Silent Hill f Review - A 7/10 game
REVIEWSAUTHOR - 2099 GAMING
2099Gaming
10/3/20255 min read
Silent Hill F is an interesting game. The highs are high and the lows are demoralizing and takes what coulda been a dark horse must play into the dead center of the road. Let’s get to the malarkey.
Gameplay
This game blends survival horror with more modern action elements like watching enemy patterns while dodging combined with a stamina meter and picking your strike at the perfect time. The perfect strike system works very well and can turn the tide in battle when your low on health and use that focus meter to save your life.
The combat feels slow and wonky but that’s by design as your controlling a teenage girl and not a combat veteran or a cop. She’s thrust into a fog filled monster mash and has to figure it out so this style works very well for the character and story. You can upgrade your health, stamina, and a couple other attributes but in addition to your in game points these require a specific item in the world that you have to find while exploring.
Exploration was a mixed bag because u can equip different buffs to help your character but they aren’t found in the world. They are only able to be acquired at save points by trading items for in game points. Exploration would’ve been much better served if you could actually find these things in the world. When you’re exploring you’ll only find health and stamina items along with items to trade but you’ll rarely find the item needed to upgrade attributes making the exploration pretty pointless to me.
I pretty much explored everywhere I could off the beaten path and a lot of areas just didn’t have anything at all. Missed opportunity and puzzling game design. Also the stamina system definitely served no purpose in this game. It was more of a hinderance on all fronts. There are chase missions and u will have to stop and walk while being chased by monsters to regain stamina which spells doom. During the combat it just didn’t fit. The character is already slow and clumsy and now constantly running out of stamina. Never use this in a survival horror game again.
The puzzles were weird in a good way and some of them were pure trial and error often leaving you close to no clues. This gave a true sense of fear and survival as u have to figure it out or face the consequences in some of them.
Story - The Gist of it, no Spoilers
Without spoiling anything Silent Hill F focused on a high school student who resents her parents and has friends that are suspect in every way. The main character Hinako slips in and out of consciousness and travels between reality and darkness. The story is simply immaculate and took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. With themes of parental issues,friends that may or may not be trustworthy,and self harm. It gets dark and it gets gory. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened next and the story writing and the dialogue (i play Japanese games in Japanese voice acting) did not disappoint. Just all around great work.
Graphics and Sound - Horror at its Finest
Amazing graphics and the sound design is next level. I played this on ps5 pro with the 3D audio headset and it was very chilling and unsettling hearing footsteps and various environmental sounds. Horror at its finest.
Maximum Monotony
Now here’s where the game killed all momentum for me. The gameplay loop. More than 3 times I encountered a level where the objective was “locate the crests”. Halfway thru the game it just gets extremely redundant. Doing the same thing over and over and over. Usually in survival horror games we get a mix of locate the key,locate the crests, turn on the power, defeat the boss, do the puzzle etc.
I kid you not I did the same objective back to back to back it seemed. I complete the game in 9 hours and there just wasn’t much variety in the gameplay loop not to mention multiple reused locations which isn’t generally a problem but when combined with repetitive objectives it increases the repetition to a level where halfway thru I pretty much checked out until the story picked back up towards the end of the game with a couple of crazy boss battles.
In a Nutshell
Positives
Amazing sound design
Combat was satisfying and crunchy
Story Is amazing and unsettling
Environments look beautiful
Puzzles were unique and difficult
Negatives
Stamina system was trash
Unrewarding exploration
Unnecessary upgrade system
Repetitive gameplay loop
Locate The Crests my gawd
Final Verdict - 7 out of 10
Silent Hill F is a fun game that takes risks within the survival horror genre. Not all of those risks pay off and some are just a downright head scratcher for this style of game. Konami has something here it just feels like they tried too hard to add modern (I’m not gonna say the phrase souls like) elements to appeal to a popular audience. Definitely a step back from silent hill 2 remake but still a game I think is worth playing when it goes on sale.
One of our goals at SpawnYaard is to provide multiple perspective of the same game from different authors. You can find Spawn's review of Silent Hill f here.