Silent Hill Heaven

"The combat - and, respectively, the difficulty curve - in this game sucks."

Discuss your reasons for or against this statement. GO!

I completely disagree. The combat wasn't awful; I saw a friend of mine have problems with it, but I found that provided you push your analog stick toward the enemy and block when they'll come at you, it was rather easy (provided they weren't in groups).

I disagree also, I had no real problems with the combat at all. It wasn't unchallenging, but I think it was at an acceptable level, and vastly better than Homecomings terrible system.

I did find guns to be somewhat useless for combat, but I was quite happy to mostly use melee anyway.

Combat's simple, so I like it. Still frustrating because I have shitty reflexes, though.

In my eyes, the combat was great; a perfect combination of classic-styled SH combat and a few modern features. It was how combat in a modern SH should feel - simple & minimalistic while retaing responsiveness.

I felt that the overall difficulty was about right; although I play on hard.

I didn't really have a problem with the combat for the most part. Sometimes I would get a little too gung-ho and attack an enemy before it finished its attack pattern for me to block but for the most part I didn't have an issue with the combat at all. It wasn't overly complicated, you just had to pay attention to attack patterns and block at the right times.

Come to think of it, I DID have an issue with guns, though. Occasionally I'd shoot a monster at point-blank range and they'd do nothing.

I disagree, as well. I felt the combat to be very fluid with no difficulty at all. I never found any frustration from the combat what so ever. This doesn't deal with combat exactly, but I didn't like how I couldn't have a pistol and a melee weapon. That was a bit annoying. However, I rarely used firearms in the game (only during like...the final boss), so it wasn't really a big deal to me.

I mostly disagree. Throughout the vast majority of the game I experienced no issues with the combat. I'd screw up a few times, but it was almost always my own fault. However, the final stretch of the game over-emphasized combat, in my opinion, and this gave me some grief. That section in the prison where you're forced to fight three prisoners, for example, was a pain in the ass--especially since I didn't have any firearms on me. It frustrated the hell out of me. This frustration was made even worse due to a glitch in the save system--If I died later I would be sent back to fight those three assholes. The glitch magically went away after I took a break to study for exams.

But, again, for the vast majority of the game, the combat and difficulty were both perfect.

Yuki wrote:Come to think of it, I DID have an issue with guns, though. Occasionally I'd shoot a monster at point-blank range and they'd do nothing.

I had this issue as well. The first couple times I thought maybe I somehow missed, but I think that might be another hiccup with the game.

The melee combat if anything, is piss easy most of the time. All you have to do is block until the monster stops attacking then swing back. Of course you'll typically want to use a metal weapon like a pipe or crowbar since they last a bit longer than most weapons.

Gunplay is a different story. The aiming reticule shakes a lot, and even at close range, Murphy misses plenty of his shots; he's almost as bad a shot as Harry Mason back in the day.

thy_butcher wrote:In my eyes, the combat was great; a perfect combination of classic-styled SH combat and a few modern features. It was how combat in a modern SH should feel - simple & minimalistic while retaing responsiveness.

This is exactly how I feel as well. The combat was pretty much perfect for me. It wasn't over-the-top action while also not leaving the player feeling weak, useless, and defenseless.

The combat felt just right to me, it wasn't clunky or awkward. I didn't use firearms much, but then again I tend to use melee combat much more frequently in Silent Hill games.

The only thing that I disliked was the response-rate for pressing the block button. I felt like Murphy didn't respond accordingly at some times and took unnecessary damage because of it.

It was great otherwise!

I found the combat to be okay. The controls took a little getting used to- I threw my weapons by accident a number of times. It wasn't particularly difficult once I got used to it, but I never quite enjoyed it either. It was "meh." (And yes, I did enjoy the combat in past games.)

Also, I found it really bothersome that you had to drop your current weapon just to see what another weapon is (when it wasn't obvious), and that you couldn't have a pistol, a shotgun, and a melee weapon. And that those hooks for ladders had to count as your weapon instead of being an item in your inventory; I didn't like using those for combat.

The combat in all the silent hill games kind of suck, but that is because your character never used a weapon before. Murphy is actually good on using weapons such as axes...

my point is, the bad combat in silent hill games makes the games scarier because the main character is not prepared at all to battle with those big scary monsters

The combat itself wasn't that bad, it was just the interaction with the monsters....the blocking and dodging and them jumping backwards avoiding attacks?...i might as well have been fighting normal humans. The combat was handled better than what was seen in homecoming tho.

The breakable weapons mechanic actually didn't bother me as much as i thought it would, but i would still rather not see it return...and the monsters just need more terrifying behavior and mannerisms...not human like traits and behaviors.

I found the game to be super easy on hard. At one point I had 25 med kits.

The combat is easy, but it still sucks. Its kind of a downgrade from homecoming.

Kompwars wrote:The combat is easy, but it still sucks. Its kind of a downgrade from homecoming.

Pretty much this. Such a shame too because Homecoming really had the best fighting mechanics. They just needed some polish.

But there are too many fans who act like the games are supposed to be nothing but super, duper serious visual novels that recycle the same gameplay mechanics to not "spoiler immersion" (which is subjective anyway) and induce lazy, artificial attempts at instilling fear.