With the Silent Hill franchise I’ve been in love since forever, and Silent Hill f is among the best. We played it through in Tōkyō, and to make things even eerier, there was a 4.6 earthquake during our next to last session, and our final session lasted until sunrise. Together with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (we’re still at it), it had the strongest and most lasting impact on me from all games released in recent years. And I have a collection of paraphernalia to show for it!
To fully enjoy the game, some cultural knowledge is recommended, otherwise many events remain opaque until, as far as I heard, more explicit references are provided in the second playthrough. Also, thanks to my traditional sensitivity for certain motifs, I knew exactly what Hinako-san’s core issue was five minutes into the first Dark Shrine level. Which, indeed, was then matched beautifully—which is to say horrifically—by the first playthrough’s ending.
I’d love to play it through a second time for the dangling subplots and two more endings, and after that a third time for the “true shǔ” ending. (Has the term “shǔ ending” or “true shǔ ending” indeed become generic? I heard it applied here and in general to games other than 真・三國無双シリーズ aka Dynasty Warriors lately.) Alas, I can’t—I’m again in Germany now, and here we only have a PS4; Windows 11 will never be invited to cross our apartment’s threshold; and the Steam Machine is wildly unattractive at the moment thanks to the market being licked clean of affordable RAM and SSD storage by the most insufferable crypto hustlebros and AI brunchlords.
Thus, the second and third playthrough will need to wait until I’m back in Japan.
Played between June 9 and June 28 on a Japanese PlayStation 5 console in its original Japanese language with English subtitles.