In love with: Silent Hill f

Even before Silent Hill died, many fans of the original 3 games (and The Room) had doubts it can come back. Apart from pleasant surprises like Shattered Memories, that played completely differently anyway, the franchise has turned into crap. One last glimmer of hope was Silent Hills that got cancelled almost at the same time as it got revealed and the dream was dead.

And then, after years of Konami going full pachi-slop, there were serious hints of the series revival that I personally dreaded. When the garbage called Silent Hill: Ascension was dumped onto the world (“I like to make jams!”), it only reinforced my feelings that we will see more crap. Silent Hill: The Short Message was better, but played like Shattered Memories except with extremely heavy handed messaging. Only when Silent Hill 2 remake came out and turned out to be solid, if incredibly safe and forgettable, did it start to feel that maybe the franchise can be revived.

That’s how we get to Silent Hill f which is both the best Silent Hill game with combat since Silent Hill 3 (I admire The Room, but it’s a difficult game to enjoy), but also… not much of a Silent Hill game. It’s weird, but in a very good way.

In general, SHf follows the formula of a Silent Hill game, being a survival horror title with town exploration and separate “dungeons”. It is more railroaded and action heavy than what the original Silent Hill was, but that was true even by the time SH3 came out. The setting is new, as we are now in Japan in the late 1960s, which means no guns for the first time in the series. But then again, of all the classic survival horror franchises, SH was the one most focused on melee since the beginning anyway. Otherwise, you get more familiar genre elements like save points, resources, boss fights and multiple endings.

I will start with the most impressive thing the game has, which is the level of “you have to play it several times” I have not seen outside of visual novels/interactive fiction. The only other action adventure that changes the story and events on replays this much I can think of is NieR: Automata. So if you’ve seen people mention that you must play the game several times to get all of its narrative content – they are not lying, without attempting to get all of the game endings (at least the serious ones, as there is a traditional joke ending too) you will be missing on a lot of the story.

And the story is extremely well written and told here. You see, years before Konami turned it into a sticker and a self-referential joke, the fans of the series mocked how so many sequels (and even games outside of the franchise) desperately tried to copy Silent Hill 2 and its take on psychological horror. The main tool to achieve that was giving a lot of horrible psychological trauma to all characters involved. There was never any nuance to it and the plot always used the simplest most primitive elements to achieve the goal, like an exploitation movie. Silent Hill f has a lot of trauma and narration isn’t entirely reliable, but it does not feel like an example of the trope at all. In fact, this might be the most human, the most emotionally optimistic Silent Hill game of them all… at least, as a whole. You get a lot of characters and all of them have a range of personality aspects and emotions you get to learn and same goes for the main character. And even when things touch on more exploitative tropes, those are used for a reason and with clear intent.

Which does make the game feel very different from what you usually feel from Silent Hill, ignoring the whole “it’s trauma” thing. You see, the original 4 Silent Hill games, despite being very different in a lot of ways, all had a pretty significant focus on the feeling of “otherness”. Of being in a waking dream where you were never quite sure if what you see is what is actually happening. If the other characters are seeing the same things. Three of the four games there had moments of main character waking up and all of them had characters wondering about if they are asleep or even alive. Other characters had a similar mysterious aura around their presence, with the most straightforward character being Douglas in SH3. SHf has the exact same setup and themes, you are constantly hinted at the fact what you’re seeing might not be what is happening, and yet this is never the focus or even a lingering theme of the game. It isn’t really interested in making you or its characters wonder about the reality of their situation, because it is far more interested in the human aspect of the story instead.

The game’s combat also doesn’t feel like an evolution of any previous idea, but rather borrows directly from the From Software combat systems. There’s a stamina bar that will deplete as you attack, dodge or run (the latter only affects stamina when enemies are aware of you). Mistakes can be costly, especially if the enemy performs a grab attack. And the parry/counter system is tied to the heavy attack button, so if you miss the parry window, you’re locked into a slow animation and will definitely get hit. It’s really well handled if you’re playing on Story action difficulty and as you learn how to use resources and the “focus” ability more effectively, the combat flow becomes quite satisfying. Especially if you rebind the keys to have run set to a normal button instead of the left analogue stick click and attacks to face buttons instead of shoulder buttons. I understand that the default bindings are the way they are because of the From Software influences, but this game genuinely functions much better with a more classic hack and slash control scheme.

I could also list other unexpected things like limited inventory, which is not typical for the series. Or the system of upgrades and special perks you can equip, which is entirely new and have not been attempted before. Mention that the soundtrack, as usual composed primarily by Akira Yamaoka, is alright, though far less inventive and exciting as his work for Slitterhead last year. Speak of the overall very nice visuals. The incredibly hit or miss puzzle design, where no matter what difficulty you may get solid puzzles only to be followed up by completely nonsensical puzzles that make zero sense even after you complete them. But what I really need to talk about is the biggest problem of the game.

The difficulty selection was a mistake. The game had three levels of difficulty (separately for puzzles and for action) on launch and action only allowed you to select two at the start: Story and Hard. The difficulties are named appropriately to the point where it almost feels like there was an original/normal difficulty in the game at some point and then it got cut in favor of the hard one and and easy one (the last difficulty that unlocks on replays is basically hard again, but adapted for all of the upgrades you have for NG+). Story mode is mostly a breeze and it completely removes several mechanics. So if you wish to experience mechanics that make resource management more interesting, you also need to play on a difficulty where you die in a couple of hits most of the time. Which often leads to a rather tedious process of playing very carefully and going back to save after every encounter.

A big post-release patch has added a new difficulty, but it’s even easier than the Story, which seems like a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. That said, the same patch also made several of the very long combat sections closer to the end of the game far better paced by removing some enemies and making forced arenas no longer necessary, which was a very good change. Weirdly enough, it even made one section of the game completely skippable during the replays, even though the skipped part has already been improved if you don’t skip it. But if you’ve been replaying the game a lot, this skip can be welcome. Either way, if you’re playing the game for the first time, stick to the Story difficulty for action, as even after the patch “Hard” feels unreasonable for first time experiences.

Silent Hill f is a game that I really liked playing and it’s also somewhat difficult to explain why even if I were to spoil the game. A lot of the joy of this title comes through experiencing it. So, I hope, I’ve at least explained why it’s a very good Silent Hill game that doesn’t really feel like Silent Hill and yet is the most exciting and inventive Silent Hill since The Room. Grab it, play it on Story (puzzles are a bit of a mess, so puzzle difficulty won’t matter that much) and then keep playing it until you are satisfied with the story you’ve learned. It’s worth it.