Thoughts on Silent Hill f
 | | The "f" is for female, flowers, or f*** 1960's Japan |
Last month, when I realized Silent Hill: Townfall was going to release in a month (now it's tomorrow), I figured it was time to give the most recent Silent Hill game, Silent Hill f, a try. As for my bonafides, I have been a fan of the franchise for a long time, going all the way back to the original Silent Hill 2. I really enjoy the first three and a half games (the second half of the fourth game is just unplayable for me), and though I didn't hate the Western-produced games that followed, they are definitely inferior to the Japanese ones. Then, after the crushing cancellation of Silent Hills, I pretty much swore off the series for good, only coming back begrudgingly once the remake of Silent Hill 2 got surprisingly decent reviews.
With that wordy start out of the way, let's talk about Silent Hill f, a divisive entry in the series that not only comes out of Japan, but is actually set there, in a 1960's village called Ebisugaoka. You play as Hinako Shimizu, a teenage girl dealing with the pressures of an alcoholic father, a subservient mother, and an annoyingly dramatic friend group. Thankfully, as soon as the friends are introduced, all hell breaks loose as Hinako finds herself in a foggy alternate version of reality, beset by horrifyingly grotesque creatures that defy description.
From a pure gameplay perspective, the majority opinion is that the first half is better than the second half, but personally, I find the opposite to be true. The combat is clunky--which is more true to the original formula than Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2--and you have three different status bars to contend with: health, stamina, and sanity. You only wield handheld weapons like steel pipes and crowbars, which is appropriate for the setting, and of course, you are a teenage girl, so your combat skills are lacking. That said, there are dodge mechanics that strain credibility mixed with the annoying fact that if an enemy grabs you, there is no way to escape. If your difficulty setting is too high, you will die quite a bit in the opening hours of the game.
 | | The boss fights tend to be the most well-balanced part of the combat |
However, once you get used to it, it is fair, albeit frustrating. That makes for a perfect survival horror experience, but not a terribly enjoyable one, at least not until you get enough upgrades for the combat to be more forgiving. The upgrade system is fine, as it goes, with you able to earn a currency called faith that you can exchange for perk items or limited boosts to your status bars. If it weren't for these, I probably wouldn't have finished the game.
Which is a shame, because the story and atmosphere of Silent Hill f are by far its greatest strengths. We're getting into spoilers now, and it was around the halfway point that I started to understand what the game is really about. With the underlying allegory finally clicking in my mind--right around the time Hinako is being forced into a ritual with a man she barely knows to cut off her own arm in exchange for one of his making--the story became profound, albeit nowhere near as emotionally complex as the series' high watermark of Silent Hill 2. Once you understand that this is about Hinako fighting to maintain her youthful innocence in the face of immense societal pressure to submit, even the most obtuse metaphors become clear. There's an additional James Sutherland-esque twist that makes it a parable not just about the social expectations of young women in 1960's Japan, but also about the dangers of traditional Chinese medicine.
The combat definitely sees an uptick in intensity at this point in the story as well, with you now having to face multiple enemies simultaneously, but the combat becomes significantly easier, at least in the Dark Place sequences where you have that overpowered monster arm and its corresponding abilities. I will admit the special power takes way too long to charge, though, and on my first playthrough, I think I only got to use it three times in total, including once in the punishing and endurance-testing final boss battle.
 | | Hinako is a strong addition to the series |
At the half-way mark, everything accelerates towards the climax, and though I found myself slogging through the first half of the game, I completed the second half in one sitting, fully locked-in by both the improved combat and story. Unfortunately, a lot of my enthusiasm was drained by the time I got to the unsatisfying ending. Now look, I understand this is a Silent Hill game and that multiple endings tend to be unlocked only upon a second playthrough, but in this case, not only is the first ending far more incomplete than in any other game in the franchise, but the "true" ending is only unlocked after three complete playthroughs under very specific conditions. In fact, the obligatory joke ending is easier to get than the true one. I'm all for making replayability more enticing, but that's a tad ridiculous.
Granted, subsequent playthroughs under New Game Plus do away with the most frustrating aspects of the early game, and you are free to change the difficulty without losing your progress from the previous playthrough(s). There are also enough subtle changes and additions to the game to justify having to play it again, though I want to once again stress that making a minimum of three playthroughs absolutely mandatory to get the full story is just absurd. I have a life, you know.
But don't get me wrong, the story is absolutely fantastic. I know Silent Hill purists hate that the game isn't set in the titular town and only seems to have a tangential relationship to the greater canon, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. In my mind, Silent Hill f achieves the one thing the series has struggled with for two decades: it feels like Silent Hill. Fans have been starved for quality for too long, and though I wouldn't call Silent Hill f a perfect game, it is a far cry better than those pachinko machines and rushed Western entries. Now then, I did preorder my (physical) copy of Silent Hill: Townfall, so maybe I'll share my thoughts on that game before the next game is due to release.
-e. magill 09/23/2026
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