Fatal Frame II: The Crimson Butterfly: Remake Review (PS5)

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Narrative

Summary: An uneven remake that’s equal parts frightening and frustrating.

3.5

It was the butterfly

There is a fine line between Terror and Tedium, and Fatal Frame II: The Crimson Butterfly: Remake wobbles along this proverbial tightrope every time an angry specter wanders into the room.

The first thing to note is that this latest version of Fatal Frame II is effectively a remake of a remake, Fatal Frame II 2026, a ground-up recreation of the 2012 Wii version that skipped North America, not the PS2 original.

If you only ever played Fatal Frame 2 on the PS2, it’s a mostly solid remake that brings it more in line with the more modern entries in the series. I say modern, Maiden of the Blackwater came out in 2014.

However, if you’ve played either of the Remasters of Maiden of the Blackwater or Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for modern hardware, you will feel right at home with its over-the-shoulder camera and unfortunately clunky combat.

The action opens with twin sisters Mio and Mayu Amakura stumbling upon the otherworldly Minakami village after they become lost in the woods.

The literal ghost town, trapped in a veil of darkness that has vanished off the map. Has a long history of strange occult practices involving twins, and the pair are the latest unfortunate couple to find themselves trapped in the haunted ruins of the rural hamlet.

Soon, the vengeful wraiths that inhabit the decaying village attack the twins and possess Mayu. As she searches for her sister, Mio begins to uncover the history of the horrifying hamlet, the twisted rites of the Crimson Butterfly, and the tragic tale of a pair of twins whose story feels far too familiar.

There’s a lot to paw through, and uncovering the events that led to the village’s downfall is one of the best parts of the whole experience and does a wonderful job of contextualising some of the game’s more horrific events. As such, it’s well worth rummaging through the environment to find every last journal entry and report you can.

If you’ve ever played Silent Hill or Resident Evil, you’ll know what to expect. Navigating the environment, solving puzzles, scavenging for resources, and trying your damnedest not to get murdered are the order of the day.

Be warned, there is a fair amount of backtracking involved, especially if you decide to take on any of the game’s side missions that reward the player with new ghost encounters, some useful new equipment, and bring a lot of the lore to life in meaningful ways.

Thankfully, you always know where to go next or how to get to the next objective, thanks to some smart map design and clever signposting.

Even though you’re rarely ever lost, walking around the village still feels consistently tense thanks to its use of a tight over-the-shoulder camera that makes you feel constantly vulnerable, and delights in freaking you out by having ghosts, both hostile and friendly, appear in windows in the distance, walk through walls in front of you and generally make you feel like absolutely nowhere is safe.

You can’t even open a door or pick up a roll of film without a ghost lunging towards you and giving you a fright.

Combat once again evolves around exorcising spirits with the fabled Camera Obscura. By snapping spirits and getting their best side, you slowly chip away at their health until they eventually sod off. Additional points and damage are rewarded for good shot composition that includes things like centering the spook in the frame and making sure it’s in focus.

The problem is that the restless and angry spirits of the dead don’t like having their photos taken, so getting the perfect picture is challenging to say the least.

What it boils down to is maintaining enough distance so you can take a shot and hanging around just long enough for you to be able to reposition or dodge when the spectres inevitably try to strangle you to death,

That’s before you take into account the times they’ll swipe at you, teleport out of your field of vision, or just use the instant jump scare button that knocks you on your arse.

However, if you get your timing right, you’ll trigger the titular Fatal Frame shot, which stuns the ghost and lets you take several more snaps, doing a lot of damage in the process.

The problem is that most of the time when you can activate this. Your sodding camera is still recharging after your last snap. (though you can get upgrades and some film types that speed up the process)

What could have been tense encounters can quickly become tedious, though, as encounters with even the lowest-level apparitions can turn into a protracted slog thanks to how randomly spongy a ghost decides to be, and if they become ‘Aggravated’.

This irritating affliction turns ghosts red, makes them do more damage, move faster, and, most annoyingly of all, regenerate health and take far less damage. As such, a fight that could have been over with a couple of well-placed shots becomes an obnoxious war of attrition as you slowly whittle down their health while hoping the bloody things will calm down.

Although upgrading your Camera Obscura and using different disposable film types that do additional damage or reload faster does mitigate this somewhat, especially after you unlock filters that allow you to do the same amount of damage to a ghost whether it’s pissed off or not, combat is just too random to be fun. Two encounters with the exact same type of spirit can turn out completely differently due entirely to dumb luck, and that is not my idea of fun.

If you’re not fighting ghosts, you’re hiding from them, and Fatal Frame II includes several sequences where you are forced to hide from powerful spirits that will instantly kill you if they get hold of you. However, sometimes even if you find a place to hide, the buggers will make a beeline straight for you regardless. Once again, luck, more than judgment, seems to be the prevailing measure of success.

Since Fatal Frame 2 is a bottom-up remake, I was hoping the gameplay elements that made the recent remasters irksome at times would have been sanded down or revitalised by Team Ninja. Instead, it just brings the game in line with the remasters. As such, the original WiiU version of Blackwater remains the best in the series from a ghostbusting perspective, and it’s almost 12 years old.

It’s a shame because the presentation for the best part is fantastic. There’s some staggering use of light and shadow to create tension. The ghosts all look absolutely ghoulish in the best possible way. The village feels lived in with lots of little details in the environment that reinforce minor plot elements and make it feel all the more unsettling.

This is backed up by some exceptional sound design that makes the world feel actively hostile, especially the care that’s been put into all the crashes, bumps, and groans of the spirits before you see them. the noises of long-abandoned buildings. It’s all absolutely brilliant. It’s also accompanied by an off-kilter soundtrack that blends into the background perfectly, yet always helps to drive the tension through the roof when it needs to.

Though I do wish it still had the same voice actors as the Wii version. Nothing is creepier than a possessed child with an English accent.

The narrative and storytelling are also really well constructed. You get more out of it the more you explore. The more you connect with the village and its myriad of mysteries, the more horrifying the game becomes, and that’s the stuff you mostly don’t see. There are some cutscenes and moments in Fatal Frame II that I found legitimately disturbing, and this is coming from someone who used to regularly cover inquests.

Final Thoughts

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake is an incredibly atmospheric and legitimately unsettling experience brought low by clunky, often infuriating combat and trial-and-error stealth sections. As such, it’s difficult to recommend to anyone but existing fans of the series.

However, for those who can push through its more irksome elements, there’s a fantastically macabre tale that will haunt you long after the credits roll.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Fatal Frame II: The Crimson Butterfly: Remake Review (PS5)