Finished Silent Hill f yesterday.
Thought it was quite good. Not really up there with the best of the series for me, I didn't like it quite as much as Shattered Memories, 2 or the Remake of 2 l. I liked it about as much as 1. That said, it's still an incredibly strong game and I think Ryukishi07 has passed the test of transistioning from Visual Novel writing to Survival Horror writing with flying colours.
It's probably the densest narrative in the series, where almost every single line of dialogue and every single puzzle and every single enemy design has some thematic significance and almost everything keeps looping back into its various themes and visual motives and almost nothing feels like it's only there for its own sake. It definitely feels literary in a way the series hasn't exactly done before, stripping away a lot of the usual gameplay conventions, for better or for worse, less dungeons, less puzzles, less exploration than most of the other games, just pure narrative and combat. Which it did have a lot of and which I thought was actually kind of enjoyable for the most part. It would have been way too much for any other game in the series but considering SHf's primary mood, at least in the latter parts of the game, is angry, rather than melancholy or spooky, it felt earned.
As for the story and presentation itself, I think it was very strong. I don't personally vibe with the traditional Japanese aesthetics as much as I do with the Americana aesthetics of the other games and particularly during the final bossfights I kinda felt that I've played way too many action games where I fought Shinto style demons in abstract arenas that may or may not contain Torii Gates but I can't deny that the actual story is a very strong one. While the first playthrough made it look fairly superficial, it really came together during the subsequent ones. Particularly I liked the idea of the Hinako in the fog world and the Hinako in the Dark Shrine world being these two conflicting parts of her personality, in particular one representing childhood and the other one adulthood. I liked how the real ending was all about reconciling them.
And I also very much enjoyed some of the ambiguity. How much of the journey through Ebisugaoka was real, what was actually going on, whether the supernatural elements are literal or allegorical, whether Ebisugaoka has the same properties as Silent Hill, whether the hints throughout the game suggesting Hinako to be "dead" or "missing" are just a metaphor for her having left her old life behind or to be taken more literally... it left me with a lot to think about.
My biggest problem, I suppose, is with the structure itself, the way it require multiple playthroughs. I think the way it's done is a very awkward holdover from Ryukishi's visual novel background. Two playthroughs were fine, but requiring three for the actual ending was a bit much. On my third playthrough I wished there was some kind of "skip chapter" option to just quickly get to the actual new content, rather than having to replay so much of it again with, at that point, minimal new information.
That said, it was the best original Silent Hill game since 2009. Incredibly tightly written, very interesting themes and ideas, not afraid to go some bold new places.