"You have a dodge, people are like, 'Ah, that's a Soulslike'": Silent Hill f leads "disagree" melee combat makes it a Soulslike, say "the most authentic" way to play is story mode

Silent Hill f: A close-up on Hinako Shimizu's face during the reveal trailer for the new Silent Hill game. .

I like getting my Heather Mason on and slicing through nightmares with a katana, sure, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried to discover in our Silent Hill f preview that the first mainline Silent Hill game in years features "parry-heavy" combat – that's a little too worldly and Soulslike for my favorite small town franchise. But, speaking to GamesRadar+ at Gamescom Day 1, Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto and director Al Yang have blessedly cooled me down by instructing us to play Silent Hill f in story mode.

"What we would like to emphasize is that the core experience of this game leans heavily on the script of the game, which has been handled by [...] Ryukishi07," Okamoto says through a translator. "And so, in order to have the most authentic Silent Hill experience you can, we highly recommend that everyone just try it out on the story mode difficulty."