TL;DR: Silent Hill f is the best game in this series in over two decades.
New setting. New story. Same fog, same dread, same feeling of something deeply wrong with the world around you.
The story is dark and layered in a way most horror games never attempt.
The atmosphere is suffocating.
The combat is the one rough edge.
If you are a horror fan — this is not optional.
Score: 9 / 10
In My Restless Dreams, I See That Town
Only this time, it is not the Silent Hill we know.
It is Ebisugaoka.
A quiet village in rural Japan, 1967.
Narrow alleys. Wooden homes. Shrine gates half-hidden in mist.
And then the flowers start blooming.
Blood-red spider lilies crawling out of the soil.
Through walls. Through floors. Through people.
You play as Shimizu Hinako — a teenage girl with a broken home and absolutely no reason to know how to fight.
Metal pipe in hand. Standing at the edge of something she cannot name.
Silent Hill f does not ease you in.
It drops you into Ebisugaoka and lets the town slowly close around you.
That is the whole game, really.
And it works.
Everything About the Setting Is Deliberate
Every mainline Silent Hill game takes place in a foggy American town. That has been the series identity since 1999.
Silent Hill f throws that away completely.
The Showa era setting is not just a coat of paint.
Every building, every street, every shrine feels like it was properly studied before being taken apart.
Spider lilies in Japanese culture are associated with death — with the boundary between the living and whatever comes after.
The game knows this. It uses every layer of that meaning.
Spider lilies in Japanese culture are associated with death — with the boundary between the living and whatever comes after.
The game knows this. It uses every layer of that meaning.
Walking through Ebisugaoka feels suffocating in a way the original foggy American town never quite managed.
The town is not just scary.
It feels like it is already grieving.
The Story Is the Whole Point
Silent Hill f was written by Ryukishi07.
If that name means nothing to you — he wrote Higurashi: When They Cry and Umineko: When They Cry. Two of the most brutal, emotionally devastating mystery-horror visual novels ever made.
He writes tragedy. He writes things that make you feel awful. And then the next chapter reframes everything you thought you understood.
Hinako’s story is about what happens to a girl when every system around her fails. Abusive father. Enabling mother. A community that treats her like a problem to be managed.
Then the town starts rotting.
The horror mirrors reality constantly. The monsters are not random. The fog is not decoration. Every grotesque thing that happens to Hinako in the nightmare connects to something that already happened to her outside of it.
That is not new for Silent Hill. But it has never been written this precisely.
There are moments in this game that will sit with you for days. Not because they are disgusting — though some of them are — but because they feel true.
The Multiple Endings — Know This Before You Start
Silent Hill f has multiple endings. Not in the “make one choice at the end” way.
The full picture only comes together across multiple playthroughs. New routes unlock. Perspectives shift. Things you thought you understood turn out to be something else entirely.
This is Ryukishi07’s signature move. He did the same thing in Higurashi. The first playthrough is deliberately incomplete. That is not a bug. It is the design.
Some players will find this extraordinary. Others will finish their first run feeling cheated.
Both reactions are completely valid.
Go in knowing what you are signing up for.
The Visuals Do Not Miss
About an hour in, the spider lily bloom reaches the edge of the village.
The whole screen shifts to deep, rich red. Flowers pulsing. Breathing. Growing through every surface. The town just accepts it — like this is what it was always becoming.
It is one of the most visually striking moments in any horror game in years.
The art direction holds that standard throughout. Japanese architecture with real specificity — wooden beams, paper screens, moss-covered stone. Environments that feel genuinely lived in before they get destroyed.
The monster designs are grotesque. But never randomly so. Every enemy connects to Hinako’s story and the themes being explored. Nothing in this game is decorative.
PS5 performance was clean. No major drops. No crashes.
Akira Yamaoka Is Back — and He Brought Something Different
Akira Yamaoka composed the music for most of the original Silent Hill games. His Silent Hill 2 soundtrack is considered one of the best in gaming history.
In Silent Hill f, he does something new.
The industrial noise that defined his earlier work is still there. But it is woven through with shakuhachi flutes, taiko drums, and stringed instruments that feel like they belong to this specific place and time.
It sounds like Silent Hill. But it also sounds like something older.
The boss fight music is the standout. Even when the combat frustrated me, the music made me want to stay in those fights.
The Combat — Honest Take
This is where it gets complicated.
Silent Hill f removes guns entirely. No pistols. No shotguns. Nothing.
Hinako fights with whatever is nearby — metal pipes, wooden boards, improvised weapons that degrade with every hit. The combat borrows from Souls games: dodging, stamina, timed parries, weapon durability.
In the first few hours it works. The desperation of it fits the character. A girl with no training, fighting with broken tools. There is a logic to it.
But the back half of the game is where this falls apart.
Enemy variety is too thin. You will fight the same two or three types dozens of times. By the time you reach the final stretch, fights start feeling like an interruption rather than part of the experience.
One more thing worth knowing — the difficulty settings are confusingly labelled. Separate sliders for combat and puzzles, both called Story and Hard, with descriptions that do not clearly explain what either actually does.
Best combination: Story for combat, Hard for puzzles. That setup works. The rest is guesswork.
How Does It Compare to Silent Hill 2
This question is going to come up. So here is a straight answer.
Silent Hill 2 is one of the greatest horror games ever made. The 2024 Bloober Team remake proved the story still holds up completely.
Silent Hill f is not competing with it — and it is not trying to.
SH2 is about guilt. About the horror a person builds around their worst acts. Silent Hill f is about oppression. About what happens to a person ground down by everything around them.
Different emotional targets. Different kinds of damage.
The Good and The Bad
The Good
- 1960s rural Japan is the freshest setting this franchise has ever had
- Ryukishi07’s story is dark, layered, and written to haunt you
- Akira Yamaoka’s score is one of his best in years
- Monster designs connect directly to the story — nothing feels random
- Puzzles are proper Silent Hill puzzles — cryptic, atmospheric, satisfying
- Multiple endings genuinely reframe the whole story across playthroughs
- Visually stunning across the board
- Sold over a million copies on day one
The Bad
- Combat enemy variety collapses in the back half
- Melee-only combat is bold but does not fully carry the game
- Difficulty settings are poorly labelled and confusing
- First playthrough ends inconclusively — intentional but still frustrating
- Three full playthroughs required for the true ending is too much to ask most players
Final Verdict
Silent Hill f does not scream at you.
It whispers. It sits next to you in a quiet village and slowly makes you understand that something here is deeply wrong — and has been for a very long time.
The combat drags. The multiple-ending structure will test your patience.
But the story, the atmosphere, the sound, the visuals — all of it arrives at the same place. A place most horror games never reach.
IGN gave it a 9. GameSpot, TheGamer, Destructoid and DualShockers all landed between 90 and 95. Dexerto, Game Rant, the Guardian and the Washington Post gave it a perfect 100. Metacritic sits at 86 across 102 critic reviews — 92% positive, zero negative.
Our score: 9 out of 10.
Horror fans do not skip this.
The Critic vs User Score Gap — Worth Understanding
86 from critics. 6.7 from users. Over 2,000 user ratings on Metacritic.
That gap is real. And it comes down to three things.
Combat. Players are much harsher on it than critics. The consistent complaint is that the Souls-inspired system works early then gets repetitive and clunky as the game goes on. Most critics called it serviceable. Many players called it the worst part of an otherwise great experience.
The multiple playthrough structure. Locking the true ending behind a third full replay is a hard ask. Several players who genuinely loved the story still pushed back on this specifically. One user put it bluntly — they would rather eat fast food than play it a third time. That reaction is extreme but it reflects a real frustration that the review scores do not fully capture.
The identity debate. A significant portion of low scores are not really about the game being bad. They are about it not feeling like Silent Hill to long-time fans. Several reviewers said the same game under a different title would have been received much more fairly.
Steam tells a softer story — Very Positive across 16,500 reviews.
The honest read: if you come in wanting atmospheric, story-driven horror — this delivers at the highest level. If you come in wanting the classic Silent Hill formula — you might land closer to that 6.7.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Silent Hill f about? You play as Shimizu Hinako, a teenage girl in the fictional 1960s Japanese village of Ebisugaoka. When the town is consumed by a supernatural fog and an infestation of blood-red spider lilies, Hinako must survive while confronting a story about identity, abuse, and social oppression.
Who made Silent Hill f? Developed by NeoBards Entertainment, published by Konami. Story by Ryukishi07 — writer of Higurashi and Umineko. Music by Akira Yamaoka.
Does Silent Hill f have multiple endings? Yes. The full story requires multiple playthroughs. New routes and perspectives unlock after your first completion.
How long is Silent Hill f? One playthrough is around 12 to 15 hours. Getting all endings takes 25 to 30 hours.
Does Silent Hill f have guns? No. Melee only — pipes, boards, degradable weapons. Combat is Souls-inspired.
What difficulty should I start on? Story for combat, Hard for puzzles. That combination works for most players.
Is Silent Hill f connected to Silent Hill 2? No. Completely standalone story, new protagonist, new setting. No direct narrative connection.
What platforms is it on? PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC — available on both Steam and DRM-free on GOG.
Is Silent Hill f worth buying? Yes — especially if you are a horror or story-driven game fan. If you need strong combat to stay engaged, temper expectations. But as a horror experience it is one of the best games of 2025.
