Good
- using the camera as basically a gun taking down spirits is an interesting take. The only other game that I experienced this was outlast, which obviously came out much later. So much respect to fatal frame as far as I know, being the first for integrating a camera so heavily into the gameplay.
- the game faithfully recreates the terror I feel when watching an Asian horror, more specifically a Japanese horror film. It has the long haired young female spirits that haunts. As well as the jump-scares, and the creepy camera angles where you see the ghost suddenly appear behind the protagonist.
- the music and the sound in the background is eerie. There is moaning, deep whispering, and just all sorts of terrifying ambient sounds. But at the same time, it's not too overwhelming where it would become annoying. It had the perfect balance, which heightened the tension.
- I like being able to follow the story of the previous group of people that visited this mansion through notebooks crafts and tapes. The information is given bit by bit which I'm covers their story at a good pace.
- the voices in the tapes were bad quality, which contributed to the atmosphere perfectly
- enemies move an unpredictable ways making the combats a bit challenging. But most importantly it's maintains a level of adrenaline. Ghosts can disappear in front of you and reappear behind you, so I had to keep moving around. Being immobile while zoomed in with the camera also added to the tension, forcing me to juggle how much damage I want to inflict versus keeping a safe distance. The game forced me to find that balance between aggressiveness and defense.
- it's interesting being able to use the camera and find points of interests like ghosts and hidden things. Kind of like a dowsing tool, it was fun to uncover secrets like these using the light.
- the hovering head ghost was probably the scariest one, since it was small and it could go between floors and through walls straight at me. Plus a travelled fast. And when I zoomed in with the camera, I saw the face directly.
- upgrades were pretty cool. Once my camera started to get a lot of upgrades, I felt like I could take on more powerful ghosts which made the game play more fun.
- sometimes the difficulty comes from limited space.
- the game uses very scary sounds, and unique sounds. Such as tightening of a rope which fits with the story.
- The lighting was balanced perfectly. It was just dark enough that I could see what I needed, most of the time. This maintained a perpetual tension every where I went.
Bad
- the constant camera angle changes can be disorientating
- despite there being so many control configuration options, there isn't a single one that allows me to use the left control stick to move, and the right control stick to aim. I would have preferred that because every single shooter out there does it like that, but for fatal frame it's backwards, which feels very awkward.
- some parts of the game has me back tracking to places without hints. At times I'd just be wandering around old areas to try and find a cutscene trigger or an old item I can now scan with camera
- sometimes the ghosts well teleport right behind you and you'll have zero reaction time to run. sometimes they'll even come straight through a wall right beside you, again giving you no time to react. Some ghosts will even stunlock you, in a very unfair way.
- the fix camera angle works against the first person shooting sequences. Because every time there's a camera change the direction controls change as well, which highly affects the fights, since positioning is so important.
- there are too many camera angle changes. Many times I feel like I'm being challenged not because of the difficulty the ghosts have, but rather my struggle with the constant change of directional inputs. Sometimes I be running away from the ghosts, but the camera suddenly changes, and I end up running into a wall and the ghost gets me.
- some ghosts shorts a bit unfair to fight. Like the blind ghost, at times I just be walking very slowly far away from her, but she's still dash straight towards me, despite her not hearing anything. And then there's another ghost that randomly teleports right behind me and attacks me, allowing me no chance to react I do anything. Healing items we're kind of scarce, and I'd usually just have enough to survive. So these unfair encounters we're a little annoying.
- there needs to be a shortcut for changing films. Very inconvenient to have to go into menu every time.
- the voice actors of the main characters aren't that great