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When twin sisters Mio and Mayu hear about the dam being built near the mysterious ghost town of All Gods Village, they decide to explore the surrounding forest one last time. The crippled Mayu, following a group of crimson butterflies, leads Mio on a small chase until the two find themselves trapped within the lost village. There, among the ghosts of the past, does Mio learn of the terrible ritual held in the village’s past, and only she can stop it from happening as Mayu is pulled further and further away.
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Version Reviewed:
Playstation 2
The original Fatal Frame is one of my all-time favourite games, so I was expecting a lot from this sequel… only to end up somewhat disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, Crimson Butterfly is a good game… just not quite as good as its predecessor.
The derelict All Gods Village is the perfect setting for a horror game. The mysterious town leaves much to be explored, and all the houses have secrets behind their silent walls. Even the village grounds and caves provide much to explore, but at some times, the large area becomes confusing and overwhelming, a bit hard to keep straight when you have to run between houses.
Your main characters, Mio and Mayu, get surprisingly little characterization. Mayu simply gets more and more possessed by a spirit of the village, while Mio spends the majority of her time searching for Mayu, propelled (supposedly) by a feeling of guilt from the time that Mio left her sister “behind,” resulting in the injury that left Mayu crippled.
The ghosts in this game are just as frightening as in the original, but surprisingly easier to defeat. Your camera controls are mapped a bit differently, but prove to be more beneficial in the long run. The majority of your battles are a lot smoother and quicker, with the exception of the final boss.
The graphics in this game are improved (though every once and a while, you’ll get stuck at an odd camera angle), and done so in more visible ways, such as using hard drawn maps (in addition to the menu map you can use). They still make use of the audio aspect of fear, and do so with a Crystal Radio. The effort was appreciated, though the crystal’s “voices” are almost impossible to make out, unless you have the subtitles on.
The plot, as in the first, is the best aspect of Crimson Butterfly. Though some ideas seem repetitive (the traveling back in time, the failed Shinto ritual), all of it is refreshed with new (and some old) characters, and insightful looks into the lives of the All Gods Village’s past residents. More new ideas are introduced and experimented with, though in some ways it makes the game less believable than the first.
And it’s certainly less scary than the first. It’s creepy and amusing, but it lacked that certain finesse that made me love the original so much. The only time I found myself even close to be truly scared was during one chapter of the game where you don’t have your camera, and had to run and hide or be faced with a 1-hit KO ghost battle.
Still, all things said, it’s an entertaining and loveable game. Thanks to better advertising, it had a better release in America on both consoles, and has left many waiting eagerly for the third game in this series. Any fan of horror or Japanese culture should pick this up; just try and play the first game first… and try not to hate Mayu too much.
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