Silent Hill f Review

Silent Hill f isn't some spin-off or experiment for Konami to indoctrinate its players into performing perfect dodges or counters—it's the next step for the iconic horror series, which is finally dragging itself to new horizons.

Watching as the fog settled on Ebisugaoka, listening to the eerie sound design, and witnessing the emotionally tumultuous story, I felt the same pit in my stomach that I experienced back when I stumbled across Silent Hill for the first time as I searched for Cheryl. Silent Hill f may leave behind that old rural town, but it has more in common with previous games than just its title.

Landed with a new protagonist, Shimizu Hinako is at a crossroads in her life. Just finished with school, she faces pressure from her parents to settle down and get married like her older sister. But she's plagued by the fears of heading down a path that broke her mother and sent her sister off somewhere far away.

Fears of what has happened, but crucially what may come to pass, is what haunts Hinako's journey through Silent Hill f. Her friends Shu, Rinko, and Sakuko, are also in similar uncertain positions. But what makes matters worse is that Hinako is forced to watch on as the people she thought she knew change and prove themselves to be strangers in front of her eyes.

But there's more to our protagonist than just her friends and who she interacts with. James Sunderland's undoubtedly has big shoes to fill, so it's no small task taking on the mantle of Silent Hill protagonist, but Hinako does it effortlessly.

Her character is vulnerable, strong, stubborn, and caring throughout the game, making it not only easy to sympathise with her but also easy to like her and want to do right by her in any way you can. For me, that's the secret for making a great horror game protagonist: someone I actually want to put effort into saving.

Riddle me this

Silent Hill f's puzzles are just the right amount of challenging, and completing each one left me feeling satisfied and just that little bit smarter. There are three difficulty settings for puzzles and action: Story, Hard, and Lost in the Fog. When it came to puzzles, I decided to play on both Hard and Lost in the Fog, and while some definitely stopped me in my tracks, most were intuitive enough that I managed to piece the answers together after exploring a location and gathering all the clues.

This wasn't just a great way to break up the action and horror, but it was also reminiscent of what I'd come to expect from Silent Hill games. Solving odd riddles, puzzling together research notes, or just trying to figure out how one of my friends was insulting me changed up the atmosphere, allowing for more relaxed moments while also serving as a great vessel for storytelling and the sharing of information about my friends and family. Turns out you can learn a lot about someone via a puzzle box.

I'm very happy NeoBards didn't skip over this feature when making Silent Hill f, because it's one of the most underrated parts that ties the whole experience together.

Location, Location, Location

The isolated setting and somewhat unusual inhabitants make Ebisugaoka the ideal place to carry on the themes and story of Silent Hill. Not only does the layout of the town make for some fantastic exploration as you wander around on your lonesome, squeezing through small gaps between houses and puzzling together new ways to traverse the many roadblocks which will complicate the map.

But there's just something about walking through an almost entirely abandoned town which is so unmistakably Silent Hill. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but the feeling of being watched never goes away.

Then there's the joy of finding all the hidden treasures, which are sprinkled throughout. I'm something of a magpie in that I have to meticulously sweep through every section of the map, picking up anything that catches my eye. It's a trait that helped and hindered me during my playthrough as some items are better left untouched.

You can get the gist of Silent Hill f's story by just watching the cutscenes and playing through to the end, but you gain so much more information and nuance if you take time to search around the map picking up all the documents, letters, and notes left by the vanished inhabitants.

Through these, I not only learnt more about the friends that Hinako keeps, but I also understood the town of Ebisugaoka and its history, traditions, and everyday happenings better. Taking your time to read about the traitorous origins of the town, the aversion to new kinds of medicine, its obsession and wariness of foxes and their relevance in folklore, adds so much more to the story. I can't stress enough just how rewarding it is to explore parts of the map that seem irrelevant at first glance.

At one point, I stumbled upon my friend Sakuko's family shrine. I didn't need to go here, but the winding woodland path intrigued me enough with the potential promise of trinkets that I just had to follow it. I was met with more items, a note from Sakuko's mother, a key to their family post box, and the most unearthly and uncanny glimpse of a dance I'd ever seen.

You can miss it if you don't look into the shrine straight away, but behind the closed paper doors, you can see a faint flicker of light which will illuminate some strange figure who dances in traditional robes. I didn't know at the time that this figure was someone I knew and would be one of the brutal encounters I'd face later on, but the realisation when I finally connected the dots made the moment all the more horrifying.

Pick your battles

Konami and NeoBards have also made no secret of how Silent Hill f does tread new grounds. A few months ago, Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto revealed that there would be more combat and action woven into Silent Hill f, a revelation that had some old school fans up in arms, afraid that this redirection would strip Silent Hill f of any quality that would link it to older games in favour of creating something new and more appealing to a wider audience. While Okamoto has since clarified that more action doesn't equate to it being a soulslike, the fear has stuck around for some fans.

But, like most things, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. Silent Hill f isn't much of a soulslike, and while there are ways in which players can enjoy a more fighting-focused experience if you pick a more action-oriented difficulty like Hard or Lost in the Fog, it still has none of the qualities which make soulslikes like massive boss run backs or weird NPCs that speak in tongues and then whip out a club to bonk you on the head.

If you play on the easiest setting, Story Mode, which I did, combat is far from the core experience, even with the counter and dodge mechanics. During my first run-through, I fought everything I could see out of pure fear and panic. It wasn't until halfway through that I realised I didn't have to face up against every bloody mannequin or twisted version of Lickitung.

So, as I walked into Ebisugaoka for the second time, I made a decision to take the cowardly option, like I'd pick in most horror games, and to just run and hide from all the monsters, and it worked like a charm.

Enemies in Silent Hill f have quite short lines of sight even before I decided to use the clam charm, which made them even shorter, meaning turning a corner was almost always good enough to get them off my back. This turned my experience from one in which I was blindly swinging a pipe around to something slightly more thoughtful. I plotted out my route on the map, crept around corners, solved puzzles, and explored every inch of the map, all while going by undetected.

In doing this, I quickly got used to the doge mechanic, which refills your stamina bar if you're able to pull off a perfect dodge. Utilising this, a knowledge of the map, and some helpful charms, I managed to get through the story from start to finish without breaking any of my weapons, which you can fix with toolkits, pretty effortlessly.

Now there are moments when you can't run away from a fight. Trust me, I tried. When in the shrine realm, you'll be met with circumstances where you'll need to clear out rooms of grunts to progress. While this can be annoying, your weapons in this space don't break and enemies are easy enough to defeat so I usually came out of scraps with most of my health intact. It's not really explained why your weapons don't decay, but it's helpful, so I won't question it.

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Hinako also receives quite the upgrade later on with a whole new arm as a weapon. And while this does make sense for the journey her character goes on, it does kind of ruin the sense of horror, as I became so strong I'd go out of my way to look for fights. But it was a lot of fun to fight with, so there are no massive complaints on my end for that.

Then there are the big monster fights. I can't bring myself to call them boss fights, because anyone I can kill by repeatedly poking them with a spear shouldn't be classified as a boss in my eyes. This isn't to say that these fights are way too easy. They just didn't make me sit up in my seat and lock in, which is exactly what I want when I pick Story Mode.

These big fights are more about showcasing hauntingly beautiful monster designs, some incredible music, and work as an exposé as to what awful thoughts Hinako has locked away in the darkest parts of her mind.

Silent Hill f is a true return to form. A game that not only can stand proudly shoulder to shoulder with other goliaths in the series, but one that is brave enough to take risks and deploy changes to set the groundwork for what I hope to be the new standard of Silent Hill games going forward.

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