BACKGROUND: This is the follow up to perhaps the greatest horror game of all time, Fatal Frame 2. Unfortunately this is a disappointing game and kinda ruins the story of Fatal Frame 1 + 2 in a way.
STORY: The story itself is fine. It is about this dream manor that people who suffer from guilt are trapped in while sleeping and eventually their guilt takes them and they end up dying in real life. Unfortunately they bring in the main characters from Fatal Frame 1 and Fatal Frame 2 and it sort of ruins the story of those two games. We find out that the main characters are suffering from guilt and Mio (from fatal Frame 2) is pretty much in a mental hospital going crazy while Mike (Fatal Frame 1) is dealing with repressed feelings of guilt. Also we never really get a sense of Rei and her fiance's relationship so there is no real attachment there. There is no flashbacks of them together, nothing.
GAMEPLAY: This is the big problem here. This game is really really repetitive and long. You spend 95% of the game running around this manor that isn't really interesting. It is big, and there is so so much goddamn backtracking that I almost gave up halfway through. Basically you play the manor parts in your dreams and when you hit a story plot, you wake up into reality and do something in the reality (such as answer your phone, talk to Miku, listen to a tape ,print photos), then it suddenly becomes night time and you go back to sleep and into the manor.
It seems like the director and programmers wanted to pad out the game as much as possible so you literally are backtracking throughout this entire giant manor looking for mundane items or finding ghost. I am not lying when I say the backtracking is nothing I have experience before, and I am a survival horror fan. Also there isn't really a lot of clues so you end up just running around looking for stuff. I spent over an hour looking for 4 ghosts to kill. Also the map is good, but at the same time it doesn't give you hints on where to go so when I get a key item I would completely forget where to use it since everything looks the same.
Lastly the ghosts are repetitive and you fight the same looking ghost over and over, in the same place doing the same scripted event. The flying ghost are extremely annoying and they just zig zag and disappear all over the place. This isn't a first person shooter guys, we don't need these flying ghost trying to make it seem like some sort of fast pace action game. I would like to say that majority of the creepiest moments took place in Rei's house and it doesn't involve fighting any ghosts. Those moments are great.
SOUND: The sound is good and some of the music is creepy. Voice acting is hit or miss, main characters are fine, but the ghost voices are kinda cheesy and Rei's fiance's voice is pretty terrible (even though he only talks in maybe 2 or 3 parts). Amano Tsukiko delivers another good theme song, and overall besides the ghost voice acting and fiance, the sound is good.
OVERALL: This is a disappointing follow up top Fatal Frame 2 (a 10/10 game in my opinion). This game is long, repetitive, boring, frustrating, padded out, and just not very fun to play after a few hours. Fatal Frame 2 just had a way better story, better pacing, a lot more scary, and the Lost Village is just a more interesting place than the manor. Lastly, not a fan of what they did with Miku and Mio in this game. If you are a die hard Fatal frame fan like me, then I guess you can give this a shot but I think you will be greatly disappointed like me. There is a great concept in here with the whole manor of dream, but the repetition, backtracking, and pacing issue bring it down.
6.5/10.
