Silent Hill f Review: Fear and the Fractured Mind Reborn

Silent Hill f is a courageous reimagining of the series, and one that succeeds more often than it fails. From its first steps into fog-choked streets of Ebisugaoka to its climactic revelations, this game offers as rich a narrative and as haunting an atmosphere as any entry in the franchise. But it is not without growing pains: its combat edges, pacing imbalances, and tonal swings hold it back from perfect glory.

From a gameplay standpoint, Silent Hill f is a hybrid of investigation, puzzle solving, and action. You play as Hinako, a student dragged into a nightmare where painful memories, societal expectations, and monstrous shapeshifters collide. The game oscillates between slower exploratory segments in which you investigate old buildings, rummage through diaries, look for keys and clues, and absorb the haunting lore and combat arcs that require reflexes, stamina management, perfect dodges, counters, and resource juggling. Many sequences place the player under pressure, forcing choices: whether to fight or evade, whether to push forward or hold back. In its more inspired moments, the duality between schoolgirl vulnerability and supernatural empowerment feels well balanced.

Yet the combat is the most divisive part. Sometimes hits feel crisp, counters land with impact, difficult encounters can become tense and rewarding. Other times, you’re struggling with slow stamina regeneration, awkward camera angles in tight corridors, stun locks, and mechanical repetition that often pulls the player out of the horror immersion. I found that midgame, when combat encounters increase, the friction becomes more frequent and sometimes frustrating, but by that point many of the narrative and atmospheric hooks kept me pressing onward.

Where Silent Hill f shines is in its writing and worldbuilding. The team behind the story, including Ryukishi07, weaves a layered tale of folklore, rumor, teenage dread, oppression, and mental collapse. Scenes in foggy streets, under red spider lilies, and through shrines feel charged with tension and symbolism. The creature designs are disturbing, beautiful, grotesque, and memorable. The game knows when to whisper and when to scream. The pacing is uneven, but many of the quieter stretches are the moments I cherish: when nothing is said and yet everything is implied.

On the Xbox Series X, performance is strong as long as you choose a mode that prioritizes a fluid frame rate over maximum resolution. The visuals are sumptuous: detailed environments, rich lighting, eerie effects, and clever layering of horror aesthetics. I encountered no showstopping bugs in my time with the game (per public reports, most technical complaints center on PC builds). The loading times, transitions, and visual polish generally meet modern expectations.

The main story takes a moderate span to complete, though multiple endings and reinterpretations reward further playthroughs. The jump from discovering a first ending to peeling back deeper layers is one of the game’s strongest pulls, and I believe many players will return. For those who deeply love horror and lore and are tolerant of some combat friction, Silent Hill f offers enough to justify the cost. For players expecting a leaner, more minimal horror walk-through, the tradeoff might sting.

In the context of the Silent Hill legacy, f is bold. It departs in setting (1960s rural Japan rather than foggy American towns), it leans harder into combat, and it embellishes more folkloric horror than industrial dread. Some fans will bristle; others will embrace the change. But I believe the game ultimately earns its place in the canon. It is not perfect, but it is compelling, resonant, and full of ambition. Silent Hill f is not a flawless triumph, but it is a haunting, modern horror that pushes the franchise forward in interesting ways. If you are open to change, drawn to layered narratives, and don’t mind wrestling with combat mechanics, you should play this.

RATING: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Silent Hill f is now available for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X.