Silent Hill f has a big combat focus with weapon degradation and you know what, I’m sure it’ll be fine
A brace of Silent Hill f reporting has treated us to the first details of the game’s combat system. Here are the headlines: counter attacks, weapon degradation and an energy bar that lets you perform power moves and dodge in slow motion. It’s apparently reminiscent of Dark Souls in that you have a stamina system and the dodge and counter timing can be tricky – a summary I would say also describes Punch-Out! from 1984, if I wanted to be a snarky little shitlord. There are no guns, just melee weapons that range from scavenged baseball bats to naginata polearms, looted from a spirit world of shrines and masked figures.
Lob a naginata into an online gaming forum roundabouts now, and there’s a one in six chance you’ll seriously injure somebody who’s miffed about all this. It’s possible, mind, that they are miffed because some previewer innocently suggested that Soulslikes might be an influence (the devs haven’t spelled this out, as far as I know) and this fleeting observation has been internet-telephoned into the argument that Silent Hill f is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with schoolgirls. But also, they will be miffed because resenting Silent Hill’s combat is integral to enjoying Silent Hill. It is the Silent Hillite’s most treasured pastime.
I’ve held forth in the past about why the series absolutely doesn’t need a combat system, and why any and all efforts to “improve” it with more complex mechanics are akin to putting wing mirrors on Pyramid Head. Lately, though, I’ve found peace in the idea that Silent Hill needing a combat system is Silent Hill’s original curse. That need will always haunt the town’s hospitals and schools – the ghost of a ‘real’ action game, tethered to this plane by the whims of commerce, trying to make sense of itself in a story about unschooled protagonists and squishy manifestations of self-loathing, doomed forever to be an uncertain mixture of pretty bad or fine but out-of-place.
It’s not like Silent Hill f developers Neobards are breaking terrifying new ground for the series: Silent Hill 4 had weapon degradation already. The strangest aspect of the combat is a special move gauge that’s tethered, Amnesia-style, to your character’s mental wellbeing. The more spooked she is, the less slow-mo power attack juice she’ll have at her disposal. This could be either a bruisingly artificial or clever way of raising the stakes during boss battles. Anyway, I remain more fascinated by the setting and story, which you can read about here.
