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f meaning loud or strong

Yes, Silent Hill f was released loudly and with strong early reviews. Critics saying it is successful and bold entry in the horror series generating 86 score in Metacritic. It was no surprise that I wanted to play this game. Silent Hill f is newest entry in the series after last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake. It’s not made by the same studio that made Silent Hill 2 remake, but a developer called NeoBards Entertainment that has made mostly remastered versions of hit games like Resident Evil and Dead Rising.

I played Silent Hill f through using PS5 Pro.

Plot

The story revolves around Hinako and her friends. She’s a Japanese school girl in the 1960s rural Japan. Everything turnes to hell when something odd happens, a weird mist comes to her village, bringing monsters around. Why this all happens? Well, Hinako tries to find her friends first and survive. Soon she finds herself shifting into another world and everything becomes very interesting and very quickly.

The plot was, as in almost every other Silent Hill game, very not-straightforward and many things are left for the players to solve. As Silent Hill f is a psychological horror themed so everything in the game is very strong and vague at the same time. The horror and, especially, body horror was strongly present. And all the mysteries not only why the monsters came to the village, but mysteries between with Hinako and her friends were interesting to see how they unraveled. The whole plot was good because it was sometimes confusing but yet making sense, if that made sense.

Gameplay, controls, audio and visuals

Players control the main character Hinako as she tries to survive and deal with puzzles and monsters. The gameplay is third person style horror ensemble. Hinako has main weapons with her that are only melee weapons, so no guns were presented. I first thought that I really wanted a gun and try to keep the enemies as far away as possible, but with the melee weapons players must go literally face to face with the monsters. That was really nerve-wracking every time I had to deal with them. Players can carry certain amounts of weapons and items with them, such as healing items and other things that can be used at the little altars (save points) to gain things like more health or stamina. Talking about stamina, I think Hinako was ALWAYS out of stamina. Running and hitting enemies will deplete stamina fast. There is also a sanity meter that will drain if enemies attack Hinako with psychological attacks or she uses the focus too much. After sanity meter drains comepletely Hinako’s health meter will take hit. Focus is used when battling enemies, it will make Hinako to be able to do stronger attacks. There are other things Hinako will obtain, but as this is spoiler-free review I will not talk about them. In Silent Hill f weapons will break after certain amount of usage. Hinako can carry more than one melee weapon at time and she can also fix the weapons with tool kits.

Yes, the battling system in Silent Hill f isn’t as straightforward as I thought. Did I like it to be a little bit convoluted? Well, no. Then there were all the enemies that didn’t give anything from killing them. No exp, no items. Nothing. So many times I just ran past them and let them behind to save my precious health, sanity and stamina bars. What comes to the enemies I think they are like sponges at times that take too many hits to kill. Not to mention that the weapons will wear out rather quickly and there were situations where I had no weapon at all so I had to just run away from the monsters. What I want to mention about the enemies, I think there were too many enemies around. It very much killed the mood. Less is more.

The inventory system was rather lacking. There was always more items than Hinako could carry and I had to run to the altar all the time to trade items.

Puzzles were rather easy to solve, especially when there was a notebook with Hinako that players can check different things such as info they’d gathered. There is an option for not just gameplay difficulty, but for the puzzle difficulty as well. But yet there was a few puzzles I had to find help from online.

Controlling Hinako was made good and easy. I didn’t find anything bad to say about the controls—EXCEPT—the battling feels clunky at times. Hinako was always too slow to do any moves and was out of stamina. For sure it was frustrating. Don’t know if this was intentional as Hinako is just an ordinary school girl who haven’t fought monsters before. You know, just to put it out there.

The audio was freaky. I mean, all the off-putting sounds the enemies made could be heard far away and the 3D audio worked very well in this. The voice acting was good and the game can be played with Japanese or English audio. I recommend to use Japanese audio (with English subtitles) to get the most authentic experience.

Visually Silent Hill f looks phenomenal. It is claustrophobic and trypophobic for your nerves. Bloody and disgusting. Just the way I like it. The more creepier the better. Enemies character models were disturbing and hair-raising. All the areas Hinako goes through trying to survive and make sense of it all were well-designed and not too vast or confusing. I played Silent Hill f using PS5 Pro and the game locked my options only to “Enhanced”. I literally couldn’t choose any other graphical option, so I have no idea did the game utilised things like PSSR or what things were “enhanced”. The game had some serious stutterin issues sometimes. I had to restart the game for it to calm down, but that happaned only two times.

The final note

Silent Hill f is an extraordinary game. I played it through in about 8-10 hours on the easiest difficulty. It was not too difficult on easiest setting and there is surely more challenge in higher difficulty. I liked all the weird and creepy things I encountered. Characters and all the horrifying enemies to the good (but odd) story. But the fighting system felt little bit off, though. It was somewhat clunky. But if you want a peculiar psychological horror experience, I truly recommend Silent Hill f to you.

SCORE:

4/5

“Visually Silent Hill f looks phenomenal. It is claustrophobic and trypophobic for your nerves. Bloody and disgusting.”

RELEASE DATE: September 25, 2025
GENRE: Horror
DEVELOPER: NeoBards Entertainment
PUBLISHER: Konami
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed on PS5 Pro)
Xbox Series X|S
Windows

 

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