Review of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

This game was rather good and scary hampered by an insanely difficult stretch near the end of the game and a story that never really makes much sense in areas especially the ending. Still, it had good atmosphere and a good premise as two twin girls wander into a village that is apparently deserted. Well it is not to long before the one twin runs off while the other one follows after her (get used to this, she runs off a lot). Pretty soon she ends up in one of the houses of the village and before you know it you begin seeing the spirits of those who once inhabited the village. These spirits are deadly, so when push comes to shove you use a camera you find to fend off the attacking ghosts. So that is about all there is to it, the camera fighting is rather tough and tense at the same time as you have to wait till the right moment to really do some damage. Unfortunately, some times you have only a split second to take an opportunity to do real damage. You get power ups for said camera, but it is rather limited in the power it can get. You have to have your twin following you at times and while she is slow she is good bait to snap some good and deadly photos of the spirits. The game has to many flaws though to put it in the horror/survival elite class with games such as "Dead Space", "Resident Evil 4", and "Silent Hill 2". It is very dark in some parts of the game to the point the flashlight does virtually nothing, during the last part of the game there is a lot of backtracking to be done where you go through levels you have already passed through fighting the same enemies, and then the last level has you fighting through a really tough set of caves where they have way to many enemies and not enough power ups such as health and film (there are different films each with more power and such). However, thankfully the last enemy was relatively easy to get by and was a welcome change of pace after that walk through the cave hell. So while not great it is a rather good scary little game.