I can’t stop thinking about Silent Hill F.. Konami’s latest post in the prolonged survival horror franchise, this time developed by Neobards Entertainment, is easily the most fascinating game I’ve played all year. From its disturbing lore and ties to Japanese mythology, to its strange nervous role crew of characters, each runs through the foggy streets of the rural Ebisugaoka, which reveals great revelations about the city and its inhabitants.
SPOILER WARNING!
For this article I have tried to keep spoilers to Silent Hill F. to a minimum. But if you are not quite aware of the game, I am strongly suggesting to blindly before I read this piece as I touch on narrative elements and themes that only become clear when you have become stuck in. Consider this as a slight spoiler warning if you even have the slightest interest in Silent Hill F.
It is not only the usual case of detecting moments of advance shade in repeated playthroughs – although there is definitely plenty of it. Rather, Silent Hill F. Have one of the best implementations of new game plus I’ve been playing for quite a long time. To take a leaf from Nier Playbook, Silent Hill F. If you require you to play it through several times to share the full image together.
However, it is not as much of a beat as it sounds. New game plus in Silent Hill F. changes things significantly. Many cutcene playing differently, the enemy locations can vary, brand new areas open up to you, and some riddles even have different solutions that you can struggle with. While the skeleton for the most important playthrough is there, all these elements ensure that you never quite know what to expect from subsequent Playthroughs.
But it’s not just Silent Hill F’s approach to new game plus that makes me sing his roses. Even after series standards, its plot is crushing gloomy. Misogyny, drug addiction, leave and control. All forms the life of the game’s deeply tragic main crew, and it is at once pleasing and heartbreaking to witness the protagonist Shimizu Hinako, who fights for the horrors to overcome her personal demons.
Silent Hill F. Maybe just be my game in the year if only because its totality lives rental load in my head.
Fits in
If you are not familiar with the game, first consider playing it for yourself. I won’t spoil the experience for you here. Silent Hill F. does not take place in the fictional Maine-placed city in the United States. Instead, we are transported to the 1960s Japan, in the sleepy – and also fictitious – rural town of Ebisugaoka.
Our protagonist is Gymnasium Shimizu Hinako, a girl who despises the demands and expectations of the era’s patriarchal norms, something that saw her depleted as a child with her reluctance to play with dolls and her preference to hang out with boys. When he grew up, Hinako and her best friend Shu, for example, often play ‘Space Wars’ with each other – a detailed game to pretend that they are fighting an imaginary foreign strength.
Hinako’s journal that you consult to learn more about grades, placements and notes on riddles are all written by her. Not only do we see that she is an excellent skissing artist, Hinako is not shy to issue her complaints and frustrations with Ebisugaoka, her parents and even her friends to some extent.
One thing I find quite brilliant at Hinako’s personality is how it effortlessly woven into her abilities as a surviving horror protagonist. Her background as a trophy-minded track star goes a long way to explain an almost bottom-free well of endurance and ability to defend herself in battle.
Like Harry, James and Heather before her into the town of Silent Hill, it seems ‘curse’ that hits Ebisugaoka, tailored to Hinako’s past, her fears and the traumatic moments she has lived through. At home, her father is a violent drunk while her mother is one, she describes as ‘pitiful’ and who lives in her father’s shadow. It is a boring existence that threatens to consume her at each given opportunity.
Fox speech
The horrors Hinako face in Ebisugaoka – from knife development dolls to birdskrims killed in the school’s garb – is not even close to being the most scary of Silent Hill F. Hinako’s home and social life is one thing, but the city’s insidious occupation of superstition also manifests herself to make her existence a living hell.
Undoubtedly the primary antagonistic force in Silent Hill F. is – as always in this series – a kind of supernatural cult, often referred to as the Fox clan. They inhabit a strange other worldwide world that Hinako is transported throughout history every time she slides out of consciousness.
Playing into Ebisugaoka’s paranoid superstition and its reverence for foxes as creatures, the clan seems to be a well -known unit, from what we can collect from documents that are stranded about the city. Their primary goal is to breathe young girls away, make them brides and inevitably offer them as victims. To be dull, they are weak.
Essentially, this is the core match of Hinako’s journey – a strength that is so powerful that it can succeed in removing the identity (both physically and metaphorically) for even someone as independent as her. My heart sank each time Hinako entered the Fox Clan’s Bisarre world because she would inevitably end up losing part of herself (again, both physically and metaphorically) in service for their goals.
Hinako’s journey is brutally disturbing. Which comes as no surprise, considering lead author Ryukishi07’s previous works including Harrowing Higurashi when they cry Visual Novel series that deals with similar themes. But at least there is a bunch of hope here as each new game plus runs after your first playthrough edges still closer to the truth of Ebisugaoka.
Again and again
Silent Hill F’s Take new games plus (NG+) is incredibly refreshing, especially in an age of games where such a state is often treated as a reflection or worse, saved to a post-launch update. IN Silent Hill F, NG+ has all the usual features. You transfer things like your inventory, state upgrades, documents, perk assignment omamori, journal items and certain key articles.
Here, however, it is not just a bonus mode; a way for you to avenge Silent Hill F’s Anrile horrors with a distinct beef Hinako. No, subsequent new games plus races are definitely a requirement if you want to reveal the whole of the game’s story. Again, not different from how Nier replicant and Nier Automata Handle repeated playthroughs.
Silent Hill F. Have four finishes in total (yes, five, if you count the joke UFO ending), the last of which is the game’s ‘real’ conclusion. But to get there, you must have witnessed at least two other endings, including the one you are locked on your first walk.
And it’s a hell of a journey to get there. Cutscenes are expanded, providing additional context and hidden details. New documents that shed light on the city and its history can be collected. There is also no shortage of new rooms to discover, new afraid of catching you away, and a general feeling of great turmoil, as areas that once seemed like set clothing come alive with frightening new details (a certain shrine you can find early in the game comes to think of there).
There are also some brilliant quality of life. The main menu’s closing guide (which you can see when you beat the game once) shows the criteria for reaching each conclusion. And if you want to speed up things by jumping over cutcenes, a prompt will tell you if the one you see has changed in any way by indicating it’s new.
I simply can’t get enough of Silent Hill F. It’s one of the best horror games I’ve played in recent memory, and finds a place somewhere in my top three Silent Hill titles next to the original Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. The rural Japanese surroundings are such a refreshing change, and the integration of the country’s history and mythology plays unusually far into Silent Hill F’s Brand of Horror.
If you are looking for a deeply influential and unforgettable horror experience this Halloween season, I cannot recommend Silent Hill F. Enough, and you can pick it up today for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series and PC via Steam.
