Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water review

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, called Zero: Nuregarasu no Miko (零 〜濡鴉ノ巫女〜?, lit. Zero: The Raven-haired Shrine Maiden) in Japan and Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water in PAL regions, is a survival horror video game developed by Koei Tecmo and Nintendo Software Planning & Development, and published by Nintendo for the Wii U. The fifth main entry in the Fatal Frame / Project Zero series, it released in September 2014 in Japan and is set for Western release in October 22, 2015. 

The main character, Yuuri Kozukata, works at an antique shop and is able to see the "shadow" of objects she touches and can bring people back from "shadow world." Yuuri's gift is the reason she distances herself from other people but she also uses it to help others find lost items or missing people when they come asking for help. One day, a girl called Fuyuhi Himino enters the store with a request for Hisoka Kurosawa to find a friend of hers, Haruka Momose, who has gone missing around the area of Mt. Hikami. Unfortunately, Hisoka was currently absent at the time, so Yuuri takes up the request herself instead. People with such intentions enter the forest during the witching hour when the border between the world of the living and the hidden world of the shadows becomes blurred. It is said that those ending their own life there can die a clean, "proper" death and not become trapped as ghosts between worlds when committing suicide elsewhere. Both Yuuri and Fuyuhi enter the forest but at some point Yuuri sees Fuyuhi standing across a river with a knife to her throat, seemingly cutting it as the screen fades to black. Presumably the shrine maiden mentioned in the title, Ouse Kurosawa, is causing trouble in the area. 
There are three main characters: Yuuri Kozukata, Miu Hinasaki, and Ren Hojo. Yuuri Kozukata is able to see the history of objects she touches and brings people back from the spirit world. She goes out looking for the owner of the Kurosawa Antiques Shop, Hisoka Kurosawa, who has gone missing in the mountain area of Hikamiyama. Miu Hinasaki goes to Hikamiyama in search for her mother Miku Hinasaki, who vanished when she was young. Ren Hojo is an author who has known Yuuri for a long time. He travels to Hikamiyama after hearing of a custom involving burial photos, to research for his new book. Ayane is a playable character in a bonus episode of the game. She is requested to find Tsumugi Katashina, who disappeared at the mountain.

 Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water puts the player in control of three different characters navigating a number of environments across Hikami Mountain from a third-person perspective, including ruined buildings and dark forests. Characters are able to navigate environments using an interactive map, and can either walk or perform a sprint. During navigation, the characters are confronted by hostile ghosts that attack them and damage them through touch. If a ghost grabs the character, they can either dodge or break free from their grip. Game plots center on horror stories steeped in Japanese myth and tradition, and the main mechanic features using an in-game camera (The only means of defense and attack for the characters is the Camera Obscura, an antique camera that is used from a first-person perspective  to ward off ghosts.) It’s a weird mix, but one engaging enough to earn the franchise a cult following. The camera is controlled using the Wii U gamepad, with shots of varying closeness and angles affecting how much damage the ghost takes. The most damaging is a "fatal frame", which hits a ghost weak spot. During combat, after a shot is taken, fragments of a ghost will appear around them. Taking photographs of these fragments together with the ghost causes higher damage, but they also regenerate a ghost's health when they return to it. Using the Camera Obscura to photograph strange events in the environment will earn bonus points used to upgrade equipment. However, aside from the Camera Obscura, other factors are present in play. The characters can glimpse pieces of a ghost's past upon defeating them or when they launch a special attack. Characters can also concentrate on items in the environment related to missing people, generating a shade that leads them to the person's location. A wetness meter tracks how damp the character gets when navigating environments. The amount of wetness has positive and negative effects on the character: being wet increases the damage done by the Camera Obscura while increasing the number of ghosts present in an area and attacks causing more damage. In addition, characters can be inflicted with a status ailment from dark-colored ghosts or from a special attack: this ailment decreases vision and defense, and deteriorating health. The ailment is only lifted by defeating all the enemies in the area or using an item to remove all wetness. 

 If you’re familiar with Japanese horror flicks, or have at least seen The Ring, then you know what to expect in terms of pacing; this brand of cinema tends to reveal mysteries bit by bit through increasingly gross and shocking events. But Maiden of Black Water front loads most of its intrigue, blowing major plot twists within the first few chapters and destroying any sense of dramatic pacing. Discarded notes and journal entries scattered throughout each area add color to events, but don't yield anything new; you're exposed to enough heavy foreshadowing earlier on that everything is predictable. Much of the middle is a tedious slog, as you retread previous areas wringing little revelatory substance. 

Battling ghosts with the Camera Obscura is relatively similar to past iterations, which the exception of tilting the camera to get portrait shots. Ghosts now have small fragments that float around them, and if you can take a picture with five targets, you'll do more damage to them. There are also three different characters who have their own abilities with the camera, like charged shots or chains of 8 rapid-fire photographs. You can also upgrade the camera's stats, improving its damage or the lenses that you find throughout Mount Hikami. Snapping photos of the ghosts with these lenses is cathartic, and it's heart-warming/chilling to hear that old Camera Obscura sound. That catharsis doesn't remain for too long, since you'll be encountering enemies about every two minutes. Tension never has a chance to build since there's a specter always ready to pounce at you. Instead of dreading ghosts because they're horrifying, you'll dread them because of the repetition they bring. Pacing was not a priority here. It doesn’t help that characters have punishingly little depth. It’s hard to care about anyone in Maiden of Black Water because nobody acts like they care, either. Lifeless lines are delivered through lifeless acting, and the story gives little indication of genuine affection between its characters. Every line is delivered in the same stoic, stone-faced way. There's barely any progression within relationships, no reason to believe a young woman looking for her mother actually gives a damn about her mother or that Yuri's guardian cares about Yuri. Yuri's aforementioned decision to find the missing is not given much context; she just does it, apparently with no motivation given. Character decisions like this are abrupt with no drama or emotion behind them; they are only things that need to happen to further plot. I found it difficult to empathize or care about these people, because Maiden of Black Water tells you these relationships exist but doesn't bother to show you why they exist, or why they matter.
 For the most part, Maiden of Black Water tells you exactly where you need to go and keeps you firmly on the path to getting there. But the game is at its best when it sets you down in an area and lets you explore on your own. The graphics aren't the sharpest, but the game does an amazing job of setting a sorrowful tone and creating an atmosphere of simmering tension. Abandoned shrines sit coldly under canopies of dark, dripping leaves, shadows playing along decrepit wooden beams. Apartments are bathed in the dull golden glow of lamplight, creating a sense of warmth but also emptiness. Exploring an abandoned building often involves discovering which doors are locked, searching for keys, creeping through soggy basements and running along rickety porches. These multi-leveled structures are playgrounds for ghosts and the imagination, and poking into every nook and cranny sells the sense of desolation and destruction. You really feel like you’re in a remote area of Japan, a place forgotten by time and haunted by history. It’s a marvelous setting for a story, and exploring it unfettered by main directives is a delight.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water seems so, so tired. Maidens, rituals, sacrifices, suicides, water, black hair growing and covering every surface...we've seen all of this done before and with more skill. Two small moments offer an enticing glimpse and what could have been: a short trip to a cable car station and a short episode where you're monitoring surveillance cameras. Taking a photo with your Camera Obscura requires holding the GamePad upright in front of you, aligned as symmetrically as possible with your TV screen, and entering camera mode. Once in camera mode, the TV screen becomes less important as you use the GamePad to identify ghosts’ weak points. Tap a button to snap a photo, which stuns them for a half a second. Then it’s a game of cat-and-mouse as you move to keep out of reach while waiting for your camera to reload for another photo. As you snap away, your camera absorbs Spirit Power, which can be used to trigger a Fatal Frame attack and take several photos in rapid succession without needing to reload. You can stick with landscape shots or flip the GamePad for a portrait shot to get more ghosts in frame. The camera is also upgradeable. At the end of a chapter you’re awarded points based on the quality of your paranormal photos. These points can be spent on upgrading the camera and its different lenses, the latter of which have special effects like stunning ghosts for 10 seconds or inflicting more damage. 

The most dramatic parts of gameplay are "boss battles” where you take photos of more powerful ghosts. Running around a room and then frantically whipping out the camera to get a demonic priest off your back can be exhilarating, when the controls behave. If there are too many ghosts on screen, the frame rate tends to chug, making everything scary in an entirely different way. Additionally, you can use healing items in battle, but only by calling up the pause screen, which takes much of the drama and urgency out of battling away ghosts. It gives you no incentive to play things safe and protect yourself, as you can always just take a break from battle and load up on purifying water. 

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water's story and characters are not compelling, and the GamePad-as-camera controls are frequently unreliable. These prevent the game from attaining any real sense of excitement or drama.