Caltrops - Silent Hill 4: The Room - Spoiler-free tips for the ghosts

Forum Overview :: Silent Hill 4: The Room

by curst 11/05/2004, 3:25pm PST

I gotta agree, the backtracking you have to do in the later parts gets pretty annoying. If the FPS mode didn't suck, and if the load times were better, it wouldn't be an issue at all. You know like, Diablo 2 town runs - they're something I don't care for, but they didn't have me wishing for an unlimited inventory. SH4 does make me wish I could carry a trillion things at once.

Anyone who has yet to play it but is about to: you will find certain items that specifically help you deal with the ghosts. These are the items FABIO's talking about here, the ones you have to hoard until absolutely necessary.

- One kind will prevents ghosts from harming you as much as normal. Only use them as a last resort because IIRC you won't find many of them at all. And at the point where you have to accompany the NPC, I believe you can give them this item in order to help "heal" them somewhat. That's important, because as they take damage they will become more "possessed" by evil, and the further they are possessed when you fight the final battle, the harder it will be to accomplish a certain something in that battle, and that affects what ending you'll get.

- Another special item can pin a ghost in place permanently. There are a few "permanent" ghosts that will follow you throughout the whole game, so obviously your only chance of stopping them is to use one of these items. So hoard *all* of them until you run into the permanent ghosts. If you're up against a non-permanent ghost, but absolutely need to pin it in place, that's fine, but you have to be sure to pick the item back up before proceeding.

- Then there's another that exorcises certain ghosts that start infecting a certain area of the game. IIRC, you can use it while its in your inventory and carry it around with you, and it acts as a sort of ward... I don't remember if that's really true or not. However, if it is, you still don't want to waste them in that fashion. Hoard these until you need to do an exorcism in the special area. Also, when you do exorcise a ghost, it takes a while for the item to be completely consumed - if you don't wait that long, I believe that ruins the exorcism and the same ghost will return at a later point.

And then there's a certain item that you have an option of picking up or leaving behind. It serves no obvious purpose at all - you never "use" it. However, if you decide to never take this item, you'll make future parts of the game easier. Taking it causes the number of ghost infestations to increase, I believe to the point where you can't possibly exorcise them all.