All Silent Hill 2 Difficulty Levels, Explained

The original Silent Hill 2 is one of the most critically acclaimed horror games of all time and one of its unique features is how it handles difficulty. The remake maintains how the difficulty originally was determined back in 2001, so here’s what you need to know about it!

All Silent Hill 2 Difficulty Settings, Explained

The Silent Hill 2 remake like the original Silent Hill 2, has two different difficulty settings: one for combat and one for puzzles.

Combat difficulty, or Combat Challenge as it’s known here, is the more traditional difficulty setting. This determines several metrics related to combat, like enemy health, how much damage they do to you, and how much damage you do to them. You choose this at the beginning of the game, but you can adjust it at any point if you find things too easy or too difficult as you’re playing.

Then there’s the difficulty setting for puzzles, known as Puzzle Challenge. As the name suggests, this determines how difficult the puzzles of Silent Hill 2 are. The easiest difficulty setting provides gamers with plenty of hints and simplifies puzzle instructions, while the hardest setting offers obtuse and intentionally vague hints. You’ll still go through the same puzzles, but the solutions will vary depending on the setting. Unlike combat, once you choose a puzzle difficulty setting, you can’t change it, so make sure you choose wisely, as it can and will make certain segments painful if you’re not up to challenge.

Thankfully, these settings are independent of each other, so you can mix and match to your heart’s content. You can set everything to medium, which is ideal for a first playthrough, or you can reduce combat difficulty and set the puzzle challenge to the max. You can also customize if you want a more modern playstyle with features like tutorials, an ammo count, and tips during loading screens, or you can opt for a retro approach that omits those modern sensibilities. In short, you can customize the game to your heart’s content, but the most important setting to consider at the beginning will be how hard you want the puzzles since that can’t be changed. 

And that’s everything you need to know about Silent Hill 2’s difficulty settings!

Silent Hill 2 is available on PS5 and PC.