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Legendary survival horror series Silent Hill has entered a new era this week with the arrival of the highly anticipated Silent Hill f. f aims to deliver Silent Hill’s themes of dreadful, psychological horror in a brand new setting, featuring new characters and a new combat system.

Read More: Silent Hill f: The Kotaku Review

The combat here is a little more action-focused than in previous entries in the series, though the game still manages to feel dangerous at every turn. And while I had a delightfully macabre time with this elegant survival horror game, there were a few things I wish I’d known before jumping in. So, after spending tens of hours on this game in both Story and Hard mode, allow me to share with you what I learned while surviving the fog.

1. Don’t sleep on omamori

f may be a survival horror game, but it’s got a touch more build-crafting than you might expect. Not only can you improve Hinako’s max health, stamina, and sanity, you can also equip omamori to augment her abilities. You can increase the maximum amount of omamori slots by spending enough faith at shrines.

While you might be better off investing faith in improving your stamina first, you should still be regularly checking which omamori you’ve collected thus far to see where you can gently improve your combat skills. Plus, unlocking an extra omamori slot can be really advantageous.

2. Stop hanging onto those offerings

As you traverse the weird and terrifying world of Silent Hill f, you’ll find various offerings like antique combs and dried carcasses. These items have no utility beyond earning faith by offering them up at a shrine. But they do take up inventory space. On more than a few occasions, I found my inventory full only to see that there was some random offering I picked up a while back still taking up space, doing nothing but inconvenience me.

Check your inventory for offerings every time you’re at a shrine and you’ll have a lot more room to spare.

3. Invest in Stamina first, Sanity second

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

Stamina is Hinako’s super power. No, really! While our girl is plenty capable of bashing in a monster with a steel pipe, weapons break pretty quickly and there are more than a few occasions when you can easily be overwhelmed by enemies. You’ll need to be able to deftly get in and out of skirmishes with the creatures of the fog. For this reason, I recommend investing in improving your stamina first, followed by sanity second.

Sanity is what will allow you to pull off a pretty powerful counter attack, as well as Hinako’s charged light melee strike (this ability isn’t available at first).

Having a generous amount of stamina to maneuver out of the way of enemies, and enough sanity to deliver more powerful strikes, will help you get hit less and ensure enemies go down faster.

4. Don’t get into useless fights

The creatures of the fog might be creepy, but you’ll quickly realize that many of them are pretty easy to take out–especially if you’re used to combat-focused games like Dark Souls. That said, resist the urge to go wild and clear the town of monsters. While your weapons in the Dark Shrine segments of the game won’t break, the random pipes, crowbars, and kitchen knives you’ll pick up in Ebisugaoka are fragile little things and you can easily find yourself without a weapon all too easily.

Hinako can’t punch or kick, so if you’re without a weapon, you will have no offensive options against monsters. No bueno. Pick your battles strategically.

5. Higashi is kinda broken

Early on, I neglected eating any Higashi, which restores your stamina, because managing stamina seemed like a me-problem more than anything else. That was until I got to hard mode and had to take on one of the game’s early bosses and, well, I learned that this item is kinda broken.

Not only will eating it replenish your stamina, but you’ll have unlimited stamina after eating for a rather generous amount of time. This provides a perfect opportunity to spam your dodge while also getting in close to deliver a ton of hits without worrying about your stamina.

6. Keep your distance and use the camera to peer around corners before exposing yourself

Silent Hill f is pretty low on jump scares. But there are more than a few occasions in which monsters are eager to hop out from a hiding spot and attack you. When this happens, it’s more than likely that you’ll get pulled into a grab animation where the camera will zoom up to show the monster brutally attacking Hinako.

There’s no way out of this animation once it starts. Mash all the buttons you want, you’re not getting out of it without losing a chunk of your health. So in general, it’s best to try and leave some distance between you and any monster you happen to be fighting.

One way to do that is to use the third-person camera to peer around a corner where you suspect a monster may be hiding. The game will play some gentle static (though it sounds a little more like a record player looping on silence in this game) when a monster is nearby, so trust your eyes and ears to avoid unnecessary damage.

7. Counter attacks get easier once you unlock Hinako’s charged-up attack

Silent Hill f’s counter-attack can be a little challenging to pull off at first. You have to wait for the monster to flash in color, then hold down focus, then execute a heavy attack. Given that focusing drains your sanity meter pretty quickly, countering an enemy can be a weird, time-sensitive juggling act.

That said, once you unlock Hinako’s charged-up light attack, things get a little easier.

Since you have to hold down your focus button anyway to charge up your light attack, it has the added benefit of putting you in a good place to successfully pull off a counter-attack. While you’re waiting for Hinako’s attack to charge up, keep your eyes on the enemy. If they flash in color, forget the light attack and immediately hit your heavy attack button. Since you’re holding down your focus button, you’ll trigger the counter attack.

8. Nail that perfect dodge

Dodge just before an enemy strikes you, and Hinako will hack the foggy Matrix to slow down time and recharge her stamina instantly. It’s a pretty small window, but nailing this move is pretty essential for surviving the game’s tougher enemies. Hinako runs out of stamina pretty fast, so do everything you can to preserve and restore it.

9. Look out for helpful items during boss fights

Fragile weapons and sparse items can make you feel pretty on edge at times in Silent Hill f, especially during boss encounters. Fortunately, the game wants you to succeed more than you might think. While my first run through “Story” difficulty didn’t have me desperate for healing items, Hard mode is a different matter.

© Screenshot:: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

Fortunately, I’ve noticed that it’s pretty common for the game to throw some items your way during boss fights; you just need to keep your eyes peeled in corners and other non-obvious places.

10. Collect everything; read everything

Us masochists sure do love a game that kicks you when you’re down. But there’s so much more to Silent Hill f than the struggle against the fog’s shambling, knife-wielding monstrosities. Hinako is quite the diligent note-taker and artist, and you are missing out on so, so much if you don’t take the time to read the various character entries and in-game documents. Not only is the art design on-friggin’-point in f, but so much of the game’s wonderful use of metaphor and its dives into Japanese folklore are found in the journal.

11. Resist brute-forcing your way through puzzles

Trying to brute-force your way through most puzzles in SHf is a quick way to sink into some serious ennui. Puzzles in this game often have too many variables for this approach to succeed in a reasonable amount of time, and trying to do so is way more frustrating than just figuring them out as intended.

© Screenshot:: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

While the clues in it aren’t always the most obvious, spend some time studying Hinako’s notebook. You can always jump to it while looking at a puzzle via the on-screen prompt in the lower left-hand corner.

Silent Hill f won me over with its brutally dark tale first and foremost, but its combat has a satisfying rhythm that settles into place over the course of the game. Hopefully with these tips, you’ll end up with a few less broken weapons and even fewer scars from those mannequin psychopaths.

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