#adorablog

while organizing my collection, I ended up reflecting as to why I hold such strong affection for these two characters in particular. by the time I finished taking photos, I articulated my thoughts into coherent sentences.

Leon reminds me parts of myself I very much dislike—but need to acknowledge and accept, while Claire embodies the strength and bravery I aspire to have.

together, they remind me of who I am and who I want to become. that’s why I am fond of them both. i have love-hate relationship with leon though

the narrative itself is intriguing and packed with interesting lore about Ebisugaoka and its many gods. some players have accused this game of not being Silent Hill, and while I agree that the combat is indeed different from what we're familiar with, everything else is typical Silent Hill... in my opinion, at least. what seems to be a simple, straight-forward story of a girl who doesn't want to be sold to an arranged marriage is made more interesting and complex by mentioning conflicting gods and a weird fox-possession/spirited-away phenomena in Ebisugaoka. I'm still in the process of figuring what really happened in the overall story, but one thing I really like is how they portrayed Hinako's internal struggles by having a 'doppelganger' - a Hinako (ヒナ子) whose wings have been clipped by the arranged marriage, and a Hinako (深水 雛子) who still resists and continues to fight for her freedom.

also, can I just say that her actress - Konatsu Kato - did an excellent performance as Hinako? I loved her insanely relatable crash outs in the late sections of the game. she mentioned she felt like she was going insane while working on this project, and yeah, I felt that.

the monsters/enemies are also one of the best concept designs I’ve seen in a Silent Hill game, but maybe that's just me being biased. personally, I love the Sakuko-like Entity the most! terrifyingly beautiful and haunting.

one negative thing I'll say about the game that I wanna rant about is... of course, the combat. (I platinumed this game so I deserve to whine for a bit) I found it annoyingly clunky and tedious for like, 70% of the game, and it kinda pissed me off during my first run ;; the counter visual cues looked like it appears a millisecond fast, the camera becomes your sub-enemy after doing an attack... the perfect dodges were fun to do, but it wasn't that rewarding at all. fortunately, if you obtain the right set of Omamoris (Rabbit & Serpent) this fixes the issue completely, though I wish they had the perfect dodge + counterattack combo as a basic mechanic and not an unlockable skill. also, I despise the Irohihi & Kamugara mob so much. they made things insufferable at times. but anyway!