I'm on the record as having said that I think From Software would've been a good candidate to develop a Silent Hill game (or a pure horror game in general). But I also said that I would not want such a game to be a "Souls-like". Instead, I think FromSoft is well suited to the Silent Hill IP because they make games that are rich in oppressive atmosphere, are good at developing rich mythologies, and which share many common themes with Silent Hill (such as corrupt religious authorities). Also, FromSoft makes games other than Souls-likes. They made Déraciné, which I loved! And which might actually be there 3rd or 4th best game.

Well, I didn't get a FromSoft Silent Hill game, but I did apparently get the "Silent Hill Souls-like" that I very explicitly did not want. Thankfully, it did not turn out as bad as I feared it would be.

Poorly-labeled difficulty options

Do yourself a favor, and do not try starting this game on the "Hard" difficulty! It's a shame that the developers chose to label the difficulty levels like they did: "Story" and "Hard". There's no "Normal" or "Medium" difficulty option. Typically, when I see a "Story" difficulty option, I assume that it's a mode that is stripped of all challenge and friction such as to allow the player to basically just walk through the game un-molested.

Don't get me wrong! I approve of games having accessible difficulty settings, even if I choose not to use them. Such stripped-down "Story Modes" are perfectly fine to include in an action or adventure game -- especially one that is narrative driven, like Silent Hill f is.

I gave up on the Hard mode after the first major boss.

This "Story" difficulty doesn't quite go to that extreme, but it is pretty easy (outside of a handful of tougher setpieces), and it renders many of the game's advanced mechanics moot. For example, you don't really have to manage Sanity or Focus at all in this difficulty level, as Sanity is automatically refilled at every save point. Stamina is still meaningful, but one-on-one encounters can almost always be defeated without depleting the sanity bar.

Almost all the consumable pick-ups, thus, can be safely ignored or sold at save points in exchange for permanent buffs (which just make the combat even easier!), since you'll rarely (if ever) need to use consumables on the Story difficulty. This has many knock-on effects for the rest of the game, such as making exploration largely pointless. Going out of your way to explore, only to find a reward of an extra item or 2 that recovers or buffs your Sanity simply has little-to-no value. Truly valuable rewards, such as inventory upgrades or a useful omamori, are few and far between. In fact, I often had to run back to a nearby save point to sell consumeables because my inventory would be too full to pick up any new ones.

The rumors regarding new Silent Hill games are true. Well, some of them anyway. It doesn't look like Hideo Kojima or Guillermo del Torro will have anything to do with any of it. Konami finally broke the silence regarding its plans for the Silent Hill franchise, and announced 4 new games and a new movie! I have very mixed feelings about all of this.

Market saturation

First and foremost, announcing 4 new game projects all at once feels like overkill to me. I really hope that these games are spaced out and aren't all released at the same time or in quick succession. Remember the last time Konami tried releasing a bunch of new Silent Hill content in its 2012 "Month of Madness"? Yeah, that didn't go over too well.

I'm having enough trouble keeping up with the oversaturation of streaming Franchise TV series.

More generally, keeping up with the oversaturation of content from franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel is already difficult, and I can't keep up. I don't need all my favorite video game franchises piling onto that oversaturation. People have lives outside of media consumption, and I'm sick to death of these corporations thinking that they have a right to monopolize our time by throwing dart after dart at walls in the hopes that some particular dart sticks in the bullseye. I do not owe Disney, or CBS/Paramount, or Konami any of my time, and I've gotten to the point that I don't offer my time unless I have an expectation that it will be worth it. So if any of these Silent Hill games does not look worth my time, I won't play them, and they can go in the pile of un-consumed content along with Book of Memories and most of the crappy graphic novels and comics.

That being said, I'm expecting that most (if not all) of these titles will be relatively short, niche horror games -- "short" compared to the massive open world grind-a-thons that other studios keep trying to shove down our throats. I don't expect any of these new Silent Hill games to be 100+ hour, open world, live service games that are designed explicitly to waste my time and try to steer me towards buying "time-saver" micro-transactions and loot boxes. That doesn't mean that Konami won't find a way to put micro-transactions and loot boxes into the games. But I expect these games will likely be more traditional, conservative 8 to 15-hour horror campaigns. This means that I will likely have time to split between these games and other games, and also between these games and each other (should they all be released contemporaneously, and I chose to play them all).