Silent Hill f (PS5)

Back in 2022, Konami announced a full revival of the Silent Hill IP that included a number of video game projects, including a teaser for Silent Hill f (SHf), developed by NeoBards Entertainment. Even back then, SHf stood out for its distinct Japanese flair, which came from a desire to bring the series back to its roots after worry that the series had grown too “Western” following the Team Silent era (games that they clarified were influenced by Western media, but filtered through a Japanese lens, creating a unique blend of both sensibilities). To this end, they brought on famed horror game writer Ryukishi07, known for the When They Cry series of visual novels, and set the game in 1960s Japan. When this entry finally released in 2025, it not only received critical praise, but became the fastest-selling game in the series, with one million copies sold in only three days.

From the outset, the concept of SHf intrigued me as someone open to exploring other aspects of Silent Hill that developers hadn’t yet tapped into and as someone used to legacy media experimenting with their format once in a while. As such, it was a day one buy for me and I started playing it as soon as I got the chance. Thanks to a combination of personal health factors, however, as well as my prior reviews locking myself into viewing every single ending, it did take me a bit longer than I had initially thought to truly complete the game. Although I found the final product flawed like any other Silent Hill game, I can confidently say that trying out a new direction paid off spectacularly.

High school student Shimizu Hinako lives in rural Ebisugaoka, Japan during the 1960s. There’s tension within the Shimizu residence, as her mother is subservient to her patriarchal father, who doesn’t approve of Hinako not following the traditional path of a woman, while her sister Junko, who would protect her from their father, has gotten married and left home. Following an argument, Hinako leaves the house to meet up with her friends, Shu, Rinko and Sakuko. During their conversation, a mysterious monster appears and blankets the town in a dense fog and starts flooding it with spider lilies, which kill Sakuko. Hinako successfully escapes and searches for Shu and Rinko to make sure they’re safe. During her journey, however, she collapses and awakens in the Dark Shrine, where she encounters a mysterious man known as Fox Mask. Although Fox Mask appears caring and helpful as a guide, Hinako sees repeated pleas from a being resembling her childhood doll not to trust him.

Hinako's life quickly gets turned on its head.

Before I continue, I’ll mention that due to the nature of the game’s storytelling, I wrote down my thoughts as I completed each run, both to more accurately capture the feeling of playing SHf and so that I wouldn’t forget how I felt about certain elements at different points in time. As such, these thoughts are presented mostly as-is. Also, I’m aware that being an American affected my relationship with the story, including possible misinterpretations, but I tried my best to view it through a Japanese cultural lens.

Throughout the game, Hinako’s story switches between the plotlines in Ebisugaoka and the Dark Shrine. These changes occur at natural points, usually in times of stress or injury, which helps the story progress smoothly.

At first, the Ebisugaoka plotline is the most straightforward, as Hinako simply wants her and her friends to find safety from whatever has plagued the town. Through a combination of journal entries, notes placed throughout the world and the occasional cutscene, we learn more about Hinako and her relationship with Shu, a boy who likes playing Space Wars (a made-up childhood game) with her and never treated her any differently because of her gender. He’s not just the only boy who would hang out with her with no issue, but even tries to help her relieve the tension headaches she suffers from while dealing with her family. While Hinako finds comfort in her friendship with Shu through their trying time, Rinko is clearly more concerned about following the traditional roles of girls in Japanese society at the time. Rinko has feelings for Shu, but seems very jealous of how close he is with Hinako, who he repeatedly calls “Partner” due to their ongoing Space Wars game, and continually asks about their relationship status in a way that could drive a wedge between them. Since she brings this up in increasingly less subtle ways at the most inopportune moments, and how she really doesn’t like Hinako’s comparatively more tomboyish nature, I quickly despised Rinko, which didn’t change much up until the end.

As the game kept switching between Ebisugaoka and the Dark Shrine, however, something happened. The way the Dark Shrine segments played out kept me invested thanks to an organic air of mystery that kept me asking the right questions, such as “Who is Fox Mask?”, “What does Fox Mask want with Hinako?” and, more often, “What exactly is going on?” Thankfully, the game does answer these questions and more, either directly or hinting at some larger picture. Eventually, the Dark Shrine segments put certain aspects of the Ebisugaoka segments in a new and intriguing light. I gradually questioned the nature of story, as well as the reality of Hinako’s journey, in a way that kept me engaged. Certain notes that I had picked up early on took on a new meaning and certain encounters added more context.

Unique encounters take on new meaning later.

What helped me was the idea that, for the most part, the Silent Hill series uses a lot of carefully crafted symbolism, so I tried analyzing the visuals while playing, just to see if I could figure it out on my own for once. I realized how invested I had become in the story once I started making connections between past and future uses of certain concepts and designs, which gave new meaning to earlier scenes and helped me understand this game’s use of visual metaphor. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t go into too much detail, but I will mention that this included aspects of Fox Mask’s design and a striking scene involving an Inari shrine cleansing ritual (Fox Mask sees water while Hinako sees lava). Some of the symbolism isn’t exactly subtle, but it does still add to the game’s message about women’s struggles in 1960s Japan.

My investment also led to me thinking more about and uncovering a number of running themes. Many of these related to the aforementioned struggles of women in 1960s Japan, including, but not limited to, sexual assault, the tradition of becoming a housewife, subservience and expectations of bearing children. Gradually, I noticed a theme in the Dark Shrine of Hinako giving up her identity and past self for the sake of the future imposed on her, which felt more disturbing and unsettling the more I processed the accompanying visuals. A medical theme also emerged through documents discussing traditional vs modern medicine in curing or treating ailments, which grew more relevant as the story reached its conclusion. There’s a lot going on, for sure, but everything still felt relevant.

 

Even the Game Over screen is symbolic.

When Hinako’s story does reach a conclusion, however, it delivers a twist that I can only describe as contentious, a potential “make or break” for many players. Again, I won’t spoil it, but I will say that there’s a buildup where both plotlines bleed into each other until you’re hit with a revelation that puts the entire game on its head, recontextualizing everything just before and while the credits roll. When I saw the twist, I thought it helped explain a lot of what was going on and validated some of the details I had picked up on while challenging others. Personally, I found it clear that Hinako’s story had more to it and felt intrigued enough to know more.

Of course, based on how the game presented this twist and the existence of the traditional alternate endings, I can understand why it would turn people off. Although there is some foreshadowing that builds up if you read the notes, those don’t necessarily prepare you enough for the reality of Hinako’s situation, which isn’t as conclusive as other entries in the series and still has enough ambiguity that it can give a player a bad impression of what’s going on. Although I was unfamiliar with Ryukishi07’s work before I pressed Start, I did know about his method of requiring multiple playthroughs to get the full picture of his prior work, where he has a “Question” arc that delivers an increasingly horrific story and then an “Answer” arc that shows you what really happened with new context or explains what’s really going on. However, I would imagine that many players picking this up on a retail shelf wouldn’t know anything about the writer or his methods, so they wouldn’t know that just getting the first ending (and maybe also watching the other endings on YouTube afterwards) isn’t enough to get the full picture. Even those used to multiple endings in Silent Hill games wouldn’t have encountered one where the endings are sequential rather than alternate conclusions to the same story. Barring that, it doesn’t help that although the game alerts you to the other endings, and even gives you hints on obtaining them, it doesn’t do enough to nudge the player to play the game again for more context (that is, if the player wants to at that point).

Since I locked myself into viewing every ending in a Silent Hill game anyway, I pressed on with New Game+, which had two endings associated with it. As with other entries, I figured out the divergence point between these two endings and made multiple saves so that I could safely explore either one on its own (also, the game won’t count both on the same save if you do it this way, but will still acknowledge that you completed both in the Endings menu).

The Endings menu is a helpful addition.

Playing through these endings felt faster than before since I could skip cutscenes, though I stuck around whenever the game warned me about skipping new content. Admittedly, although I did notice some changes, many in the early stages were rather subtle and hard to pick up on. The further in I got, however, the changes grew more apparent and I collected a number of new documents that helped flesh out the characters, including some that fill in Fox Mask’s backstory. In the final stages of either path, the game revealed more nuance in presenting the characters and themes, recontextualizing previous information in multiple ways while staying engaging. Hinako felt more complex, now a person conflicted about her future out of fear of losing friendships or ending up like her parents. Both endings added depth to different characters: in one Shu’s motivations and relationship with Hinako are made much clearer, while the other changed my perception of Fox Mask and his relationship with Hinako. Interestingly, both paths have Shu and Fox Mask meet each other, but present a similar outcome with two very different implications on how they affect Hinako’s life.

After experiencing both New Game+ endings, I found the ways that they complimented each other despite the alternate approaches intriguing as a natural evolution of the first ending. Reading as many of the new documents as possible certainly helped, as they added a lot of necessary context and subtext. Going into the final playthrough, I also considered a possible metaphorical interpretation of this pair of endings and wondered how the story would wrap itself up.

As for the player experience, I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out the full paths for these endings without a guide. Sure, I stumbled upon major landmarks required for them on my first run, where I had a more thorough approach but still missed some things, but wouldn’t have known about a particular puzzle or its location otherwise. From my experience, Silent Hill games can have endings with unspecified requirements that many might not have achieved without some guidance (unless they had a lot of persistence). For example, plenty of alternate endings, such as the UFO Endings or the original Silent Hill 2’s Rebirth ending, require collecting specific items or performing specific steps that the game doesn’t tell you about at all. What may make this a turn-off for some players in this particular case is that these steps are necessary to view endings that are canon to what’s going on rather than achieve an optional ending for the same scenario. This ties back into how sequential endings are new for the series and may throw some players off, though they grew on me at this point in my journey as a neat attempt at taking advantage of the unique interactive nature of video games (in what other medium could you attempt something like this?).

I might not have found this serene area without a guide.

This brought me to the final run, colloquially known as “New Game++”, which would let me view SHf’s True Ending. At first, it didn’t introduce many new changes apart from yet more new documents, which piled up over the course of the game and included more context behind every character and their actions. By the end, however, cutscenes had far more noticeable differences and everything I had seen or read across my previous runs clicked into place. While they reminded me of Hinako’s insecurities about her future, the new scenes added more perspective and nuance that really put Hinako and her journey into a whole new light. Everyone felt more three-dimensional than before, especially with the context of the other endings, and a theme of freedom emerged that helped tie everything together.

The True Final Boss fight also helped tie the narrative together in a clever way that put the supernatural elements of the series on full display while retaining their usual metaphorical nature. Naturally, the ending left itself open to interpretation, as other entries have, though I thought that it still ended the game on a positive note that made the whole journey worth it. Mostly (I’ll explain shortly).

Silent Hill veterans may like to know that SHf continues the series tradition of including the classic UFO Ending. As with most other UFO Endings, this one is the easiest to acquire, as you can obtain it in about an hour or less if you know where to go. I found this particular UFO Ending hilarious, not only for rendering the cutscene and characters in a black and white manga format (think the comic book style cutscenes of River City Girls), but also providing a fun alternative explanation for the events in Ebisugaoka, especially the early game. As a sign of care and admiration for the franchise, it even acknowledges Mira from Silent Hill 2’s Dog Ending (and later UFO Endings in the franchise). For an added bonus, putting this ending in a Clear file gives the player access to a powerful weapon for use on subsequent playthroughs, which made it worth the detour before attempting other endings.

Although SHf has one of the best stories in the series, its gameplay, while improved over earlier entries, has the classic uneven feeling that series veterans will recognize.

One feature I liked right away was keeping the return of separate Action and Puzzle difficulties, which lets the player customize their experience (I played on Story, the lowest setting, throughout my collective playthroughs). Getting into the game itself, Hinako’s journal does a good job at tracking valuable information like puzzle hints or enemy descriptions, as well as Hinako’s evolving thoughts throughout the game. Her thoughts are written in a way that not only captures the style of a teenage girl, but also helps make certain aspects of the story clearer. In a separate menu, you can view key items you’ve collected, some of which persist between runs, and re-read collected documents, which are necessary for understanding the story and characters. One thing I personally love is when a Silent Hill game like this doesn’t require collecting maps, instead including one that updates in real time with some nice visual flair, though there is one map you can collect that makes navigating one section of the game easier.

The visual flair adds a lot of personality.

Apart from the usual mechanics of exploring the environment, solving puzzles and interacting with items, SHf has a greater emphasis on combat than other entries. In the early game, Hinako is pretty helpless, with enemy encounters emphasizing running out of the enemy’s sight, which I actually found pretty tense (and it made me grateful that running was a toggle by default). Once Hinako starts using weapons, players will need to manage all three of her bars: Health, Stamina and Sanity. Stamina slowly drains while running away from enemies, eventually leaving Hinako out of breath, which stops her in place for a moment until her Stamina starts slowly filling back up. This bar will drain faster each time she attacks with a weapon or performs a Dodge, though dodging an attack at the right time results in a Perfect Dodge, which refills Stamina; Hinako can Dodge up to twice in a row, though at a greater Stamina cost. Psychological damage will drain Sanity, then Health.

Apart from dodging and managing Stamina and Sanity, SHf departs from its predecessors in other ways. There are no ranged weapons this time, only melee, which fits the setting (the Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law was enacted in Japan in 1958) and alters the approach to combat. For instance, Hinako can wield weapons with three different ranges, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses regarding distance and attack speed/strength, as well as their own light and heavy attacks. She can also track enemies with a lock on, stun enemies to deal more damage, as well as perform counterattacks when the enemy flashes a visual indicator. This visual hint stays longer if you temporarily trade Sanity, represented by flowers, for Focus, though taking damage in this state will deplete Hinako’s max Sanity, unless you’re playing on Story. Unfortunately, this visual hint does not display while attacking or dodging.

Hinako only has melee weapons at her disposal.

While in the Dark Shrine, combat changes. At first, Hinako plays like she does in Ebisugaoka, but the rules gradually change, including a unique set of weapons and a new threat of enemies reanimating sometime after their death unless they’re in special areas that ward off evil. Eventually, she can gain a new set of abilities centered around a Fox Arm that replaces her other weapons and can prevent reanimation through either a unique Focus Attack or the Soul Siphon ability. With this arm equipped, her HUD also gains a Kudzu Seal that will gradually fill up through combat or using Soul Siphon. Once it’s full, she can Awaken a Bestial Form that not only prevents reanimation, but can charge a heavy attack mid-combo, as well as counter even in the middle of an attack. Hinako can also revert back to the normal Fox Arm at any time without completely draining the Kudzu Seal. One other ability is the Fox Mask, which lets her Focus to view secret pathways that open up new shortcuts or reveal new secrets.

Especially during the first run, Hinako can feel underpowered compared to the threats that she faces. Thankfully, she can help close the gap with Omamori (protective charms) that offer various beneficial effects ranging from increasing her maximum stats to decreasing enemy line of sight and beyond. She also has limited inventory space, though finding certain items can increase this limit, which can really make a difference. She can also access restorative items through shortcuts, which have two layers to work with for full customization.

Whether in Ebisugaoka or the Dark Shrine, Hinako can interact with Hokora, miniature shrines that let the player Save their game or change costumes. However, Hokora have extra utility that makes knowing where they are invaluable. Hinako can Enshrine certain items in exchange for Faith, which can be spent to draw for Omamori not found elsewhere, pray for various benefits in combination with a blank Ema or clear your mind to restore Sanity (Story Action level removes the Faith cost for restoring Health and Sanity). Praying with blank Ema lets you increase Max Health/Stamina/Sanity or increase Omamori slots, though the Faith cost goes up each time. I personally prioritize Omamori slots, since they would open up more room for setting powerful or beneficial combos, especially on New Game+ and New Game++, where you can have up to five slots.

Hokora offer respite and utility.

Although I didn’t mind the direction of the combat system, as Silent Hill has a history of trying new things, it did feel clunky at times and even on Story difficulty I found dealing with more than one or two opponents at a time potentially frustrating, especially when certain ones ganged up on me and didn’t give me a chance at recovery. What didn’t help was introducing weapon durability, tracked with a crescent shape in the UI, where weapons can take damage and eventually break, disappearing from your inventory forever. Hinako can mitigate this with Toolkits that repair on the fly, though this did force me to consider when certain fights were worth potentially damaging my weapons or if I should run away. Even when I had lots of Toolkits by the end of my first run, the final boss fight still felt tense due to how it made me blow through recovery items until I just barely won on the first try. On subsequent runs, I landed on an Omamori combination (Wolf + Spider + Otter) that removed the need for Toolkits entirely, leaving room for more healing items (my final build also had the Boar and Kudzu Omamoris, which mitigated Stamina loss and increased all stats respectively).

What really didn’t help was that, despite prior Silent Hill games typically letting players run away from all non-boss encounters, SHf features some forced combat encounters that are required for advancing the story. It doesn’t feel too bad at first, but they come up more often towards the end of the game, culminating in two long stretches of fighting through Ebisugaoka one way and then all the way back. By this point, I grew more frustrated with the combat, so I prioritized removing more of the difficulty on later runs so that I could get through them faster.

Then there’s how enemies can grab you, sometimes in an ambush, but you can’t break out of it and instead just lose Health and Sanity. This does force you to get better at dodging, sure, but dealing with enemies that grabbed from a long range made the mechanic frustrating to deal with. The more I played, the more I noticed some odd additional quirks, like how you can take damage while opening a door, creating too many cheap shots, or how hidden enemies will “activate” if they’re seen by the game’s camera, not Hinako’s line of sight. On a lesser note, some healing items can feel redundant for filling similar roles, like how Ramune and Divine Water differ only in how much Sanity they restore, though you can also view these as opportunities for free Faith.

At least healing items have easy access.

As for the puzzles, they fit in fairly well within the series and I felt satisfied when I figured them out on my own, like the system for figuring out locker codes. However, a couple of them, mostly the Scarecrow puzzle, suffered from the writing style used for the hints, which sounded almost too vague at times, even on the Easy Puzzle setting. When this happened, I often brute forced my way through.

What helps alleviate at least some issues is how New Game+ runs alter the game in the player’s favor. Although you can skip cutscenes, it will tell you when you’re about to skip new content, so you can focus only on those. In the Dark Shrine, Sanity items also refill the Kudzu Seal and Hinako has access to her fox abilities at an earlier point, plus a buffed Soul Siphon. There’s also a brooch that allows access to boxes and doors with Inari’s seal, which gives prior dead ends a purpose. Plus, Hinako can obtain a unique weapon that ties into most of the other endings while offering some powerful utility of its own.

One big point in SHf’s favor is its visual design. Ebisugaoka and the Dark Shrine both capture the right atmosphere and provide a good amount of variety in settings and individual areas. The gritty and “industrial” Otherworlds one might expect from other games aren’t present, but the flower aesthetic still fit the story and themes of the game and provided a nice change of pace without sacrificing any of the horror. In fact, you can tell how hardy certain enemies are by how much the flowers have overtaken their bodies. Although Masahiro Ito didn’t return as the monster designer, the artist kera did a fantastic job with creating monsters with horrific designs packed full of symbolic meaning. I also liked how Hinako’s appearance, as well as the main menu’s, gradually changes as more of the story unfolds regardless of costume. Plus, Hinako’s journal drawings, or at least the ones that aren’t filtered CG, have a lot of personality and can change during the course of the game. I’ll also mention that a hidden area required for obtaining some of the game’s endings offers an odd moment of calm within an otherwise atmospheric place.

Silent Hill f looks very impressive, especially in Performance Mode.

Other visual elements help give SHf the distinct Silent Hill feeling. Hinako will look at items of interest, a subtle detail retained from the Team Silent entries. While roaming Ebisugaoka, the game does a good job of guiding the player through increasingly flower-filled areas with lights rather than the infamous “yellow paint” of other modern games, much like Silent Hill 2 (2024). Although there's no hard ties with other Silent Hill games apart from the appearance of a certain flower, I did notice that the often-seen Kudzu Seal resembles a simplified version of the Halo of the Sun emblem used by The Order.

Of course, it would be disingenuous if I didn’t bring up how on additional runs of some modern AAA games, I end up running into issues that can expose what makes the game tick. In this case, I ran into a few glitches on my additional runs, though thankfully they mostly made for unintentional hilarity, like enemies clipping into a wall or somehow lifting Hinako off the ground. Something else I’ll mention though is that you can’t preview subtitles and the mouth animations were clearly done with the original Japanese audio in mind.

Speaking of, SHf also excels in its audio. Although I can’t recall the score as much as I could with some of the other games, I still felt that Akira Yamaoka did a good job, as did contributors dai, xaki and Kensuke Inage. I also found the “Japanese” sound design rather fitting and memorable.

Between Silent Hill 2 (2024) and Silent Hill f, the Silent Hill revival is heading in the right direction. Even if the gameplay gets clunky at times, which is par for the course with this franchise, SHf still shows that a powerful story can really help make up for it. Hopefully, this streak will continue with the upcoming Townfall.