The Haunted Hoard: Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (PS2)

The original Fatal Frame turned your camera into a ghost-busting device, but Tecmo seemed to be feeling out the space with the camera combat concept and thus the spirit fights in that game ended up less than exciting. However, a sequel is a chance to refine mechanics after having a chance to see how the world reacted to them, so with Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, also known as Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly in Europe, we do get a game that is better than its predecessor, but it still hasn’t quite figured out how to make its battle style work.

 

There are a few reasons taking photos of spirits to defeat them still stumbles as the main action component of Fatal Frame, and one of them is probably that it remains a pretty passive battle style. When a hostile spirit appears in Fatal Frame II, the player must defeat them by taking properly timed and framed photos of the ghost to deal the most damage possible. The player can move around freely when their special exorcising camera, the Camera Obscura, is held by their side, but much of a fight involves holding it up to your face, meaning your view of the confrontation goes from a full view of the area around the game’s protagonist Mio to a first person view through the camera lens. Ghosts are mobile and will try to move around during a battle so they’re hard to focus your lens on, but since most of the fight is expected to be viewed through the camera, their attack methods are usually approaching at a somewhat slow pace. Ghosts range from nearly transparent to barely translucent to add another layer of difficulty to spotting them as they approach, but a light on the camera helps it not be absurdly hard, getting brighter if you’re looking in the right direction. Once you’ve got the ghost in your sights though, it’s just a matter of waiting for the right shot, but you can always take the shot right away for damage as well, the game trying to encourage waiting by limiting your quantities of strong film types despite giving you a weak but infinite option as well.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly does reward waiting for the right moment to snap a shot though. If the enemy is attacking, they’ll take more damage when you take their picture, and if you snap it at just the right moment, you even get a Fatal Frame bonus for heavy damage. This adds more danger to the combat as you wait for the spirit to strike, but it also gets around the fact the game isn’t very good at giving the ghosts interesting attacks. Most ghosts drift towards you before doing some swipe or grab, your only real approach to these battles being standing in place and waiting for the wind-up so you can take your shot. The game will gives some spirits weapons or have them approach in different ways like flying higher or crawling on the ground, but those mostly just make you aim your camera a bit differently or keep more of a distance. There are a few effective combat shakeups such as a doll maker who will have two dolls float around and harass you while you try to take his picture, a female ghost who keeps reliving her deadly fall during the battle to make her harder to time the shot on, some zombie-like ghosts who swing wildly after you snap a picture of them, and a few ghosts that dare to use projectiles on you, but mostly it’s a matter of standing around and waiting until it’s the right time to act, the option to take a photo before its perfectly lined up present to potentially remove that element from some fights as well. There aren’t many unfair battles, and when you are ganged up on it’s usually done well as you do have to start balancing time spent on one ghost while you don’t know what the other might be doing, but most fights are simply adequate, more focused on making the ghosts spooky or strange rather than real threats… save for the instant kill one that pushes perhaps too far in a different direction.

 

The camera is given a few abilities that might be meant to make the fights more exciting. The ability to stun or slow ghosts is appreciated but not necessary and draws on the spirit power you gain from exorcising the spirits with your special film, power that could be better spent on things like the more powerful burst shots. Ghosts naturally recoil from any well-framed and well-timed shot so patience is truly the most powerful ability in handling difficult ghosts, but there is a customizable upgrade path and power load out for your camera to help you find the most comfortable and effective way to use it. Outside of fighting ghosts, sometimes the Camera Obscura is simply used to identify them, spirits lurking around the areas you’re exploring as restless souls rather than aggressive specters. You have to beat the game once to be able to have them all appear on the harder difficulty and the compendium that tracks them all is also similarly an unlockable, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly unfortunately keeping a few things locked until a second playthrough, including a different ending that, while maybe not necessarily better than the normal one depending on perspective, still necessitates playing through the game again despite nothing else being too different besides difficulty. It does increase the risk of the passive fighting style on the harder setting and makes the more interesting confrontations more tense, something the challenges you unlock after the first run also do with their mix and match approach to ghost teams and settings, but most fights still just seem to boil down to running around and then waiting with the camera up for the right shot as the ghosts approach.

While the camera combat is about as adequate as it was in the first game with a few more extra touches and adjustments to avoid frustrations, the story remains the best feature in the sequel. While it’s not pretending to be based on a true story this go round, the mythology and history surrounding the tale still feels authentic and fleshed out to the point it could convincingly slip into some little known region of Japan. Mio Amakura and her sister Mayu are twins who find themselves stumbling across a strange place in the woods where a town known as All God’s Village suddenly vanished years ago… only to reappear before the two girls and pull them in with an inescapable supernatural force. Legends of the village speak of a Crimson Sacrifice Ritual involving sets of twins, and as the player explores the ghost town, they’ll find plenty of details tied to this strange practice. Documents give both a researcher’s view on the area, the notes of villagers stressing over its completion, and the musings of twins who were previously set to be involved in it, more and more details drip fed over the course of the game as Mio and Mayu seem to be pulled ever closer towards it by the lingering angry spirits. There are little crystals which contain the voices of people who held them, but they’re not really used for any information, mostly just containing slow spooky moaning about things you should already know by the time you’re listening to them. The town itself has various residences where important relics are on display and family histories are told before you encounter the spirits of those you got to know through what you’ve uncovered, the game putting a lot of work into building up each building as more than just an area to move around in and solve puzzles. Puzzles will even tie into the rituals and lore of the area, books containing clues and your camera revealing hints on how to operate ancient devices or unlock secrets hidden from plain sight.

 

There are unfortunate moments of backtracking, especially when chasing a small girl spirit at one point as the game gives little direction on where to go, but the village is large enough that you don’t linger in the same locations too long, and some areas are only returned to after a long break. House interiors are a common sight of course, all done in the style of old Japan, but different purposes and layouts overcome potential visual staleness. You have a map to help navigate but most areas are sectioned off well enough you can memorize them quickly, and with the village cast in an eerie fog filled with ghosts who can pop up at any second, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly does establish an effective horror atmosphere, something fed well by the ghosts that do often work as spooky designs if not exactly interesting fights. There are a few niggling points left though, such as a fight with two twin ghosts where only one can take damage and there’s not really the time to tell them apart until it’s too late. Mayu is a bit of a load when she’s around since the game does little to establish the characters or their relationship outside of being twins and Mayu being the sort of innocent character you save just because she doesn’t deserve to be in trouble, but besides blocking hallways she at least doesn’t cause too much trouble when she’s walking with you. Most everything in the game does tie well into the plot though, from every ghost having some reason for being where it is to the sisters being involved in the plot despite their shallow characters because they are twins, but the Camera Obscura does seem to just sort of get plopped in there plot-wise, and funnily enough, it is the element the most holds back the plot, since the need to break from it for the spirit fights are what keep Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly from thriving on atmosphere and lore alone.

THE VERDICT: Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly takes what did and didn’t work with the original game and tweaks them to be better, but not by much. Tecmo can still construct a deep, believable lore to its settings, the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual leaving its mark all throughout All God’s Village and influencing every spirit you encounter, and the atmosphere of the ghost town is eerie and filled with appropriately creepy angry spirits. Once you lift the camera to face these ghosts though, the game starts to lose its luster. Puzzle-solving is tied to understanding the game’s lore, but the fights are mostly similar battles with only a few truly unique ghost encounters, almost all of them feeling fairly passive and bland. While backtracking is just a minor gripe during play, the main gameplay mechanic involves a lot of waiting on the right shot on enemies who aren’t threatening enough despite the effectiveness of the build-up. Fatal Frame II an excellently constructed stage where the play being performed just lets that hard work down.

 

And so, I give Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly for PlayStation 2…

An OKAY rating. While not quite more of the same when it comes to Fatal Frame, it does show that Tecmo hasn’t quite ironed out how to play a Fatal Frame game despite knowing how to do all the other aspects pretty well. The horror would work excellently in a game where the ghost designs and the set-up explaining their existence paid off with a fearsome foe, but looking at the ghosts slowly shamble towards you, snapping a photo, and repeating the process after they flicker about a bit wears down a lot of the good will. The picture taking isn’t so bad that it completely wastes the effort put into building up All God’s Village, but snippets of interesting lore aren’t as common as ghost encounters, and the puzzles, while often drawing on interesting clues, don’t dominate enough of the experience to overcome the Camera Obscura’s issues. Picture taking is a hard concept to turn into a combat style without it devolving into disguised first-person shooting due to the passivity of taking pictures of something you aren’t allowed to really touch, but some ideas like the extra abilities for the camera help it a little. The ghosts probably need to carry more of the burden here, with the more interesting ones standing out for shaking up how you approach the fight or have to aim the camera. Many confrontations involve focusing on an easily framed face and waiting for a strike that is only dangerous if you want to deal the extra damage, but the fact there are some interesting spirit battles shows that the game could have perhaps been better served focusing on fewer unique ghost fights rather than trying to slip them in as often as they do.

 

Learning about the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual in an eerie ghost town keeps Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly interesting even as its gameplay fails it, and within the horror genre, sometimes the details and scares are more important than the surrounding details. The gameplay isn’t a negligible aspect here though since the camera fights remain important throughout, but it does seem the Fatal Frame series is growing a little. While not quite a full step up in quality from the original, Fatal Frame II is better and at least seems to be exploring solutions to its weaker parts, all while continuing to provide the parts that do make the series promising. The thought put into the mythology is begging to be enjoyed, it just ends up being viewed through a suboptimal lens thanks to the Camera Obscura struggling to carry a weak combat system.