Fatal Frame 1

 

As much as I love vns and it's what I consume for the most part taking a break with something with gameplay is much appreciated. I wouldn't consider myself a survival horror fan despite playing quite a bit of them. As a firm believer that silent hill is overrated I enjoyed Fatal Frame (Project Zero, I played the European release) a lot. I'm probably going to compare it with silent hill a lot since it's a survival horror I played most recently. Although it's not really fair as I have been always drawn to Fatal Frame for its themes and atmosphere unlike SH. 

Gameplay wise it's really simple and easy to get used to even using keyboard on an emulator like I did which might make me seem mental but I doubt I'd do better with a controller. I'm not a fan of action hand to hand combat so I thought camera obscura mechanic is a very cool original way of beating enemies that I enjoyed. Would've enjoyed it more if I figured out you could sprint earlier than halfway through. Given how short it is I can see myself replaying it in the future especially since there's still more to see like optional boss fights and ghosts I might've missed and an entire different ending although I doubt I could do nightmare mode and I saw it online anyway. 

Especially compared to silent hill I think FF1's story is great. Older games especially horror I feel like don't have that much plot explained in game and I'm glad that's not the case here. You get quite a bit of cut scenes and a lot of notes, diaries, tapes etc. scattered across the game. The overall story is easy to follow but extensive enough for it to interest the player and make us want to continue uncovering what happened albeit it is very obvious from the start what's happened to Kirie. 

I thought it was pretty odd and made no sense for Mafuyu to give up his free life to stay with Kirie I still don't get his motivation really but I like that that's how it ends and Kirie can in a way feel reunited with her unrequited during her life love.

Voice acting. As expected from a Japanese production voice acting is top notch. It's a shame you have to go out of your way to get a patch to be able to play in english with japanese voice acting and most people probably don't bother and have to experience whatever the english dub is. I had the displeasure of hearing it when I wanted to check how far in I was compared to someone else's gameplay. I did hear someone said that FF2 has decent English dub but I don't know if it's the same and I'm oversensitive to bad dubbing or it improved. 

FF1 does everything it wanted to do well. I went in expecting great atmosphere and got exactly that. I usually don't drift towards similar works back to back but playing fatal frame I was thinking that I need more of that hence why I played Akai ito next and I have already installed and set up FF2 and I'll probably play it faster than I expected going into it.

The ending. It's not grand nor flashy but it just works in a way I cannot explain. I find it hard to appreciate horror game endings and FF1 gave me a satisfying closure that left me thinking about the game more than the rest of the plot. It's exactly what you could expect. We, as Miku manage to lift the curse and Kirie will continue sealing off evil forces (alone or with Mafuyu depending on the ending). I can't explain why but I really like that final cutscene. It makes me feel in a way I don't usually feel and It's probably going to keep coming back to me for a long time. The souls departing from the mansion finally free.