For 20 years, Fatal Frame has been something of a fringe series in the world of J-Horror gaming. It's markedly different from Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and other PlayStation 2-era stalwarts. always feels unique.
Fatal Frame Maiden of Blackwater isn't the first outing for the restless maiden spirits hinted at in the title; this survival horror game was originally released in 2015 for the Wii U, though it's likely still a new experience for most. Although there are improvements in visuals, resolution, and other areas with this new release, Fatal Frame still looks a lot like its predecessors.
Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water Review: The Return of Chilling Photographic Horror
The series, as a whole, hasn't been seen in a long time for those of us in the West. Before Maiden of Black Water, no Fatal Frame games were released here since 2005, so there's a whole generation that probably hasn't heard of the series. And that makes it a great time to get started.
Intertwining the stories of three different characters, Maiden of Black Water centers on the dark forests, waters, caves, rocky paths and shrines of Mount Hikami, Japan. Once a revered place, a violent twist in its history has turned the place into a veritable nightmare. Mount Hikami is haunted by countless suicides, gruesome murders, and missing people.
Much of the game centers around Yuri Kozukata, a gifted (or cursed) young woman with an exceptionally strong sensitivity to the supernatural world. She finds herself drawn into a mystery involving missing girls.
Ren Hojo's story intertwines heavily with Yuri's. He is a man determined to find the source of bizarre nightmares. The third character, a young woman named Miu, enters the story later, but all inevitably end up taking the same paths to unravel the mysteries and horrors of the mountain.
While there are some minor differences between the three characters in terms of controls and abilities, Maiden of Blackwater largely plays the same no matter what character or chapter you're in. Its third-person exploration of maze-like maps takes you through a variety of indoor and outdoor locations. Things to investigate and items to collect are everywhere, but so are the dangers.
These dangers are inevitably supernatural in nature. Fatal Frame is obsessed with ghosts as opposed to the physical dangers of zombies and vampires, and the only way to combat these spirits is with the Camera Obscura. This vintage camera lets you absorb the energy of a ghost with well-placed shots. It also allows you to see otherwise invisible things.
There are times when the camera is used to focus on a certain spot to reveal hidden objects, which is quite simple. Other tasks require you to find a location shown in a photo and recreate the shot. These puzzles can be boring and frustrating because finding the exact right spot can be a boring period of trial and error that feels almost random.
The camera combat is great, though. You'll find a range of film types that have different reload speeds and damage modifiers, in addition to actual camera add-ons that allow you to do extra damage among other benefits. Each time you take a picture of a ghost, its face highlighted, you deal damage and that damage, in turn, will cause the ghost to lose more spirit energy.
This energy floats around the ghost, and the more energy you can capture in one shot, the more damage you deal. Do enough damage and the ghost will be exorcised. Of course, ghosts don't take this lying down. They will try to charge, attack and drag you into the abyss. Luckily, there's a dodge ability, and overall, on normal difficulty, Fatal Frame is more about creating intense atmosphere than killing you.
This atmosphere is, despite the age of the game, surprisingly thick. Fatal Frame's story manages to kick off nearly every J-Horror trope you can think of. There's the Suicide Forest, scary ghost children, even scarier haunted dolls, ghosts of angry shrine maidens who seemingly float through the afterlife dressed in sheer white dresses with plunging V-necks that contain barely their ghostly assets.
Two of the main characters fall squarely into the Japanese schoolgirl camp, with very questionable fashion choices given the situation they find themselves in and the emphasis on getting their clothes soaked. It would be easy enough to pick out questionable story elements here as well, but the overall effect is a game that does a great job of creating one hell of a horror movie twist.
Being cinematic is a big part of Fatal Frame's appeal. He loves to use film and home video filters for great effect. Memories are seen through grainy VHS-like footage. The color schemes have lovely old photography and the interplay of light and dark makes everything beautifully eerie and disconcerting.
The ghosts look fantastic. Strange, mostly black-and-white faces that cut through air and architecture with menacing and often tragic intent. There are a variety of spirits to encounter, not all of them violent, and capturing their final moments on film can be surprisingly poignant and intense.
The overall soundtrack is excellent too, with a great score and terrific ambient effects that amp up the creep factor. The voice acting and dialogues are also solid. The story itself is frequently relayed in journals and found books, and although the writing is sparse overall, it helps create a compelling and dark story.
The controls fall somewhere between the old-school tank controls of the original Resident Evil and more modern third-person games. As a result, there are some quirks. Interacting with things can be clunky as the camera tends to circle around the character spasmodically. Running and following are weird too.
Sometimes you will need to hold down a button to see and follow a spirit and you will automatically walk the path while the button is held down. Running also causes the character to be on autopilot halfway through and feels particularly clumsy. During both actions, it's just plain awkward to turn, stop, or look at anything else.
Objects of interest are highlighted with white or red (for threats) arrows on the sides of the screen, which theoretically point in the direction of something. They are, however, unreliable and erratic markers, leading to particular confusion when trying to track teleporting ghostly entities.
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water Review – The Bottom Line
Benefits
- Incredible horror vibe through beautiful use of cinematography, film and video filter effects and beautifully rendered ghosting
- Photography-centric gameplay and combat are still unique and engaging
- Excellent overarching story that effectively throws in a myriad of J-Horror movie tropes
The inconvenients
- Photo hobby puzzles are particularly cumbersome
- Controls and camera can be clunky
- Real questionable fashion choices (and associated camera angles and shots) for female characters
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is the welcome return of an obscure but memorable series from the PS2 era. This redesign of the Wii U version still feels firmly rooted in the past, but it uses atmospheric visuals and audio so well that the overall experience is a unique take on horror gaming. It's worth giving this remake a second chance.
[Note: Koei Tecmo provided the copy of Fatal Frame Maiden of Blackwater used for this review.]
