I really don't see what all the fuss is about over this game compared to SH1 and SH3. SH2 is well written and the presentation and atmosphere are superb, but mechanically it is shit compared to 3, it doesn't do anything to progress the story of 1 like 3 does; all it really does well is having good atmosphere in certain places like the apartments at the start and exploring the town in the dark after Brookhaven. If I cared about the story of 1, I don't see why 2 would be my favorite 6th gen SH over 3.
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good for you, anyway.
It was an early gen 6 game that shocked everyone with its graphix
You just answered yourself, anon.
Yeah, you basically wrote it all out. People like the quality of writing, its more metaphoric story, and the atmosphere. As a game it is worse than 1/3, and the plot isn't connected to the other games. If you don't care about its quality as a game or the story of 1/3, but really like the story(telling) in this one, it could feasibly be your favorite game (and for many people it is). I'll always wonder how things could have been if Silent Hill 2 and VTMB had been fortunate enough to be released with excellent writing AND gameplay, but unfortunately we don't deserve good things.
SH1 is not only the better game but I like the cult plot better.
A fat movie critic dunked on gamers so hard they're still seething about it to this day. They latched onto SH2 as something they could point at to prove that games have stories just as good as movies. Unfortunately they didn't realize the game's main plot was lifted wholesale from an American movie.
Hardly dunked on anyone when he admitted he's never played any games. Mark Kermode, like or loathe him, used to dunk on TV shows until he sat down and watched some contemporary ones and conceded he'd misunderstood them as a medium. That's all story based games are: a different way to present the narrative; neither better or worse in any absolute metric, only different.
Anyway:
SH1: best horror
SH2: best melancholy
SH3: not sure. I don't dislike it but never replay it. I'm in the anti-cult club though, I think it sucks. Much prefer the town being the "enemy" and you're just along for the ride.
>Hardly dunked on anyone when he admitted he's never played any games.
Not to mention he admitted he didn't have a definition for "art" to work with and just ended up saying "Sure, fine, whatever. Now go play outside."
What movie?
I wonder if he's going to say jacob's ladder
I was thinking Solaris because of Lisa and Maria.
Jacob's Ladder is overrated
Nta but Silent hill 2 is influenced but a bunch of horror kinos. Mainly lost high way and Jacob's ladder.
3 is the one that underwhelms. 2 has its own story and Mystery, which your homosexual ass probably had spoiled by reddit and youtube before you ever played it. 3s story is pretty uninteresting overall. Harry dies anticlimacticly, your dumb ass sister which is never mentioned before is trying to retread the events of the first game, you kill her, the end. 3 also recycled a lot of assets from 2.
Shit, why is it so expensive now?
Shit, why'd you think that was worth the bump with such a pointless question?
Just play SH2 EE. It's free.
3 has the best atmosphere, I can never get enough of the amusement park, subway, church, apartments, etc. The mechanical improvements are a nice touch as well, but ya, it is a bit disappointing having such a limited experience within the town itself. 3 does feel like it has the most replay value to me.
>3 has the best atmosphere,
SH3 is a gamers game. Its my fave too. Plus heather is best protag.
SH3 is literally garbage, a bag of trash, a heap of waste. Cool graphics tho
>playing Silent Hill for it's gameplay mechanics
kek, just say you like jerking off to Heather and be done with it. All Silent Hill 3 excels at is appealing to waifugays and I mean gays
There's no "strong evil cult" behind any of the original four games.
Aside from that whole burning Alessa alive thing that kick starts the whole franchise thing? That also have control of the town prior with drug running?
>Aside from that whole burning Alessa alive thing that kick starts the whole franchise thing?
In SH1, Kaufmann helps Dahlia to keep Alessa alive in the hospital basement as they're accomplices in drug production and distribution. Keeping Alessa alive and hidden is a feat that requires a vast influence over the town. But whether Alessa is alive or not during the events of the game is not crucial to the game's plot. What is crucial is Kaufmann obtaining Aglaophotis and using it to stop Dahlia. There's no "cult" in this, just a single man's actions.
In SH2, learning the truth about "the abyss" is what helps James to realize what's happening to him and to come to terms with what he did. He gets a letter in the hospital that says:
>A part of that abyss is in the old society. The key to the society is in the park. At the foot of the praying woman
The "praying woman" is the cult founder Jennifer Carroll. One of the endings is James bringing Mary's body to a church to perform the Resurrection of the Dead ritual. In Born from a Wish, Maria performs the same ritual metaphorically to help Ernest find peace.
SH3 is Claudia trying to revive the God by using her own power and influencing Cheryl's. Vincent, the cult's corrupt financial director, is trying to manipulate Cheryl to stop Claudia. Claudia hires a detective and orders a cult member to kill Harry. This is where you can argue that "the cult does things", but in my opinion it's still just Claudia pushing her own agenda. Hiring an unrelated guy and convincing a dude to commit murder is hardly "strong evil cult" deeds.
SH4 is the South Ashfield Apartments tenants being affected by the Otherworld created by Alessa and amplified by a serial killer who took his religious lessons seriously.
Ultimately, all four games deal with the power of a tortured girl affecting specific individuals and being influenced by specific individuals. The cult as a whole is always in the background (always, in SH2 too), not in the front.
So the death of “the mayor and the others” was all Kaufman? Don’t talk shit. I can’t be arsed replaying the game but I think your interpretation is simply different to mine. If I find the time I’ll go through the notes in the game for more proof but I’m not that heavily invested in this argument because Dahlia et al. are the shittest part of the series in my opinion.
Lisa’s speech:
“ Before this place was turned
into a resort,
the townspeople here were
on the quiet side.
Everybody followed
some kind of queer religion.
Weird occult stuff...
Black magic, that kind of thing.
As young people moved away,
the people figured they'd been
summoned by the gods.”
Cont.
Lisa: Evidently, things like that
used to happen around here
all the time.
Before the resort,
there really wasn't
anything else out here.
Everyone was so flipped out.
Gotta blame it on something.
Then a lot of new people
came in and everybody
clammed up about it.
Harry: A cult...
Lisa: Last time I heard anything
about it was, gosh, years ago...
When several people connected
with developing the town
died in accidents.
People said it was a curse.
The death of the mayor, the police officer and god knows who else is the background, the lore. You can remove it completely, and it wouldn't really affect the game's scenario.
Like I said, the cult is always in the background, there're no games where the cult doesn't matter. But none of the games directly deal with a "strong evil cult" either. This talk took off with a now deleted post claiming that SH2 is the game where the cult doesn't matter while the other games somehow have a "strong evil cult behind them".
>So the death of “the mayor and the others” was all Kaufman?
http://silenthillchronicle.net/shkgb.htm
Yes it was.
>In short, despite the fact that the religious cult to which Dahlia belongs is a secret society, they have come to possess the sort of structure and organizational capability that allows them to manufacture narcotics beyond the reach of police surveillance. White Claudia, which is refined into the extremely powerful drug PTV, is transferred out of the cult and sold chiefly to tourists by Kaufmann. In return, Kaufmann carries out illegal medical dealings, such as phony autopsy reports and diverting pharmaceuticals into illegal channels.
In SH1 it's not the cult, it's the Kaufmann's personal drug business operation cooperating with the cult that holds the power over the town. But in the game itself even this doesn't matter, because here the whole operation is just two people - Dahlia tricking Harry to chase Alessa around the town and Kaufmann getting his hands on a funny liquid, which Alessa thought to be powerful, and then using it in the final confrontation. Same with SH3, it's just Vincent tricking Heather to confront Claudia and Claudia herself hiring a detective to find and kill Harry and force Heather to birth a god and bring a local Apocalypse. Same with SH4, it's just an orphan kid getting thoroughly buttfricked into becoming a serial killer. Where is this "strong evil cult" behind any of these events?
Right, so there IS a cult in the background? Meaning the statement people ahve a problem with here:
is inaccurate.
With all the spiritual, spooky, supernatural whatever going on putting more emphasis on K.'s drug running empire (which I don't buy into - you'd need a group) is a bit of a strange counter to all that. I'm sticking with cult.How MUCH they are involved is open to interpretation and what little there is, doesn't work for me. That said SH1 is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch by a mile.
>http://silenthillchronicle.net/shkgb.htm
Kind of undermines the whole point when there's a passage stating:
"It is rumored that a religious cult of a considerable scale exists behind the scenes.
It also seems to be a place where young people are spirited away, workers from the town's
development group die mysteriously, and sinister traditions continue to be handed down
from long ago."
>so there IS a cult in the background?
There is, and nobody argued against that.
>is inaccurate
Do you have a reading comprehension disorder? Do you not see the difference between
>there is a cult in the background
and
>there is a strong evil cult behind SH1 and SH3, unlike SH2
?
I don't even what we're arguing about here, other than your neatpicking moronation.
I like SH2 more than the others because there's no evil cult that controls things behind the scenes, the town is just an entity like a purgatory that forms into nightmares to torture the protagonists, it has no ulterior motives like bringing hell on earth or other cliche stuff.
>I don't even what we're arguing about here
Don't engage in a discussion if you can't follow it.
>I like SH2 more than the others because there's no evil cult that controls things behind the scenes
The "evil cult controls things behind the scenes" in SH2 in the same (miniscule) capacity as in SH1, 3 and 4. It is of course easy to miss if your attention deficit when playing games is as severe as in this discussion.
>the town is just an entity like a purgatory
This claim is a dead giveaway that you have only played SH2.
for the love of frick, you massive fricking idiot, focus!
lol
No idea if it’s you or some other anon saying:
But you/they are quite categorically wrong as proven in several posts already. As I have said stated, clearly, how much emphasis one wishes to place on said cult is up to themselves and for me it’s weak. I can’t put this any plainer for you but, by all means, keep arguing. What you like/do not like doesn’t interest me one bit, but if you’re trying to say that a) there’s no strong cult presence and b) dahlia et al. aren’t part of it and are the main antagonists in the first game (aside from the town itself) then I think you’re demonstrably wrong and I don’t believe I’m the only one in this thread who thinks so.
>But you/they are quite categorically wrong as proven in several posts already.
You still didn't address the claim that SH2 is devoid of the cult storyline unlike SH1 and SH3, which is what I was arguing with:
>I don’t believe I’m the only one in this thread who thinks so.
Desperately appealing to the crowd's opinion is a very tourist thing to do. I bet you think it's a damn shame that you can't downvote posts here. If you can't defend your point on your own, you shouldn't engage in a discussion.
>if you’re trying to say that a) there’s no strong cult presence
I was literally the first one to point out itt that there's cult presence in all games:
>dahlia et al. aren’t part of it and are the main antagonists in the first game
Dahlia and who? Dahlia herself is an old mad woman. An old mad woman telling lies to Harry hardly counts as a "strong evil cult behind the game's events". Kaufmann is Harry's ally by chance. So who are those "et al" that are the main antagonists?
Dahlia is literally a high priestess of the whole cult. Kaufmann is/was a part of the cult but he's a non believer, he's only in it because of the material gains. It's clearly implied that other influential people of Silent Hill were a part of the cult.
So again, all of your autistic babble hinges on the fact that you're not being chased around by a bunch of hood cultist like it's Blood. And yeah Dahlia might be the leader of the cult and her actions might be the will of the cult and the final boss is the demon worshipped by the said cult but a-acktually Dahlia is a lone wolf and lore doesn't matter at all in the game.
There's clearly a cult in Silent Hill. Devs just didn't have the time, resources and probably good ideas for more members but looking at your autistic babble they probably should've put one scene with bunch of hooded people so there would be no misconceptions. And yes the cult runs drug operations too, those two are not mutually exclusive.
Also, they mention the cult in the official Silent Hill Guidebook which basically leaves no room for discussion.
This might come as a shock to you, but SH3 did not exist at the time SH2 was released.
Just finished playing through the first 2, will play 3 after a break.
The outside parts of SH1 were a lot more exciting because it had flying monsters and leaping monsters that you had to put effort into dodging and could be a challenge to even shoot without taking damage. By contrast, SH2 streets are sparsely littered with the very same slow enemies you fight indoors except they're completely harmless out in the open unless you're some sort of mental moron.
Indoors the games are comparable, but by the end of 2 I was tired of my routine of circling hallways checking every door to find out which ones actually open, hence me taking a break from the series.
Does 3 have as many locked doors?
>Does 3 have as many locked doors?
3 is entirely dungeon/level-based, there's only one outdoor section and even then it's linear as hell. You solve the dungeon, fight the boss and then you are put right into the next one. Yeah, about the locked doors, the dungeons are a bit more sophisticated than in 1 and 2, I think. It's also not braidead easy and a harder game than the first two in general
that sounds like an improvement over 2's gameplay then, 'cuz honestly wandering around outdoors looking for health/ammo (which I realize now I didn't need anyway) became tedious. The outdoor parts in 1 were a lot better.
Entire OST is kino and people like it more because of it despite other flaws. It's the ridge racer type 4 of horror games.
is the psp game worth playing?
It's worse than first 3 games in the series but still decent. Play it if you crave for some more after beating the trilogy, pass it otherwise.
>it doesn't do anything to progress the story of 1
That's a good thing.
How is it worse mechanically. Gameplay wise the first three really blend together for me, I never felt there was much to any of them aside from Heather and her Sailor Moon transformation I guess.
There are some differences. In SH2, trying to open a door in the dark yields an "it's locked" message, whereas trying the same door with the light on makes James automatically use the matching key -- misleading and nonsensical. You now have escort sequences, and they are mostly garbage, with Maria often spawning further into a room than you (?!) and becoming monster bait and being a human shield against your bullets. The importance of radio static is reduced, because several common enemies don't really trigger it, whereas SH1 used this in a clever way. Almost every SH2 enemy occupies the same combat dynamic niche, making them very boring to engage with compared with SH1's flyers, leapers, ambushers, etc.
On the other hand, there are some positive changes. Combat/puzzle difficulty are split. Some puzzles require combining items, although this is not really utilized well or frequently.
It's a game, so the mechanics do matter. The story and artistry of the game are among the best seen in gaming, but I had to force myself to finish it because the moment-to-moment experience was so clumsy by comparison, and I was constantly reflecting on how many ways it had stepped backwards from SH1. Destroyed much of the experience for me. Nothing sadder than seeing a sequel do something worse than its predecessor, especially when the first one has every excuse to be rough around the edges due to being a new engine, innovating new mechanics, etc.
You'll have to decide for yourself. To me, while SH2's outdoor areas sucked, they at least alternated with indoor areas and gave the game some high/low action pacing. SH3's fairly non-stop dungeon design completely flattens that curve, so it's like "are you fricking kidding me? I just solved 20 puzzles, and my reward is walking 100 feet and being presented with a new map covered in locked doors?". As with almost any game that fails to grasp this lesson, it makes the entire thing feel like one unending drag.
I found SH2 easier to play than 1 probably because of the more homogenized and less annoying enemies. I was a lot less annoyed by the combat in 2 than I was in 1 mainly because it was easier to avoid and when I did fight it was a lot easier than some of the annoying frickers in 1. I don't think I can really call that an improvement but I thought it was easier and more overall enjoyable to play through 2 than 1.
Anon, SH was never really about game mechanics though.
SH2 was a very, VERY good journey. I suggest everyone to experience it. Hits harder when you are older and especially if you have a significant other. It probably wouldn’t be that effective as a movie, as the game makes you invest quite a lot of hours into it and builds up the suspense over a longer period of time. SH games were never about gameplay. It’s about a very good composition of artistic elements.
>It probably wouldn’t be that effective as a movie
lol
My thoughts when I read that too. And Lynch's best work, IMO.
Like someone said earlier in the thread, Silent Hill 2 had the best writing of the series but unfortunately, this does not translate very well to horror gameplay mechanics - even monsters and bosses are just symbolic in nature but that by itself does not enhance the horror experience the player engages in. I think Silent Hill 1 and 3 are much superior in that aspect (Silent Hill 3 is my personal favorite because the horror is so visceral and aggressive, it feels like it's trying to disorient the player from saving Heather in time), they truly know how to use atmosphere, sound effects and monster design to evoke a terrifying dread through out the journey. Silent Hill 2 is more focused on themes, symbolism and metaphors to get inside the player's head, which is more of a psychological draining experience but less constricted to video games and could work just as fine in any other medium.
How are they similar?
>guy killed his wife
I'm grasping for another similarity. Even the circumstances surrounding the murder are completely different, and so is everything else.
Both main characters are in a severe delusion and most if not all of the action is happening in their heads? Both have sexual problems?
Silent Hill team couldn't copy the movie 1 to 1 but they sure took a lot of inspiration from it. Same with SH1 which is the best Twin Peaks game you're going to get.
>most if not all of the action is happening in their heads
No, that's not what's happening in any SH game. What James sees is based on his psyche, but everything is physically real. In LH the only time you see reality is when the guy is in prison, there's nothing supernatural going on.
>Both have sexual problems?
That's a stretch and I'm not sure the guy in LH is sexually frustrated, I think he's still banging his wife, he's just a jealous piece of shit.
Inspiration is a far cry from saying "it's LH in game form", as you can see if you actually try and explain how they're similar it's very obvious the similarities are limited to the broad, vague thematic inspirations and vibes that immediately differ extremely as soon as you scratch the surface.
>What James sees is based on his psyche, but everything is physically real.
Dude, the whole game happens in that starting toilet. At the end he comes back to his senses, leaves the toilet, enters his car and drives straight into the water with Marie in the trunk. That's why there's bunch of mold throughout the whole game.
>enters his car and drives straight into the water with Marie in the trunk. That's why there's bunch of mold throughout the whole game.
That's what Masahiro Ito claims, but that would imply the events of the game are happening as the car gets filled with water and James slowly drowns. Why would there be water and mold before James drives into the river?
Ever been to a roadside toilet? Especially in the late 90?
>Same with SH1 which is the best Twin Peaks game you're going to get.
There's also a shitload of Koontz's Phantoms in SH1. It's almost exactly how the town in the book is described, right down to the siren going off when weird stuff is about to happen.
It's about a dude in a sexually dead marriage who murders his wife and mindbreaks himself into a fantasy where he's not a murderer, meets his dead wife's sexy prostitute duplicate that really wants to frick him, and is pursued by his guilt personified as an executioner figure intent on making him remember what really happened. They simplified and sanitized it somewhat for the game but the major points are lifted directly from the movie.
>It's about a dude in a sexually dead marriage who murders his wife
It's dishonest to equivocate them as being simply "sexually dead" like they're the same premise. Totally different characters, emotions, circumstances and facts.
In LH he brutally murders his wife in cold blood and there's no justification. In SH2 they take an extremely grey approach where we're invited and expected to empathize with James and forgive him. Even Laura forgives him.
>mindbreaks himself into a fantasy where he's not a murderer
There is no fantasy in SH2. James never believes he isn't a murderer, he never tries to justify what he did, he only represses it out of grief.
>meets his dead wife's sexy prostitute duplicate
There is no duplicate of the guy's wife in LH. It's a different, not real person, who looks like his wife. The entire scenario is imaginary, and he is not even the same person in that scenario. James never dissociates from himself.
Whereas Maria is a physical clone of Mary created by demon magic. How are you saying these two things are the same with a straight face?
>pursued by his guilt personified as an executioner figure intent on making him remember what really happened
The Mystery Man isn't the guy's guilt, it's his evil nature. He doesn't feel remorse, he's trying to justify what he did.
Pyramid Head on the other hand is based on real executioners from SH in the past, very much a representation of guilt and justice coming to James, who is torn apart by what he did and trying to come to terms with his guilt.
And besides that, it is a real monster that chases James around with a sword. The comparison shows how everything about your reductive and simplistic interpretation of these stories ignores the fact of Silent Hill itself.
It seems obtuse to pick apart the differences and to not realize the similarities in the process. It's not the same story but I would bet my life that Lost Highway was a major inspiration for Silent Hill 2
>Hits harder when you are older and especially if you have a significant other.
This. I played it during COVID when I wasn't able to see my gf as much and it hit a lot harder than it would have otherwise
Damn you homies should've played Max Payne. That thing would shred you to pieces.
I know someone who really likes these games but I don't think she ever played the first one, I feel like she would like it as well as the RE games and a few others like the Clock Tower series.
SH2 was always my favorite but honestly it is a game for over-sensitive nerds. Anyone who is passionate about horror for its own sake probably doesn't like SH2 that much because it's not scary. Like my friend recently beat SH1 and he kept talking about how the Lisa scene was the best part of the game, and I just wanted to roll my eyes, because there is so much cool shit in SH1 like the sewers or the hospital yet you focus on the one part that's more like a TV soap opera. When I think back to SH2, it's mostly dramatic scenes like that which stick out, and the actual game is just meh, the overworld had a big downgrade compared to 1, the apartments & the hotel are the only really good areas, and so on. SH2 has godly music and writing, but the rest is just give or take.
>Anyone who is passionate about horror for its own sake probably doesn't like SH2
Not necessarily, as a huge horror fan whose favorite SH game is 1, there is lots of good shit in SH2. The apartments and Historical Society -> Toluca Prison -> Labyrinth are awesome
The hospital was alright but nothing compared to the one from 1 and 3
SH2 doesn't bombard you with dread but it's still scary, and horror is masterfully done.
The lisa scene is absolutely my favorite in sh1,brought tears to my eyes its just so good,and that soundtrack.
?si=HAIjQBGWXt9CktWr
Yeah definitely the peak of SH1
>but mechanically it is shit compared to 3
they are the same mechanically
>I really don't see what all the fuss is about over this game
Try playing it.
>If I cared about the story of 1
Most people still don't understand the story of SH1 or SH3, so that's important.
>and the presentation and atmosphere are superb,
I disagree. Coming straight from SH1 I was really not a fan of the atmosphere.
It tired to go for a more melancholic tone, rather than a horror one, but it never resonated with me due to expectations that this would be a horror game in the same vain as SH1 was.
It felt so mild and laid back, even.
I cannot understand the love for Silent Hill 3.
The story is trash
The monsters are uninspired and boring
The gameplay, while better than 1 and 2, is still a joke compared to other horror offerings
The puzzles are worse and sparse
The amount of instakill garbage is annoying (River Monster, Roller Coaster)
The characters are incredibly bland (even Heather)
The endings are a joke (2 similar endings)
The atmosphere is good, but only after slogging through 2/3rds of the game when you actually get to silent hill.
The cult is the most boring part about Silent Hill. Its fine when its in the background, but its just terrible at the forefront and just makes it generic monster of the week with "Let's kill the bad guy" plotline.
>The atmosphere is good, but only after slogging through 2/3rds of the game when you actually get to silent hill.
I think it picks up from the construction site.
Really for me it was the Hilltop center, but that point is almost halfway through the game
>I cannot understand the love for Silent Hill 3.
heather is a woman
That just sounds like a matter of taste
Heather is cute and the other world is spooky and scary. What I don't understand is the love for SH1.
>heather is cute
I don’t buy this as an excuse to play any horror game, much less silent hill
Did You Know Gaming? Devs said she was inspired by Charlotte Gainsbourg and there's a movie where she gets fricked by two Black folk on-screen (with uncensored dicks etc)
Based! I love SH3 and I love BBC just like any other SH3 chad!
>What I don't understand is the love for SH1
Best atmosphere of any fricking gen 5 game and ironically it's the best SH gameplay-wise
>it's the best SH gameplay-wise
Even if that was true it's a low bar.
SH1 has a very similar otherworld, no? More rust than blood, but thematically fairly similar. There's really no accounting for taste. For me, virtually anything you can compare the two games on, dozens of points, comes out as an obvious win for SH1. So when someone tells me that they prefer 3 to 1 it just sends my head spinning in abject confusion. I can't even find what angle I'd have to look at the game to start to understand the position, apart from some sort of "I like cute girls, Heather is cute, thus the game is good".
I'm hard on most sequels that make steps backward, and SH2 makes several from SH1, such as with enemy variety/behavior, as you note. Also, SH2 is melancholic and oppressively gloomy for almost the entire game, it is definitely not just the hotel. (I think the atmosphere is excellently done and have no complaint with it, I'm just addressing the point you raised.)
I think the strong reactions people have is just due to SH1/2 having different appeal to different people. As a game, SH1 is superior, but some people are going to be more willing to overlook SH2's flaws because they resonate with the story and narrative techniques and find SH1's demon cult shenanigans to be generic or sloppy. Add that to the fact that SH2 gets about 90% of the praise, to the degree that there are posts every 3 days here and on Ganker asking "I want to try the SH series, is there any reason to play SH1 at all or should I do the normal thing and start with SH2?" and I am not surprised some SH1 fans are totally fed up and have short tempers on the subject by now.
Consider also the case of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Very similar games in some ways, very different in others, and the community won't reach a consensus in the next 20 years about one being overall better. It's a little different, since e.g. those two have very similar assets and its the sequel that gets less acclaim, but I think it's a comparable situation.
>I'm just addressing the point you raised.)
agree to disagree I guess, to me 3/4ths of SH2 is within the bounds of conventional horror, with a strong theme of melancholy yes but the traditional fight or flight quality of the black unknown 10 feet in the distance is there. the hotel is the only portion of the game that feels like an explicit departure into being purely an ethereal mood piece.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't have conventional horror as well. The intro walk from the parking lot is a good example of a moment that feels very in line with what SH1 would have done, and doesn't feel melancholic. But the atmosphere of regret and somber tone starts around it, with his narration of longing to find his dead wife in the intro while looking at a foggy town, alone at a rest stop, and then right after the descent in the graveyard dialogue with Angela, then carrying on throughout. The balance grows toward melancholy and it's clearly dominant at the end, yes, but it's there from the very beginning.
They are thematically the same but I would wager for a lot of people the execution of SH3 otherworld is what makes it better. I know personally it was a lot more scary and intimidating for me to play than anything else in the other games.
All 3 silent hill games have bad difficulty balance, potion chugging cakewalk on normal where you're never in realistic danger of dying, grueling spongefest on hard, 2 alone getting singled out for is kind of unfair imo.
2 getting so dumped on in terms of atmosphere has always perplexed me, it's more stark than 1 and 3 sure, but people seem to act like the less horror focused depressive hotal bit is the entire game, I think the historical society more than makes up for any blandness in the apartments or hospital.
I think enemy variety is 2/3rds there, I think the manequins, vomiters, and rattle crawlers whatever the frick they are work as early game harasser enemies you're meant to blow by. Nurses seem comparable to the midlevel threat they were in 1, the final level of the game was nurses, 2 absolutely does have a problem lacking a third tier threat though even I can't deny that. Pyramid head is too sparingly used to fill that void and the abstract daddy is lame. On a first blind playthrough though I think the suspense and occasional appearance of pyramid head is enough to get it by without too much ill effect, it is a problem on replay knowing the most intimidating thing waiting for you in the tank is nurses.
2 is a flawed game no doubt about it, especially in comparison to 3's monster variety, but again the hate it gets seems gratuitous to me.
One of the first games to have a poetic or interior focused story, doesn't really hold up and it's not like current vidya writing is any good either.