I'm loving the difficulty on hard mode

Just finished the swollen monster fight in the third(?) shrine visit. It was tough but it felt so good once a got a good run in. I'm finding that the enemies are both consistent and erratic, which I think is perfect for Silent Hill. They're consistent enough in their animations that you can infer when to activate focus, and then whether to dodge or counter. But they're also erratic enough to keep you tense and a little panicked.

This shrine visit ramped up the encounters, both the amount of enemies and their difficulty, but I made it through in one piece. I ended up spending more resources than I would have liked to, but it felt so good getting through there. The blade dancers are easy enough to predict and take out, and I was able to evade most other fights. You're given enough information to know whether to fight or run (enemy type, number of enemies, area size), and the dodge mechanic makes it way less frustrating, and even a little exhilarating to squeeze by monsters.

Overall I'm finding the difficulty on hard mode to be just about perfect. Once you've mastered fighting a particular enemy, they go down really quickly, even bosses. But if you mess up, you're severely punished. I think there should be more difficulties in between, especially where this game seems to have a fairly large gap between the skill floor and ceiling, but when you solve each fight and maintain focus, you're rewarded greatly. So far it's been a brutal but fair challenge, exactly what I'm looking for in a game.

Also there was a really cool moment in the school. After narrowly escaping the courtyard through the classroom window, I walked out into the hallway to find it full of scarecrows. The dread of stepping into safety only to have the floor collapse under me was awesome.