Silent Hill f Review – Flawless fear

Last year, Konami took a big risk with Silent Hill 2. Not only were they remaking the most beloved game in the franchise, they handed the reins over to Bloober Team, entrusting them with their biggest game to date. That risk paid off, and Silent Hill 2 was a massive success. But where next for this beloved horror franchise? There hadn’t been a new mainline game in many years, and the last two were… well… questionable. Cue Silent Hill f.

Silent Hill f’s announcement left fans with a lot of questions about its direction. Konami stepped away from the Western setting, embracing Japanese Horror, setting the game in the 1960s, and jumping from Silent Hill to the fictional town of Ebisugaoka.

You take on the role of Hinako Shimizu, a high school student who takes a stroll into town to meet her friends. When she arrives, in typical Silent Hill fashion, everything is not as it seems, a mysterious fog descends upon her friends group, covering the immediate area with beautifully grotesque flora which consumes anything it touches. After Hinako escapes, she realises everyone has disappeared, and proceeds to try and track down her friends and find out what the hell is going on.

Silent Hill 2 remains the benchmark for this series, and Silent Hill f seems to have gone back to its style of storytelling, giving us a tale that slowly unfolds over the course of the game, introducing new details and keeping us guessing right till the very end. It helps that they got Ryukishi07 (of Higurashi When They Cry fame) onboard to write the story, and his DNA is definitely present here.

A lot of the fun is in discovering what’s actually happening to Hinako, although the game does thematically lean towards making your own choices and being your own person. The messaging is powerful, and like Silent Hill 2, will have you emotionally charged throughout. There are a couple of symbolic scenes in the game that had my jaw on the floor, and when I fully understood what those scenes meant, left me feeling morose, and needing time to contemplate what I had just seen. There’s some really powerful imagery that, while initially a little confusing, has more meaning as you discover the secrets of each character.

It leads to a prescribed ending on your first playthrough that, in all honest, doesn’t feel like a great outcome for our protagonist, though you will realise that certain actions have had an impact on the outcome. My mind was blown and I was taken back to Silent Hill 2, and how what you do on your playthrough affects the kind of ending you get. Yes, this is just what I wanted. The game then gives you clear guidelines for what you need to do to see the other endings, so you can reach a better outcome for our heroine.

Now, what really got me, was that New Game+ brought new cutscenes and lore to be discovered, adding proper flavour to what we knew already, in some cases, adding slightly new mechanics as well. I felt like I was playing a new game, and seeing things through a new lens, which I think is the point.

Silent Hill f feels like a traditional Silent Hill experience, going back to the classic third-person view of the original games, instead of the tighter over-the-shoulder style made popular by Resident Evil 4. The action introduces something a little new in the form of dodges and counters, which I quickly fell in love with it. When the horrible beasties come at you, some of their attacks will have a momentary pause, outlining them in a shimmer. Attacking during this time will net you a power blow, sending them reeling and, in some cases, stunning the monster. If you’re quick enough, you can always dodge the attack, with a perfect dodge completely refilling your stamina bar. You can’t just go swinging wildly and hoping for the best; running out of stamina is dangerous, leaving you incapable of attacking or running away.

Along with the stamina bar is the sanity meter, which comes into play when you do focus attacks or when the enemies psychologically attack you. The sanity meter will drain but when the focus meter is full, you can unleash a devastating attack on enemies. If you are interrupted while doing this, it will reduce your max sanity until you can refill it with items. While it’s a great tool for dealing damage, having no sanity means any psychological attacks on you will drain your health, so play around with it carefully.

Of course, you’ll be defending yourself with the many weapons you’ll find lying around. You can carry up to three weapons and they will break after too much use, so you either need to find more or use a repair kit. I’m not normally a fan of weapon degradation, but Silent Hill f strikes a nice balance to make it less of a chore.

You can also upgrade your stats, increasing things like sanity, health, stamina by way of Faith, a currency earned by making offerings at the Hokora save points. Some items you pick up just give big Faith bonuses, but you can trade some health items in as well. You can also increase the amount of Omamori slots you have, equipping these charms to give various bonuses, such as decreased charge time for focus attacks, or just flat stat increases. It would normally feel out of place in a Silent Hill game, but it felt natural here. Thankfully, these upgrades accumulate across multiple playthroughs as it’s impossible to do it all in one run.

There’s a nice variety of enemies on offer, each one terrifying to look at and erratic to fight. The symbolism in enemies has seemingly returned in Silent Hill f, with each creature having a detailed explanation in Hinako’s journal. This is one of the best inclusions because it doesn’t feel like some tacked-on menu item, but more of a look inside Hinako’s mind. As you discover things in game, Hinako will write about it in her book, drawing pictures to supplement the words on paper. It’s really neat and gives you an idea about not only what some of these monsters mean, but also her thought process and logic when it comes to puzzles and local lore.

And you want to read everything. Taking a leaf out of Soulsborne games, there’s a lot to be discovered in the written word of others and Hinako’s journal, so I made sure I searched every nook and cranny to find every piece of obscure information that might help unravel the mystery.

In traditional Silent Hill fashion, there’s an abundance of puzzles to solve, ranging from easy logic to difficult brain destroyers. One puzzle you come across later requires using a cipher to work out code, which my tired brain couldn’t quite figure out. Of course I got it in the end but, for I thought that was me done for a moment! What didn’t help, is that I’d missed a random note, which had another part of the cipher, reinforcing the fact that you want to search everywhere. Credit to the team for actually making the puzzles a challenge.

Design wise, Silent Hill f is absolutely stunning. Even running the game on a lower setting, I was still blown away with how gorgeous it looks. The visuals are beautiful yet terrifying. You want to see everything yet it’s haunting and unsettling. The details on characters’ faces are also very impressive, with each character’s emotions unquestionably represented in Unreal Engine 5. NeoBards really did a sterling job.

The music was composed by series’ veteran Akira Yamaoka and Kensuke Inage who is known for his work on games such as Tekken 8 and Samurai Showdown. Yamaoka’s eerily subtle work can be heard in the Fog World, while Inage provides the sounds for the Otherworld – two contrasting tones, masterfully provided by two titans in the industry. The soundtrack is just perfection and provides added tension to already tense situations, but also serenity when needed.

In past games, there has always been a massive distinction between The Fog World and the Otherworld, and one of the most interesting things about Silent Hill f is just how different those two worlds are. In previous games, Otherworlds are generally grotesque versions of the real world, but this game takes you somewhere completely different. It actually makes a lot of sense from a story perspective, and I can’t wait to see players crack open the symbolic meaning behind all of it.

The core questions the game leaves us with is who are you really? Should you submit to the will of another? Abandon everything you know and love? It’s these mysteries and more that keep me wanting to play Silent Hill f over and over again, because like Silent Hill 2, there’s a lot to unpack, and it’s incredibly well done.