Looking for a comprehensive Silent Hill F Review? We’ve got you covered! Enter into a Silent Hill like never before, set in a remote Japanese village in the mountains, a mysterious fog rolls in, bringing with it a nightmare. Here is our Silent Hill F Review.
Developed by NeoBards Entertainment and published by Konami, Silent Hill F is only the second currently playable game in the series to utilise the power of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 to power a new world of terror. Although set in a fictional place in Japan, Ebisugaoka has all the traits that empower the Silent Hill name, and is a thrilling take on the franchise’s newest instalment.
STORY
The story takes place in the town of Ebisugaoka in the mountains of Japan. Starting the game, the player takes control of Hinako, who somewhat seems an outsider to the village. Conveniently, the name Ebisugaoka, converted from the Japanese Kanji, could be interpreted (loosely, we might add) as Silent Hill. In Japanese, Ebisu is the god of wealth and prosperity, and Gaoka can translate to slope or hill. While Ebisu clearly doesn’t translate to Silent directly, it can be very loosely translated to Silent (this is not something we are going to explain; it’s the principle of the matter). Chinmoku is the Japanese word for Silent.
While starting the game, it feels rather unique as it has fast and slow-paced elements, which are confusing. This is because the slow-paced parts are sometimes those of combat, while the fast parts are exploration. Most of these times, the fast-paced parts are during Combat, and the slow parts are Exploration.
While the game takes place in Ebisugaoka, there is another location where you will play. This will be in a more mind state, at least this is the way we see it. The game, at points, will make Hinako unconscious, which is where she will go into this other place, and have a guide who wears an Inari Mask (a type of fox, so technically it would be a Kitsune). The Inari, not just in the game, is a Kami (god), the easiest way to think of it is that the Inari is the Kami of Prosperity among things.
Ignoring what we have addressed, the story follows Hinako as she battles her own demons. Everything that happens in the game is a reflection of both sides of the Character, who is Hinako. The world of Ebisugaoka, which is the “Real” world, is Hinako’s defiance to the situation she is in, while the Shrine is her “Mind” world and represents her acceptance.
While the story seems to revolve around things which seem true, like Family, Friendship, and Bonds, it’s not. The true motivation of the story is about marriage, and the fact that Hinako doesn’t want to go through with it, or that she does, it depends on the ending.
Mechanics, Graphics, & Technical things
Mechanically, Silent Hill F is a Horror game through and through; it plays as you might expect, with a few exceptions. Typically, your character in a Silent Hill game would be armed with a firearm; Silent Hill: F breaks this by having a younger character than most SH games. While mechanically the game treats you to a thrilling adventure through a rural Japanese village, it does let you down locomotion-wise.
While this might seem like picking fault with a fantastic game, the Locomotion feels forced and uncharacteristically horror. If we take a look at the basic movement, we see that the “heart” of the Character, although she presents a scared person when in a cutscene, in gameplay, she only shows a strong and confident person.
Where this is valued as the Locomotion, it doesn’t fit a horror game. As Capcom stated about the protagonist of Resident Evil 9, “Leon Kennedy is a bad match“; likewise, in this situation, Hinako feels like a bad match. This isn’t as apparent when controlling her and moving through the game in a combat scenario. The reason for this is that in a horror game, you play to be scared, and your character would be in the same situation. While she jumps when grappled by enemies or flinches when attacked, you would want her to be a more concerned character, especially about the situation.
One of the biggest issues I have with the Mechanic might be the Locomotion system, but a painfully obvious one is the Combat. The reason this is highlighted is for both good and bad reasons. The good is that weapons will take conditional damage, which wears them down; the bad is that they break. If you are unlucky enough not to have another weapon, you are powerless to do anything but run away. While this sounds like you are already defeated in combat, you’re not; just run a certain distance, and you can escape the enemy. On the downside, this will limit what you are able to do. After all, without a way to defend yourself, you can’t really explore too thoroughly because a monster could jump out at you.
Graphically, the game is just as you would expect. Characters look real, and the environment looks like you could step into it and look around the world, although with a heavy fog bank, you might want to try again when you can see the world clearly.
One of the best parts is the environment, which is because of how varied it is. From rural buildings in a near-feudal looking setting, to what feels like a modern town, which was alive and bursting with people moments before the events.
Where the normal look of the town, although limited, looks impressive, when it’s taken over by the “Red Weed” looking life and Red Spider Lilies, it has a pretty unique look in areas, but is still impressive. Keep in mind that most of the world is just covered in fog, meaning it’s more or less unchanged, just covered.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, Silent Hill F is a thrilling, engaging, and at times a terrifying tale. What F does is introduce a new dynamic to the Silent Hill Franchise. Instead of the likes of characters you would normally see in the franchise, iconic monsters like the Nurses (or the equivalent), or Pyramid Head, we have something traditionally Japanese for a game-changing entry to a little American town, which helped shape horror.
While this is a remarkable tale in the Silent Hill history, it is probably the best, at least that I have played. Although this is very subjective since I have only played 3 total entries in the Silent Hill series, F included. There are some factors which would need to be addressed, things like menus and even the sense of horror itself.
Menus:
While playing through the game, the menus are rather interesting. This isn’t just because of how they are presented, but more to do with the content. It is about this point when I have to point out that the Audio is pretty important to the overall experience and controlled through the options setting. Where this isn’t out of the ordinary, it is important to note that I found the game more enjoyable when playing it with Japanese audio. While this is a huge contradiction to my yakuza reviews, such as The Man Who Erased His Name, Silent Hill F is played better in Japanese with subtitles. Getting back to the point, the menus are interesting as they aren’t as packed as other games’ menu systems, but the real reason the menus are highlighted is for 2 reasons. The first is the distribution of the menu’s subjects, and the second is the map.
While the menus are nothing out of the ordinary, they are really rather interesting and easy to navigate, with little for you to actually get caught up on. Essentially, they are short and to the point, nothing like the massive, overwhelming menus of Avatar Frontiers of Pandora or too underdeveloped and lacking menus of an indie title. Enough information is presented to the user that they know what they want and what it will do, and if not, the tooltips are good for explanations. As for the map, like all Silent Hill games, I can think of the map as adaptable and evolving over the course of the game. If a path is not accessible a marker on the map reflects this and shows that you can’t pass that way. Likewise, there are key markers which highlight the passageways or key items. All of these were scribbled onto the map by the protagonist character, although in Silent Hill F’s case, Hinako doesn’t actually draw on the map visually like James Sunderland does in Silent Hill 2.
Sense of Horror:
While I have little fault to pick with the game, I do have a core feeling that I don’t like. What I am referring to is the essence of horror games, and the fact that over the past 20 or so years, we have seen the Survival Horror genre go from a locked or tracking camera to the Third Person. This Third Person is normally close in to the character and gives a closeness and isolated feel, like things will be jumping out at you. Silent Hill F, on the other hand, has a Camera set back further and positions the character slightly off the centre of the screen.
Where this is a normal survival horror game like Dead Space, Resident Evil, or even Fatal Frame, we would have the character on one side of the screen. Instead, it is set up more like Dead Rising, where our character is off-centre and deals with a more wide-based combat. Presumably, the reason for placing the character where they are is because of the lack of ranged combat, giving the player a wider view to see the area they are battling in.
Another difference is the inclusion of a Lock-on system, making attacking easy to do. This isn’t a typical thing, from the Silent Hill games I have played in the past and not many horror games I could think of utilise a Lock-On system like what you would find in a Souls game. This not only makes combat easy to grasp, but lets you keep an eye on the hostile you are confronted with, without having to turn your back to run.
One of the things that I found incredibly irritating to me was, of all things, the flowers. While they are a really nice part of the game and a distraction to the organic growths around the place, the irritation came from more of what they were. The flowers in question are called Red Spider Lily, they are a member of the Amaryllis family of Botanicals and have a rather distinctive depiction even outside of Japanese belief. Known under many names, Lycoris Radiata, Red Spider Lily, Corpse Flower, Equinox Flower, Hurricane Lily, or even Resurrection Lily, they are a troublesome yet beautiful flora. As with all members who hold the Lycoris genetic structure, they are toxic. What is irritating to me is the Japanese lore, known commonly as Higanbana; however, it possesses many more names. The part that I know them for is their connection with Death and the Afterlife. The way the game depicts them is in a way that the town is being taken over by them, and this makes me think. Before picking up Silent Hill F, I hadn’t touched a Silent Hill game in a while, so my memory of lore of the Silent Hill world was murky, meaning that F was a good restart for me. Initially, my feeling for what was happening was that the monsters were the citizens, and Hinako was actually killing them. The encounters with her friends were disjointed, so they were from later in the story, maybe, and the mystery in the environment was in Hiniko’s mind, like the Shrine. This was only added to when you find Hinako’s missing person poster in town. Getting back to the Red Spider Lily, as I said in Lore, they represent a connection to Death and the Afterlife. They are also presented as a Guide for the Departed to guide them to the next life, and for this reason, they are often found near cemeteries. This leads me to think that there is way more going on in the world of Silent Hill F than first meets the eye, with the concepts which are presented within the game of Marriage and then the Spider Lilies, which represent, in a broad sense, death. These are only hammered home by the way that Hiniko is treated; her two female friends, one seems to despise her, while the other calls her a traitor. I might be looking at this way too closely, but there tends to be more to things a lot of the time.
To conclude, the game has hit one of my personal favourites for Lore and location, it’s bursting with interesting things and a story which kept me on the edge of my seat.
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