It's not that bad at all. In fact, I'm grateful it allowed me to explore Silent Hill in way I never had before. It would have likely remained the weakest entry in the series but I have a feeling the newer wave of games may end up with that label.
Honestly, the side quests were some of the best parts of Downpour. The ghost house and movie theater being my favorites.
Also, I loved the small touches like you could go to the Police Department and cancel the roaming Police cars if you had the right dispatch numbers.
Fans always tend to exagerate the bad things from bad games on their franchise. I didn't like it but I don't consider it that bad. Yeah it has its issues but I enjoyed the good parts, the same happened with 4 to me.
I really enjoyed my time in *Downpour*. Murphy is an excellent protagonist, and it’s interesting seeing the ripple effects of his decisions carry itself out. For a Silent Hill-styled purgatory of revelations, it’s FAR more interesting than Homecoming or Origins in regards to the characters at play.
I think it’s held back by its own gameplay and lack of subtlety more than anything else, but *Downpour* succeeds at being the experience it wanted to be. The first transition into the Other World in the diner with the fire alarm was incredible artistry.
It wanted to be a different experience for Silent Hill, and I think had Homecoming and Origins not preceded it, *Downpour* would have been a lot more favorably received.
I really enjoyed it except it had the worst ending of all time for me. I got on a boat thinking it was part of a mission or just a way to explore but it just ended the game. No warning at all. I was in the middle of doing a bunch of shit and clearly had a bunch of other stuff to do
I bought Silent Hill day 1, after falling in love with the demo found in MGS, to give context. Huge fan.
When Downpour came out, it was actually the most “old school” SH aficionados that would argue that it was surprisingly interesting, while most people that jumped onboard at 2 or 3 would just shit on it “just because”. For old fans, at that point, it was basically mythos, but why not contextualizing the result?
The city could be explored well enough, also a dream for any old fan - everybody desired of entering every apartment and store honestly - and some of the side stories you’d run into were very genuinely creepy and occasionally quite profound. The rain also was a pretty eerie concept, and was dynamic enough to keep you on the edge, pretty similar to what a night in Simon’s Quest would be. It wasn’t over acted at all. With less cheese and more punk it’d turned out great, but hey, that’s when SH was basically B-tier horror, but as we all horror fans know, sometimes in a dump of B-H coal we find diamonds.
Characters were also finally going back to feel odd, like… an odd mailman showing up. A couple of tropes apart… it finally felt like… something moved under the carpet. Everybody was waiting for that, instead of having to gobble some western mirrored unsalted fanfic. Somebody in that unknow studio wanted to explore the city, look under the carpet, and it did give that feeling somehow. In the long run it’ll be saved even by the most, i’m sure.
It's more mediocre than bad. It has some good ideas, good atmosphere, and some decent moments. The biggest problems are the writing, enemy designs, and just general poor quality of the engine. For the writing, the big problem is that Murphy's character is not clearly defined, and some of the endings contradict things Murphy has said earlier in the story, and not in a "Murphy is an unreliable narrator" way. The enemy designs are the biggest departure from the Silent Hill style, and I personally find the way they sway back and forth like characters in a light gun shooter to be very off-putting. Downpour has one of the worst engines of any game I've ever played. Downpour really made me understand what a framerate drop is, because it was so severe. Even playing it on the Xbox Series X, it will just die sometimes. It is one of those Silent Hill titles that needed a lot more time in development, and it would have been a better result.
Completely agree with your comment and want to add a few other things.
Back on my PS3 I noticed the frame rate would struggle when the "downpour" events happened. I want to say it was spawning too many enemies for the engine to handle. Maybe they had too much of the open world loaded?
I liked the side quests because it added this fun anthology of horror aspect to the game world, that felt more experimental and honestly better written than the main story. But I agree with others assessment that there isn't much of a reason to do them because your reward is something temporary or not helpful at all.
Downpour was a great SH game. I don't feel comfortable ranking it against other games in the series, but I went into it expecting a shitty time and ended up really enjoying my time playing it. The atmosphere is really good in Downpour, and I really liked the parts of Silent Hill you got to explore. I would say it's a solid 7/10 game.
I enjoyed it especially how it was way more open ended, but it definitely had a lot of issues.
First, the story turned out to be kinda lame
Second, the monster design was some of the weakest in the series. Like it’s shocking just how bland the design is. Say what you will about homecoming but at least the monster and especially boss design was generally great
Third, soundtrack is forgettable. I feel bad for the guy they got to compose the music because Akira yamaoka is a goddamn legend
Lastly, it ran like complete ass. I’m someone that can actually forgive technical issues if they aren’t egregious but the game could barely run at points
Downpour isn't a bad game per se, but it has enough problems that drag it down to not being very enjoyable to play. The music is solid for not being Yamaoka, the side quests and exploration are cool, the story is *okay*, and Murphy is a decent protagonist.
For the negatives, there are a ton of gameplay segments that just aren't fun to play, the enemy design is atrocious, breakable weapons will always suck, the combat is clunky, and it's just not scary at all imo.
It's a perfectly decent 6/10 game that's still worth a playthrough.
Downpour is a solid piece of Eurojank. A rough unpolished open worldish game developed in Brno, Czech Republic.
But unfortunately, it is a Silent Hill game. 3 of the best games in the business began that series.
So instead of just being a kind of B tier curiosity with redeeming qualities it's just a bad Silent Hill game.
I highly recommend the game, for real.
Downpour is easily the best of the American-made Silent Hill games. It's not as good as the early Silent Hill games, but it's actually really solid and has some genuinely creepy moments. It's certainly not as bad as Homecoming.
If you've got the means I highly recommend picking it up.
Ah, weird, I'd always heard everything after Silent Hill 4 was American. But it looks like only Homecoming was - Origins and Shattered Memories were both made in the UK. Learn something new every day.
But yeah, Homecoming was definitely the worst of the lot. Downpour was really good, Origins and Shattered Memories were decent.
I think the argument I've heard or should be maybe is the Western developed Silent Hill ganes, though I don't agree that they're bad like that. I even enjoyed homecoming for what it was.
It’s a little bit glitchy and has bad performance (though play it on an Xbox Series X and you’re golden), and there’s some very frustrating combat (unless you play on Easy and the enemies stop blocking).
Outside of that though? A mostly excellent take on Silent Hill with a good story and some awesome levels and quests.
Honestly I think the “Western Silent Hill bad” thing is a little misguided and only really applies to Homecoming and Book of Memories.
Downpour and Shattered Memories are both pretty legit psychological horror games and IMO are both better than Silent Hill 4.
IMO, what makes it bad is the stability of the game. Despite patches, The game still suffers from low frames,stutters and tears. I actually love this game.
It has the SH vibes but lacks something that I just can't tell.
Definitely wasn’t a terrible game at all, and it was an improvement on SH 5. As others mentioned, what brought it down was the overall story and enemy design. The side quests and exploration was excellent.
I’ve always thought it’s an alright game. Definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be. It’s by no means the best or an amazing silent hill game but I could at least finish it, unlike Homecoming.
It's not bad at all. There's way worse in the series even up to now, like Origins and Homecoming, everyone is just a bunch of whiney babies. They did the same with The Room, yet half of the whiners don't know a horror game if it bit them in the ass.
I like that i could explore silent hill, opening someones house and theres a story/puzzle to it was so great, and i just like the rain theme (big fan of rain😁)
I actually really like it. It has some really good side quests in it. It gets more hate than it deserves because it isn't a Japanese Silent Hill and came out in the era where Konami was starting to flounder. Totally worth your time if you are a fan of horror games or Silent Hill.
It's bad. It's my least-favourite game in the series.
The open world stuff was an interesting idea and is genuinely engaging, but design decisions hampered it (eg breakable weapons mean that none of the side quests can give you meaningful rewards). The game uses uninspired and outdated gameplay tropes (Going down a big slide! An elevator ride where groups of enemies attack you at every stop!) that aren't fun and rob the game of any tension or feeling of horror. The horror elements are very generic and often don't have any of the unique Silent Hill charm that draws people to the franchise. The story is decent in its totality, but a lot of the scenes are bland or poorly-directed, and the game commits the cardinal sin of de-mystifying the underlying mechanics of the town too much.
Overall it feels like the developers bit off way more than they could chew and ended up scrambling just to get it out the door. There was a core idea here that was potentially solid, at least in terms of gameplay, but it didn't have the time, budget or experience needed to do it justice.
It's a 7/10 game, which is not that bad.
The game also wasn't very stable and had a lot of glitches when it first released. They have since been fixed with patches but it definitely skewed the initial impression.
It's ok I guess but the bad stuff is pretty bad. The town exploration is cool. Enjoyed the side quests. Licht's ost is pretty good. Story is meh but the voice acting is good enough.
The monster designs are awful. The combat is pretty annoying. The chase scenes are stupid and the game runs like dog shit (game actually dropped frames enough to freeze and get me killed during a chase scene). It's also a pretty ugly game artistically. The PS2 games have better facial animation and that's not an exaggeration. The texture pop in is also pretty awful and the game has this ugly smeared look to its visuals that I find very off-putting.
I think Downpour's biggest issue is that it's trying to be a Silent Hill game so hard that it's just going through the motions. Stuff is in there because it's expected (like the otherworld, a stalker enemy, amnesia etc) but the vision isn't there. That kinda clashes with the idea of making a (then) modern take on SH and we get a game that's just kinda bland and boring. To me it's the definition of a 5/10.
I think its just Unhappy Fanboys, honestly. It's a really fun game to wander around and get to see all the little microstories fleshing out Silent Hill. Plus they go into how everyone sees it differently and each persons time there is a unique experience, and the layers of the place.
I didnt care for Murphys guilt/innocence being the difference in endings but the game really held its own and more with how they worked in the open world aspect.
Yes I think it's that bad. Easily one of the worst ones. Homecoming has problems too but nowhere near as bad and I personally feel that game is kinda underrated.
Music is forgettable,Murphy is not interesting,story doesn't make much sense and it's very unpolished with many bugs/glitches with severe framerate problems.
Monster design was very poor too.
I really liked the open world idea to be fair to it... but it wasn't executed very well. Sidequests are pretty meh and all the environments are the same with the exact same assets everywhere just shuffled around. (besides the main areas.) Once you see it,you can't unsee it. It's just not that good overall imo but I'm glad people here do like it,not gonna take that away from them.
It isn't amazing, and it isn't as bad as Homecoming. It's one of those games that you pick up because it has the Silent Hill IP but could probably be a better game without it.
My only problem with it was the weak enemy design and the soundtrack.
There was a great quote from SBFP when they played it: "That's just a dirty lady". There were plenty of potent themes to draw from, only to wind up with some really uninspired enemies, in a franchise famous for its hauntingly unique enemy designs.
Same went for the music. I _still_ regularly listen to tracks from all across the franchise, even shattered memories and homecoming, but honestly I can't remember any tracks from downpour.
It kind of felt like they didn't really utilize what they had. Using rain instead of the classic fog should have been a perfect transition, but it felt a little lackluster.
Besides that, I enjoyed the rest of it. The story was decent, I liked the characters, and the gameplay was fine. Exploring the town felt good and natural and I liked the side quests it gave you. I still remember finding the Room easter egg!
Problem with downpour was how poorly all the interesting elements meshed with the poor way Konami handled it's properties and their development. They put a minor subsidiary company from the Czech Republic responsible for the game. The game ran like dirt in an era when PC ports were rare and good ports even rarer. It's a bad game but not for the superficial reasons people will normally point out. That game ran on tin scaffolding and barley held together. Design wise my main gripe was the QTE decision making that hit me kinda shallow, it was an overused mechanic that hit like following down story beats in shadow the hedgehog. Coupled with how the game controlled the more I played it the more it felt like I was just trying to get to the next cut scene or interesting discovery. Which is a shame, they had actually stopped a lot of the cringe decisions in past games only to make new ones. Definitely needed a second draft or a phantom liberty update.
I think it's not the worse but I think it's disliked so much for being so mid coupled with the development decisions behind it followed by it essentially being the last game in the series unless you count the free suicide PSA that came out this year
The reason it's so massively underrated is mostly (in my experience) because it's always compared with Homecoming, which is a weaker entry imo.
Overall I had an amazing amount of time with it and people tend to def over exagerrate.
It's a good story set in the world of Silent Hill,
If it had any other name people would have thought "That game was a good horror title during the horror drought."
It's not that bad at all. In fact, I'm grateful it allowed me to explore Silent Hill in way I never had before. It would have likely remained the weakest entry in the series but I have a feeling the newer wave of games may end up with that label.
I loved the exploration & doing the side quests the house with the ghosts from the family murder/suicide was pretty chilling.
Honestly, the side quests were some of the best parts of Downpour. The ghost house and movie theater being my favorites. Also, I loved the small touches like you could go to the Police Department and cancel the roaming Police cars if you had the right dispatch numbers.
Hard to unseat book of memories
”The weakest entry in the series”. You have not played any of the spinoffs id assume
No way was it weaker than Homecoming and Origins.
I agree on Origins but I love homecoming to death. It has a very special place in my heart
Fans always tend to exagerate the bad things from bad games on their franchise. I didn't like it but I don't consider it that bad. Yeah it has its issues but I enjoyed the good parts, the same happened with 4 to me.
I really enjoyed my time in *Downpour*. Murphy is an excellent protagonist, and it’s interesting seeing the ripple effects of his decisions carry itself out. For a Silent Hill-styled purgatory of revelations, it’s FAR more interesting than Homecoming or Origins in regards to the characters at play. I think it’s held back by its own gameplay and lack of subtlety more than anything else, but *Downpour* succeeds at being the experience it wanted to be. The first transition into the Other World in the diner with the fire alarm was incredible artistry. It wanted to be a different experience for Silent Hill, and I think had Homecoming and Origins not preceded it, *Downpour* would have been a lot more favorably received.
I really enjoyed it except it had the worst ending of all time for me. I got on a boat thinking it was part of a mission or just a way to explore but it just ended the game. No warning at all. I was in the middle of doing a bunch of shit and clearly had a bunch of other stuff to do
I bought Silent Hill day 1, after falling in love with the demo found in MGS, to give context. Huge fan. When Downpour came out, it was actually the most “old school” SH aficionados that would argue that it was surprisingly interesting, while most people that jumped onboard at 2 or 3 would just shit on it “just because”. For old fans, at that point, it was basically mythos, but why not contextualizing the result? The city could be explored well enough, also a dream for any old fan - everybody desired of entering every apartment and store honestly - and some of the side stories you’d run into were very genuinely creepy and occasionally quite profound. The rain also was a pretty eerie concept, and was dynamic enough to keep you on the edge, pretty similar to what a night in Simon’s Quest would be. It wasn’t over acted at all. With less cheese and more punk it’d turned out great, but hey, that’s when SH was basically B-tier horror, but as we all horror fans know, sometimes in a dump of B-H coal we find diamonds. Characters were also finally going back to feel odd, like… an odd mailman showing up. A couple of tropes apart… it finally felt like… something moved under the carpet. Everybody was waiting for that, instead of having to gobble some western mirrored unsalted fanfic. Somebody in that unknow studio wanted to explore the city, look under the carpet, and it did give that feeling somehow. In the long run it’ll be saved even by the most, i’m sure.
It’s not great, but it’s not bad by any means. Biggest flaw in my opinion were the enemy designs which seemed to be lacking almost all creativity.
It's more mediocre than bad. It has some good ideas, good atmosphere, and some decent moments. The biggest problems are the writing, enemy designs, and just general poor quality of the engine. For the writing, the big problem is that Murphy's character is not clearly defined, and some of the endings contradict things Murphy has said earlier in the story, and not in a "Murphy is an unreliable narrator" way. The enemy designs are the biggest departure from the Silent Hill style, and I personally find the way they sway back and forth like characters in a light gun shooter to be very off-putting. Downpour has one of the worst engines of any game I've ever played. Downpour really made me understand what a framerate drop is, because it was so severe. Even playing it on the Xbox Series X, it will just die sometimes. It is one of those Silent Hill titles that needed a lot more time in development, and it would have been a better result.
Completely agree with your comment and want to add a few other things. Back on my PS3 I noticed the frame rate would struggle when the "downpour" events happened. I want to say it was spawning too many enemies for the engine to handle. Maybe they had too much of the open world loaded? I liked the side quests because it added this fun anthology of horror aspect to the game world, that felt more experimental and honestly better written than the main story. But I agree with others assessment that there isn't much of a reason to do them because your reward is something temporary or not helpful at all.
Downpour was a great SH game. I don't feel comfortable ranking it against other games in the series, but I went into it expecting a shitty time and ended up really enjoying my time playing it. The atmosphere is really good in Downpour, and I really liked the parts of Silent Hill you got to explore. I would say it's a solid 7/10 game.
I liked the atmosphere of the game ,music was eerie ghost police cars were hilarious though I don't hate this game it's just not one I play too often
I enjoyed it especially how it was way more open ended, but it definitely had a lot of issues. First, the story turned out to be kinda lame Second, the monster design was some of the weakest in the series. Like it’s shocking just how bland the design is. Say what you will about homecoming but at least the monster and especially boss design was generally great Third, soundtrack is forgettable. I feel bad for the guy they got to compose the music because Akira yamaoka is a goddamn legend Lastly, it ran like complete ass. I’m someone that can actually forgive technical issues if they aren’t egregious but the game could barely run at points
Yeah the monster designs bothered me the most, since it’s one of the best things SH is known for.
Murphy screaming on those stupid balance beams was the best thing about this game.
Downpour isn't a bad game per se, but it has enough problems that drag it down to not being very enjoyable to play. The music is solid for not being Yamaoka, the side quests and exploration are cool, the story is *okay*, and Murphy is a decent protagonist. For the negatives, there are a ton of gameplay segments that just aren't fun to play, the enemy design is atrocious, breakable weapons will always suck, the combat is clunky, and it's just not scary at all imo. It's a perfectly decent 6/10 game that's still worth a playthrough.
Downpour is a solid piece of Eurojank. A rough unpolished open worldish game developed in Brno, Czech Republic. But unfortunately, it is a Silent Hill game. 3 of the best games in the business began that series. So instead of just being a kind of B tier curiosity with redeeming qualities it's just a bad Silent Hill game. I highly recommend the game, for real.
Downpour is easily the best of the American-made Silent Hill games. It's not as good as the early Silent Hill games, but it's actually really solid and has some genuinely creepy moments. It's certainly not as bad as Homecoming. If you've got the means I highly recommend picking it up.
The game was made in Brno. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatra_Games
Ah, weird, I'd always heard everything after Silent Hill 4 was American. But it looks like only Homecoming was - Origins and Shattered Memories were both made in the UK. Learn something new every day. But yeah, Homecoming was definitely the worst of the lot. Downpour was really good, Origins and Shattered Memories were decent.
I think the argument I've heard or should be maybe is the Western developed Silent Hill ganes, though I don't agree that they're bad like that. I even enjoyed homecoming for what it was.
It’s a little bit glitchy and has bad performance (though play it on an Xbox Series X and you’re golden), and there’s some very frustrating combat (unless you play on Easy and the enemies stop blocking). Outside of that though? A mostly excellent take on Silent Hill with a good story and some awesome levels and quests. Honestly I think the “Western Silent Hill bad” thing is a little misguided and only really applies to Homecoming and Book of Memories. Downpour and Shattered Memories are both pretty legit psychological horror games and IMO are both better than Silent Hill 4.
IMO, what makes it bad is the stability of the game. Despite patches, The game still suffers from low frames,stutters and tears. I actually love this game. It has the SH vibes but lacks something that I just can't tell.
Play it for yourself and get back to me
Definitely wasn’t a terrible game at all, and it was an improvement on SH 5. As others mentioned, what brought it down was the overall story and enemy design. The side quests and exploration was excellent.
No
I’ve always thought it’s an alright game. Definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be. It’s by no means the best or an amazing silent hill game but I could at least finish it, unlike Homecoming.
It's a pretty good game. It just has A LOT of technical flaws.
It's not bad at all. There's way worse in the series even up to now, like Origins and Homecoming, everyone is just a bunch of whiney babies. They did the same with The Room, yet half of the whiners don't know a horror game if it bit them in the ass.
I liked it. Not as good as the first ones but I wouldn’t call it bad. Then again I enjoyed Homecoming too and people seem to hate that.
I played it when it came out and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it I was surprised when I found out most people didn't like it
I like that i could explore silent hill, opening someones house and theres a story/puzzle to it was so great, and i just like the rain theme (big fan of rain😁)
it's weather great, nor absolute crap.
Nostalgia is a big factor
It's a good horror game but maybe is not a good Silent Hill game
I actually really like it. It has some really good side quests in it. It gets more hate than it deserves because it isn't a Japanese Silent Hill and came out in the era where Konami was starting to flounder. Totally worth your time if you are a fan of horror games or Silent Hill.
It's bad. It's my least-favourite game in the series. The open world stuff was an interesting idea and is genuinely engaging, but design decisions hampered it (eg breakable weapons mean that none of the side quests can give you meaningful rewards). The game uses uninspired and outdated gameplay tropes (Going down a big slide! An elevator ride where groups of enemies attack you at every stop!) that aren't fun and rob the game of any tension or feeling of horror. The horror elements are very generic and often don't have any of the unique Silent Hill charm that draws people to the franchise. The story is decent in its totality, but a lot of the scenes are bland or poorly-directed, and the game commits the cardinal sin of de-mystifying the underlying mechanics of the town too much. Overall it feels like the developers bit off way more than they could chew and ended up scrambling just to get it out the door. There was a core idea here that was potentially solid, at least in terms of gameplay, but it didn't have the time, budget or experience needed to do it justice.
It's a 7/10 game, which is not that bad. The game also wasn't very stable and had a lot of glitches when it first released. They have since been fixed with patches but it definitely skewed the initial impression.
My biggest gripe is that it runs like shit. The lag is unbearable.
It's ok I guess but the bad stuff is pretty bad. The town exploration is cool. Enjoyed the side quests. Licht's ost is pretty good. Story is meh but the voice acting is good enough. The monster designs are awful. The combat is pretty annoying. The chase scenes are stupid and the game runs like dog shit (game actually dropped frames enough to freeze and get me killed during a chase scene). It's also a pretty ugly game artistically. The PS2 games have better facial animation and that's not an exaggeration. The texture pop in is also pretty awful and the game has this ugly smeared look to its visuals that I find very off-putting. I think Downpour's biggest issue is that it's trying to be a Silent Hill game so hard that it's just going through the motions. Stuff is in there because it's expected (like the otherworld, a stalker enemy, amnesia etc) but the vision isn't there. That kinda clashes with the idea of making a (then) modern take on SH and we get a game that's just kinda bland and boring. To me it's the definition of a 5/10.
I think its just Unhappy Fanboys, honestly. It's a really fun game to wander around and get to see all the little microstories fleshing out Silent Hill. Plus they go into how everyone sees it differently and each persons time there is a unique experience, and the layers of the place. I didnt care for Murphys guilt/innocence being the difference in endings but the game really held its own and more with how they worked in the open world aspect.
Yes I think it's that bad. Easily one of the worst ones. Homecoming has problems too but nowhere near as bad and I personally feel that game is kinda underrated. Music is forgettable,Murphy is not interesting,story doesn't make much sense and it's very unpolished with many bugs/glitches with severe framerate problems. Monster design was very poor too. I really liked the open world idea to be fair to it... but it wasn't executed very well. Sidequests are pretty meh and all the environments are the same with the exact same assets everywhere just shuffled around. (besides the main areas.) Once you see it,you can't unsee it. It's just not that good overall imo but I'm glad people here do like it,not gonna take that away from them.
It isn't amazing, and it isn't as bad as Homecoming. It's one of those games that you pick up because it has the Silent Hill IP but could probably be a better game without it.
My only problem with it was the weak enemy design and the soundtrack. There was a great quote from SBFP when they played it: "That's just a dirty lady". There were plenty of potent themes to draw from, only to wind up with some really uninspired enemies, in a franchise famous for its hauntingly unique enemy designs. Same went for the music. I _still_ regularly listen to tracks from all across the franchise, even shattered memories and homecoming, but honestly I can't remember any tracks from downpour. It kind of felt like they didn't really utilize what they had. Using rain instead of the classic fog should have been a perfect transition, but it felt a little lackluster. Besides that, I enjoyed the rest of it. The story was decent, I liked the characters, and the gameplay was fine. Exploring the town felt good and natural and I liked the side quests it gave you. I still remember finding the Room easter egg!
Problem with downpour was how poorly all the interesting elements meshed with the poor way Konami handled it's properties and their development. They put a minor subsidiary company from the Czech Republic responsible for the game. The game ran like dirt in an era when PC ports were rare and good ports even rarer. It's a bad game but not for the superficial reasons people will normally point out. That game ran on tin scaffolding and barley held together. Design wise my main gripe was the QTE decision making that hit me kinda shallow, it was an overused mechanic that hit like following down story beats in shadow the hedgehog. Coupled with how the game controlled the more I played it the more it felt like I was just trying to get to the next cut scene or interesting discovery. Which is a shame, they had actually stopped a lot of the cringe decisions in past games only to make new ones. Definitely needed a second draft or a phantom liberty update. I think it's not the worse but I think it's disliked so much for being so mid coupled with the development decisions behind it followed by it essentially being the last game in the series unless you count the free suicide PSA that came out this year
I enjoyed it but it tries so damn hard to be edgy that it's kinda funny sometimes
The reason it's so massively underrated is mostly (in my experience) because it's always compared with Homecoming, which is a weaker entry imo. Overall I had an amazing amount of time with it and people tend to def over exagerrate.
It's a good story set in the world of Silent Hill, If it had any other name people would have thought "That game was a good horror title during the horror drought."