Silent Hill f

Silent Hill f was provided by Konami for review. Thank you!

Konami is on a roll lately. While they have most notably released collections of some of their classic titles, like Castlevania, they recently released the Metal Gear Solid (MGS): Snake Eater remake, which I loved. It became one of the few games that actually captivated me enough to play through a second time, and that’s not something I normally do. A month after its release, Silent Hill f is here, and just like MGS, it completely hooked me to the point where I felt the need to go back and start a second playthrough. I didn’t expect it to rope me in like it did, but not only did it successfully do exactly that, it took almost all my worries and made them disappear.

In the game, we play as Hinako, a schoolgirl who is sucked into what feels like an alternative dimension. She will go to search for her friends and find a way out, while dealing with her own self-doubts and problems that she has to face from her destructive household and sense of self-worth.

The story is where Silent Hill f shines, and I don’t want to go too deep into it so I can avoid spoilers at all cost. However, expect an emotional rollercoaster with twists that got me in ways I didn’t expect. It felt like the story could go one way or the other based on clues littered throughout the documents we can pick up, but in the end, we just go a whole different direction than I initially expected, and it made so much sense.

One of the big reasons I decided to quickly start the second playthrough is the changes from New Game+ and the alternate endings we can get. After completing the game, there are four more endings to unlock that are all detailed, and as soon as I saw what we had to do to unlock them, I was immediately brought in. It feels like the entire game and outcome could completely change with what we’d need to do to get those endings, and boy is it a treat.

Expect the game to be very coded and loose with its storytelling. There isn’t much that is outright explained, especially on the first playthrough, so it’s going to be a lot of guessing. It’s not necessarily bad, and it helps knowing there are other endings and more to do after beating the game, but it did leave me wondering and very curious initially.

Visually, the game is just stunning. The monochrome town with the iconic Silent Hill fog, the vibrant red flowers that erupt, and the gorgeous lighting of the more classic Japanese world we will have to explore just blew my mind at times. The haunting soundtrack and solid voice acting helped bring it all together. However, their lip movements didn’t always sync with the English dub, but it didn’t detract from the experience.

I wasn’t really worried about the story or visuals going into the game, but the gameplay was another story. I had heard previews comparing the combat to soulslikes and there being a big focus on it. I didn’t know how to feel hearing all of this, but I kept an open mind going in, and I’m glad I did.

Combat starts off relatively simple. We have a weak and strong attack, as well as the ability to dodge. Our weak attack doesn’t do a lot of damage, but is relatively fast, while the strong attack is slow and deals more damage. Using the strong attack can also stun the enemy, which will receive extra damage when attacked, and makes weak attacks worthwhile to use. All of your moves use up stamina, which can be replenished by not attacking or dodging for some time or timing your dodge perfectly, which will fully refill your stamina. 

As we keep playing, we will learn new types of moves and mechanics to master. We learn how to counter fairly quickly to put enemies into a stun, though the indicator of when to counter is hard to see, and the timeframe is quite short. And following that up, we learn about our focus and sanity bars. Focus allows us to charge up a weapon to do a special move that will usually stun the enemy, and this costs Sanity. However, while in focus mode, the timeframe to counter is extended as well. So, if you know your enemy’s attack patterns, you can strategically get into focus to ensure you land a good counter.

Combat grew on me, and while there’s a lot of it, it’s enjoyable. It reminded me a lot of God of War 2018 and Ragnarok’s combat systems, with some small soulslike elements like the stamina bar. I didn’t mind the stamina bar much, but I did mind the weapon durability system. There were a few times in the beginning of my first playthrough where I almost ran out of weapons and had to resort to running away and dodging through enemies. This changed later on, and there are plenty of weapons to find with an item that can restore durability, but it was a nuisance at first.

I would say the only time I was genuinely aggravated in combat was having to fight multiple enemies at once. The mechanics feel perfect for one-on-one fights, and they shine in these moments and the boss fights against these crazy monsters. But mix in 2-3 enemies at a time, with all of them attacking at once or right after each other, and it was just too much. I’d have to exhaust my stamina just to dodge away and hope they weren’t fast enough to catch up to me as I was trying to heal. There were a couple of times it just felt way too much, and that brought the experience down a little.

The other big element of Silent Hill f is its puzzles, and boy, can they be difficult. When choosing a new game, you can decide the difficulty of the combat and the puzzle difficulty, which I found interesting. I started off hard, and there were definitely moments I hit a snag. One puzzle in the middle school had me in my head thinking it was more complicated than it was, but some of the others actually were. Reading clues and using your journal with logged information is going to be a lifesaver here. Documents are going to be key here, both in terms of story and to help get through puzzles.

I actually want to praise the team specifically for how they implemented the UI. The journal sorts the relevant clues for each puzzle, while the map does an excellent job of telling us where we have and hadn’t gone yet, with some landmarks to give us an idea of what’s in the rooms we’ve already been to. Some areas can get very confusing to walk around in, with winding corridors and many rooms, so the map with the clear real-time updates is a life saver.

There are ways to improve yourself with upgrades, which give a nice touch for the most part. We can find Ema to use with accumulated faith and upgrade Health, Stamina, Sanity, and the number of Omamori we can hold. Omamori gives us some passive buffs, like getting some health back after an enemy is defeated or increasing the potency of healing items. We can find these around the world or use Faith to gain a random one. Faith is mainly gathered from offering up objects or items at Shrines, which stems from one other problem I had with the game: inventory management.

Silent Hill f has eight inventory slots for items you pick up, and with how many healing items there are for health, sanity, stamina, and special objects that can give lots of faith when offered, it very quickly becomes a problem. There are items you can find to increase your inventory space, but I found them far and few on my first playthrough. I was getting rid of items very often because I wanted to keep my faith items to upgrade, but I ultimately had to sacrifice healing items that would have come in handy not much later. Starting New Game+ with more space completely alleviated the problem.

Silent Hill f - Steam Deck Performance

I was pretty surprised when I saw Silent Hill f get the Steam Deck Playable rating, especially after the release of Metal Gear Solid Delta. With the reasons it was rated Playable due to small text and needing to manually set the graphical options, I went in worried. However, after playing around with the settings, I can say that it is more playable than I expected, but there are some compromises.

There is one spot in particular that I was able to test effectively to make sure the settings are the best they can be. There’s an early semi-early on where we are engulfed in fog and have to find the correct dolls to show us the way to get out. For whatever reason, there’s one section of this that’s very demanding, so I chose to optimize there.

Regardless of the upscalers I chose, whether it be FSR or TSR, as well as just changing the rendering scale without upscalers, I ultimately found that FSR on Balanced provided the best performance and visual quality balance. I had also played around with shadows and view distance to find a balance between better visuals, especially in the town, and performance. With those combined, I came to a compromise with FSR balanced, view distance, shadows, and textures on medium, and everything else on Low.

I also decided to keep the indirect lighting set to "Lumen High" instead of off and reflections set to Screen Space Reflections (SSR). Lumen and SSR are usually a very intensive setting to have on, and while I would usually turn it off, it changes the entire look of the world for the worse. Specifically, the iconic fog that defines Silent Hill games and the flowers that define this entry either disappear or become completely colorless. It changes the look and feel of the world, and that effectively ruins the experience. It's still playable with these settings on, but with some extra little stutters here and there. Still, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The doll area still had some drops, but stuck above 25 FPS. With it being the only area I’ve found to behave this way, apart from some cutscenes and the Journal menu, I felt the small drops justified the better visuals. There are some small stutters here and there when running around and going to new parts of the areas you are exploring, but taking it slow, in combat, and completing puzzles generally stuck to 30 and above. There are even some areas that can go up to 40, but there are many more that drop, so I recommend just sticking to 30 FPS for the most stable experience.

While there may be some areas that don’t drain battery as much, expect to be pushing the Deck to its limits. There will also be some lighting pop-in and some shadows may have a slight grainy effect at the ends of them, but it ultimately looks better and stays stable overall.

Against my initial worries, Silent Hill f is still playable and enjoyable on the Steam Deck. It may not have the visual fidelity that can come from more powerful computers and consoles, but it’s definitely enjoyable while looking decent, and that's just a treat.

Accessibility

We can change options for controls like camera sensitivity, inverted style, vibrations, how to toggle running, change language, subtitle size, color, and audio settings.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions, cloud saves, and controllers. The game does have HDR settings and recognizes the Steam Deck OLED screen.

Conculsion

Silent Hill f does have flaws, but the pros heavily outweigh the cons. The story sucked me in and combat was more fun than I expected. I am being more nit-picky with the issues I’m bringing up, but they ultimately never affected my enjoyment of the game, nor made me think twice about getting back into it for round 2. And a lot of the issues I had were erased as soon as New Game+ started, which was like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

On top of that, it actually runs quite well on the Steam Deck. It’s definitely not perfect and needs compromises to run effectively, but the game is playable on the Deck and can look gorgeous. It may cost a little extra performance in 3-4 scenes, but they include graphical improvements I’d consider necessary to enjoy.

In the end, Silent Hill f is a thrilling game, and if this keeps up, the future of AAA releases from Konami is going to look very bright.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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