in a new breed of survival horror games alongside the Resident Evil series. Unfortunately, the quality had really dwindled and it seemed Konami wasn't sure what to do with the franchise, even putting it on hiatus for a good number of years. With the flash in the pan that was P.T. which turned out to be a teaser for an upcoming Silent Hill game, interest started spiking again before the project was cancelled and the franchise was put on the back burner again. After some more quiet years, during a playstation state of play a few new Silent Hill projects were announced. One of these being a new standalone entry taking place in a1960s fictional Japan city, titled Silent Hill f.

This is the first of the Silent Hill games to pull from Japanese culture and setting, and does so brilliantly. The areas that you explore throughout the game are relatively small, but used very effectively. Silent Hill games have always (mostly...) been really creepy, but the new setting and tone really elevate what was getting a little stale. The playable character voice actor does a phenomenal job of bringing the character to life. You can use English voice acting, but I highly recommend the default Japanese voice acting with English subtitles. The story as always is very tragic, and no one involved gets a happy ending but that's par for the course with these games. It's a fresh spin playing as a younger woman than the normal older gruff guy.

The combat takes a little bit to get used to and isn't great, but which Silent Hill does have good combat? There is a little bit of depth to it, but it's nothing complex. There are various difficulty options you can set for the game. You can independently set the difficulty for the combat as well as for the puzzles. In my playthrough I used the standard difficulty for combat, but increased the difficulty for the puzzles.

There are a total of 5 endings in this entry, with one being the standard joke ending. Unfortunately to get what's considered the "best" ending, you still have to play through the game 3 full times. You will always get the same ending on playthrough 1, then have to meet specific requirements on the next two playthroughs. I liked the game, but I did not like it enough to play through it a whole two more times for the "true" ending. Looking up the information afterwards, there are some changes to the gameplay and story beats on the subsequent playthroughs but it did not seem enough to encourage me to keep playing.

I really enjoyed this entry and excited to see the series having a bright future again. The 1960s Japan setting puts a fresh take on the series and another wonderfully tragic story to experience.

There’s really no way to review this game without talking spoilers, so I’ll be splitting this into a non-spoiler section, then spoilers, then a conclusion that’s more about the game’s impact.

Par One: Non-Spoiler and Gameplay Discussion

Silent Hill f makes some big departures from the mainline series in setting and time period, but it absolutely feels like a proper installment worthy of that pedigree. Silent Hill 1 and 2 famously split the series by focusing on the disparate themes of cults and psychological horror respectively. SHf combines both of these themes in a powerful cocktail that makes the best of both. The atmosphere is as oppressive and tense as those old games, while adding in a strong new aesthetic flavor of red rot and decay. Instead of an outside look into the foreign culture of America, f looks back at the slightly less foreign setting of Japan’s own not-to-distant past, using the transitional period of the post-war 60’s.

The difficulty of the game is split into two separate options: puzzles and combat, and the difficulty settings do a great job of adding additional tension and novelty to further playthroughs. I played my initial playthrough on Hard Puzzle and Normal Combat, which is the game’s default, and found both enjoyable and tense, though I did need some help here and there were the puzzles were concerned and was generally able to get by with the combat relatively well. Ramping up to hard, and then the extra hard Lost in the Fog difficulties on later playthroughs kept the game fresh and tested the skills I’d learned over the course of the previous ones in a really compelling way.

The combat seems to be the main sticking point for others in this series. Personally, I honestly really liked it. It’s slow and weighty as molasses, but there’s a serious amount of depth hidden under those slow, awkward looking strikes. I’ve heard people describe the combat as nothing but button mashing, but if you get the difficulty up to the point where you need to start mastering it, there’s a lot more to it. The game has legitimate combos that using various types of attacks that you’ll need to figure out through experimentation, and then instead of a couple strikes and retreat you can end up chaining six or seven hits together. It has perfect dodges that can chain into counters, interrupt counters, a special attack, and a truckload of accessories that alter the combat in a myriad of ways, allowing you to set up all kinds of different builds for different circumstances. The special weapon received in the Shrine World half of the game adds additional layers on top of that. I completely understand that the combat isn’t going to be compelling to everyone, but I do think a large portion of the player base simply never gave it a chance or tried to learn its more complex systems.

The general presentation of the game is very good, with well directed cutscenes, intricate and memorable level design, and good voice acting and scripting. I do think the original Japanese dub is actually a bit lacking in emotion compared to the English localization, and that’s with me going through the entire first playthrough in Japanese before I made the switch. This is probably down to me simply not knowing the language well enough to catch the subtleties of the dialogue, but I would recommend the English dub for English speakers. Protagonist Hinako can seem a bit flat and lacking in personality on a first playthrough, but this is down to the odd but compelling writing structure the game is built around. This is where things are about to get spoilery, but the basic gist is: a first playthrough of this game is meant purely to immerse you in the vibes of the game and raise dozens of questions in your mind with no clear answers. In order to get those answers, you have to play additional playthroughs and piece the story together bit by bit. Even watching the endings online after the first playthrough won’t do too much to alleviate the sense of vagueness, because the majority of what you learn about game’s story and characters comes from additional written notes and little dialogue changes throughout the game, coupled with the slow process of thinking it through as you repeat the now mundane process of traversing the game world. This is going to be an absolute deal breaker for some players, knowing that the whole first playthrough is just a teaser for the real story, and I don’t blame those that would check out at that point. But I found it continually exciting for the dozens of hours of repeat plays (I play games slowly, lol) always having some new piece of information to turn over in my head and chew on as I made my way through.

Part Two: Spoilers and Story Discussion

The greatest trick this game pulled is that after my first and even second playthrough, I basically despised all of the characters other than Hinako and her loyal partner Shu… and by the end of my four-and-a-half playthroughs, I pretty much felt positively about all of them. I mean, Rinko is absolutely the utterly spiteful and delusional asshole she appears to be, but even in her case, her journals from her adulthood looking back actually realize what she was and resolve to change and be a better person. The fox-masked Kotoyuki initially comes across as nothing but a manipulative cruel bastard pressuring Hinako into annihilating her own psyche for the sake of his cult, his own perverse desires, or both. And yet his letter to Hinako in the True Ending after breaking off their marriage plans where he is attempting to mature while exploring the simple joys he never got to experience in his abusive childhood made me tear up.

When I finished the first ending of the game, I was honestly pissed off and disappointed. It had felt as though the game was building to something, two somethings really, with the parallel storylines of Hinako-in-the-town and Hinako-in-the-shrine-world both cut short by a sudden disjointed, confusing crash out ending. Worse, it seemed to be committing the ultimate sin of a horror story for me: implying that everything in the story is actually symbolic and mundane, purely happening in the confused mind of the protagonist. Fortunately, this isn’t quite the case.

It’s true that the events shown in the game do not literally happen. Hinako is not a 14 year old girl trapped in a town full of monsters, she’s a 20 year old woman grappling with her two inner desires to run away from her impending marriage or to change herself and hope that it will bring her happiness. But there is more than enough evidence to imply that the trio of powerful gods influencing events in the game truly are manipulating the plot from behind the scenes, and that each of the story's conflicts are playing out albeit in a less dramatic manner. Even looking back at it now, I feel like I ought to dislike this method of storytelling, but the symbolism used does such a good job of cutting to the heart of the characters and their struggles that it just works for me. I have a hard time getting really into mundane dramas, so this use of wildly evocative horror and fantasy imagery to sell these simple concepts elevates that drama for me.

The game is unfortunately very repetitive throughout most of its playthroughs, aside from all the small logs and letters you find that would be completely overwhelming if they were all there from the start. But when it comes to the game’s endings, it pulls out all the stops, each one culminating in massively dramatic boss fight against one of two gods, or—in the true finale where both sides of Hinako resolve their differences and come together to forge a new path—two gods at once, in a back-and-forth fantastic duel set of boss fights. Even the joke UFO ending is pretty high-effort, with an animated manga that has a new unique set of character designs for each of the main cast, silly and out of character as it is.

The whole game kind of hinges on the character of Hinako, seeing as how it boils down to an exploration of her personal insecurities, fears, and desires for the future. As mentioned she seems kind of simple at first since most of the game is spent with her simply being scared, confused, or angry in the monster-filled town, or drugged and compliant in the shrine world. But through the explorations in her relationships with her classmates, parents, sister, and eventually her fiance and the gods, we end up with a highly comprehensive portrait of a character that I’m very fond of. Even on a surface level, there’s something pretty fun about a petite teenage schoolgirl going feral on a bunch of horror monsters with a steel pipe and heart full of rage. James Sunderland would be scared shitless of her, lol.

I think what I find most remarkable and inspiring about this series is the nature of its development. I’m not a journalist, and the information I’ve found on it is limited and heavily biased by my opinions on Konami and the state of the Silent Hill franchise over the past couple decades, so take this with a grain of salt. But it seems to me that Konami outsourced SHf’s development to a small foreign studio that has spent nearly all of its career to this point making ports, remasters, and working in support of larger studios on games without much of a chance to make creative choices. The major staff positions of the game are filled by veterans in the games industry who don’t seem to have ever had the opportunity to really stretch their creative muscles. And yet now that they’ve been given a chance, they blew it out of the park and made a bold, original new step in the series direction. I really hope that with this game in their portfolio they can continue to make interesting games, and I’ll be keeping an eye out to see where they go. As for the franchise itself, its position is still kind of up in the air. I’ve heard that the Silent Hill 2 remake is meant to be very good, though I haven’t really built up any interest in playing it, but there were several other low-effort games put out as part of the new direction for the franchise. It's hard to say if the series is really back, but honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me. Whether SHf is simply one odd and brilliant side story to the overall series or the last hurrah of the franchise, Silent Hill has proven itself and doesn’t really need to continue. But if there are more games to come as original and interesting as this one, I’ll definitely be there to try them.

I gave this one another shot, but ultimately wound up selling it.

Is the game decidedly above average? Definitely. It's quite well-made, and clearly a project that had a clear vision and executed on it. And I respect it for that.

Thing is though, I have limited time for gaming these days, and when I'm playing a game that constantly brings feelings of, "I've seen this before," it's just really hard to stay interested.

That being said, there was just enough of a narrative hook that I think I could have powered through... Had it not been for the combat. Even on easy, I consistently found the combat to be an exercise in tedium and frustration, with enemies feelings like they required roughly 2-4x more damage than they should have. It felt like any time the game was starting to have some momentum, I'd be stopped in my tracks by enemies, occasionally dying in ways that felt cheap and not easily avoidable. I've frequently bemoaned the core conceits of "Soulslike" combat, but this is a glaring example of, "This really did not need to be here."

While I think this game represents a positive trend for the series overall - and definitely helps wash the stink of Ascension and Book of Shadows out - it's just kinda... Mid. If you have the time, it's a worthy play. If you don't, you are better served by more ambitious and creative games in the survival horror space.

What the 'f' stands for? Fantastic? No. Fun? Definitely not. Failure to meet my expectations. Right on the money.

Silent Hill f is a good looking and sounding game with gameplay that is archaic, clunky or both at the same time. It's a survival horror game with restrictive environments, atrocious combat that you need to do immense amounts of and an infurating stamina meter that makes the first Dark Souls stamina usage seem fair.

At least the environment of the game, 60s Japan, is an interesting one. Moreover, the story hold certain intrigue. It feels like it could click at some point and there are interesting bits here and there. However, the game has some mind-bogglingly stupid game-logic moments, cheesy cutscenes, and heavy-handed character development. Also, at the end of the game I had little idea what happened. Courteusly, the game says that you can complete the game many times to see different endings but, honestly, I'll toss this hot potato right to the damn bin.

On another note, what is the deal with having the difficulty options either 'story' or 'hard'? Typically story difficulty denotes the lack of challenge, which is something that I don't want in my survival horror experiences. There needs to be some stress-factor involved. But nothing like the hard difficulty in this. That is one of the most groan-inducing gameplay I have endured in a while. I guess it's on me, though, for not going with the story difficulty.

It's not even scary. And what's Silent Hill about it? I do not know.

I'm pissed at myself for playing though this with the little free time that I have. I still have many, many things to say about it so I'll write my pet peeves with the game in a separate status.