Silent Hill f Review
Introduction:
There’s perhaps no video game series more victimized by its previous greatness than Silent Hill. The first three games are widely considered landmarks for the horror genre; although the fourth entry is still loved by many. But it’s mostly Silent Hill 2 and 3 that get the most praise. And out of those two, let’s be honest- it’s Silent Hill 2 that has cast a large pitch black shadow over the rest of its franchise. The internet has done of a successful job of deifying Silent Hill 2 to absurd levels. To the point where when the remake was having its rollout in 2023 and 2024; thousands of adults were acting like children trying to “protest” the game. They were fearful that their favorite masterpiece would get bastardized.
Thankfully, the Silent Hill 2 remake was truly fantastic. But it still left us with two questions. Number one, can Silent Hill have an equally as good original entry? Number two, can Konami themselves develop such a game? The last time they tried, we got Silent Hill: The Short Message, an incredibly boring “game” with some decent ideas and an awesome monster design. But Silent Hill deserves better. And finally, Silent Hill f seeks to answer those questions and live up to its name.
Presentation:
I want to make it extremely clear that despite being a big fan, I am no Silent Hill scholar and historian. I know that Silent Hill 3 was the first entry to have playable segments outside the titular town. And Silent Hill 4 continued that trend. According to some very quick research, Silent Hill: The Short Message was the first game to take place outside of the United States. And Silent Hill Origins was the first game to go back in time chronologically. Silent Hill f seeks to tackle both of those ideas. Not only do we go back roughly sixty years to the 1960s, but we also do so in Japan. A lot of fans were fearful of this change, because to them, Silent Hill is synonymous with the foggy northern east coast Maine-inspired vibes. But again, Silent Hill 3 proved with its first half that we don’t necessarily need that. The first third of Silent Hill 3 reminded me of a metropolitan area such as New York.
Silent Hill f takes place in Ebisugaoka, a small town that was one noteworthy for its work provided by the coal mines and dam construction. But over the years, the mine was shut down, the dams were finished, and the town was left with nothing special.
What I love about Ebisugaoka is how the 1960’s allows the town to feel stuck in some sort of transition. We still get architecture and structures that feel slightly old. There are moss covered shrines everywhere, important but neglected. I loved seeing the tiny little bridges crossing over small streams of water, the outdoor laundry machines, and the tiny gardens. I’ve never been to Japan, and I’m sure tons of areas there still look like this, but I just love of cozy and nostalgic this town feels. And it all clashes with the electric lines towering above, a sign of change that will only grow more powerful with time.
Silent Hill f runs on the controversial Unreal Engine 5, but thankfully this game looks and plays at a smooth and high quality level. The characters and environments are bleeding with a realistic quality. You sometimes get taken to these areas called the Dark Shrine which feel like landscapes from a nightmare. They sometimes made me feel like this is what a triple-A remake of Yume Nikki would feel like, with these ever expanding labyrinths meant to make you feel lost, afraid, and alone.
The monster designs were done by kera, an artist who I can’t seem to find much information on. Luckily, these designs are really strong. The basic enemies feel a bit too Silent Hill 2 inspired for me, clearly inspired by mannequins. But everything else looks amazing. There’s monsters that are giant hulking masses of flesh and faces. My favorite are the scarecrow enemies; their faces are so disturbing and I loved the introduction to them in the field area. Unfortunately, the monsters have a slight plastic-y look and shine to them. It clashes a bit awkwardly with the realistic looking characters. It almost looks like real people are fighting giant action figures at times. I don’t know what the cause of this shine is; maybe the designers didn’t want the enemies to be too frightening?
One of my favorite aspects of the game is the journal. It not only gives us insight into who Hinako is as a character, but it gives us beautiful art of each character and monster alongside a nice chunky description. Oftentimes these descriptions will expand as the plot continues. I love it when these types of things are left to the players interpretation. Like how the entry for Junko, Hinako’s sister, is pretty nice for the duration until the last sentence. And then we see that giant ink split over her face. Almost like Hinako is trying to forget her sister.
It’s hard not to see the tender love and care that went into this game.
And of course we can’t discuss Silent Hill without mentioning the music. Akira Yamaoka did such resonant work on the series during its early years that he began producing some of the games starting with Silent Hill 3. That’s pretty crazy; I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a game composer also producing said games. The man clearly knows the series like the back of his hand. But Yamaoka wasn’t alone on Silent Hill f. Apparently he was in charge of the music for the “Fog World” sections, which are the parts of the game in Ebisugaoka. Kensuke Inage was in charge of the Dark Shrine sections, the dream-like labyrinths I mentioned earlier. I didn’t know this until a few hours of my playthrough, but it makes sense. The Fog World sections are my favorite of the game, and they’re accompanied by some notable sounds. Yamaoka is beyond talented at making me feel like I’m somewhere else, somewhere slightly familiar but also a little wrong. And to fit the Japanese tone of the game, there’s a lot of wind instruments and strings. It’s a safe direction to go in, but it works for the most part. Kensuke Inage did a good job on the Dark Shrine tunes, but these segments of the game were less enjoyable to me than the Fog World (more on that later), and the music here while great, wasn’t a huge joy of mine. It’s a good soundtrack and I’m happy it exists, but I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed it more than the OSTs of the first three games.
Gameplay:
The gameplay of every Silent Hill game gets put under an absurdly huge magnifying glass. For some reason, the fans usually justify subpar combat with narrative excuses. “The reason Silent Hill 2’s combat isn’t very fun is because James Sunderland is just a guy- not a warrior”, stuff like that. By that logic, it makes no sense that 17 year old Heather Mason knows how to properly use a submachine gun and a flamethrower. It’s a video game guys.
Silent Hill f focuses primarily on melee combat. There’s no firearms at all. You can lock onto enemies, dodge attacks, perfect dodge them, light attack, and heavy attack. If you’re worried that this sounds like some sort of action game- don’t worry, it’s not. Hinako’s attacks still feel slow and vulnerable. She never feels like a strong fighter which is good for the horror element of the game. There’s also the Focus Attacks which cost a bit of your Sanity Meter. At first I kinda hated the combat because of how the game slows down a tiny bit after every attack, but I got used to it. It becomes especially simple when you realize you can just do 1 focus attack and 2-3 light attacks to finish most non-boss enemies. There’s a way to make the player character feel not very strong while not sacrificing gameplay, and Silent Hill f mostly achieves that. I still had some deep frustrations like with the stamina system and sometimes not being able to find weapons. There’s also a weapon durability system I’m not very fond of. Luckily in the Dark Shrine, the weapons you find in there can’t break. Usually the game keeps the fights one-on-one which is how I prefer my Silent Hill fights. Especially in a game without guns. Sometimes they do give you two enemies at once and that can suck if you’re in a tight hallway.
A lot of people seemed to really criticize the combat in this game and I can kinda see why, but I found a decent rhythm pretty fast. In a game like this it’s important to not necessarily want the next fight. You’re supposed to dread it- just like your character does.
Other than fighting there’s of course the puzzles and exploration. The game actually feels extremely linear which didn’t bother me personally. Oftentimes you’ll just be in small alleyways with one little branching path to find some healing items. It took a while until I felt like I hit my first proper Silent Hill dungeon- the middle school. When I tell you I was smiling for a straight minute, I’m not exaggerating! The locked doors. The puzzles. The map with a bunch of rooms. It feels good to be back home. It felt like a nice little nod to the first Silent Hill to be in a school setting.
As for the puzzles, I didn’t find any of them particularly too rough or too easy. And the journal does a fantastic job at recording all of your hints. You can open the journal while attempting a puzzle too which is nice. There was a puzzle box in the school I had to guess my way through, but since I was able to do that I guess it means the solution wasn’t too complicated.
There’s also the savepoints which allow you to offer up healing items to the gods for more “Faith”. Faith allows you to buy omamori- charms with specific stat boosts and abilities. You can also get these upgrades by using Faith and ema. I found the requirements for more omamori slots kinda expensive. You need 1500 Faith for the first omamori upgrade and 3000 for the next. Not necessarily cheap, and it made me feel like I had to skip out on getting other upgrades to save up.
Good dungeons. Good puzzles. Decent and slightly stressful combat. The most diehard of fans were concerned that this game wouldn’t uphold the identity of the series, but for the most part this game does. There are some gripes I had with it that require me to get a bit more into the story aspects of the game. I’m going to discuss a brief general overview and I’ll give a heads up when I feel like I’m getting into any true spoilers (in bold text).
Story:
This is where the game caught me the most off guard with my disappointment. One of the biggest selling points of the game that Konami was trying to nail into our heads was the involvement of Ryukishi07. Ryukishi is known for his When They Cry series. I don’t know much about his work, but I know that Higarashi is very loved. And once I saw that the protagonist was a teenage girl in 1960’s Japan; I had a feeling we were going to get a brutal yet honest story of gender roles and expectations. When you open Hinako’s journal at the beginning of the game, we see that she hates her father for his controlling ways and alcoholism. She also pities and dislikes her mother for being nothing but a weak servant to her father despite his abusiveness. It’s an awful yet realistic situation especially for the time. We also see that Hinako claims that ever since she was a young kid, she never really liked playing with girls. She liked playing with boys like her best friend Shu. So I thought the story might steer strong in that directions; a young woman who doesn’t identify or desire the path that her male-dominated society demands of her. But I feel like that game mostly doesn’t capitalize on this nearly enough.
This game is on the shorter side, around 10-12 hours. And for the first 6-7 of those hours I honestly felt like nothing really happened. Hinako, Shu, and their mutual friend Rinko are the only non-monsters left in Ebisugaoka. So they decide to go up the mountains to Shu’s house and take the highway out of town. That’s it. That’s the majority of the the playtime of this game.
There’s also the Dark Shrine sections which I mentioned earlier. In these sections, Hinako is accompanied by a mysterious man in a Fox Mask. This man is leading Hinako to some sort of ritual. The main reason I disliked these sections is because it sacrifices my absolute favorite part of Silent Hill- the relatability. Silent Hill doesn’t take place in haunted mansions like Resident Evil or abandoned space colonies like Dead Space- it takes place in normal neighborhoods and places we all visit like schools, hospitals, and office buildings. Most horror media is like a movie screen- a way to project a story to us. But Silent Hill is like a mirror; stare at it too long and we start to see the things we hate about ourselves. It’s disturbing and it’s supposed to be that way. But by taking me to these fantastical locations in the Dark Shrine, you’re turning this game into…a fantasy. And that’s not really Silent Hill to me. The Dark Shrine sections also house a lot more combat than the Fog World. Sometimes you’ll fight three or more enemies at a time and that’s not very fun. Thanks to the ritual done by Fox Mask, Hinako unlocks an almost Devil Trigger like ability. It’s kind of jarring for this series.
I’m honestly just disappointed by how boring the characters are. Hinako never seems to speak up when it’s necessary. She doesn’t discuss how much she doesn’t want to be a traditional woman, or a woman at all (it’s not really clear). Shu feels like an absolute nothing of a character except a loyal best friend who wants to be a pharmacist. Rinko is obsessed with Shu and despises Hinako for their closeness. We get about seven minutes with Sakuko until she dies. It’s interesting for the first hour, but it also doesn’t really hold any weight. Again, it’s hard not to feel disappointed when the series is home to some legendary characters. Even characters you aren’t supposed to like like Eddie from Silent Hill 2 or Vincent from 3 have some iconic moments. You love to see them on the screen because you know you’re gonna get some cryptic but disturbing dialogue. But everyone in this game is just boring.
The themes of the game do start to pick up once we see what the Fox Mask ritual is. Hinako is forced to remove some of her body parts, replace them, and obviously endure much pain. This whole thing is a metaphor for how women were forced to sacrifice themselves both in body and mind for the satisfaction of men- basically a commentary on marriage, specifically arranged marriage. It’s towards the end of the game we finally see some flashbacks of Hinako’s father abusing both his wife and Hinako. There’s even a certain monster entry in the journal that states that a specific monster doesn’t even bother attacking men. I absolutely love the concept of turning a woman’s struggle in male dominated societies into a piece of horror; it’s one of the reasons I absolutely adore Silent Hill 3. But I wish Silent Hill f gave me more reasons to feel these things in the first half of the game. And I wish the characters didn’t feel so bland and empty.
Speaking of bland characters, I should’ve mentioned the character designs earlier. I wish this game took place on a Sunday, so the kids wouldn’t be in their school uniforms. By putting everyone in identical uniforms, we lost all chance at unique character design that gives us a deeper idea of who these people are. Imagine if Sakuko and Rinko were wearing dresses or skirts but Hinako was wearing a pair of mens pants and working boots? It would further boost the themes of Hinako as a character. I mentioned the enemy designs being pretty strong in terms of grossness and creepiness, but I kinda miss when the enemy designs used to have symbolism in them.
Hinako’s father is a boss late in the game. Instead of trying to reinforce his design with his character traits of alcoholism, debt, or failure as a family leader- we are left with a semi-generic pink blob. Compare that to the Abstract Daddy from Silent Hill 2, who is a horrifying sentient symbol of the sexual assault one of the main characters had to endure.
The story and themes left me wanting more. If you do any research on the development of Silent Hill 3, you’ll know that Konami rushed the game out and didn’t let Team Silent fulfill their true vision. But somehow, despite that, I still think Silent Hill 3 did a better job at painting the horrors of being a woman. The subway station of that game made me genuinely stop and think about how my sister must’ve felt coming back home when she used to live in New York. That’s the power of media and horror media specifically; it can make us see that our reality isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Overall:
Silent Hill f is a good video game and I think it would be foolish to deny that. It looks good, it sounds good, and has solid mechanics. I’m sure this is the type of game thats better on replays so you can get the alternate endings and really piece together the finer details of the plot. Do I think it’s a horror classic that every fan of the genre needs to play? No, not really. But I’m glad that Konami has proven to us that they can still make good games, specifically Silent Hill games.
I opened this review up by saying that the Silent Hill franchise has been victimized by its own previous greatness. And in some ironic fashion, I ended up doing that during this review. I mentioned the things I loved about Silent Hill 2 and 3 multiple times. But I went into Silent HIll f not wanting it to be those games. I was excited for the new setting and time period. I was excited for the lack of firearms. I was open to the idea of a new combat system. And all of those things are actually pretty dang good. But I think the lack of strong character designs, symbolic monster and boss designs, boring characters, and half the game being dedicated to dream-like locations took a lot of my joy away.
Either way, I liked Silent Hill f.
(In an effort to move away from traditional numerical scores, I will use the following metric: Hated, Felt Neutral, Liked, Loved, Can’t Stop Thinking About)
