While last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake was a well-executed modernization of a classic, Silent Hill f from Neobards Entertainment takes a far bolder approach. It plunges players into an entirely new narrative within a distinct, foreign setting, introducing a compelling protagonist who defies the series’ usual lineup of somber, middle-aged men. Furthermore, it bravely swaps firearms for a strictly melee-focused combat system. Though its clumsy and inconsistent pipe-swinging felt more like a chore than an exhilarating fight for survival, Silent Hill f largely succeeds in every other aspect, standing as one of the strongest new entries in the series since the PlayStation 2 era.
Silent Hill f is unique for not featuring the familiar, titular town. Instead, it marks the first mainline entry in the iconic Japanese survival horror series to be set in Japan itself, specifically the fictional 1960s village of Ebisugaoka. This fresh backdrop is rich with meticulously crafted cultural details, making it one of the series’ most captivating environments to explore. From slogging through muddy rice fields to gulping down ramune soda and solving puzzles inspired by local folklore – some of which posed a real challenge for a Western player unfamiliar with the specifics – every element works together to create a powerful sense of place.
For the first time in a long while, we’re given a lead character with significant emotional depth: high school student Hinako Shimizu. As the black sheep of her family, Hinako is tormented by an abusive, alcoholic father and a complicit mother. In true Silent Hill fashion, her deep psychological wounds manifest as terrifying physical threats as her tranquil village transforms into an increasingly sinister landscape. This forces Hinako to become a determined agent of her own destiny, far from a typical damsel in distress. The story masterfully delves into complex themes like gender discrimination, child abuse, and drug dependency, slowly revealing the origins of Hinako’s suffering through discovered letters from friends and frequent encounters with malevolent metaphors.
There’s one particularly grisly moment in here that makes Heavy Rain’s infamous pinky-severing scene seem like little more than a paper cut.
The result is an utterly absorbing nine-hour adventure, expertly paced and full of surprises, including genuinely unsettling body horror and torture that will leave a lasting impression. It all culminates in a profoundly disturbing conclusion, offering plenty to reflect on and a strong incentive to jump into New Game+ to uncover Hinako’s other potential fates across four additional endings.
Soup Foggy Slog
As a thick fog envelops Ebisugaoka, and blood-red flowers and sinewy tendrils begin to choke its abandoned streets, nightmarish creatures emerge to stalk Hinako relentlessly. Some of these horrors feel familiar to Silent Hill veterans, like the mannequin-like dolls that lunge with kitchen knives from blind corners. Yet, there are also inspired new monstrosities, such as the grotesque scarecrows, twisted versions of Hinako’s schoolmates, that shift from frozen contortions to sudden attacks the moment your back is turned. Later, truly repulsive, slack-jawed beasts appear, covered in bulbous growths resembling rotting grapes, giving birth to howling demons to overwhelm you. Silent Hill f clearly embraced the series’ tradition of conjuring the most repulsive creatures imaginable.
My biggest disappointment, however, was that fighting these magnificent monsters wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as admiring their ghastly designs. Combat often felt annoying rather than fun or frightening, and it didn’t seem intended for constant avoidance, at least not after the opening hours. Unlike many prior Silent Hill games, you won’t find a single shotgun or pistol in Silent Hill f. Hinako is limited to carrying up to three breakable melee weapons, such as crowbars and baseball bats, scavenged from her surroundings – a logical choice given the Japanese mountainside village setting compared to the series’ usual American locations.
Consequently, close-quarters combat largely consists of light and heavy attacks, interspersed with dashes and dodges to evade blows. All these actions drain Hinako’s frustratingly limited stamina bar, temporarily preventing further movement or attacks if it’s depleted. A ‘focus’ ability allows for powerful charged hits, easier counters, and even blocks with heavy weapons like a sledgehammer, but this comes at the cost of draining your sanity meter. An empty sanity meter leaves Hinako vulnerable to both physical and debilitating psychological attacks.
Constantly juggling health, stamina, sanity, and weapon durability felt like an excessive burden, especially after Silent Hill 2’s more intuitive, fear-driven gunplay. I never truly found an enjoyable rhythm with Silent Hill f’s stiff and repetitive combat. While buffs and consumables can slightly improve these stats, and a perfect dodge grants a helpful stamina boost, Hinako too often ran out of breath prematurely, forcing awkward retreats while waiting for her to recover. Even with ample stamina, she would frequently pause stubbornly between strikes despite my furious button mashing.
Yet, the restrictive stamina bar wasn’t my primary issue with Silent Hill f’s melee combat. Nor was it my slow, energy-sapping swings often clanging harmlessly against walls while enemies somehow struck me through scenery, or the frustratingly unreliable lock-on targeting against groups in the campaign’s latter half, or even monsters chipping away at my health while I was defenselessly stuck in door-entering animations. No, my biggest frustration with Silent Hill f’s combat is its fundamental lack of reward.
Unlike games such as Dark Souls, where defeating enemies grants XP for character progression, or Resident Evil 4, where vanquished foes often drop vital ammo or healing items, winning a battle in Silent Hill f usually means *likely* losing some health and *definitely* damaging your irritatingly brittle weapons (Hinako cannot fight bare-handed). While last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake also had weapon wear-and-tear (or ammo loss), its intuitive, shotgun-fueled skirmishes offered an immediate, visceral thrill that was its own reward. Since Silent Hill f’s combat felt neither urgent nor exciting, I often chose to simply avoid enemy encounters whenever possible. This was especially true for tougher foes that could absorb numerous overhead swings from a lead pipe before finally falling. (Seriously, if I’m going to pummel something with a big stick eight or nine times, I’d expect it to at least burst into a shower of candy like a piñata!)
My biggest gripe with Silent Hill f’s fighting is that it’s all risk and no reward.
Surprisingly, avoiding combat was quite manageable for much of the game, as most enemies could be sidestepped with the dodge button and many would abandon pursuit the moment you broke line of sight, behaving like newborns who haven’t grasped object permanence. I frequently bypassed fights, sprinting past ghouls to my next objective or ducking into side streets for supplies before dashing back. This passive strategy, exploiting the enemies’ weak AI, couldn’t last forever. The final hours of the story feature increasingly repetitive gauntlet runs where progress is blocked until every creature is eliminated. Yet, during the first half, I often found myself speeding through Ebisugaoka in a way that felt more like a comedy chase than a horror game. This made it difficult for the town’s bleak atmosphere to fully envelop me, despite the genuinely ominous ambient audio, but at least I was having fun instead of feeling frustrated.
Phantasmic Mr. Fox
Throughout Hinako’s journey, the ethereal shrine realm, adorned with Torii gates and lanterns, serves as a sinister yet strangely beautiful contrast to the village’s decaying streets. This otherworld helps mitigate some combat frustrations while gradually empowering Hinako, occasionally making fights almost too easy. Here, Hinako slowly falls under the sway of a morally ambiguous mystery figure in a fox mask, aptly named ‘Fox Mask’ in a very Kojima-esque fashion.
Early in these otherworld sections, Hinako is granted an indestructible dagger and polearm, allowing her to face the same monster mobs from the real world without the worry of weapons breaking mid-fight. By the story’s midpoint, she gains the supernatural ability to siphon soul power from defeated enemies, channeling it into a ‘beast mode’ that makes her temporarily overpowered and invulnerable. While Hinako’s otherworldly evolution makes thematic sense, her newfound, fox-powered combat ability paradoxically undermines survival horror’s core tenets, making me feel less like a vulnerable Red Riding Hood and more like the big bad wolf.
[I felt] less like a vulnerable little red riding hood and more like the big bad wolf.
The shrine realm also highlighted some issues with Silent Hill f’s inventory system. While limited pocket space is a given in survival horror, I yearned for an item storage box at each Shinto shrine save point. This would have allowed me to better manage consumables, keeping those useful in the ornate otherworld separate from those needed in the village. For instance, I hoarded toolkits to repair weapons in Hinako’s hometown, but since they were useless in the shrine realm, I was forced to either discard them or sacrifice precious inventory slots until Hinako returned to the real world. If her earthbound weapons are waiting for her, why not the toolkits too?
Despite these inventory frustrations, Silent Hill f’s otherworld delivers the bulk of its boss fights, offering flashy spectacle on par with melee-focused adventures like Elden Ring or Lies of P, though thankfully less punishing on standard difficulty. These battles showcase truly striking character designs, such as an aggressive apparition that cloaks the arena in red mist, teleporting sneakily, attacking with a spiked flail, and even attempting to gnaw on Hinako’s face in a bear hug. While these encounters still rely on the same sluggish slashing and dodging as other fights, they at least introduce more strategic depth.
More importantly, the shrine realm’s levels are predominantly structured as elaborate and consistently satisfying puzzle boxes, ranging from disorienting switch-based mazes to confoundingly cryptic treasure hunts. In fact, Silent Hill f’s puzzles generally excel at providing cerebral challenges that thoughtfully interrupt combat, while also serving as crucial storytelling devices. Playing on the hard puzzle difficulty, I regularly found myself poring over every scrap of information in Hinako’s journal for clues. There are truly clever sequences, like collecting scattered calendar pages in Hinako’s family home to jump through different time periods, hunting down unsettling ghosts from her past. If future Silent Hill titles lean more into this kind of imaginative puzzle design over aggravating combat, the series will truly be onto something special.
Verdict
Silent Hill f offers a refreshing new Japanese setting and a captivatingly dark narrative, filled with twisted abominations to torment you. All of this left me wishing I felt more engaged with its combat system, which often felt like a tedious chore initially, yet later made me feel too powerful to maintain a consistent sense of fear. While I commend Neobards Entertainment for taking a bold risk, like Hinako’s often-frustrating, fragile lead pipe, the execution of its core gameplay doesn’t quite land perfectly. Nevertheless, its spectacular art direction, inventive puzzles, and compelling lead character mean this latest mainline Silent Hill entry deserves a grade much higher than an ‘F’; it’s probably closer to a ‘B-‘.