Silent Hill f Review

Silent Hill is back. Apparently.

I wouldn’t call myself a Silent Hill superfan. Silent Hill 3 might be my favorite horror game of all time (though it might be SIGNALIS, I’d have to think on that), and 1 and 2 are fantastic as well. 4 is okay, and everything after that you can basically just leave. Though I did unironically like Shatmem, maybe even more than 4.

The series was re-awakened after a decade about two years ago now. Let’s ignore the pachinko, they do not count. Konami announced THREE new Silent Hill games at the exact same time. The first was one stupid AI thing or something that no one liked and everyone already forgot. The second was the Silent Hill 2 remake, which a lot of people liked. I didn’t enjoy what I saw, but I am a Bloober Team hater. And then they announced Silent Hill f.

There were a lot of thoughts about the trailer. The most prevelant ones I heard was “how is this a Silent Hill game”. It DID look more like Siren to me, but there were a lot of other things that set Silent Hill f apart. It takes place in Japan, the first Silent Hill game NOT taking place in America. And it’s VERY Japanese. It’s so extremely culturally Japanese, it feels like Mega Man 6 where they made Wily’s castle extremely Japanese for some reason. It’s also the first Silent Hill game produced in Japan since…. fuck, The Room? Silent Hill 4? That was a long-ass time ago. According to interviews, the reason this game is so extremely Japanese is cause they were afraid the series has become too Americanized and lost its Japanese roots. Which again, is interesting, since the series ALWAYS took place in America.

There’s another important thing about this game that there was a lot of talking about before its release. It stars a woman, and is very, VERY explicitely about feminism and the way women are treated, specifically in 1960s Japan. A lot of people were angry about that, and I heard lots of the funniest shit I’ve EVER heard, like someone going “I hate that they’re shoving this woke shit in there. Why couldn’t it be like Silent Hill 3, where it’s feminist, but you can easily ignore it cause it doesn’t shove it in your face”. THE GAME WHERE YOU LITERALLY ABORT GOD? So yeah, THAT made me interested. As I said, Silent Hill 3 is an utter masterpiece to me, and anything TRYING to invoke the ideas and themes of that is something I will at least be slightly interested in.

So I played it. And it’s…

alright. It’s alright. Not bad. It’s the best Silent Hill game we’ve gotten in a while. And it IS a Silent Hill game. I saw a lot of people claiming it doesn’t feel like one, but it IS. It’s a different setting and got some different vibes, but it has a lot of nods to the original games. “This is just a Fatal Frame” game was the funniest thing I saw from people who stepped in and watched for two minutes. Yes, they are both very Japanese. Fatal Frame is ghosts and spiritualism. This game is VERY meaty. AND flowery!

The thing this game REALLY reminds me of is Higurashi. In many ways, it feels almost like a retread of Higurashi. But that makes sense, they’re both written by the same person. This game was written by Ryukishi07, a guy I don’t know a lot about, but I respect a lot because his name is a reference to Final Fantasy V, and like respects like.

In Silent HILF you play as Hinako, a Japanese school girl in 1960s Japan. She has an argument with her family one day and goes to spend time with her friends, when suddenly Horrible Shit starts happening around town. One of her friends dies, monsters come, a fog monster is killing everything, Shits Bad. Hinako is an ordinary enough girl, though she’s always been a bit of a tomboy and prefers playing with boys. She always strained against her alcoholic father for being a failure of a woman, though her sister always protected her…. until she left to get married.

This game is not subtle about its themes. That’s not a bad thing. I will once again point to how we saw a character abort god earlier in this series. I have no problems with that. And the things its saying ARE good… but I dunno. It’s hard for me to explain, but I don’t think it hits as hard as it, or I, want it to hit. Yes, women are forced by incompetent and failed societies to place all the burden on themselves, that does suck. What’re we gonna do about it?

There is ONE thing about the story, though, that kinda floored me. So, I looked at a lot of reviews of this game before I got it, and they all said the same thing. 9/10, very good, and it also has a scene in it that’s possibly the most haunting, upsetting thing in any Silent Hill game, or even horror game, so heed the content warnings. I think it’s more a 7/10, but that warning? They uh, they were not kidding. That shit was upsetting. It’s not what I expected (I expected sexual assault, which thankfully is NOT a thing in this game, except for the one monster inspired by it), but it really blew my mind. I liked it, it was good.

I do like the monster designs. Silent Hill has always had good monster design that fit in with the themes of the game, and this is no exception. You’ve got creepy dolls, women who are beaten and abused and lash out at those they CAN lash out at, horrifying sex predator monsters, big pregnant monsters who’s only job is to breed, school children scarecrows who watch and strike when you don’t expect it, it’s good.

The story, vibes, and themes are all fine, but didn’t blow me away. The gameplay, on the otherhand, was outright annoying. Silent Hill combat has never been good. Ever. And that’s fine. I don’t mind that. The issue is, uh, this game has the combat be MUCH more important. There’s no guns or anything, what the fuck do you expect, this is Japan, not America. Instead, Hinako uses exclusively melee weapons, and it IS cool to play this school girl beating the shit out of monsters with axes and naginata.

But the combat is very clunky and annoying, and filled with required counter attacks, and I never liked counter attack combat. The first 70% of the game was rather good, because I could fight when I felt I needed to, but avoid combat a lot of the time, like all the other Silent Hill games, and only really have to engage 25% of the time, or for bosses. But then uh… the last 30% of the game is Not like that. The last 30% of the game FORCES you into a lot of combat. You have a LOT of combat arenas in a row, and nothing else. No real exploration. No puzzle solving. JUST combat arenas. All the enemies are damage sponges, ESPECIALLY the fucking breeder enemies. AND the game has a weapon durability mechanic. Yes. That DOES suck, I agree!!!

It frankly ruined my enjoyment of the game. It doesn’t help the game runs like shit on my computer, and I have a new, strong computer. I was just happy for it to be over by the end, I could barely enjoy the ending. And then I learned another rough thing about the game. It has like, 5 endings. 1 bad, 2 neutral, 1 good, and a UFO ending. You can ONLY get the bad ending on your first playthrough. Then you need to get both neutrals on New Game plus, then fiiiinally you can get the good ending. So you need to play this game four times to get the best ending.

No thanks. It wasn’t long, or anything. It took me 11 hours. But I can’t be assed to play again.

Do I recommend Silent Hill f? I do. But not for 70 dollars, and ESPECIALLY not for the 80 dollars I paid for it for the special edition. Though the art book IS nice. For 40 dollars, this is a good deal. But I know what world we live in now, so like THAT’LL ever happen.

So, is it a return for Silent Hill? I’m not certain. It’s a step in the right direction, at the very least. But maybe if you’re looking for a modern Silent Hill game that’s as mindblowing as the classics in the series, just play SIGNALIS or Sorry, We’re Closed.