GAME INFORMATION: Release: September 25, 2025 Players: 1 (single player) Genre: Survival Horror / Action / Psychological Horror Developer: NeoBards Entertainment Publisher: Konami Available languages: Audio in Japanese and English; subtitles in Brazilian Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and others Available on platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam) Indicative Classification: 18 Years – Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sensitive Themes (abuse, bullying, discrimination, suicide) Game analyzed on the platform: PlayStation 5

Silent Hill f takes you to 1960s Japan, to the peaceful town of Ebisugaoka, and calmly asks: “Are you ready to face things too beautiful to be safe?” The way flowers, faith, guilt, and violence intertwine here is brutal. At times, it’s macabre poetry. At others, it’s the kind of image you wish you hadn’t seen before falling asleep.

The proposal is bold: no nostalgic comic strip, no recycling of what we already know. Here, psychological horror flirts with Japanese folklore, with a teenage protagonist (Hinako Shimizu) trying to survive the fog, the monsters, and, above all, the weight of suffocating social expectations. The city is a labyrinth, the diary becomes an anchor, the shrines demand offerings, and every corner holds a metaphor waiting to squeeze you inside.

It’s a different Silent Hill, yes. But it’s one that respects the essence: dense atmosphere, clever puzzles, monsters that symbolize wounds, soul-stirring music, and an ending that’s not exactly “the ending,” because you’ll want (and need) to go back to better understand what happened. I played on PS5 and, between occasional camera slips and the occasional choke, I found one of the most memorable horror games of recent years.

Mechanics and Gameplay

Silent Hill f is, by design, a contact-based survival horror. Forget pistols and shotguns. The rule is cold iron, wood, and blade. You carry up to three melee weapons at a time, and each has its own weight, range, animations, and… durability. Hit too hard, and it breaks. Repair kits exist, but they’re rare, and the game constantly makes you decide whether it’s worth spending money on a kit now or saving it for later. The heart of combat resides in three bars: Health, Stamina, and Sanity.

• Vigor drives everything that requires effort: short runs, dodges, heavy attacks, and even “focus.”
• Sanity is the cost of your advantages. Activating focus makes counterattacks easier, extends the “glow” that indicates the parry window, and unleashes devastating charged strikes. When your Sanity is zero, certain enemy attacks begin to eat away at your health. In other words, every shortcut has a price.
• Life is the final line. Don’t underestimate common enemies. Two or three mistakes in a row and you’re down.

The combat cadence isn’t hack and slash. It’s rhythmic, punishing for those who deplete the Stamina bar and generous for those who execute perfect dodges (they restore full Stamina). Visually, the game telegraphs counterattacks with a red outline on the enemy. If you time it right with a heavy attack at this instant, you “open up” the beast and turn the fight into an opportunity. It’s a system that rewards calm and alertness, not button spamming.

However, fighting isn’t always smart. Many areas allow you to break line of sight and simply run away. Others block the passage until you clear all the enemies. These mandatory enclosures appear more towards the middle and end and are where the game leans more towards “action horror.” They work, generating tension, but they can drag out already emotionally intense sections.

The design shines when it mixes survival mechanics with folkloric progression systems :

• Hokoras (small shrines) are your save points and store. You offer items to them to convert them into Faith . With Faith , you can purchase permanent Health/Stamina/Sanity upgrades or pull Omamoris (passive-effect charms) from a spiritual gacha.
• The Omamoris are small adjustments that change your micro build: a slightly larger parry window, subtle health recovery when finishing off an enemy, reduced Sanity cost when focusing, etc. It’s enough to adjust the feeling of risk without distorting the genre.

The exploration is classic: a map that fills in, locked doors noted, shortcuts that close loops. The Diary is gold. It holds notes, poems, visual clues drawn by Hinako herself, and often the mental key to solving puzzles that, at first glance, seem nonsensical. And what puzzles! On the “hard” level, some require symbol interpretation, local culture, and careful reading of texts. When the penny drops, the feeling is delightful.

There’s also the layer of “elsewhere .” At specific moments, Hinako blacks out and awakens in a spiritual realm of shrines, lanterns, and an enigmatic fox-masked figure. There, the rules change: her weapons may become indestructible , certain powers gradually emerge , and later, an ability to “transcend” her own body becomes a trump card for a short period. This contrast re-energizes the pacing, creates larger puzzles, adds stylized bosses, and, narratively, pushes the story to unexpected places.

Points of friction? Some, yes:

• Camera struggles in narrow hallways and tight corners.
• Target lock may falter when there is more than one enemy glued to you.
• Enemy variety is good conceptually and readable, but quantitatively limited. After a few hours, the threat “type” repeats itself, with variations in speed, health, and range.

Even so, the core loop of exploring, uncovering, and surviving works very well. And it grows in New Game+ : new internal areas open up, cutscenes gain length, bosses appear that weren’t there the first time around, and even a “treasure hunt” that yields a special weapon. Because there are multiple endings with their own conditions, replayability becomes part of the game, not just an added bonus.

Graphics

Silent Hill f is a spectacle of art direction. More than just being “beautiful,” it manages to be ugly in a way that makes it impossible to look away. The mist is voluminous and alive, curling through alleys and stretching across rice paddies. Higanbana (red spider lilies) explode onto walls, bodies, and the ground, sometimes as a poetic frame, sometimes as a festering infestation that makes you itch just looking at it.

The character models are convincingly natural, with expressions that support heavy scenes without becoming theatrical. The lighting maintains the mood in the temples and shrines, with thick shadows and warm points of light that seem to smell of incense. In Ebisugaoka, period materials stand out: worn wood, tiles, rough concrete, metal plates, small shops, soda fountains, the detail of an abandoned ramune bottle. Everything speaks to the era, with the narrow architecture of the alleys naturally keeping you alert.

Where the game really shines is in its creature design . Mannequins that twist like puppets, pregnant women with open mouths releasing their own offspring, scarecrows that only move when you turn your back, quadrupeds yawning a bouquet of guts and flowers. It’s a deliberately uncomfortable aesthetic. The body horror here uses the flower as the wound and the root as the scar.

On PS5, you can choose to prioritize fluidity or visual quality. Performance mode seemed like the right choice for combat, with a target frame rate of 60. Quality mode emphasizes textures and volume, but it’s not what I’d recommend for a first playthrough, because dodge and parry timing makes every extra frame count.

A detail I love: the illustrated diary . It’s not a boring menu. It’s a notebook with drawings, arrows, and sketches. It helps with puzzles, adds personality, and becomes a narrative piece in its own right.

Sound

There are games you “see” with your ears. Silent Hill f is one of them. The soundtrack leads with melancholy, industrial noise, percussion reminiscent of dragging metal, strings, and traditional instruments in moments of ritual. It’s that balance between sadness and menace that only fog can match.

The sound design is surgical. Footsteps change color depending on the floor. There are creaks of old wood, squeaks of chains, whispers that seem to come from behind the wall, echoing temple bells—a silence that isn’t empty, but rather the compression of air before the fright. The creatures have clear sound signatures: the hollow thud, the scratching, the creaking of bone, that sickening “click” that warns you something is behind you.

On PS5, the DualSense speaker is used sparingly for proximity noises and small alerts, and the triggers have subtle resistance for heavy attacks. If you play with a headset, 3D audio helps you locate threats in crowded intersections.

The voice acting delivers the emotional message well. Playing with Japanese audio better suits the setting and time period, while the Portuguese subtitles are clear. When bosses taunt you with repetitive phrases, the original language masks the repetition better.

It’s rare to praise combat music in survival horror, but some tracks here stick with you. And outside of combat, the use of silence is as important as the music. Many scares don’t come from loud noise. They arise from well-placed emptiness and the question “why did it get so quiet all of a sudden?”

Fun

The fun in Silent Hill is… different. It’s not about “woohoo, 100-hit combo.” It’s about “wow, I can’t believe that clue was in that poem” and “I found a hidden shrine at the end of the alley and it changed my next hour.” I really enjoyed the loop : exploring cautiously, solving a set of puzzles in an entire building, escaping, opening a shortcut, clearing a mandatory arena, breathing in Hokora, choosing upgrades, reading the diary, entering the other place, facing a boss who turns metaphor into violence. The rhythm alternates and builds a constant state of alert.

The city rewards curiosity . A dead end might yield a rare item, a document that changes your understanding of a person, a hidden Omamori. And no matter how directed the “critical” path is, there are always enough forks in the road to make you feel like you’ve uncovered something on your own.

Bosses are a highlight. They require you to combine learned mechanics, read patterns, and accept that making two mistakes in a row can be costly. Several arenas have environmental “tricks , ” and when the monster falls, that relief hits hard. These are intense battles and, almost always, significant to the story.

Speaking of story, Silent Hill f is the kind of game that doesn’t truly end the first time . My first run took a little over 12 hours, reading everything, poking around, solving puzzles on the hard setting. I finished with my head full of theories. Then New Game+ opened previously locked doors, extended scenes, introduced encounter variations and even bosses that didn’t exist before. And there are multiple endings , each requiring specific conditions. It’s not an “extra mode”; it’s part of the design.

Are there things that disrupt the flow? Yes:

• Sections with mandatory enemy cleanup that repeat a bit.
• The lack of rewards for killing common enemies (they don’t drop anything) discourages engaging in certain fights and can lead to the “I’ll just run past” syndrome, at least until the middle corner.
• The intentional harshness of the combat may not be for those who only want atmosphere and story. Still, the game offers a difficulty setting for action and another for puzzles, which helps calibrate the experience.

Even with these drawbacks, I left satisfied, tense, and curious. It’s that terror you “think about” the next day.

Performance and Optimization

On my PS5, playing almost all the time on the performance setting , the experience was stable. The frame rate remained high most of the time, which is essential for dodging and parrying. I noticed occasional stutters when the screen was crowded with moving flower and vegetation particles or during heavy transitions between cutscenes and gameplay. Nothing session-breaking, but they do exist.

In the quality mode , the visuals are more refined in terms of fog density and surface sharpness, but some sections show noticeable drops . My recommendation is simple: play through the game in performance mode first, then revisit areas in quality mode to appreciate the details without the pressure of hitting the dodge window.

There are some technical points to observe:

• The camera can betray you in very narrow corridors. Adjusting the sensitivity helps, but it doesn’t solve the problem 100 percent.
• Collisions with corners and hitboxes in tight areas can cause your attack to hit the wall. The game punishes this with a slight stagger, and it hurts.
• The inventory is intentionally small, but the combat interface requires respecting the item use animation. If you try to use a bandage while it’s stuck to an enemy, you risk interrupting it. Planning and distance become part of the skill.

Now, platforming kudos: loading times are fast , and the DualSense has helpful contextual vibrations. The overall optimization allows for a large city with many elements without intrusive loading screens.

It’s a solid technical package, with rough edges that could be ironed out in future patches, but which don’t prevent the campaign from shining today.

Conclusion

Silent Hill f grabbed me by the edges and squeezed me in the middle. It’s a game that understands that horror isn’t just about shouting “boo!” but rather plunging you into a liminal space, where every symbol bites. It takes risks by exchanging limestone and rust for wood, rice paper, and bleeding flowers, and succeeds by weaving this together with thorny themes, puzzles that demand attention, and combat that demands respect.

It’s not for everyone. If you’re looking for frantic shooting or just want to stroll through the fog without sweating, you’ll run into walls. If you’re triggered by plots about abuse, bullying, misogyny, and torture, there’s content that will truly disturb you. But if you want a modern psychological horror that tackles thorny issues with conviction , rewards reading and exploration, and even delivers memorable bosses, Silent Hill is a macabre feast.

Playing on PS5 was, overall, great: smooth performance, thrilling audio with headset, honest use of the DualSense, and only minor technical hiccups that didn’t ruin the immersion. Add to that the replayability with New Game+, bonus areas, and multiple endings, and you have a game that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

Recommended? For me, with excitement. It’s the best “new” Silent Hill in years and one of the most interesting horror titles of the generation.

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Positive points:

• Absurd art direction, combining beauty and disgust in unforgettable ways
• Score and sound design that build real and constant tension
• Creative puzzles that require reading the diary and observing the scenery
• Rhythmic combat system that rewards precision and composure
• Hokoras, Fé and Omamoris create themed progression that is enjoyable to manage
• Intense and well-thought-out bosses, with a very strong visual identity
• True New Game+ with new content, alternate routes, and multiple endings
• Ebisugaoka is dense, believable, and full of useful secrets.
• Functional and stylish illustrated diary, part narrative

Negative points:

• Camera and lock-on suffer in narrow areas
• Variety of enemies could be greater in the long run
• “Clear everything to pass” arenas repeat near the end
• Durability and small inventory can frustrate those who want to fight all the time.
• Occasional stuttering in scenes with a lot of particles and cutscene transitions
• Using items in combat requires distance and timing, which can be very punishing for beginners.

Rating:
Graphics: 9.5
Fun: 9.0
Gameplay: 8.5
Sound: 9.5
Performance and Optimization: 8.0
FINAL GRADE: 9.1 / 10.0