Silent Hill f

same fog, new horror...

Given my deep history with Silent Hill, it has taken me a while to write this review. This is by no way a negative fault of the game itself or the team behind it. This new and unsettling addition to the Silent Hill franchise has provoked my thoughts in a big way. It has driven me to check every shadowy nook and foggy cranny for critical information to the story, and the deep lore the series is known for, as well as striving to better understand the symbiotic relationship of the characters involved in this story. This has always been the biggest draw for me in the Silent Hill series and why it's always had such a strong grip on my heart ever since its first iteration. 

I was not sure what to initially expect with Silent Hill f. It had no noticeable connection to the titular town, the memorable characters from any of the previous games, nor did it even take place in the same country and time period. The biggest question on my mind, as was the same with many other fans of the franchise, was Silent Hill f… Silent Hill? Equipped with a steel pipe, as I ventured into the fog and was intrigued to find out.

Silent Hill f opens as a story of its ilk often does: with family angst or trauma. A muffled, angry tirade can be heard boiling over in another room. A sliding door opens, and a young girl, Shimizu Hinako, clad in her school uniform, walks quickly into the hall, the shouting voice of her father spilling after her. As she's putting on her shoes and opening the front door, the timid words of her mother try to smooth things over and call Hinako back, which have little effect, and Hinako shuts the door behind her with no acknowledgment that she had even heard her mother speak in the first place. You can feel the burdensome tension this interaction has created for young Hinako in the way that she speaks to herself out loud when she expresses the need to see and speak with her friends. You almost feel relief being outside of such a stifling and painfully infectious environment. But as Hinako makes her way into town to find her friends, you begin to notice the silence more and more and start to feel a cloying sense that something is not right.

Silent Hill f is a standalone title that takes place during the 1960s and is set in the fictitious town of Ebisugaoka in rural Japan. Ebisugaoka, according to research, was based on the real town of Kanayama in the Gero area of Gifu prefecture, Japan. Ebisugaoka’s inspiration was gleaned from Kanayama for its seemingly evolving architecture and narrow, labyrinthine streets. It became the perfect place to be devoured by a nebulous fog and filled with horrors pulled from a severely tormented subconscious. Everything is beautifully rendered and historically represented by the creators, inviting you to dig deeper into every location you see in the game.

The general gameplay is similar to other Silent Hill titles. It utilizes a third-person-based perspective, close combat fighting with various melee weapons (yes, my friends, the fan favorite steel pipe is here, and you may rejoice), and unsettling puzzles to interact with in order to progress through an area or obtain keys or key information crucial to progress. You are also confronted by a range of grotesque abominations and surrealist variations of people around you, such as twists on fellow classmates. However, that is where the similarities taper off and things begin to differ, setting Silent Hill f apart from the rest.

The combat is far more action-heavy here, which, admittedly, spawned in me a spore of skepticism and has caused many others to worry that it would detract from the subliminal and isolating feel, wrecking the overall immersion into what made the franchise so special. However, the deeper I delved into aiding Hinako in her fight against onslaughts of nightmarish monstrosities, the more I was pleasantly reassured and compelled to utilize every mechanic and tool at my disposal. Not only do you have more enemies to clobber with everything from heavy steel pipes to smaller kitchen knives, but there is an added dodging mechanic that feels fluid when it needs to be and heavier when your stamina is bottoming out. Yes, you read that right. Stamina consumption is front and center. 

Try not to let that stuff worry you too much. This new standalone Silent Hill title brings new support systems along with the new challenges of how it handles stamina consumption. You now have ways to augment and upgrade Hinako’s abilities. How you build these up is very interesting. There are prayer shrines scattered throughout the game where you can save your progress. These also serve as a place to give offerings that provide you with points of favor that you can then utilize to augment Hinako's abilities. Many of the items you acquire as you explore can be either used as healing items, or what have you, or offered up as these offerings, which earn you currency to then use to buy into these upgrades.

These upgrades include increasing your health pool, your sanity (which is fuel for power attacks or bolstering yourself against enemies' direct assault on your mind), your stamina, and also how many charms you may equip. The charms are what you use to add defensive features, like mitigation of how fast your weapons break when doing light attacks, how easily enemies will be able to see you, or providing you with health or stamina once you take a creature down, etc. This leaves it up to the player to decide how best to pair these systems together in order to help Hinako survive her nightmares. The nice part is that it also allows the player to choose how they prefer to approach their playthroughs.

Since we are on the subject of “puzzling” out about how you'd like to play the game, let's talk about the other biggest draws of our foggy hometown series. The puzzles! The way they were crafted in Silent Hill f is an art form that serves to elevate the story itself while also bringing a new pot of ingredients to cook with to the table. For example, you can fully interact with a box you need to open by rotating it and even zooming in on a particular spot of interest. These range from matching symbols to certain tales, or deciphering clues to track down certain students’ lockers. What is rather interesting is that the game’s varied difficulties, which are story and hard, each flavor the puzzle in unique ways.

Many of them also require you to be mindful of your surroundings when you pass through, as you do not receive any helpful advice. This can involve the way you approach multiple exits or statues, or remembering characteristics of one's behavioral patterns that are spoken about or even observed. The team that constructed the puzzles and the way you navigate them did a wonderful job, and personally, I never became very frustrated with my inability to solve something quickly. I relished the time it took to solve each one and the way they made me feel present and connected to Hinako's thoughts and emotions while trying to get through those challenges.

You can't speak on the puzzle navigation without also delving deep into how you traverse the maze-like and often claustrophobic environments of Ebisugaoka and the eventual trip into the twisted dark halls of the “other world”. These two aspects often go hand in hand in Silent Hill f. When you initially arrive in a new area, you will begin to walk through it blind. The streets and halls may be twisted, but as long as you keep your cool, you will never feel completely lost. The great part is, you often find maps of areas quickly. Hinako often keeps herself grounded by marking impassable areas on the map to places to return to with key items, and my favorite bit is when a struggle of an area is concluded, she marks the occasion with a sketch over the map depicting what happened. This is often paired with a new diary entry or an expansion of an existing one. It is a seamlessly functioning system.

When it comes to performance, let's elaborate by briefly discussing the functionality inside the meat. All of this (including things I've mentioned previously in earlier subjects) also feels and looks physically great. The walking and running animations feel quite smooth, and switching between the two is nice and feels agile. When it gets action-heavy, the movements of Hinako, the jerking and stuttering creatures, are fluid and believably erratic as though they were referenced from real beings (or at least, we hope not). I never even noticed any stuttering in gameplay when encountering an enemy entering the area through the fog or crashing through a previously blocked area. All in all, the game ran flawlessly on my Xbox Series X.

I must admit that my bloated 15-hour playtime counter is partially due to my traversal through areas and stopping to admire every beautiful, and at times, grotesquely rendered detail. The town and countryside were breathtaking to travel through, and I really felt present and part of the time period as every building and corner had something historically represented from that era. Areas that are marred by the spreading of the fleshy and cancerous-looking clotting fleshy growths are absolutely disgusting. Honestly, I loved it. It was all slick, pulsating, and unnerving, and really built on my horrific immersion. The artists and creators here are brilliant.

No Silent Hill experience would be complete without being able to end the story in multiple ways. Not only does Silent Hill f deliver on this, but with disturbing twists that can extend the story beyond the roll of credits, and slightly change the narrative each additional time you choose to dive back into Ebisugaoka. Silent Hill f offers New Game + modes that are unlike most that I have encountered. If you felt that anything about the story or ending left you with more questions than answers, you can restart the game using your new game + file. It reminds me of when you sometimes watch a plot-heavy movie, and if you choose to rewatch it, you begin to notice things that you didn't catch the first time around. Where this game delivers on this experience is that there are even new moments that happen on top of extending plots that were already there, as well as adding in new puzzles to solve and new horrors to survive. 

The developers endeavored to create a new and unique experience that would cleanse the palate of older fans of the Silent Hill franchise and even entice newcomers to join in on the horror. Its representation of 1960s Japan is beautifully and hauntingly brought to life by a series of great characters, strong voice acting, and, of course, the atmosphere a game titled Silent Hill demands. It certainly is a different experience from what has come before, but ultimately succeeds in delivering a journey that follows the tropes the Silent Hill series is known for while additionally gripping our hands through our controllers and feverishly pulling us through new and horrific nightmares. 

Developer - Neobards Entertainment ltd.
Publisher - Konami Digital Entertainment. Released - September 25th, 2025. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (M) - Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch.
Review Access - Silent Hill f was purchased by the reviewer for the purpose of this review.