So if there’s one game I talk about this month that isn’t very niche it’s probably going to be this one, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly! For one it’s actually part of a series and two it’s a series that is technically still going? While we haven’t gotten a new entry in the series in awhile we have gotten some remasters of the more recent games, and if you are wondering why Fatal Frame sounds familiar this is probably why as I reviewed the remaster of Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, or Fatal Frame 4 as I’ll call it. I also talked about the fifth game in the series a little as well in some very old posts! With that in mind you might not really feel this fits the theme of talking about niche games this month but I’d argue Fatal Frame very much fits the bill!

Despite the fact that the series has gotten so many entries, it’s only really gotten them barely. While the series was mostly thriving in the PS2 era, it hasn’t exactly been doing well since. Which is why I was so shocked when we got a remaster of the fourth game at all! Mainly since it never officially left Japan so they had to put some effort into translating and localizing it unlike with the remaster of the fifth game. Here’s hoping one day we can get a brand new game in the series but for now we’re talking about Fatal Frame II and why you should go through the effort to play this older game nowadays!

Now first things first, you might be thinking that it would just be easier to pick up the remastered versions of Fatal Frame 4 or 5 if you want to experience the series for the first time, and while that would be easier as they are available on most modern consoles you would also be getting a very different experience than you would with Fatal Frame II.

Fatal Frame 4 and 5 are good games and ones I do highly recommend people check out! But they are far different games than the three original titles on the PS2. Like most horror series, Fatal Frame saw a bit of a shift with its later entries. Similar to how Resident Evil took a shift in to more action from Resident Evil 4 until Resident Evil 7. While Fatal Frame did shift a bit more towards action itself it wasn’t nearly as drastic of a change as Resident Evil had. Fatal Frame 4 and 5 have a much different structure compared to the three original games. They are level based and have a far greater focus on combat while still retaining a lot of the series survival horror roots. But the fact that it is so level based, with you even getting a score at the end of each level, honestly does take away from the horror a bit. Again, they aren’t bad games in the slightest but the original three games were pure survival horror and of those three I’d say that Fatal Frame II is the best! And most people seem to agree. But we’ll talk more about that later! For now, let’s talk about what makes the game so good and why you should play it nowadays.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is the sequel to Fatal Frame but luckily you don’t need to play the original at all to enjoy the sequel. Most of the games in the series don’t really tie into each other very heavily. There will be some nods here and there but most of the time each game can be enjoyed entirely on their own and Fatal Frame II is one of those cases.

The plot of Fatal Frame II is honestly the same plot as every other game in the series. A remote location in Japan, so a mansion deep in the woods or a whole village deep in the woods, has a weird tradition/ritual that must be completed and repeated or else something terrible happens. The tradition/ritual isn’t completed one time and then all Hell breaks loose, sometimes literally, and ghosts happen. Then comes in our main character, or characters, and they have to complete and/or stop the tradition/ritual which stops all the ghosts. That is the plot of just about every game in the series, and Fatal Frame II isn’t any different! And while that might sound like a negative thing, it’s honestly not.

While the overall plot is exactly the same each game, which really makes you wonder how many crazy cults and rituals must exist in Japan, the details are always different! For instance, Fatal Frame II is about a pair of twins, Mio and Maya, who are going through a forest they played in as kids before Maya notices some crimson butterflies and runs off to chase them. Mio of course follows after her sister and suddenly they find themselves trapped in an old, lost village. A village that is said to relive the night of a particular ritual gone wrong where a pair of twins were involved until one seemingly went crazy and killed everyone! And that’s actually all I’m really going to say for the story.

Like I was saying before, each game in the series has the same plot but it’s the story details that really make it work! Slowly uncovering what’s going on by finding different notes and such scattered around is honestly one of my favorite parts of Fatal Frame in general! While I know the end of each game is probably going to be that they figure out the main ghost messing everything up and beat it, finding out what said ghost’s deal is, what kind of ritual they were involved in, and how it all ties into the main characters is a delight that I don’t want to rob you of! One thing I will say though, mainly because it’s going to come up when discussing the game play, is that you play the game as Mio rather than both Maya and Mio. This is another big change from how a lot of the series’ more recent games play. Most Fatal Frame games now have you playing as multiple characters, which works for those games, but I feel that Fatal Frame II really benefits from just having you play as Mio looking for Maya as she seems to be in an odd trance that pulls her deeper and deeper into this strange haunted village… But now, let’s talk about that game play! Especially since this is probably the most polarizing aspect of the Fatal Frame series as a whole.

Fatal Frame II is a classic survival horror game! Meaning it’s got puzzles, fixed camera angles, and limited resources you’ll need to manage as you try to survive. It also has tank controls! However not by default. So before hitting New Game I highly recommend everyone goes into the options, hit the button for control options and change it from ‘2D’ to ‘3D’. I’d also recommend changing the camera from ‘left stick looks right stick moves’ to ‘left stick moves right stick looks’ that way when you do eventually get into combat, which is in first person, it’ll be how every first person game controls nowadays! With the controls out of the way though, it’s time to get started properly.

As I stated before when talking about the story, things start with twin sisters Mio and Maya hanging out in the forest they use to play in before Maya sees some crimson butterflies and chases after them. Mio followers her, since Maya isn’t listening, and the two find themselves in a mysterious village that shouldn’t be there! As you slowly make your way towards the village, as there’s no way to leave now, Maya talks about a rumor about a village people find themselves in after getting lost in the forest saying that anyone who finds themselves there will be stuck there as the village is forever stuck in a loop of the night a ritual went wrong and they all were killed.

As soon as the twins get into the village proper, they follow a woman into a house, thinking she might know what’s going on I suppose. And by this point we’ve already seen some good examples of one of my favorite parts of Fatal Frame! The series does a lot of more subtle scares, things that can be pretty easy to miss. Even the ghostly woman going into the house is something that isn’t really focused on or called out, it’s something in the distance. Another good scare comes from the cutscene before you enter the house. Mio is standing before the door ahead of Maya and Maya reaches a hand out to hold Mio’s shoulder to comfort her. A sweet moment at first! Until Maya walks forward, revealing someone, or something, was holding Mio’s shoulder as the hand remains as Maya walks by. Such a perfect little scare…

Back to the game play though, once you’re in the house you’ll be seeing plenty of these subtle scares too. This also shows how well the designers of the game knew how to use the fixed camera angles. Because the player doesn’t have any control on where they are looking, the game can force them to look towards some scary things! And I don’t mean the game suddenly will shift to a jump scare or pop a spooky face on the screen. Well, not all the time at least. For the most part, the camera angles will just give you glimpses of something scary like I was saying before, stuff that you can blink and miss or only see out of the corner of your eye. The kind of stuff that makes you go “What was that?” It’s perfect for making you feel uneasy! And it’s honestly why I’m kind of upset the more modern Fatal Frame games have moved away from fixed camera angles.

Getting back to where we were though, this house at the start does a great job of showing us how the game will work! There’s a bit of exploring, checking for locked doors, finding items and all that before you eventually find the Camera Obscura! A very important item in every Fatal Frame game. One that originally starts out being rare before they have to include it in every game and suddenly everyone has their ghost fighting camera! Because that’s exactly what we’ll be using the Camera Obscura for. At least for the most part! This camera can see and harm the ghosts that you’ll be fighting through out the game, but since we’ll talk about combat a little later let’s hold off on that for now. One of the other uses for the Camera is to help solve puzzles as well as find keys and other such things. In this starting house in particular, there is a door blocked by a ghostly thing. Taking a picture of the door gives you a picture showing you where you need to go to unlock it! Generally when this happens it’s pretty obvious where exactly you need to go, but despite this being a thing in every single game, I can’t deny always getting a very satisfying “Ah-ha!” moment whenever I recognize what the photo is showing me.

After figuring all this out, getting the key for the upstairs room and heading on inside, we are finally introduced to the game’s combat. And this is where that polarizing aspect of the series comes into play!

At first glance, combat in Fatal Frame is pretty simple. It’s all about taking pictures of the ghost, or ghosts, attacking you with the Camera Obscura all in first person! Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that. To really get the most out of your camera shots, you need to not only stare at the ghost coming at you, you have to let them get close to you. And if you really want to get the most out of your camera shots, you’ll have to wait for the exact moment the ghost is going to strike! If you manage to snap a photo of the ghost in that moment, the ghost will fly back and you’ll deal massive damage! Having combat work like this, especially in first person, is pretty smart for a horror game. It forces the player to quite literally get face to face with the spooky ghosts! Which is both scary, of course, and lets the player really appreciate the designs of each ghost, something else I’d say is a highlight of the series.

Now you might be asking why this combat is what drives some people from the series in general and sadly it’s not because it’s too scary. You see, when you manage to nail a shot on a ghost right before it attacks you, you’ll probably also notice in the corner of the screen that you just hit a Fatal Frame shot! And doing that awards you with lots of points. And this system of getting good shots for extra points is what tends to drive people away. It might sound petty from how I’m describing it but I honestly understand why people find this so off putting, and it all comes down to the immersion of the situation.

It is pretty jarring to go from learning about this insanely scary and dark ritual to having a ghost jump on you from the shadows to suddenly grinding out points and going for a high score like it’s an arcade game while you fight said ghost. And that’s the major sticking point. It’s a bit hard to be scared of these ghosts when you start seeing them through the lens of the Camera with a bunch of points and multipliers flying off them as you take pictures. And while you could argue to just try and ignore all that, it’s honestly pretty hard to do that! Not only is it in your face, the points you earn are actually pretty important as they are how you upgrade your Camera. Which is another factor that makes the combat feel very disconnected from the horror experience. You’ll probably get to the point when a ghost pops up and you just see them as not a scary ghost but a way to upgrade your Camera. So while it might seem a bit petty to hate on the series for something like this while the rest of what the series has to offer is so great, I totally get it. And I say this as someone who adores Fatal Frame!

Beyond that, combat can still feel a bit clunky. It can be hard to keep ghosts in frame for some attacks resulting in you missing some shots. This can get even worse when it comes to faster moving enemies making the combat way more frustrating than it needs to be. A lot of this is actually addressed and fixed in the future games though! But despite that, I still can’t deny that Fatal Frame II is my favorite in the series…

Is the combat clunky and just as immersion breaking as the rest of the series if not more so? Sure! Does it have the same overall plot structure the rest of the series follows? You bet! Is it another fixed camera angle survival horror game on a console that has plenty? For sure! But despite all that, I still find myself coming back to Fatal Frame II. While it may not be the best at everything it tries to do, the game has some amazing atmosphere, scary ghost designs, and a really compelling story to boot! There’s a reason why this game is still considered by many to be the best game in the series. It manages to nail a lot of what makes the series so good so perfectly. And while the combat is still pretty clunky, it’s not nearly as bad as Fatal Frame 1, or 3 oddly enough. And it’s not nearly as arcade like as future entries in the series where the games are broken up into levels where you actually have grades and high scores! Fatal Frame II is pure survival horror goodness and I couldn’t recommend it more especially if you are new to the series.

Now, if you are wanting to play Fatal Frame II nowadays, how would you do that? You might be thinking that after I talked about how this was such a fan favorite in a series that is an actual series with multiple entries, surely the game has at least a port if not a remake! And, actually, you would be right! Sadly, playing either the port or the remake would honestly be harder than just emulating it…

Unlike the other two games I’ll be talking about this month, Fatal Frame II does actually have a port and a remake! And while you might think that means you don’t need to use an emulator to enjoy this game, let me clarify. Said port, which is actually a pretty good port after it got fixed up when it was originally released to be pretty busted, is locked to the PS3 digital store… Which, even if you already own a PS3, it’s a nightmare to use! Last time I tried using the store the “buy” button was invisible on the page for the game I was trying to buy. And while I haven’t checked the store in a bit, I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better since then! A shame since there are actually quite a few great ports locked on this digital store. This is, as far as I know, the only official port for the game too. No modern PC ports or anything. At least not yet! Fingers crossed Fatal Frame could get the same treatment Resident Evil is getting right now with its PC ports.

Now with the port being a bit of a bust, you might think to go for the remake instead. Well this might be hard to believe, but the remake is even harder to get your hands on than the port! The remake of Fatal Frame II came at a dark time for the series, the time when Nintendo owned the series. This meant that not only were games like Fatal Frame 4 and 5 locked to Nintendo consoles for awhile it also meant that most of the world didn’t get these games! See this was back in the Wii and Wii U era of Nintendo when they didn’t like to localize things they thought wouldn’t do well. And this was also when region locking consoles, making it so your console can only play games released in the region that console was meant for, was way more common. Meaning even if you wanted to import these games and learn Japanese you were still screwed unless you imported a Japanese console too. What’s even more annoying though is the fact that the Fatal Frame II remake was fully translated and released in regions like Australia and Europe! For whatever reason Nintendo just felt the series wouldn’t do well over in the Americas! Even though it wouldn’t have been hard to bring it over here since all the translating was done. And unlike Fatal Frame 4 and 5, this remake has not gotten released in a remastered form since then! A shame since it’s suppose to be pretty good. It’s done in the style of Fatal Frame 4, so sadly no fixed camera angles but you do get far less clunky controls. And from what I can tell, it doesn’t retain the level structure of Fatal Frame 4 meaning it feels much more like a classic survival horror experience! So if you’re willing to import a European Wii and copy of the remake, you can certainly do that to experience this amazing game!

…Or you can just emulate it.

These are the crazy lengths I’m talking about that should help you not feel bad at all for using an emulator. The most legit way to play this game is the port on PS3, but that is still a big ask for a single game. Not only that, emulating the game can have a lot of benefits too! Like the fact you can get a version of the game with the original Japanese dub so you don’t have to listen to the rather poor English one!

Regardless of how you play it I still highly recommend checking out Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly. It’s the best way to get into the Fatal Frame series and it’s still the best in the series for it’s awesome setting, not extremely clunky combat, and great ghost designs too! And while the plot set up is the same as the rest of the series, I honestly really love story for the game as well. Learning and discovering the crazy twin ritual is a blast!

However, if you’re wanting a more original kind of experience, and a far more niche one, then you’ll have to tune in again next week as we talk about another niche game from this era. That game being the cult classic Haunting Ground!

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Have you ever played Fatal Frame II before? If not, are you wanting to after reading this post? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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