Silent Hill ƒ Proves the Fog Still Haunts Us

I'll admit when I first heard Silent Hill ƒ would shift the setting—to 1960s rural Japan, far from the foggy town I grew up fearing—I was skeptical. Would it feel like a Silent Hill game at all? Would the tone, the dread, the intimacy survive such a leap?

Turns out, I was wrong to worry.

From the first moments wandering Ebisugaoka’s fog-choked streets, Silent Hill ƒ wraps you in that oppressive silence, that sense of wrongness, in a way that feels not just faithful—but reinvigorated. Yes, the lore shifts. Yes, the aesthetics lean Japanese. But the horror pulsing underneath—the characters burdened by guilt, loss, longing—still beats like the heart of the series.

The narrative is brutal, beautiful, and layered. You’re not just chasing monsters, you’re chasing memories, secrets, emotional fractures. It makes you feel things.

The sound and score? Haunting. Akira Yamaoka’s return has been handled with subtlety and innovation—melding traditional Japanese instrumentation with those industrial-eerie tones. The music isn’t decoration; it is the blood running through the veins of this horror.

The environment feels alive. Fog, decay, blossoms, ritual spaces—they all echo the characters’ inner lives. There’s a poetry in how the game telegraphs dread through silence and shadow and negative space.

The cast. Hinako, her friends, the ghostly guides, they’re not just narrative tropes. Their relationships and tensions ground the supernatural in something recognizable, human.

That said: combat. Sometimes clunky. You’ll dodge into attacks; weapons break; you’ll find yourself wishing you could just run past more. It has its moments—but fighting never felt like the point. I found myself deliberately avoiding fights when I could, because the scares that lingered in quiet corners, the unsettling puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere—those were the parts I craved. Combat was never the heart. And that’s okay.

Silent Hill ƒ is a return to what Silent Hill should always have been: horror that lives in your mind, not on the screen. It takes risks—and mostly they pay off. It doesn’t forget the soul of the franchise even when it reimagines its bones.

The fog rolled in again. Silent Hill never left us—it just waited.