Good
- plays on the fear of distorted face.
- map shows keys
- auto turnaround
- using the wiimote speaker for certain sounds was great. Especially that parts when ruka was picking up the telephone.
- using flashlight to reveal items adds a deeper element to the dosing gameplay. And it means I don't have to go mashing A in front of random shelves just to see if there an item there
- less scary music. Just creeky empty wooden house sounds
- hand slowly reaching out grabbing while holding A added suspense.
- the hozuki doll gave me a scare
- the silence makes the jump-scares even scarier. It also amplifies all the normal sounds of foot steps, door creeking and other noises I would've taken for granted in previous fatal frames.
- the bad quality of the audio in the wiimotes actually amplifies the eeriness of the phone calls
- this game is much more linear compared to the past fatal frames. there's always a ghost that leads me to my next destination, and if there is an unlocked door, the game will bring up the map automatically and show me exactly which door got unlocked. The layout of the hospital is also much less complex then fatal frame 3. Less crawl spaces, Less ladders and stairs located right beside each other. The map was basically one big circle on each floor. All the places that I wasn't supposed to access yet were blocked off saving me much time from wandering in the wrong direction. I'm actually happy about that's, because it was really annoying navigating the mansion in fatal frame 3.
- character flinches after a long fight.
- some ghosts really mixed up the timing for fatal frame shot
- shaking wiimote to dodge attacks is nice
Bad
- I have to shake too hard to get the turnaround.
- it's awkward having to aim vertical with the wiimote, and then aiming horizontally with the nunchuck. I wish the aiming was all done on the wiimote.
- the auto lock on removes a big part of the challenge, which is the aiming
- there you needed to be a fast option to open doors. I understand opening it slowly maintains the tension, but when backtracking an area, I know there will be no ghosts, making these long animations tedious to sit through
- hostile ghost appearances and non-hostile ghost appearances have no difference when it comes to the filament indicator. Both appear red. Problem is I automatically prepare myself for a fight, meaning I press Z to try and lock on, but cant. Turns out to be a non hostile ghost, so it disappears causing me to miss out on points
- the ghosts movements and abilities are not diverse. They seem to all just be sluggish, like zombies and go for the same kind of attack.
- it's very hard to examine items. Sometimes I can be literally right in front of it, but I still do not get the prompt to examine it. I end up having to jostle around to find the specific angle. This became annoying when it happens so many times
- pointing the wiimote down to look at things below me is very uncomfortable. The vertical sensitivity is very low, forcing me to bend my wrist 90 degrees
- using a special was a little tedious because the attack was mapped to the c button, which meant I had to put my index and middle finger on the shoulder of the nunchuck. This left only my pinky and my ring finger to hold the nunchuck, which was quite uncomfortable. I guess if I tried, I could technically control both the z and the c buttons with just my index finger, but it also feels unnatural, since the two buttons have different elevations.
- sometimes the anime we'll throw out a long-range attack behind a wall, like the doctor with the flashlight. When they are halfway behind a wall, my attack will miss. This made the shots of little ambiguous when this happened. Luckily the flashlight the doctor had didn't do damage, it just blinded me a bit
- there's a lot of symbolism when it comes to the power behind the masks, the lunar eclipse, how its effects the people on the island, the ritual, festival. It's all very metaphorical. this at times makes it hard to follow along with the story, and fully digest the plot. I think the part of it is also because the text, the hole narrative and dialogues were designed around Japanese culture, mythology, and tradition. The game was never planned to be released outside of Japan, so I'm sure the developers had no intention of including any Western friendly explanations in any of the text. The best we had was of course the fan made translation. Which was good, but it was only the direct translation of the text with no extra explanation behind some of the cultural and traditional implications The narrative had.
- I didn't really like the flashlight as a weapon, because there was no fatal frame shot opportunity, which takes out the reflex and reaction part of the gameplay. Which is my favourite.
- that doctor ghosts enemies flashlight attack actually helps me, because it makes the screen brighter allowing me to see more clearly. I don't think this is what the developers intended. if they wanted to make it harder to see the either should have made the screen completely white for a brief moment, or I did some kind of motion blur kind of like how a flashbang works in csgo
- the layout design choice in the moon reflection cave during masaki's fight with the girl in black ghost was misleading. First off there was a safe point very close to the boss fight butts it was at the door in the next area, which I wouldn't have known to check unless I skipped the boss trigger item. Also right before the boss fight you can walk in the opposite direction which consists of 10 flights of stairs that leads to a dead end. Afterwards you have to travel back down the stairs to the boss. They could have just put some kind of blockage where are the stairs were since it wasn't even intended for you to go there. This punish me for exploring.
- there's no way to cancel a flashlight charge
- sometimes fatal frame shots will just straight up miss even I did get the window
- very easy to get clipped on wall
- save points at the end were pretty terribly placed
- anti climatic final boss. Easiest final boss I've ever faced.
- the ending does not explain a lot of things. Ends rather adruptly
- is you haibara a ghost or alive? He was holding a knife. And the detective was able to push him off the balcony. He also died very anti climatically.
- what happened to Misaki? Her story arch just ended with no follow up. Is she still in the red kimono ghosts body? What happened to her soul? Or was she completely eradicated?
- half the time the game was just too ridiculously dark, to the point where it wasn't evoking fear anymore, but annoyance. Annoyance of not being able to see where I was walking.
- I don't know if it's just the Wii's hardware limitation, but the graphics took a dip compared to Fatal Frame 3 and even 2.