Silent Hill f Review Highlights Bold Setting, Eerie Storytelling, and Divisive Combat

The review by Tristan Ogilvie on IGN outlines how Silent Hill f departs from its predecessors, abandoning the long-standing reliance on firearms in favor of melee combat and placing a high school protagonist, Hinako Shimizu, at the center of the story.

Konami’s highly anticipated horror sequel, Silent Hill f, has surfaced in the wild days before its official release date. The newest mainline entry in the series trades its traditional fog-covered American town for a Japanese village setting in the 1960s, shifting both atmosphere and gameplay expectations.

Ogilvie notes that while Silent Hill 2’s remake from Bloober Team was a safe modernization of an established classic, Silent Hill f by Neobards Entertainment attempts a riskier evolution.

Silent Hill f sets itself apart as the first in the franchise to take place outside Silent Hill. The fictional village of Ebisugaoka is carefully constructed with Japanese cultural details, ranging from rice fields to folklore-driven puzzles. These puzzle elements provide not only cerebral challenges but also deep connections to the themes of the narrative. Players are even prompted to investigate cultural references like kudzu plants, giving the game a uniquely localized identity.

Hinako Shimizu’s role is pivotal in how the story unfolds. As a victim of domestic abuse and a product of a fractured family, her psychological trauma becomes externalized through monstrous representations. Silent Hill has long been known for manifesting inner torment as tangible threats, and Silent Hill f continues this tradition while incorporating themes of gender discrimination, substance abuse, and familial collapse. According to Ogilvie, these narrative elements elevate Hinako from a passive victim to an active agent within her own survival story.

The review describes the nine-hour campaign as gripping, layered with body horror, disturbing imagery, and shocking moments. The conclusion is both harrowing and open-ended, with multiple endings available through New Game+ mode. Replay value is enhanced with fresh interiors, additional documents, altered cutscenes, and even new bosses that provide more narrative clarity. This structure ensures Silent Hill f does not end with the first playthrough but encourages players to revisit and uncover alternate fates for Hinako.

One of the review’s main criticisms is Silent Hill f’s reliance on melee encounters. The game arms players only with breakable melee weapons such as pipes, crowbars, or baseball bats. There are no firearms at all, a departure that feels contextual within 1960s rural Japan but shifts the flow of combat significantly. Heavy focus on melee combat — but that combat is exactly what’s splitting the fanbase before launch.

Encounters are stamina-based, forcing players to manage health, sanity, and weapon durability simultaneously. This multi-layered system creates moments of high tension but also frequent frustration. Attacks can feel sluggish, enemies can exploit collision inconsistencies, and lock-on targeting occasionally misfires. These issues, compounded with brittle weapons and the lack of rewarding drops after battles, push players toward avoidance rather than engagement.

The shrine realm, a recurring alternate dimension accessed by Hinako, introduces mechanics that contrast with her limitations in the real world. Here, Hinako wields indestructible weapons and eventually gains supernatural powers, allowing her to overpower enemies with relative ease. While thematically justified, Ogilvie suggests this balance undermines the survival horror core by granting Hinako bursts of invulnerability.

Inventory management further complicates the shrine realm. Consumables and repair kits have different uses across worlds, forcing players into tough decisions on what to carry. These design quirks occasionally disrupt pacing, especially when shrine rewards fail to align with the practical limitations outside of it.

Boss fights are largely confined to the shrine realm and lean into spectacle over relentless difficulty. Ogilvie compares them to melee-heavy titles like Elden Ring or Lies of P, though less punishing. The designs, from teleporting apparitions to grotesque amalgamations, stand out as highlights of the game’s horror aesthetic. Puzzles in the shrine realm reinforce this strength, often blending directly into the narrative. Time-shifting challenges, journal-based riddles, and elaborate environmental puzzles showcase Silent Hill f’s ingenuity when it prioritizes psychological tension over combat repetition.

The monsters populating Ebisugaoka further amplify the game’s horror credentials. Standard creatures such as knife-wielding dolls are joined by new terrors like scarecrow-like figures mimicking Hinako’s classmates, lunging only when unobserved. Other designs include fleshy clusters that spawn smaller demons mid-battle. Each design emphasizes grotesque imagery, solidifying Silent Hill f’s place within the franchise’s tradition of disturbing creature aesthetics. Yet the visual horror often outpaces the gameplay, as Ogilvie admits that avoiding combat becomes more enjoyable than enduring its awkward mechanics.

A recording of the opening cutscene from Silent Hill f has leaked online, captured during a panel dedicated to the game at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. This early exposure underscored fan expectations for the game’s visual tone and set pieces before reviews even landed. The atmosphere—saturated with red flowers, fog, and oppressive imagery—matches the franchise’s longstanding emphasis on oppressive dread.

Despite gameplay frustrations, Ogilvie highlights Silent Hill f’s standout elements: Hinako as a layered protagonist, puzzles that demand intellectual engagement, and a culturally authentic Japanese setting. Together, they carve a new identity for the series beyond the familiar streets of Silent Hill. The overall verdict suggests that Silent Hill f succeeds in delivering a bold story and a rich setting but stumbles in achieving balance between horror tension and enjoyable combat systems.

The review closes with a recognition of Neobards Entertainment’s ambition. Silent Hill f is graded positively, not as a failure but as a flawed experiment. The combat system may divide players, but the atmospheric storytelling and striking design secure its relevance within the series. The game demonstrates Konami’s willingness to let external studios push the boundaries of its horror flagship, even if the results leave parts of the fanbase conflicted.

Silent Hill f represents both continuity and change within the franchise. Continuity in its focus on personal trauma manifested as horror, and change in its willingness to abandon long-standing design conventions. It asks players to embrace discomfort not only from its monsters but also from its design choices. As Silent Hill continues to evolve, Silent Hill f positions itself as an experiment that redefines what the series can be, even if it does not always land perfectly.