It was a little slow for my taste, but the formula for creepiness is deffinatly there if you are into ghost stories.
Story: Deffinately the main pull of interest here. The main character is a very young japanese girl named Mio, twin sister of Mayu. In the begining sequence, both girls sort of taking in memories at a patch of woods you used to play at when they were little...er. Anyway, Mio is just sort of chatting with Mayu and turns around just to see Mayu shuffle off into the woods. Worried that Mayu might injure herself due to Mayu's bad leg, Mio runs after her sister accidently running by a camuflauge statue that acted as a marker to an enterance into All God's Village, a cursed town that is only talked about in rumors as supposedly it disappeared one day long ago. Suddenly, the sky turns as black as night and the path behind her disappears. Mio and Mayu find themselves stuck in a twisted place with a bloody history. What's worse is that the evil place pulled the twins there for a reason and it's up to Mio to save her sister and find a way to ecsape before they winding up becoming a part of the horrible town's history.
Gameplay: Well, it mostly revolves around trying to find Mio's sister, Mayu who is having a very unnatural identity crisis the whole time, so if you were guessing tones of backtracking, document reading, and puzzles solving you a VERY correct. The entire time Mio will be running over the town many,many,many times over again hunting for keys, books, and other creepy objects just to travel from one room to the next with disfigured ghosts trying to suck out her life force the whole time. Mio isn't exactly the most athletic character either, in fact she's probably the least energetic little girl character I've ever seen in a videogame as she runs slower than most snail crawl. Her sister, Mayu is even worse. Fortunatly, for both of them the dead villager's ghosts, for the most part match Mio and Mayu's enthusiasim for speed and Mio has gained an upperhand by finding a tricked out camera to blind them with. Shotguns? Ha. Lazerbeams? Pfft. The only weapon you can FPS it with is a camera, but as the system is mostly about timing it's not so bad considering this game has combat has combat as an afterthought at best. This game iholds interest mostly for puzzle solvers and detectives rather than those players who need intense action. Keep that in mind if you plan on exploring Fatal Frame II any futher.
Graphics: Good and eerie. The cut scenes play with your nerves. Perfect for this type of game.
Sound: Well, mostly it's about sound effects in Fatal Frame II as there is almost no music. Silence is on of those things that can play with your mind after all. Good for atmoshpere in a game ment to be scarey. Pop in a CD if you want something to fill long a quiet backtracking however.
In conclusion, for those who have not played a game like this, rent it first to see if your general likes will roll with this one. Like I said, this game seems to aim for a certain audience in mind and I'll be the first to admit as a gamer with a wide range of likes, this one began to ware a little thin after the first hour or so for me. I ended up making myself finish because of my interest in how the ending went. Just the same, it plays very well for what it ment to acheive and I think that is a wonderful insight to what horror games can acheive.