Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

Fatal frame 2 is a survival horror game set in a long lost village. You play as Mio and occasionally as her twin sister Mayu as they attempt to escape the village. That task isn't an easy endeavor as the ghosts that inhabit the village aren't particularly happy with the idea of them leaving.

The story starts with the sisters sitting in a forest, as Mio is distracted Mayu follows a butterfly into the forest. Once Mio notices she follows Mayu deeper into the forest where they inadvertently discover a village that was believed to have disappeared long ago. As you explore the village you learn about the history behind it and why it ended up the way it did. This is told through Mio finding old diaries, books and notes that are scattered around the village. The back story to the village is probably the most interesting part of the story, the story told in the present time seems to be lacking in comparison with it not really picking up until the ending.

The only weapon in the game is the camera obscura which is a camera made specially to exorcise spirits. You can obtain different films for the camera which have different levels of power. If you time your shots right you get a fatal frame which does extra damage and forces the spirit back, normal shots do less damage and may not send the spirit back. There are also special abilities you can attach to the camera like blast (blasts the enemy back and inflicts more damage), slow (slows the spirit down) and a few others. There are only a few types of enemies which in the end gets fairly repetitive once you figure out how they each behave.

Fatal frame 2 doesn't really have much of a soundtrack instead it relies more on ambient sounds being played in the background which really builds up the tension helping with the games great atmosphere. The ghosts can be quite repetitive in the sound department with them constantly repeating the same lines over and over again.

Graphically the game looks great for a PS2 game, especially the character models. The problem with the graphics is they can be repetitive with many areas in the houses looking pretty much the same. This can kind of be overlooked though as it is an old village so there is bound to be similarities in the way it all looks.

One of the major faults in the game is the difficulty; the game never really felt that challenging. The combat is easy once you know what you're doing, it mainly comes down to timing the shot right. The only time the combat can become slightly on the challenging side is when they throw more than one ghost at you at once. This is mitigated though by the seemingly never ending supply of healing items and ammo. Overall I only died twice in the game, once due to not knowing how to deal with a certain ghost and the other time due to me just being stupid. Admittedly I did only play on normal but I guess I still expected a bit more of a challenge.

Fatal frame 2 lasts under 10 hours for a first play through and after that there isn't that much in the way of replay value. It features two endings, one for finishing the game on normal and the other for playing it on the hardest difficulty. Other than that you can go through and unlock different outfits for the twins to wear like kimonos and the like. It also offers you the ability the restart the game with all the stats and items from your previous play through. You also unlock mission mode which is a bunch of challenges against different ghosts.

Overall it was an enjoyable although kind of flawed experience, the story was interesting and the setting was great. I would recommend any survival horror fan to pick this up as it's cheap now and well worth playing.