Speak Memory (I haven’t read it :))
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I started with Shattered Memories and I grew up to be a perfectly reasonable fellow who believes that Silent Hill 2 was kinda mediocre. See, totally not crazy at all!
3 is the best silent hill, but it’s a direct sequel to 1, so if you wanna be cool you can play 1->3, with the caveat that your best bet for 3 is to emulate the ps2 version (or get a disc and play on original hardware), because the pc remaster is atrocious (though there might be some mods that fix it?)… or you can just play siren instead, which is on ps4 to boot. sh2 is massively overrated imo.
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I was with you until you suggested they play Siren… Siren is pretty interesting, and the ending is amazing, but that game blew so much to play.
siren owns!!! the sequels are bad tho
I’d suggest just watching somebody play Siren.
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I’m totally sympathetic to the “2 is worse in practice than 1 or 3” argument, it just does a lot of really thematically unique stuff so I don’t feel I need to contest that
Cannot stand while this Siren slander happens. Siren rules. 2 is alright. Blood Curse rules.
I’d also say they are very distinct from Silent Hill even if they share staff.
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“Silent Hill” has the most raw fright potential.
“Silent Hill 2” has the most compelling characters and scenario.
“Silent Hill 3” has the best setting, soundtrack, and climax; it’s probably the one I like the most. Its highlights burn brighter than the other games’, although its flaws are also the most grating.
“Silent Hill 4: The Room” is an enigma. Its protagonist is the least frustrating to control, yet its environments are the most frustrating to navigate. It feels on some levels as the least inspired and the least inventive, and yet it becomes the most transgressive and the most self-critical. I think it’s @familyjules 's favorite, for that matter.
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Having played none of the games and knowing nothing that happens in 3 or 4, 4 has always seemed like the most ominous one to me
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even if you don’t stick with it, everybody should at least play through the first few hours and see how it uses perspective to establish things in a… sort of way. i think ominous is a good word.
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Pale Fire is totally the best, but Ada or Ardor is def not as good as either
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I played only SH2 and 3 and enjoyed 2 more
2 has a more compelling driving force from the beginning (go find your dead wife who sent you a letter)
In 3 Heather just kind of gets lost at the mall and ends up in Silent Hill? It’s more of a haunted house game with a spooky abandoned theme park at the end and it had a lot less to say
SH2’s dog ending is also unsurpassed
I played them alone in one sitting by starting at like 9 or 10 PM and finishing at dawn. This roughly matches the experience of the protagonists since both games happen over one night. Very memorable experiences
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3 is all about the flat deadpan affect and late 90s-early 00s alt rock/trip hop nocturnal suburban vibe. the walk home after you leave the subway always sticks with me. it’s also more narratively and thematically meaningful in context as a sequel to 1, even though (and because) it isn’t as objective-focused as 2, though it also underplays the teen girl bodily and personal autonomy stuff compared to 2’s sledgehammer thematics. it’s psychological horror without the psychology, like the first game.
“i sacrifice myself to the blood of criminals” is a very selectbutton line
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Thanks all for the replies!
I will play 3 for sure.
Right now I am playing Fatal Frame 2 
By the way, which would be better between original PS2 Siren, and Blood Curse?
definitely original!
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Blood Curse is more easily uhh playable because it is linear. Replaying it last year was shocked how early PS3 clumsy it was. But difficult to measure that to PS2 Clumsy of the original. Is there a patch to put the Japanese VAs back into Siren 1/2? Siren 1 is also like 20 hours long which is as much time you would need to play Silent Hill 1-4.
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i looked into this, because i would also love to play this way for 1 in particular, but unfortunately there are no subtitle triggers during gameplay, so any undub would have to add them back in manually, and no one has yet.
in any case, the nonlinear structure of siren feels like a huge part of the appeal to me!
Oh I think they are both great. Siren 1 is just more hostile. I am 100% in favor of the towel puzzle. It’s this big disjointed narrative with a lot of subtle things going on. Lots of world-building in item descriptions. It’s an overwhelming game.
And Blood Curse is in 2008 how do you make Siren presentable to the public and does a lot of weird stuff with that while flatting it into a straight line. I like all the language stuff in it. It makes the time-warping more literal.
Dang I should emulate Siren 1! And wait is the no-subs during gameplay a possible logical explanation for the British Dub?
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