Silent Hill f Review: Japanese Gothic

A Return That Looks Elsewhere

Silent Hill f is a game that arrives with the weight of impossible expectation. For those of us who have lived through the golden age of psychological horror, who have walked the decaying streets of Toluca Lake in Silent Hill 2 or felt the suffocating isolation of Amnesia, the idea of a new Silent Hill game is both exciting and suspicious. The core issue is that Silent Hill is not returning us to midwestern America, fog and all, but is instead setting the series in 1960s Japan and folklore, cultural memories, and a new protagonist.

The Atmosphere of 1960s Japan

Setting Silent Hill f in Japan was always going to be contentious. For people who have always thought of Silent Hill with its American Gothic roots, this relocation may seem like a thematic betrayal. However, taken on its own, Ebusigaoka – the fictional village inspired by Gifu Prefecture – doesn't skimp on fully realized nightmare aspects. The roads are claustrophobic, the fog is thick, lingering around the age of so many wooden buildings, and the stench of decay is so strong it feels alive and pervasive. Here, rot extends well beyond being a mere backdrop. And it does so with a Japanese horror styling, which is far more than I expected. And, yes, there is a topped appreciation, especially from players who embrace the Japanese ghost tradition, on cultural imagery of yūrei and cursed blossoms.

Hinako Shimizu and the Internalized Horror

Casting Hinako Shimizu, whose character is a high-school student with a history of domestic abuse, who has social anxiety, and deals with crippling societal pressures, is a decision that places Silent Hill in a primitive and personal context. Silent Hill has always succeeded with the more grotesque on-screen horrors compared with the horrors the characters are going through, and here that tradition is maintained. Every twisted apparition and every creeping fungal bloom is themed to Hinako’s broken and fragile mind. Where other recent horror titles lean on spectacle, Silent Hill f seems to focus more on the artistry of converting private dread into shared hallucination. In this aspect, it retains Silent Hill’s greatest achievement, which is horror as a reflection.

Sound to Decay and Dread

тo even begin to discuss Silent Hill f, one track at a time, feeling terror and dread, one must begin to appreciate sound, and to appreciate sound is to approach the stretch of anguishing bliss described by some of the hardest audiophiles in the space. This is one of the few games where each moment of dread is crafted to be experienced and sustained by sound more so than the other senses, and is precisely how a Silent Hill game is meant to be experienced. The ability to slip into a shred of dissonance, shred after shred, without the sound falling apart is the earmark of professional sound construction, and dread is the lowest, simplest, and most effective of the emotions that can be evoked. This ludonarrative is crafted with such genius to tap into the primal feeling of fear, and the emotion transcends the game. The fear lives in your spine, and resonates in your skull.

Combat: A Critical Weak Point

The most poorly executed part of Silent Hill f is its combat. There are no guns, so players must engage in melee combat that is passably executed but not particularly terrifying. Mechanically, light and heavy strikes, dodges, and the focus enemy slowdown feature work, but the fight itself lacks the psychological danger. Even more detrimental is the design choice of having enemies simply revive after a while with no tangible reward for their defeat. This completely strips combat of narrative and survival value. In other installments of Silent Hill or Resident Evil, deciding to fight or flee had some value. In this title, combat is almost always the wrong choice and thus unnecessary, which means fear is foregone in favor of easier mechanics. The combat is not broken, but it feels out of place in a series that once made the player's timing for every encounter a matter of life or death.

Puzzles That Respect the Player

More than the mechanics, the puzzles are actually well designed. Like any veteran should, I played on Hard difficulty, and the best part is that the puzzles embraced my intelligence instead of making me feel stupid. There are no pointless guess and check, just observation, creativity, and an environment to immerse yourself in. While the story and puzzle difficulty bifurcation is a smart puzzle, they are still the weakest of the three primary puzzles in the game. Most commendable, though, is the addition of the “Lost in the Fog” mode after completion, which rewards a certain type of masochistic challenge that the old school mappers used to define. In this regard, Silent Hill f rewards hard work and skill, which every horror game ought to.

Professional Capability in a Time of Discouragement

An aspect of Silent Hill f that I found pleasant was how stable it was. Much to my confusion, Silent Hill felt phenomenal while in the early access period, and floating fog, textures, and decay in it were optimised to run consistently. To my surprise, none of the crashes, stutters, and broken promises were present, something I was used to from playing games slotted to the fabled Unreal Engine. I entered early access and had mentally prepared myself for the litany of performance issues and dysfunction that comes with most broken games, which Silent Hill f was able to defy. Silent Hill f is, for a lack of a better word, gorgeous in its rendering of fog, texture, and decay, but is also optimized to run consistently.

This is why Silent Hill f deserves a round of applause. Even though these highly touted engines often are slotted next to promises of how the games will run, a single round and forty-five seconds of polish seems to be all that the fabled industry gets. Players are often victims who have to muffle the echoes of other players slotted with these so-called premium early access passes, because they will be able to access the game in November as a not-so-broken chunk of code and function. Here, redeeming the morder is satisfied not as an insult, but as a form of sense, which transforms most public facwa into gratification.

Traditions and New Expectations

What sets Silent Hill f apart from other entries within the series is how it is received by gamers and critics alike. The combat being set in Japan and the melee-focused conflict is what most gamers have commended the game for. The only criticism I can venture for the game is that it is uniquely crafted to be a level above other horror games, but it does not feel like it is a part of the Silent Hill franchise. At certain points, it feels like Silent Hill f is a standalone horror project from Japan, a new series altogether, and that absence of connection to the game is what gamers have to deal with when it comes to innovation.

Final Recommendation

Silent Hill f is neither the series’ rebirth nor the height of psychological horror. Those remain untouched: Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 2, Alien Isolation, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. However, Silent Hill f is a stable, well-crafted, and deeply atmospheric entry in the series. It respects the player's intelligence, rewards careful play, and provides genuine dread through the sound and setting. As a genre, Silent Hill f is wholeheartedly recommended, though it is accompanied by the expectation of Japanese horror aesthetics.  However, it is unlikely to ever recapture the perfections of the classics.