Reviewer Dani can’t stop thinking about Silent Hill f. Despite its great appeal, she can’t forgive the game for a few major flaws. And these could also bitterly disappoint other Silent Hill fans.
With every hour I spend testing Silent Hill f, the long-awaited survival horror game divides me more and more into two parts.
One half of me is in love with the fantastic setting, the great staging, and the stunning soundscape. I can’t stop thinking about the game and am already planning my third playthrough.
The other half of me is disappointed because Silent Hill f leaves a lot of potential untapped, makes dull design decisions, and commits two major mistakes that I just can’t get over.
Silent Hill f sends me on a wild roller coaster ride that leaves my emotions in a sweat-inducing tangle. So the answer to the question you’re all dying to know is much more complicated than you might think: “Is it a good Silent Hill game?” Let me take you on a sensory journey so you can piece together the answer for yourself.
A feast for the eyes with a few minor drawbacks
For the first time, the 26-year-old series turns its back on the small US town of Silent Hill and takes me to Japan instead. And the developers get a lot out of the new setting.
Silent Hill f is a beautiful game that combines horror and beauty to create a sophisticated blend that feels otherworldly, dreamlike, and eerie all at once.
After schoolgirl Hinako argues with her father and flees to her friends, the village of Ebisugaoka is engulfed in thick fog and overrun by monsters. I sneak through the narrow alleys of the village, solve puzzles in a foggy rice field, seek refuge in an abandoned school, and repeatedly wake up in an alternate dream world.
Silent Hill f presents me with many different settings – sometimes I’m in buildings, sometimes in the open air, but the game remains linear throughout.
Here and there, I can explore a few optional areas – but Ebisugaoka is by no means a labyrinth in which I could get lost.
When the fog descends on the beautiful Japanese village, I immediately feel like I’m back in Silent Hill. When beautiful, bright red flowers spread like an unstoppable plague and gradually take over the village, I can’t help but marvel at their elegance and splendor. The horror in this small Japanese town is not always obvious and sometimes hides in the surreal beauty and small details that transform a normal environment into a strange twilight world. This unusual combination captivates me from the very first second.
The only slight damper on my enthusiasm is the technology: even on our high-end test system with an RTX 5080 and AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, there were minor stutters throughout the game during exploration, combat, and cutscenes, which detract from the overall impression. For this reason, I’m deducting one point from the rating for performance.
Not an easy digestible meal – with an extremely bitter aftertaste
I don’t want to reveal any details about the story, because piecing it together is a fundamental part of the Silent Hill f gaming experience. It’s primarily about Hinako, who is torn between her parents’ expectations and her own desires when a strange fog descends on the city.
Silent Hill f throws me straight into a web of mysteries, psychological images, and cryptic snippets of information, and I’m happy to get caught up in it. It deals with Japanese culture and the image of women in the 1960s. It’s about family expectations and obligations. Bullying at school and friendships. Religion and popular beliefs.
The wildest theories are already dancing around in my head. I begin to mistrust Hinako’s friends, weighing their every word. Silent Hill gradually throws me into even deeper abysses that make my jaw drop.
At its best, this horror game gives me goosebumps over and over again. Disturbing situations alternate with eerie staging that makes my stomach tie itself in knots.
I would love to draw a line under it here and tell you that Silent Hill f gets everything right in its story…
… but then it makes two big mistakes that put my love for the game to the test. I won’t reveal any details about the story, but I do need to talk about moments that could spoil the surprise for you. So if you don’t want any information about the gameplay and the ending, skip the next two sections in the spoiler box.
[[1st mistake: An unfortunate metaphor
About halfway through the game, I witness an important change that raises many exciting questions from a story perspective and opens up the potential for numerous gameplay possibilities. To reinforce the metaphor, this change also spills over into the gameplay.
I think the idea of linking story and gameplay is great…
… but this endeavor fails completely due to the technical implementation. Within minutes, all the tension that Silent Hill f has built up so well up to this point is shattered. The game mechanics turn the horror game into a run-of-the-mill action orgy that doesn’t fit the tone of the game at all.
This could have been solved in a much more elegant and subtle way, which would have had a thousand times greater impact. As it is, it just feels like a huge foreign body that I can’t ignore until the end and which, for me, becomes a real turn-off.
2nd mistake: Take two!
Silent Hill f offers a total of five different endings. On the first playthrough, all players see the same finale. Only in New Game Plus are there opportunities to unlock the remaining endings. So far, so familiar.
On my second playthrough in New Game Plus, a significant part of the story actually changes. I get to see completely different dialogues and new or slightly modified cutscenes, and I can delve deeper into the story thanks to new documents.
Suddenly, I experience a completely new interpretation of events that change the story so much in places that the second run feels like a new game. New Game Plus cleverly intertwines with the first playthrough and motivates you to engage with the game even more…
…but it also leaves a bitter aftertaste.
Because at this point, at the latest, it becomes clear to me: if you want to understand the story of Silent Hill f even a little bit, you have to finish the game at least twice.
The first ending cannot stand on its own, feels unsatisfactory, and seems more like a teaser for NG+ than a complete story.
Silent Hill f raises so many different themes: family, friends, role models, folklore, illness, and so on. None of these are brought together or explained.
I’m not talking about having to fill in a few gaps here and there yourself, as in the Silent Hill 2 remake, for example. No, I miss the common thread, and it feels like I’m missing a huge chunk of the game. And I can only find it by playing through the game a second time.
A combat system to turn your nose up at
The new action-oriented combat system caused a lot of discussion in the run-up to the release. After two playthroughs, I can give you the all-clear: Silent Hill f is not a Souls-like game. The combat system has perfectly normal game mechanics with a few gimmicks that may be new to Silent Hill games, but have been seen a thousand times in other action games.
I attack with light or heavy attacks, dodge enemy attacks, parry at the right moment…
… I have to watch my stamina consumption and also keep an eye on my sanity when I activate focus mode. My special attack can stun enemies – a breather! – My melee weapons don’t last forever and I have to repair them, I can upgrade my stats, Omamori lucky charms give me small buffs, there are light and heavy weapons…
As you can see, Silent Hill f almost overwhelms me with tutorials on the combat and level system. It feels bloated and out of place – and it’s not even particularly well implemented.
There is hardly any hit feedback. Hinako takes strange breaks between all her actions, which drive me crazy. The hitboxes of the enemies are all over the place. Targeting only seems to work on odd calendar days.
And I’ve given up counting how many times I’ve smashed my baseball bat against a wall. The combat system and the narrow corridors just don’t mix.
The limited durability of the weapons adds neither tactical depth nor excitement to the game; it’s just annoying. At least on the first two difficulty levels, there are always enough weapons or repair kits lying around.
Speaking of difficulty: in story mode, which Konami recommends as the “classic Silent Hill experience,” the fights feel very easy, with a few exceptions. The bosses in particular go down faster than I can think “Pyramidhead.”
The “hard” mode, i.e., the second difficulty level, is more reminiscent of a normal difficulty level, as we know it from the Silent Hill 2 remake, for example. Here, however, the game becomes frustrating towards the end because the combat system remains fiddly and the ever-increasing waves of enemies make it a torture. The boss fights also drag on too long thanks to the excessive health bar. The perfect gaming experience would therefore lie somewhere between the two modes.
Goosebumps you can hear
If I haven’t scared you off yet, be sure to play Silent Hill f with headphones! Because the sound design is really – pardon my casual language – absolutely awesome!
Intense background music and oppressive silence alternate skillfully. As I sneak through the supposedly deserted corridors of the school, I flinch at the sound of stomping footsteps. I turn around in panic at the rustling of leaves in the forest. My stomach tightens when I hear a rumbling noise and don’t know where it’s coming from.
The highlight, however, are the magnificent pieces created by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka. Traditional Japanese instruments and melodies meet dissonant tone sequences, distortions, and series-typical creaking that sounds like someone is playing on old building pipes.
Yamaoka creates an eerie cloud of sound that caresses my ears but at the same time sends a shiver down my spine. And above it all hangs a hypnotic melancholy that draws me deeper and deeper into this unique atmosphere.
…
What? No objections at all?
Nope. The soundscape is top notch. We absolutely agree on that…
…
Can I play it in German?
Silent Hill f has English and Japanese voiceovers. Both are good, but I highly recommend the Japanese one because it sounds and feels a lot more authentic.
Of course, you can select a German translation and have all the text and subtitles displayed in German. There is no German voice acting.
So does it all feel like Silent Hill or not?
Yes…
No.
Now let me finish!
In its best moments, yes.
Silent Hill f does a lot of things right. The masterful interplay of sound, visuals, and staging is dripping with Silent Hill flair. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up when the camera plays with perspective in cutscenes and reveals things happening behind Hinako’s back. When Hinako’s friends suddenly say strange things during a normal conversation.
The horror game knows how to throw out a mystery to capture me as a player and keep me hooked.
But then there are all those moments that snap me out of this trance. The clunky combat system puts the focus on action, which in the long run distracts too much from the horror and the initial tension. Especially towards the end, Silent Hill f no longer feels like survival horror.
And then there are the two design decisions I mentioned earlier that I just can’t forgive the game for. Even the story, which is actually quite exciting, culminates in endings that reach the level of kitschiness of a “ride into the sunset” and unfold in a way that I would not have expected from a Silent Hill game. Many of the resolutions are so clumsy that they leave me disappointed. The build-up to the mystery is so much stronger than the actual explanation behind it – and I wish I hadn’t read some of the diaries and was still in the dark.
The rancid and rusty otherworld from the previous games made me feel very uncomfortable and gave me the feeling that I would catch an infection if I looked at the oxidized steel walls one too many times. In comparison, the alternative world in Silent Hill f seems very sterile and leaves me missing that certain something.
“So is Silent Hill f a good Silent Hill?” By now, you should realize how difficult it is to answer this question. The horror game is a classic case of “It’s great, but…”
For every positive and outstanding experience I had…
… is followed by something that bothers me, ruins the mood, or makes me feel like I’m being taken for a ride as a player.
Despite everything, I had a good time with the survival horror game and will definitely give it a third try to delve deeper into the story and its secrets. Silent Hill f is a good horror game with lots of great ideas, terrific sound, and fantastic staging, …
… but in the end, it still can’t keep up with its exceptional predecessors because it puts too many obstacles in its own way.
Editor’s conclusion
Silent Hill f doesn’t have it easy. It’s the first main game in the series in 13 years. The first main game in the series since Kojima’s infamous P.T. was scrapped. For the first time, the series is set in Japan. The pressure on the developers and the expectations of the fans are enormous.
When colleagues asked me in recent days what I thought of Silent Hill f, my right eye started to twitch. Because I simply can’t sum up this gaming experience in two sentences. The horror game makes so many mistakes. It takes paths that simply don’t suit my taste or disappoint me. The longer I think about it, the more faux pas and technical errors I notice. And yet it still affects me. I just can’t get away from Silent Hill f. Normally, I play games through once and watch alternative endings on YouTube. But for the first time, I really want to unlock every ending myself and experience the changes in NG+.
Silent Hill f is not a classic Silent Hill experience. It doesn’t even come close to the best spin-offs in the series. But it’s a special experience that, in its best moments, feels like a return to the foggy US town. It may not go down in history as the best Silent Hill game, but it will definitely remain in my memory for a long time to come – despite its undeniable rough edges.
Rarely have I been so glad that I don’t have to give a game a score. Rarely in recent years has a game captivated and enthralled me so much, only to frustrate me to the max the next moment.
Silent Hill f has an incredibly exciting story, scores points with truly creative camera work, and arguably the best sound design I’ve heard in recent years.
But the game also suffers from a terrible combat system, uneven pacing, and questionable design decisions. Why is there no mention anywhere in the game of how important a second playthrough is? With such an important New Game Plus, there simply has to be a hint about it.
Despite all its problems, I keep coming back to it. This Silent Hill just won’t let me go. Because even though Silent Hill f is awful in its worst moments, it is masterful in its best.
