Definitely the best Undertale fangame by a large margin. The music and writing is generally incredibly faithful to the original game. However, not all the characters are created equal (sorry Dalv), and the story takes a weird turn to almost entirely focusing on Ceroba after she is introduced in the pacifist route. The bosses are also somewhat unbalanced, though Yellow is not nearly as bad in this regard as many overly difficult Undertale fan projects. Very much worth playing if you enjoyed Undertale.

What's left to be said about a game held in such high esteem? Silent Hill 2 is, without question, one of the most influential horror games of all time, only rivalled by its older sibling Resident Evil. Almost every modern horror title is walking in the footsteps of one or both of these series. They codified the tropes that have come to be associated with the genre: elaborate puzzles, long and dark corridors, somewhat unempowering control scheme, the works. What Silent Hill brought to the table aside from these horror staples, and what has seemingly been left in the past by the modern horror game scene, is a deeply and unmistakable sense of melancholy and empathy.

Silent Hill's biggest strength is also, surprisingly, one of its least mainstream aspects. Everyone knows about Pyramid Head, the Konami mascot adorning shirts, posters, and movie adaptations. Its (his?) popularity resulted in Pyramid Head being stripped of all symbolic meaning in SH2, reused and referenced in most of the western-developed titles following Silent Hill 4. The other most notable feature of Silent Hill, the fog, has been discussed ad nauseum to the point of being understood by those who have never once played them. How technological hinderances can breed creativity, how minor details can become an indelible aspect of a piece of art's character, even becoming a shorthand for hazy weather. "It looks like Silent Hill out here!" The significance and beauty of Silent Hill 2 becomes difficult to grasp from the outside, ironically obscured by these notable traits.

It's simple, really. We've all been to Silent Hill before. We know the dilapidated, unoccupied buildings. We've walked the broken streets, catching ourselves on the edge of an oversized crater before heading off into another direction. We've gazed into the water of Toluca Lake and wondered about the bodies dormant in its depths. It's as intrinsic to the human experience as drawing a breath. Simultaneously a place we can never escape and long to return to, a state of mind, an inner demon, an outer struggle. It's agnostic to your personal experience. It devours victims and killers alike. And somehow, miraculously, this location-but-not-really was brought to you in roughly two years of development on devices that are now much less powerful than your average smartphone.

There are issues, of course. Major ones, even, every piece of media has them. The voice delivery often adds to Silent Hill's sense of unreality but it occasionally crosses the threshold of quality to the extent it can take you out of the experience. The majority of the boss fights are unnecessarily lengthy affairs, going from tense to tedious after James has dodged the 30th swing from Pyramid Head's great knife. Some of the puzzles are a bit too "clever" for their own good, especially on the higher puzzle difficulties. These are mild quibbles in the grand scheme of the game's excellence, but they do begin to add up over time.

It's not very surprising that people have been clamoring for a return to Silent Hill given Konami's recent game dormancy and preoccupation with high-fidelity pachinko machines. I guess the lesson here is to be careful what you wish for. Silent Hill: Ascension, the first of Konami's foray into reintroducing the series to modern audiences, is a collage of all the worst current trends in storytelling. Incomprehensible plot, bad acting, surface level psuedo-symbolism that doesn't pass the barest scrutiny, and even an unwieldy microtransaction system (the biggest sin endemic to the modern gaming sphere, naturally). The remake of SH2 is being produced by Bloober Team, mostly known for being a middling horror-focused studio with titles such as Blair Witch and Layers of Fear. Perhaps this will be their first truly great title, but their past track record is lackluster at best, and I don't envy being tasked with remaking this of all games.

That is to say, the fixation on always needing new installments in a franchise is inherently flawed. The people who made the first few Silent Hill games great have scattered to the wind. It is these individuals that made the games special, not Konami's corporate branding, and it is almost certain that all future titles will fail to be captivating in Silent Hill's unique way without them. It'd be for the best if, in the future, the only way to truly revisit this shrouded town is in our most restless dreams.