Silent Hill f Stumbles, but Offers a Haunting Look at the Horrors of Tradition
The hill is alive with startled screams and grumbled frustrations
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Silent Hill f is as much a Silent Hill game as any entry in the core franchise. Its heavy themes, horrifyingly beautiful aesthetics, and haunting sound design reek of Konami’s survival horror series. Though it may separate itself from the titular town by thousands of miles, and 1960s Ebisugaoka looks nothing like the foggy New England retreat, fans of the franchise should still feel at home.
As is typical in a Silent Hill game, the human condition is under the microscope. Known for its unique approach to exploring love, loss, and grief, the franchise welcomes Silent Hill f with open arms as it torments our heroine, Hinako Shimizo, with monstrosities molded by her very experiences. It’s always where Siletn Hill teeters into a very uncomfortable territory, as it uses enemy design to tell part of the protagonist’s story, be it the Nurses of Silent Hill 2 that represent James’s guilt for suffocating his wife, or Hinako’s own demons depicting the perverted old men and abusive father she’s been a victim of.
Hinako’s journey takes her between two realms: The Real World and the Otherworld, known here as the Dark Shrine. Both work together to see Hinako’s literal nightmare come to life, as the independent young girl faces the realities of growing up in a traditional culture where women live life not of their own accord. NeoBards Entertainment succeeds in capturing the perils of being a young Japanese woman, as we watch Hinako’s childhood friendships wither away as she faces the less-than-desirable life path expected of her.
Hinako’s journey is brutal and uncomfortable, and the world is disgusting and weirdly alluring, but underneath all of that is a wildly repetitive experience that suffers from its lack of variety in the second act.
A Well-Rounded Silent Hill with Significant Late-Game Flaws
Though Silent Hill f introduces some new concepts, such as “selling” items for Favor used to upgrade our heroine, many things feel familiar. Combat is slow and clunky, exploration and item management are key for survival, and running away is often the best option. These are all pretty much staples of the franchise, though Silent Hill f makes a few tweaks with a serviceable dodge/parry mechanic and a return to breakable weapons that first appeared in Silent Hill 4.
Despite her small frame, Hinako is a formidable fighter. Though she struggles to put any weight behind her variety of melee weapons, which range from more agile metal pipes to heavy-hitting sledgehammers, her speed and reflexes are her greatest assets. The game’s dodge/parry may feel out of place for Silent Hill purists, but without it, Hinako would struggle against her agile foe. Timing a dodge and the reactive parry is crucial to survival. That is, if you play the game like I did, thinking Hinako is secretly a tank meant to take enemies head-on.
I, admittedly, approached Silent Hill f poorly on my first run through. I met every enemy head-on, and while that was fine for the early game, I realized the error of my ways as the claustrophobic streets of Ebisugaoka sank further into madness. Careful item management is the only sane way to survive Hinako’s horror, else you’ll be restarting segments quite often, trying to find the sweet sauce and spot of luck to make it through more intense, enemy-laden areas. This includes preserving weapons.
Repair kits can fix degraded durability, but they’re a rarity throughout the game. Silent Hill f sets players up with a false sense of security by being fairly generous with items in the beginning. By the midway point, that generosity erodes, and careless players will find themselves with minimal or no aid when needed most.
Along with weapon and, of course, health management, players need to watch Hinoko’s Sanity and Stamina. The former is a two-fold mechanic, as it’s consumed for some abilities (like a charged attack) and chipped away by enemies and some environmental effects. When the Sanity bar depletes, Hinako’s health gradually drops. Stamina is crucial for attacks, dodging, and running. While all three can be upgraded at scattered Hokora shrines (this game’s save points), by the game’s end, it’s a fool’s errand to try to balance sinking the very limited resources into each of them, as upgrades require Faith and Ema tablets scattered throughout Ebisugaoka.
You’ll want to mind Hinako’s stamina, even if you take the stealthy approach. In fact, in its final moments, the game punishes those who don’t nourish Stamina well. Stockpiling items is part of the survival experience, but a big part of it lies in the Onamori. New to the series, Onamori alter Hinoko’s stats or tweak her abilities, allowing players to structure builds that may favor stamina or turn Hinoko into a formidable fighter.
It all comes together well, creating an engaging experience that should have you thinking carefully about your approach to helping Hinako survive her nightmare. Later acts do play with gameplay mechanics more, as the Dark Shrine follows our lead’s transformation from an innocent young girl into a bride alienated from her former life. When she submits to her future, a whole new play style emerges, but to avoid too many spoilers, I’ll just say it favors action over the stealthy approach of the Real World.
Silent Hill f does fairly well to create a cohesive and engaging experience, but the approach grows tiresome deeper into Hinako’s journey. From the enemies you encounter to the loops you navigate, NeoBards seemed to struggle with continuing to flesh out the player experience, and the shift in the Dark Shrine can feel like a desperate attempt at waking the player up from a rinse-and-repeat daze. At one point, you face off against the same grotesque mini-boss three or four times in a row, and that’s already after spending much of the game evading or smacking around the same four or five monsters. The developer’s ingenuity seemed at its height in the early game, as evidenced in segments like the unsettling field of maimed scarecrows.
Typically, repetition can be easy to overlook when reflecting on the full experience, but there’s a quirk about Silent Hill f that puts its late-game tedium in the spotlight.
A Bold Approach to Silent Hill’s Multiple Endings
The problem with repetition is in how NeoBards handles the series’ typical multiple endings. Whereas securing the True Good ending was possible during the first playthrough in earlier entries, every player gets the same incomplete conclusion when they first roll credits on Silent Hill f. Players, at minimum, need to replay the game three times, obtaining two of the five other endings, to see Hinako’s actual fate.
NeoBards was careful not to make each playthrough identical, as there are shifts in the narrative and new areas to explore, but New Game+ still largely repeats the first run, and gameplay mechanics and enemy type don’t really change at all. By the end of my second playthrough, I was feeling very fatigued and still unsatisfied with how things turned out for Hinako. For a character I’ve grown to admire and feel responsible for, it felt like punishment that I still needed to put her through hell two more times to give her the ending she deserves.
Silent Hill f’s themes don’t make subsequent runs any easier to swallow. Like the rest of the series, Hinako’s journey is heavy, dark, and depressing, and though I appreciate a good, dreary, dramatic story, I felt like I, too, was running a gauntlet of torment that I knew wasn’t going to give me the ending I wanted.
A Quick Tip on Playing Silent Hill f
While much of the English dubbing is well done, I found the original audio best captured the emotional overtones and better served the game’s writing. In the English dub, some of the dialogue does a disservice to NeoBards’ successful attempt at crafting characters that are easy to empathize with and root for