Silent Hill F: There are worse things than monsters

This review contains spoilers.

Silent Hill F is filled with factors that are determined to corrupt Hinako’s life.

Some have claws and too many limbs. One even blooms into haunting red flowers, stripping human bodies into something beautifully disfigured.

But the worst ones do not look anything remotely close to a monster at all.

On the 24th of September 2025, Silent Hill F transported us into 1960s Japan with our protagonist, Shimizu Hinako, a teenage girl trapped in a dilemma between her individual desires and the woman she is expected to become. The game starts out with Hinako’s hometown basically vanishing into a cloud of fog, turning her life from bad to worse.

But despite the various different types of monsters found in Silent Hill F, the game showcases the terrifying aspect of being forced into a version of ourselves we never chose.

A different kind of Silent Hill

Written by Ryukishi07 and developed by NeoBards Entertainment, Silent Hill F marks the first time the franchise has moved away from North America, welcoming players into Ebisugaoka, a fictional rural town filled with rice fields, shinto shrines and narrow alleys.

Ebisugaoka is beautiful.

But something just seems off.

Even before the monsters arrive, Hinako is already in shambles. She quickly learns that her stubbornness and sharp tongue often work against her, inviting constant criticism that her attitude isn’t going to get her far as a young woman living in 1960’s Japan.

That’s when Ebisugaoka starts to change.

Everyone has plans for Hinako

With Hinako’s older sister, Junko, leaving the house through marriage, Hinako and her mom are left at the mercy of her oppressive dad. His rigid and outdated ideas about what a young woman should be leave Hinako little room to decide for herself.

It hardly gives Hinako much to look forward to.

Writer Ryukishi07 stated that he made the decision as to which friends’ and family members’ relationships with Hinako were included; that it was so that the pressure she feels from them would feel “intimate and visceral“.

“Since the protagonist is a girl, I believed that it was important to explore the things that would be most intimate and personal to her. From her perspective, it was important relationships–to her family and the ones that she has with her friends,”

Ryukishi07 on Gamespot

Silent Hill F transforms the pressures of society into monster bodies.

The monsters that pursue Hinako do not merely chase her; they often bind and distort their victims. The victims are disfigured and engulfed in vines and flowers, leaving their bodies beyond recognition. This fits perfectly as Hinako’s nightmare of being moulded to fit society’s expectations, through the metaphor of claws.

To be a feminine young lady. To grow up and get married. To just blend in.

The transformations in Silent Hill F are terrifying, giving us a glimpse of all these individuals forcing their warped version of Hinako onto her. Each of the deformed monsters is a metaphor for Hinako’s greatest fear: loosing herself enough to never remember who she once was.

Forced to bloom

The disturbing part of these transformations is how bittersweet they are. Konami describes Silent Hill F’s visuals as “beautiful, yet horrifying“, as red flowers snake through alleyways, engulfing victims and painting the town red.

But the flowers do not cause damage through destruction. Faces disappear behind petal-covered skin. Bodies become decorative objects. The person who once existed below has been covered up.

This is eerily familiar to Hinako.

The flowers reveal the disturbing future that is expected for her: although she may grow into a “proper” feminine woman on the outside, she will live out a life of obedience and surrender throughout her marriage.

Silent Hill F’s body horror is a warning. Hinako isn’t just afraid of being harmed.

She fears being stripped of her identity to the point of not recognising herself, all in the name of becoming a “proper woman”.

And then there’s combat

With monsters that carry such weight, it seems that the act of battling them could be somewhat uninteresting. Silent Hill F can make an empty alleyway agonising for hours with simply a faint distant noise. When a figure is spotted, you just have to stop in your tracks and give it your full attention. Finally, after the anticipation builds, a monster may appear, and the suspense you’ve built up is reduced to cautiously watching the stamina bar and praying hard that you’ve timed your attack correctly.

PCGamer described Silent Hill F’s combat as “too emphasised“, with complaints that the game “keeps tutorializing new combat ideas even in its final act, well after the point where they bothered caring about them.”

It’s a bit of a disappointment, as these monsters are most horrifying when we are actually able to see them and analyse their characters. However, by consistently having to engage in battles with them, the monsters are just dumbed down into enemies that need to be defeated instead of meaningful symbols.

More than just another Silent Hill

Although Silent Hill F isn’t set in the familiar town of Maine, everything about this Silent Hill still feels like Silent Hill. It doesn’t copy anything from the previous franchises, but it still captures what made the franchise terrifying: The fear of each character being turned into something they could not escape.

Hinako’s biggest fear is losing herself. As she lives within an environment full of people and creatures that are determined to mould her into someone else, Silent Hill F does an incredible job of making these expectations physical.

Yes, at times the combat may make it difficult for the tension to build. However, it is not the combat itself that will stay with you. The creatures can be battled. But Hinako’s true nightmare exists in a future which could ask of her to grow quieter, to mindlessly obey and eventually lose who she is. To treat this reformation as normal.

And maybe that is the cruellest aspect of Silent Hill F, it is the act of becoming something everyone else wanted with the price of surrendering yourself.