Last week, Konami released a small update for Silent Hill f featuring a new “Casual” difficulty mode for first-time players (or exhausted New Game Plus players). But the part of the update that really caught my eye was a small note tucked away under the “System Changes” section of the patch notes: “Fewer enemies are placed across multiple sections.”
It’s no secret that Silent Hill f’s approach to combat has been somewhat controversial. Hinako has a lot more tools at her disposal than previous Silent Hill protagonists, and is quite agile. Though I personally enjoy features like Omamori, perfect dodging, and other unique melee mechanics, I get why others don’t. Silent Hill was originally a franchise with clunky tank controls, and running away from enemies instead of engaging with them wasn’t just feasible — it was often the wisest course of action.
You can still run past many of Silent Hill f’s smaller combat encounters to avoid wasting resources or damaging your weapon. But running isn’t always the best strategy, as the game features quite a few enemies who are lurking around corners and will immediately grab you if you attempt to run past them, leaving you injured anyway. I prefer to clear out as many enemies as I can, because I genuinely enjoy the combat. In the latter half of the game, it wasn’t the number of enemies that had me struggling — it was the lack of durable weapons. At several points near the end of Silent Hill f, I had to skip past areas I wanted to explore because they were swarming with enemies and I was armed with nothing but bunny ears and the world’s least-durable axe.
Decreasing the overall amount of enemy encounters (especially unskippable ones) in the game is certainly one way to deal with this issue, but I wish Konami had taken a different route to make the experience more approachable. The “too many enemies” problem could easily be solved by scattering a few more lead pipes (or weapon repair kits) throughout the game’s final hours, instead of defanging it by reducing the number of nightmares lurking in the shadows.
For those who would rather avoid combat than engage in it, the latest update is a welcome change, and I get it: Silent Hill has never been an action franchise, and when you’re playing as a tiny teenaged schoolgirl, avoiding fights with giant monsters canonically makes the most sense. But Konami implemented an interesting, exciting combat system in Silent Hill f, and I can’t help but be bummed out that the game’s latest update now gives me fewer opportunities to engage with it.
