This review contains spoilers
I think this is a beautiful and important game. Its greatest strength is certainly the strong symbolic language it develops; it doesn't feel the need to explain everything to the player and the more I think about the story the more questions I have - to me that is a good thing because I enjoy complex narratives with many possible interpretations.
For me personally, I was really fascinated by the use of tonal dissonance throughout the game. It's saturated with a deep sense of melancholy, and yet there's the wonderfully delivered line "This town is full of monsters! How can you sit there and eat pizza?" and a completely out of place quiz show segment that comes out of nowhere. The intentionally stilted voice work adds to the surreal tone of the game which I really enjoyed. I was also moved emotionally at some points, especially the letter at the ending which was beautifully performed.
Gameplay is never Silent Hill's strong suit from what I've heard, but this game had some particular issues. Even compared to the more dated first game, melee combat in Silent Hill 2 feels sluggish and extremely unsatisfying, and with the exception of the handgun most of the ranged weapons have the same issue to a lesser degree. The boss fights were better than the first game but still objectively boring. I was very disappointed in particular by the combat encounters with Pyramid Head, which I expected to be much more exciting considering the reputation of the character. Enemy variety is also very limited even compared to the first game. Kicking downed enemies is still really fun, though. Also, for a game with a puzzle difficulty setting I expected there to be a lot more puzzles but I was sadly disappointed.
Despite some issues with gameplay this game still has many more strengths than weaknesses, and I can definitely understand how it has become such an icon in regards to storytelling in games.
For me personally, I was really fascinated by the use of tonal dissonance throughout the game. It's saturated with a deep sense of melancholy, and yet there's the wonderfully delivered line "This town is full of monsters! How can you sit there and eat pizza?" and a completely out of place quiz show segment that comes out of nowhere. The intentionally stilted voice work adds to the surreal tone of the game which I really enjoyed. I was also moved emotionally at some points, especially the letter at the ending which was beautifully performed.
Gameplay is never Silent Hill's strong suit from what I've heard, but this game had some particular issues. Even compared to the more dated first game, melee combat in Silent Hill 2 feels sluggish and extremely unsatisfying, and with the exception of the handgun most of the ranged weapons have the same issue to a lesser degree. The boss fights were better than the first game but still objectively boring. I was very disappointed in particular by the combat encounters with Pyramid Head, which I expected to be much more exciting considering the reputation of the character. Enemy variety is also very limited even compared to the first game. Kicking downed enemies is still really fun, though. Also, for a game with a puzzle difficulty setting I expected there to be a lot more puzzles but I was sadly disappointed.
Despite some issues with gameplay this game still has many more strengths than weaknesses, and I can definitely understand how it has become such an icon in regards to storytelling in games.