User Reviews

First let me start off by saying that I love the Fatal Frame series. It's one of the best survival horror series in my opinion. There's hardly anything bad I can think of to say about the series.

The third game follows the same basic structure of the last two games. You fight ghost with a camera. There's not been much of an upgrade from the past two games in terms of game play. Which may aggravate some veteran Fatal Frame players.

The story is of a young woman named Rei Kurosawa who lost her boyfriend some time ago and is a freelance photographer. She currently is now trying to solve the mystery of the cursed tattoo and the manor of sleep. The story is as always beautifully crafted and finishes out the trilogy on the PS2 with a bang.

You'll be going back and forth in between a "dream manor" and the waking world. Which is Rei's apartment. The transition is done very nicely and pulled off in such a way that it doesn't take away from the story.

There are two other characters in this game. Kei Amakura and Miku Hinisaka from the first game. They serve their purpose well as this game eventually ties into the past two games. You'll actually be seeing a lot of Miku.

The graphics are the best they've ever been in this game. The locations look great as does the characters. The voice acting is great, but the characters do sound like they're talking in a hole sometimes. The sound for all the ghost is great and intense.

I wouldn't say this is the scariest out of the three as anyone who has played the past two games will likely be desensitized to the whole ghost fighting formula of the series. That still doesn't take away from the game in my opinion. It holds its own.

A few words to sum up the whole game is it's a beautiful intense game. I recommend the whole series for anyone who is into survival horror and looking for a deep psychological game.

fatal frame series for me surpasses silent hill series, which for me was the best survive horror game ,not only this game is heavy on story but damn scary, this game is a must play for all those survival horror fans ,the first thing that i appreciate about this game is the story, which is brilliant , this game is slow which makes it more scary and realistic ,the only thing that i didn't like about this game was it was in the mansion itself which gets quite repetitive but that point can be ignored as this game is quite involving. At last i would say This game has been consistent enough in providing thrills and chills . i give this game 9/10 and highly recommend this game to the ps2 owners

BACKGROUND: This is the follow up to perhaps the greatest horror game of all time, Fatal Frame 2. Unfortunately this is a disappointing game and kinda ruins the story of Fatal Frame 1 + 2 in a way.

STORY: The story itself is fine. It is about this dream manor that people who suffer from guilt are trapped in while sleeping and eventually their guilt takes them and they end up dying in real life. Unfortunately they bring in the main characters from Fatal Frame 1 and Fatal Frame 2 and it sort of ruins the story of those two games. We find out that the main characters are suffering from guilt and Mio (from fatal Frame 2) is pretty much in a mental hospital going crazy while Mike (Fatal Frame 1) is dealing with repressed feelings of guilt. Also we never really get a sense of Rei and her fiance's relationship so there is no real attachment there. There is no flashbacks of them together, nothing.

GAMEPLAY: This is the big problem here. This game is really really repetitive and long. You spend 95% of the game running around this manor that isn't really interesting. It is big, and there is so so much goddamn backtracking that I almost gave up halfway through. Basically you play the manor parts in your dreams and when you hit a story plot, you wake up into reality and do something in the reality (such as answer your phone, talk to Miku, listen to a tape ,print photos), then it suddenly becomes night time and you go back to sleep and into the manor.

It seems like the director and programmers wanted to pad out the game as much as possible so you literally are backtracking throughout this entire giant manor looking for mundane items or finding ghost. I am not lying when I say the backtracking is nothing I have experience before, and I am a survival horror fan. Also there isn't really a lot of clues so you end up just running around looking for stuff. I spent over an hour looking for 4 ghosts to kill. Also the map is good, but at the same time it doesn't give you hints on where to go so when I get a key item I would completely forget where to use it since everything looks the same.

Lastly the ghosts are repetitive and you fight the same looking ghost over and over, in the same place doing the same scripted event. The flying ghost are extremely annoying and they just zig zag and disappear all over the place. This isn't a first person shooter guys, we don't need these flying ghost trying to make it seem like some sort of fast pace action game. I would like to say that majority of the creepiest moments took place in Rei's house and it doesn't involve fighting any ghosts. Those moments are great.

SOUND: The sound is good and some of the music is creepy. Voice acting is hit or miss, main characters are fine, but the ghost voices are kinda cheesy and Rei's fiance's voice is pretty terrible (even though he only talks in maybe 2 or 3 parts). Amano Tsukiko delivers another good theme song, and overall besides the ghost voice acting and fiance, the sound is good.

OVERALL: This is a disappointing follow up top Fatal Frame 2 (a 10/10 game in my opinion). This game is long, repetitive, boring, frustrating, padded out, and just not very fun to play after a few hours. Fatal Frame 2 just had a way better story, better pacing, a lot more scary, and the Lost Village is just a more interesting place than the manor. Lastly, not a fan of what they did with Miku and Mio in this game. If you are a die hard Fatal frame fan like me, then I guess you can give this a shot but I think you will be greatly disappointed like me. There is a great concept in here with the whole manor of dream, but the repetition, backtracking, and pacing issue bring it down.

6.5/10.