Join the Festival
The game play hasn’t evolved much from the original. One thing you’ll immediately that wasn’t in past Fatal Frame game is having Mayu travel with you. Unlike most horror titles where your allies are useless and distractive, Mayu will stand in front of doors to provide clues. She’ll verbally tell you that she hears something in this room, which means you’ll need to suck it up and follow her instincts to advance the game. You’ll also briefly control her for certain scenes, but for the most part, You‘ll be using Mio. You have explore through an entire village one building at a time. You’ll frequently search for items, run into a few puzzles like finding keys, and snap photos of sealed locations for clues to progress the game. There are journals scattered throughout the villages that provide you with clues and history of the area. You’ll be confronted by grainy, innocent spirits who’ll give will give you clues. You will also be confronted by hostile spirits, which is where your trusty Camera Obscura will come into play.
The core of the game play revolves around the Camera Obscura. The Camera will serve as a device to destroy spirits, reveal clues, unseal doors, and catch hidden that aren’t visibly on screen. Snapping photos will require film, which you’ll find scattered throughout the entire village. You’ll find various powered films that’ll come in handy for those more difficult battles. When you equip the camera, you’ll go into Finder Mode, and the center lies the capture circle/spirit wave gauge. The capture circle will change colors depending on what your snapping. It’ll turn green to hint you towards clues and hidden spirits, and orange-red to indicate a locked hostile spirit. Taking a picture during a red capture circle(called shutter chance) will deal critical damage and push-back the enemy. A very successful shutter chance will result in a Fatal Frame, which is a chance for you to sneak in combos and rack up tons of points to upgrade your camera.
You’ll need to snap photos of spirits if you want to rack up points to upgrade your camera. Your camera has three basic functions to power up, which are range (increases size of the Capture Circle), Accumulation (increases the number of stocked spirit powers), and Sensitivity (increases the damage and range of the camera). Each power-up requires a certain amount of spirit orbs. Even if you have enough points, you cannot upgrade your camera without a spirit orb. Through the course of the game, you’ll acquire special lenses that can be equipped for additional functions, such as the Blast, which pushes enemies back, Indicator, which alerts you at a time of Fatal Frame, Measure, which allows you to see the ghost’s remaining health, and various others. These special lenses also requires spirit orbs and points to be upgraded.
The difficulty has been turned down a few notches in this installment. Unlike the first one, enemies will spin in circles around you, catch you off your back, or hide in walls as often. Most of the time, the enemies you’ll be facing are slow. They’ll literally creep up near you at a slugs pace, opposed to floating at full speed. As slow as they maybe, they never fail to scare the crap out of you. Just meet my personal favorite “Woman in box”, she’ll definitely give nightmare for days. There are some times where the screen will turn grainy black and white and provoke a lot of static; you’ll break a nerve and run for the nearest exit. The graphics are really dark and creepy. You’ll run through blood stained hallways and rooms with dolls hanging on the ceiling. The realistic environments are well constructed with great usage of lighting and realistic effects of wind blowing against a piece of cloth. The ghost are given an upgrade with extra detail on their clothing, personality, facial expressions, and creep factor. The character models are also given special attention with their clothing, body movements, and facial expressions smoothly animated with emotional appeal. There are also an abundance of disturbing cut-scenes that are frightenly difficult to endure
The sounds are frightenly solid. The background music is mostly quiet, with a few creepy noises coming into play at certain story points. Its mostly composed of distorted static and soft drum beats. The girls are voiced really well , giving an emotional appeal and charisma, you’ll start to feel sympathy for them. The noises and voices emitted by the ghosts are solid. you can even check the spirit radio to hear the voices of ghost, but you’ll never want to sleep with the lights off again.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is a horror experience, those looking for Jill Valentine and zombies will need to stay away, horror enthusiast who plays for the creepy atmosphere and brilliant story will need to pick this up. Its original, creepy, and fun to play. It does a great job in tapping into your mind and soul, and changing your sleeping habits. You’ll be completely exhausted mentally and physically just after a few hours of nerve-wrecking game play. It’ll take approximately 12 hours to complete this game, with unlockable bonus costumes, higher difficulty settings, and multiple ending. Fatal Frame II is a keeper, do yourselves a favor and experience the Sacred ceremony that vanished an entire village.