Jason DittonHow does one start a review on a Silent Hill title after all of this time? Anyone and everyone that’s been familiar with this franchise for a given length of time is aware of the series many difficulties over the decades. Silent Hill has had a fairly rough time for roughly 21 years now.
That figure is give or take, depending on one’s opinion of Silent Hill 4: The Room (I liked it enough, personally, although I can’t reasonably call it good), the Silent Hill 1 reimagining that was Shattered Memories (I liked it considerably, was probably my favorite entry in the series of the last two decades until extremely recently), and the not an actual and will never be an actual game that was P.T. I’m not a huge fan of the latter, or even like it personally, but that hasn’t been relevant for a good while now.
That, however was then, and this is now, and this is the first full-length original Silent Hill title in 13 years. How do NeoBards Entertainment, a studio who previously made and released Resident Evil: Resistance, RE: Verse, and the Mega Man Battle Network: Legacy Collections, in collaboration with noted visual novel writer Ryukishi07 and Kera, both of whom I’ve discussed in previous articles leading up to this review, do in making this latest addition to the series? Let’s, once again, take a walk, shall we? Keep close this time, though you never know what lurks within the fog, and you don’t want to be out here by yourself. All pictures will be from in the first few hours of my first playthrough, and this review will be as spoiler free as possible.
Watch The Flower Patch- Ah… Nevermind…
Silent Hill f starts in first person, as our heroine, Shimizu Hinako, stares at a doll, which you will grow increasingly familiar with as the game continues, and speaks with her older sister Junko, before it jumps to Hinako some years later, as she considers the memory, and Junko, although we don’t see her face, steps up onto the residence… steps… and they talk for a bit longer. Hinako then ties a bell to Junko’s sash, and Junko hugs her sister.
The title looms afterwards and an immensely more uncomfortable situation immediately unfurls. Whereas our heroine, evidentially had a good relationship with her sister, she clearly is in the middle of a situation with her father and mother. The relationship is immediately set-up here, and, with this being a Silent Hill title, her interpersonal relationships will inform a lot of what’s going on here. However, it doesn’t stay here, in the middle of her father yelling at her, for too long, as Hinako quickly leaves her residence in the middle of the fight to go and see her friends in town. The atmosphere is instantaneously set the instant she steps outside, and grows as Akira Yamaoka, one of the three best composers in video game history, gets to work on the soundtrack immediately, as always.
Be Quiet And Listen. It Might Save Your Life.
There’s the intro, and now the game truly starts. What does one do from here? It’s Silent Hill. Not to get ahead of my score, and final opinion of this game, but it’s a good Silent Hill. Walk around, take in what the NeoBards team has done, here. Ebisugaoka, the small 1960s Japanese town that f takes place in, is a dark wonder of terror. The sound design is tense, and absolutely perfect, albeit certain sounds can get a tad frustrating to hear. Mind you, those frustrations come from situation when you’re like me, and dumb enough to not pick up on what a puzzle wants you to do, so the tension has to be ‘broken’ by something in the darkness heading your way.
You tend to not stay in a specific area for particularly long, shifting between the “main” town, and an area called the Dark Shrine in turn at good paces. And, this may sound strange to people that don’t actually like being scared, but Ebisugaoka is genuinely lovely in it’s own way. You want to explore- when you have the chance-, you want to see what it has in store for you next. You also don’t want to see what it has for you next, but I mean that in the best way possible. Silent Hill f‘s monster design, by the aforementioned Kera, is as terrifying as the town is quietly, and occasionally very much not quietly, horrifying.
Don’t Run, Weave, You Can’t Help Yourself If You’re Tired
The gameplay itself is perfectly good. Especially for a Silent Hill title. The combat’s never really been the point of the series, despite certain titles that I do not wish to remember in what’s intended to be a positive review attempts to the contrary. However, it’s actually not bad, all things considered. Hinako is an athletic young woman, she can move, fight, swing what weapons she finds quite effectively. There are, admittedly, some unexpected weapons especially later on, and weapon durability is never really something you want to see in a game, but it makes sense here. Otherworldly threats, and she is swinging as hard as she possibly can in the situations where she has to fight.
The puzzles vary, obviously, depending on the puzzle difficulty. As always, you can select difficulty for both the combat sequences and the puzzles, and the harder difficulties make some genuinely quite interesting puzzles, with even the hardest puzzle difficulty, Lost in The Fog, largely being perfectly reasonable as long as you pay attention to your journal. There is one, relatively early on, that is considerably more frustrating than some much later on in the game, but I’m more than willing to blame that on me being dense and misreading how the puzzle was meant to be solved. I’ve never fully trusted scarecrows, either, so the situation there made me rather more tense than usual.
Keep Up, Keep up, We’re Almost There!
So, all that being said. What do I think of Silent Hill f? …Hmm? What about the story? The thing that’s the backbone of all of the good Silent Hill games? How does it stack up to the best of the series? That is a complicated question, because I am the exact wrong sort of person to take lessons from the game. I’ve been lucky enough to not have to deal with the situation Hinako, or anyone in her time period had to deal with. I’ve especially been lucky to not have the sort of relationships or problems the poor young woman had and has to deal with.
It’s affecting, the character work, especially amongst her, her friends, and the mysterious Fox Mask are all written well, especially Hinako and the just mentioned Fox Mask. I’m just not sure I’m qualified to comment on how appropriately the story handles everything she goes through. What I do know, is that the story is fantastic, I’m just not sure I’m picking up the intended lessons, because I’ve not been anywhere close to her shoes, and can’t be sure I’m not misunderstanding intent here. Play it for yourself to see, all I can say.
I had waited for so long for a new Silent Hill title. I did not trust Konami’s decision making ahead of it, and was suspicious of it even after seeing the writer, composer, and artists that were attached to this release. I had hope for this, because of the talent attached, but I’m a Silent Hill fan, and I’d been burned for years. I did not think this would be good. I’d hoped it would be, as always do, but I did not have any expectations it would be. Konami and NeoBards Entertainment proved my cynicism wrong here, and I am immensely grateful that they did.
Do I recommend Silent Hill f if you like horror, the Silent Hill series in general, and good games? For the love of God yes, I do. I may not be the right audience, but I do know that, and I freely admit this might be recency bias and I’ll have to come back to this question at the end of the year when it’s GOTY time, that this is currently tied with Silent Hill 3 as my favorite game in the series. It’s terrifying, you want to see what happens next, and, this is somewhat unusual for a horror title, you want to play it again immediately afterwards, because there are unanswered questions on a first playthrough that do in fact get answered on further returns. I genuinely love this game and cannot recommend it enough, especially ahead of October and horror month.