What I felt was the weakest part of the game was the intro and general premise. Silent Hill’s camera system doesn’t not work well in claustrophobic areas with lots of turns, and the beginning mall has so much of it that you just can’t even see where you’re going (in a bad way). This isn’t helped by the fact that it’s basically impossible to shoot your way through the game, which is fine, but having to run past everything where the camera keeps jittering around made me miss still camera positions and the more open areas of the other Silent Hill games. The story was also quite boring since once you realize the surface level shock of Heather being Harry’s adopted kid, there’s really no substance to the story. The Stanley stuff was kind of neat, but just another shock value thing instead of being something interesting. This also didn’t help to make the gameplay worth slogging through. Many of the bosses are quite samey, narrow hallways were always a mess, and every enemy was a damage sponge. There’s also little to no ammo for anything other than bosses, so you’re just going to have to run past everything or face tank damage in narrow hallways where tons of enemies are. These problems are made exponentially worse the higher the difficulty gets, and with how BS all the encounters are, it’s just not worth it to play on Hard. The puzzles are also all bad, especially the Shakespeare one where you need extensive outside knowledge about ONE play writers work just to get past the first puzzle of the game. Aside from those, the atmosphere is even more tense and draining, with the music being a particular standout for making me feel a kind of dread that no other game has gotten close to. The hospital in Silent Hill 2 got close, but that was only one section of the game, not the whole runtime like 3. The sound effects on monsters and even walking are also fantastic at creating the industrial horror vibe that the first game couldn’t quite reach with limited hardware capabilities. A terrifying game as long as there aren’t people talking, explaining things already explained in the first game, or in a boss fight. Lots of great effects work with poor interactivity.

Has some neat ideas like the comeback system with the health, and the presentation is top notch with some great camera work, but the enemies are quite bad with some encounters that just have unblockable damage that seems almost impossible to avoid. The story also doesn’t seem to impart much of anything, and there are some pretty… problematic aspects to the game to put it lightly. Combos are also very repetitive with a magic system that doesn’t encourage experimenting since the most optimal route is to do the biggest moves. Many of the level goals are comically stupid to the point where consistency was totally shattered, but it’s not a huge deal for a beat-em-up focused game. Another flaw with this combat heavy game is long animations with little to no interactivity with the fatalities, which aren’t necessary, but if you’re struggling in an encounter, you’ll need the health and mana resources. Not a bad first move for the series, but it definitely feels like a first step.