As Silent Hill f fans pore over the slew of previews that went live recently (you can read ours right here), two questions are consistently popping up on social media and fan communities: is the latest mainline Silent Hill really a ‘Soulslike’ game? And if it is, what does the term ‘Soulslike’ even mean anyway?
As we described in IGN’s Silent Hill f hands-on preview, combat itself has a similar feel to Silent Hill 2 Remake’s close-range combat. You can dodge enemy attacks with the DualSense’s circle button and activate a light and heavy attack with R1 and R2, respectively. Your limited reach and lengthy attack motions give a realistic, weighty feel to combat. Heavy attacks, especially, feel slow and need to be timed well, “contributing to the feeling that Hinako is just a teenager with limited strength.”
On top of that, however, Silent Hill f’s combat also features timed dodges and counterattacks, with the latter particularly important in combat sequences. Enemies briefly show a sign when a counterattack can be utilized, but we suggested that “unless you have trained your reflex skills by playing games like of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you will likely have a hard time reacting.” That’s where the Focus mode comes in, which can be triggered by holding L2. It allows counterattacks to last longer, while also charging up a power attack that staggers an enemy.
While series producer Motoi Okamoto hasn’t specifically mentioned the Soulslike genre, and by our estimation, Silent Hill f is “by no means a Soulslike,” talk of parries and counterattacks come as quite the surprise to Silent Hill fans. The franchise has never been famous for its clunky combat — story and atmosphere have almost always come first — but Okatomo’s suggestion that f’s combat sequences had been ratcheted up because “challenging action games are gaining popularity among younger players nowadays” has pretty much split the fandom.
The legacy of FromSoftware’s Souls series isn’t just defined by the amazing games in its back-catalog, but also the subgenre that’s been given life thanks to its very existence: The Soulslike. While defining one is kinda tricky, there are core elements that tend to apply to Souls games, such as punishing consequences for death, Souls — or a similar currency — gained by defeating enemies that is integral to character progression and can be lost upon death, methodical combat, typically tied to a stamina meter, and checkpoints that reset the world.
For some, however, Soulslike can simply mean tough melee combat that involves learning to predict an enemy’s attack pattern.
In a thread entitled, “Silent Hill f is not ‘souls-like’ and no one here seems to know what that means,” a Redditor said: “Genuinely baffling. This is link [sic] second graders being told to name an object and call a toaster a blender. Like, I don’t think you even know what a Soulslike is.
“Having a dodge roll and hard bosses applies to like 90% of third-person games that exist lol. Like you people cannot be serious. Souls games have heavy and light attack, tight-nit dodge intensive combat. You have frame-perfect dodges […] huge emphasis on stamina management, with shields, break meters, and focus on killing enemies to get c[urrency].
“Silent hill f has like 1.5 of those. This blatant lie needs to stop. Anyone with eyes who isn’t full of sh*t can see this is nothing like a Soulslike.”
It’s the broader confusion between what and what is not indicative of a “Soulslike” game that’s frustrating players, though.
“To be fair, nobody knows what a Soulslike is,” admitted a respondent. “This is clearly demonstrated on the Soulslike sub by daily arguments about whether or not a game is a Soulslike.”
“I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into FromSoftware’s games and Soulslikes like Nioh,” said someone else. “Nothing about Silent Hill f looks like a Soulslike other than there’s a target lock-on system and a stamina meter. Which is in, you know: a million other games that are not goddamn Soulslikes.”
Confusingly, others who have also played Souls-inspired games don’t concur, however, leading to considerable disagreement to what does, and does not, make a Soulslike game. Is it the melee combat? The need to parry? Or does any game that requires players to learn an enemy’s attack pattern count?
“I’m still excited for the game, but the comparisons to Souls combat are really clear guys, like come on…” posited one. “Invincible dodge, lock on system, light and heavy attacks, multiple attempt boss fights testing your combat prowess… Even the combat UI is clearly inspired by action games.”
“People complain about the combat becoming melee-focused like they don’t remember Silent Hill 4. Breakable weapons are essential without the firearms if we still want the game to stay a survival horror,” explained another fan. “This whole situation feels like Silent Hill 2 Remake all over again with almost the same talking points.”
Okamoto said that tougher combat, with the visuals and music’s “juxtaposition between beauty and terror,” along with the “terrible beauty of the game’s monster design,” makes for a terrifying adventure. Even the puzzles are apparently “grounded in psychological anguish and suffering.” Quite how players react to all that when Silent Hill f finally releases next month, of course, remains to be seen.
Silent Hill f takes us to 1960s Japan, where we’ll follow Hinako Shimizu, a teenager struggling under the pressure of expectations from her friends, family, and society. As displayed at the beginning of the Japanese-language reveal trailer back in March, it is the first Silent Hill game to get an 18+ rating certification in Japan. It’s out for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series on September 25.
In case you’re wondering, no, Silent Hill f is not a sequel to any of the existing Silent Hill games, so you can play it even if you’ve never jumped into a Silent Hill game before. Instead, it will offer a standalone story “independent from the series.” That came from publisher Konami itself, which finally confirmed on X/Twitter that the latest instalment of the horror series — which is usually, if not always, set in a sleepy resort town on east-coast America — will be “a completely new title” that “people who have never played the Silent Hill series can enjoy.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
