Silent Hill F Review (PS5)

Find beauty in horror.

Hello, welcome. I just so happened to create this on Halloween and figured, why not talk about a “horror” game and one that just happens to be one of my favorite releases of the year.

Reviving a franchise is never a small feat, especially one as beloved as Silent Hill. 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake served as a way to put the series back on the map, but Silent Hill F is the first brand new installment in this revival, and one that has found itself to be divisive since its release.

Silent Hill F puts you in control of high-school girl Hinako Shimizu, who lives in the small town of Ebisugaoka. Instantly you will notice what is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the game, we’re not in Silent Hill, or America for that matter. The entire game takes place in a small Japanese town which brings the question, is this really a Silent Hill game? Well, yes. But more on that later.

After meeting her friends the town is engulfed in a thick fog, and you’re chased by both a fog monster and red roots on the ground, kicking off the events of the game. The way the story is told in this game is another point of discussion that will probably still be talked about years from now. What little I mentioned is all you get when first booting the game, yes this is one of those “multiple playthroughs” type of games and one where yes, you do have to get every ending to understand it.

While this type of storytelling is mostly seen in Visual Novels, I believe the most comparable titles would be Armored Core 6 (Which I might review one day) and Fate/Samurai Remnant (which has a skip dialogue option that F could’ve used), with each playthrough going through the same events, but getting small bits of dialogue that give the player additional context as to what is actually going on. Keep in mind that majority of these “changes” are very minor for the most part, with the exception of the opening cutscene which completely re-contextualizes the entire game, everything remains relatively the same until you reach a certain point in the story where you’re hit with several flashbacks. All these flashbacks will entirely change depending on the route you’re in, and this is pretty much the only reason it’s required to play this game a whooping 4 times as without the information given here you will be clueless if you were to watch the rest of the endings online. This type of routing is certainly a choice and might scare off some players. Still, if you put the controller down after the first ending, sorry to say but you didn’t actually play Silent Hill F.

If you do decide to stick with the game, you will be rewarded with what I found to be a surprisingly wholesome tale. Definitely not something I expected after playing Silent Hill 2, though I guess 1 also had a happy-ish ending. As with previous installments, the cast of characters is on the short side and I would say they’re all fairly memorable. Hinako’s relationships are a big driving force in the plot, so they stay relevant the entire way despite their lack of screentime.

Audio is one of this game’s strongest points. I would say the game itself is very low on the scary scale, but the sound design more that makes up for it. It keeps the atmosphere tense and you always have a good idea of where the enemies are due to their unique sounds and footsteps. The cast also deliver a great performance and are part of the reason I found the characters good (I played in Japanese, the game is set in Japan, duh.)

How many words have I gone without mentioning the gameplay? Perhaps not enough. Let’s address the elephant in the room. Silent Hill F gameplay, or rather, Silent Hill F combat. At first sight, the game looks and feels fairly familiar to Silent Hill 2 Remake. I had certain issues with that game such as too many enemy encounters and low enemy variety and well, those still carry over here but Silent Hill F also introduces many other problems. The first, and most appalling difference between the two is there is now a stamina bar, oh no. This is the main reason some previews of the game compared it to a souls game but no, it’s nothing like that. Yes, there’s a stamina bar and yes, it’s green but the game plays more like God of War 2018, if it was really clunky and bad. Besides the stamina bar F also introduces another beloved gameplay mechanic, weapon durability, oh no! But only in the real world, in the otherworld (which I failed to mention before but it’s a Silent Hill game of course it’s there.) your weapons last forever and you’re also much stronger. This made it so I dreaded going into encounters in the real world but didn’t mind them in the otherworld, despite the combat being pretty much the same.

It is however a Survival Horror game so running away is a viable strategy a lot of time. Until it isn’t, several times. Yes, someone had the bright idea to introduce mandatory enemy arenas in a Silent Hill game, a game with weapon durability, go figure. This only happens at the very end of the game, but it’s still a real low point and drags the whole experience down. I honestly wouldn’t have minded if it was otherworld Hinako handling things but unfortunately it’s normal Hinako dealing with majority of these rows of enemies. It’s never fun and in higher difficulties it becomes obnoxious. Do yourself a favor and play your first run on Story mode (and if you don’t care about achievements, ALL your runs) don’t let the weird naming fool you, it’s literally normal mode.

All that said, let’s be honest. No Silent Hill game has good gameplay. Despite all of its shortcomings the game is still very much worth playing as long as you can stomach multiple playthroughs. As a veteran Visual Novel player, I was in my element for 30 hours and left with an experience I won’t forget anytime soon.

With this being the first review on the blog, I guess I should explain how scoring goes. I will rate games on a 5 star scale, but the score isn’t everything. At the end I will either give out a Seal of Approval (If I liked the game a lot and recommend it), nothing, or a Seal of Shame (If I find it remarkably bad). This, for me, is the real score.

With that out of the way, I’m happy to report our first game does earn the prestigious Seal of Approval.

SCORE: ****