Despite being very familiar with the Fatal Frame franchise for many years now, I somehow managed to never finish a single game of it until now. I loved my time with the first two games, but for various reasons (one of which being that those games were genuinely too creepy to play) I never finished them. Maiden of Black Water is the fifth main game in the series, originally released in 2014 for Wii U, and while it’s not considered worst in the series (that “honor” being given to the absolutely terrible spin-off Spirit Camera), the reception for the game was overall quite poor. And now I see why, even if the game does have some cool ideas.
Fatal Frame as a franchise started out as a rather typical classic survival horror game. There was a huge interconnected location to explore, puzzles to solve, keys to find, resources to manage and combat was methodical. Combat is what the series got known for the most, probably, as instead of guns or melee weapons, your “weapon” is an antique photo camera that can hurt the enemies of the games – the ghosts of the violently deceased, who cling to staying in the land of the living for reasons that tend to differ from game to game. As the series progressed, more cool mechanics and ideas were introduced, but the first three games played to the strengths of the survival horror genre pillars, even if by The Tormented the game became a bit too long and bloated.
By the time of the fourth game, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, (that happens to remain exclusive to the Japanese Wii market to this day) the gameplay changed quite a lot and most of the typical survival horror elements were swapped for more streamlined linear action adventure ideas. And Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water mutates those ideas so much, that most of its gameplay is actively punishing those who would want to play the game as a survival horror title. While all previous games were divided into chapters, in this game these chapters play more or less completely independently and ignore whatever inventory or actions you might’ve had in previous chapters.
The mission to mission structure of the game is mostly the same. You start at the chapter selection, where you can use your points to buy resources on top of the ones that are given to you automatically. Then you start the chapter, often in the “hub” like starting location from where you go to the main map of the game. In there, the game forces you down a specific path (trying to take any other path is impossible), you fight ghosts, fill out the map and find items along the way. Then you do a required thing in the required sequence of events, as all the other options are simply locked for story reasons. Then you have to escape. Then the next chapter you repeat all of these steps, but often get to a different location in the end. Yet all of the ghosts, items respawn and all of the doors and passages get blocked in other ways for story reasons.
In most cases you simply cannot stray off the “intended” path. In some cases you can, but it’s a waste of time because “you’re not supposed to until later” and you will have to backtrack there again when the game tells you to. And in some cases you can and doing so will give you a reward, so you never know if it’s a waste of time or a side quest unless you try. The game does open up all of its paths, including a few that are completely unused throughout the rest of the game, but it happens in the very last chapter when the game is ending. And by that point you’ve ran through the rest of the locations so many times, redoing the same actions over and over again, that there’s no joy to the exploration.
Especially since the game is so horrifyingly painfully slow and unwieldy. Every action takes way too long. Picking up items is a mini-game of sorts, where you can get grabbed by a ghost hand that damages you, so every time you wish to take something (even a note), it’s a slow “reaching out to the item” animation. Every door opens slowly and closes almost immediately behind you so you have to slowly open it again. The camera is all over the place and picking up items turns you around from the position you were in when trying to pick the item up. Run button is actually an auto-run, but it has a strange delay and the character turns like a truck. If you have several actions around you, finding a position from which you can interact with what you want is almost impossible, especially since while there are dedicated buttons for “touching/picking up” and “investigating/opening doors”, the touching button does both. It’s a horrible mess.
And yet… I do like how Maiden of Black Water tried to update the camera combat. It’s not implemented well and the controls make no sense (they made even less sense on Wii U, if you’re wondering), but the idea of not just aiming at ghosts, but also framing them in specific ways to deal more damage via weird floating ghost bits is cool. And while I hate how each chapter is completely independent, I do like the shop for buying the resources and how they get “refunded” at the end of the chapter – it’s a cool way to use the points, apart from upgrading the camera. Oh and by the way – the game never tells you that you can upgrade the camera, for whatever reason, I only knew that because of my familiarity with the series. The “touch the ghost for their final moments” thing is also really neat. As were the attempts to try adding stealth into the game via the special separate story that features an otherwise pointless crossover with Ninja Gaiden/Dead or Alive.
Oh and the style of the game is genuinely great. The way they handle the analogue effects of the camera or VHS, the way many ghosts are designed and presented, the visual design of the locations – it’s amazing. Granted, the franchise was always really good with this, but if anything, Maiden of Black Water makes all of that even better. Sadly, the ridiculous costume designs, typical for the franchise, are also here. And unfortunately the story is just boring while the characters completely uninteresting. Fatal Frame games were always a bit weak about their stories, but usually the “lore” and the folklore of the previous titles was at least engaging. In this one, almost nothing interesting happens, while the characters are so one note and miserable all the time, it’s hard to even start caring.
There are glimpses of a game this could be that gave me moments of excitement. If the game was as open as the final chapter, relying on honest exploration, puzzles and keys, it could’ve probably been fun. But most of the time Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is just boring. If you’ve never played a Fatal Frame game before, and it’s likely given the lack of ports for the older and better entries, this isn’t the worst way to get introduced to it. Most certainly a better way than trying to play the horrible knock offs like DreadOut. But personally, I just hope that the release of this game can mean the future ports of the rest of the games to PC and modern consoles. With FF2 being the original release and not the dreadful Wii version.
P.S. Oh and speaking of PC port – it’s fine. It was horrible at launch, but by now it’s just “fine”. Some visual glitches here and there and some options are lacking, but overall it’s okay. Don’t try playing it with the keyboard and mouse, though, controls are poor enough as they are for the “intended” control methods.