Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE Review

Never Let Me Go

HIGH The final boss fight is fantastic.

LOW The hiding mechanic isn’t great.

WTF I missed HALF of the ghosts?

Despite the attractive modern graphics and additional story elements, the most interesting change in the Fatal Frame 2 Remake is a decidedly retro one. In the early days of the original PlayStation, developers began experimenting with how to use physical interaction with the controller itself in order to involve the player more fully in a game’s world.

The greatest example of this was Metal Gear Solid. From the rumble in the player’s hands in the scene with DARPA Chief Donald Anderson through the iconic Psycho Mantis fight, all the way to where it invites players to destroy their hands keeping Snake alive during torture, Hideo Kojima did everything he could to break down the wall between player and game. It was a bold experiment designed to make the player rethink their relationship to the game’s world. This idea didn’t catch on in a major way and is now little more than trivia, rather than an influential gameplay philosophy. So, I was more than a little shocked to discover that the remake of Fatal Frame 2 would not only revive this concept, but create one of the most impressive versions I’ve ever encountered.

Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly is a story about twins, and the unbreakable connection they share. A town somewhere in rural Japan sits atop the mouth of hell, and its denizens believe that twins are the heaven-provided tool they can use to keep it closed. I won’t reveal the specific mechanism by which the seal is maintained, but suffice it to say that Mayu and Mio, the modern-day twins at the center of the story, have found the worst possible place to end up. Players control Mio, the younger of the two sisters, in her attempt to uncover the town’s secrets and locate Mayu, who is stolen away near the start of the tale.

Not the absolute start, of course – no, FF2 asks the player to spend the first hour guiding Mayu through narrow, decrepit streets while clasping her hand the entire time. This isn’t just about leading a sometimes-confused AI through the map quickly, though – holding Mayu’s hand (done by holding the right trigger) also heals Mio’s injuries, making her effectively unkillable as long as she stays with her sister. The intent of this design choice is made clear when, after searching a handful of houses, Mayu disappears and suddenly the player has no reason to hold down the trigger any more. The result? I felt Mayu’s absence immediately and physically. My hand wanted to keep holding the trigger even when there was no reason to do so, and then I felt comfort I felt when I got to hold her hand once again.

It’s a masterstroke of a mechanic, and the developers use every opportunity they can to remind the player of Mayu’s absence during the long stretches when she’s missing. Opening doors and picking up items, activities the player is constantly asked to do, are traditionally mapped to the face buttons on a controller. Here they’re all mapped to the trigger, so that every time the player reaches down to grab a healing item or throw open a door, they’re reminded of Mayu. This is especially true whenever they pull the trigger to take a ghost’s picture, damaging it.

This brings me to Crimson Buttterfly‘s combat, which is frustrating — by design. Mio is armed with a camera capable of sapping the energy from the wraiths that populate the village they’re in. Her problem is that ghosts are as difficult to take pictures of as one would expect. They dart around areas, disappear and then reappear behind her, and use attacks that break Mio’s focus, forcing her to reacquire them in her viewfinder. The camera does have a lock-on function that allows the player to automatically follow the spirits’ heads, but ghosts have any number of ways to break that lock, forcing the player to either constantly re-acquire or just aim manually – each one a challenging option.

Fatal Frame‘s combat has always been brutal, but this remake tries to dial that back a little, both by offering a ‘story’ difficulty level and by adding three bonus camera filters, each one offering a different tool for solving puzzles in the village and handicapping enemies. One slows ghosts to make them easier to hit, the second blinds them so that their attacks will become wild and aimless, and the last simply charges up to wallop ghosts with huge bonus damage. If I’d had these in my arsenal twenty years ago, I might have finished the original version!

This move towards player-friendliness has not, sadly, been extended to the storytelling. The tale is intriguing, but it’s presented in a fashion that requires the player to dig deep if they want to know what’s going on. There are dozens of journal and diary entries from a wide variety of characters, as well as magical stones that capture a sentence or two of their thoughts. It’s easy enough to make it through the story by simply following map objectives, but even by doing that and reading every file I came across left me feeling like I’d only scratched the surface of what’s going on in that cursed village.

The missing component was content from sidestories, which are the key both to understanding the story and unlocking different – and better – endings. The problem is that sidestories are difficult to trigger and even harder to complete. While some can be started by simply finding a piece of text, many are kicked off by stumbling across and photographing missable ghost events that occur only in certain chapters of the story. I’d hoped that the complete list with pointers on how to find them would unlock after rolling credits, but the only clues I was given were to ending-critical stories only available in New Game+.

Fatal Frame 2 Remake is creepy, haunting, and thrilling in equal measure. It’s also fiddly and frustrating at times, and requires the player to put in a ton of effort if they want to feel like they’ve gotten everything out of the story. (PROTIP: get a walkthrough.) Still, it’s a truly affecting experience, and that’s down to the developers’ brilliant use of mechanics. I’ve played literally hundreds of creepy horror titles, but I’ve almost never felt this kind of connection to the story, and that’s entirely down to the decision they made to trigger that bit of physical discomfort in the player. I can’t imagine it’s going to be an experience for everyone, but the results are inarguable – I cared about what happened to these twins, and appreciated the experience all the more because of it.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Koei/Tecmo. It is currently available on PS5, PC, XBS/X and SW2. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed once. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated M by the ESRB and features Blood, and Violence. Look, beyond the oppressive dread that permeates every frame of this game, there’s some truly dark subject matter. Lots of talk of murdering children and self-harm. Just because you’re old enough to play it doesn’t mean you’re ready for it.

Colorblind Modes: The game does contain colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game is fully subtitled, and the subtitles can be resized. Audio cues are used frequently in the game, and any that have gameplay relevance have onscreen indicators. The game is fully accessible.