"Will you resist the call of the siren?" You have no idea how much I want to.
Siren takes place in a remote rural village in Japan known as Hanuda. Some very odd events have been taking place there. The natural water sources (rivers, rain, etc.) have turned blood red and the villagers seem to have turned into deadly zombie-like creatures known as shibito which have really surprising accuracy when it comes to firearms. Hanuda is definitely a place that you don't want to be in. Unfortunately, 10 unlucky survivors (some of them being original inhabitants of the village while there are also those who come from the outside) just so happen to be trapped in there and it's up to you to take control of them and help them survive the entire ordeal.
The story mainly takes place in a span of three days but everything isn't done chronologically. Instead, the stages tend to jump around in terms of time and the characters you play as. While this may sound like it makes the story far too complicated and difficult to follow, the game uses a "Link Navigator" system in order to organize the stages by time and character like a spreadsheet. While this does help you understand the story more than if you didn't have it at all, it still feels really unnecessary. Regardless, the story was still rather complex and deep and I personally liked uncovering more about the characters and the truth about the village. It still could have been much more comprehensible though if the developers made a few better choices when it came to the gameplay mechanics.
Unfortunately, gameplay is one of the biggest aspects where Siren fails in. This game is littered with problems like awkward controls, extremely challenging difficulty which is centered around trial-and-error, and pointless second objectives. There is one bright side to the gameplay though which comes in the form a unique feature called as "sight jacking". Basically, all the 10 playable characters have the ability to see through the eyes of another, be it another human or another shibito. You can use this ability to see where certain items are hidden, where the shibito are, and where you stand in comparison to where the shibito are (as you're always symbolized with a blue cross when sightjacking). This is definitely a unique feature that this game really benefits from as it adds some depth to the game and makes it a bit less frustrating.
Unfortunately, almost everything else about the gameplay mechanics is unlikable. Movement in particular is very awkward, whenever you run into a wall, even at a rather slow speed, the characters act as if they made impact with it at full speed with their hands up in the air. It's also really dislikable how the developers decided to make this game extremely hard and frustrating. The shibito have extremely good accuracy when it comes to shooting you from afar (meaning that if a sniper sees you, you can consider yourself dead) and the sightjacking process is a bit too slow to the point where even if you're getting a few seconds to run away from the enemy before they see you, they'll probably end up seeing you in the end anyway.
My biggest complaint about this game so far is the ruined "2nd Mission Objective" system. Basically, after completing a stage, if you've met certain requirements, you can play the stage again except with another goal in mind (for example, at first, the only requirement for that stage might be to escape the area but the 2nd objective is to retrieve a certain item). Now, I wouldn't have had any problems with this system if the 2nd objectives were completely optional and were just for the sake of finding out more about the characters and seeing more of the story, but if they force you to replay the same stage twice over and over again just to finish the game then that's a sign of poor development choices. Maybe I would have forgiven this huge flaw if the game was a bit easier, but forcing you to play each difficult stage twice and dying dozens of times just to get to the ending of the game is not my idea of enjoyment and being creeped out. What this system did was make the game a tedious trudge and you got to play through the stage so many times that it wasn't even creepy or scary anymore.
Moving away from the horrid gameplay mechanics, the game actually does alright when it comes to its other technical aspects. One of the more notable things about the game is the audio. The music sets the mood just right for this sort of game. The background music is filled with eerie sounds and weird chanting which just gives you that whole "there's something out there…" feel. Some stages even benefit from the fact that there isn't any music at all, just weird sound effects and the creepy moaning of the shibito. Unfortunately, not everything is good as the voice acting is mediocre. Many characters lack enthusiasm when speaking, one example being when a character pulls a bucket out of a well, grabs it, and an infant's hand suddenly comes out of it. That was a creepy scene, but the voice actors certainly didn't show it. All that the guy said was "Ah…" and his partner just replied with a rather unsurprised "Creepy, isn't it?" which was a bit of a turn off for me, but still, it's way better than what we saw in the original Resident Evil.
The graphics are very nice. They aren't extremely detailed like some of the more recent PS2 games, but for a game released back in 2004, it isn't too bad. The faces of the characters are real people with their faces being mapped onto the actual character model which was an interesting graphical style to use and it makes the characters look all the more realistic. The village of Hanuda itself is also very atmospheric with typical houses that you'd see in the Japanese countryside and lots of fog which made the whole place look very creepy. There are always a few things to nag about like how sometimes your characters or melee weapons will pass right through solid objects but these minor issues never really get in the way greatly.
In terms of replay value, this game really disappointed me. It's not because of the actual length of the game itself. In fact, the game has a lot of gameplay stages so technically, it's one of the longest survival horror games I've played lasting me over 10 hours (the first Fatal Frame game didn't even last me 5…). The main problem comes from how it manages to last so long and that comes in the form of the second mission objectives which are all just made so unclear (How in the world am I supposed to know that I'm supposed to hide my partner behind a shrine so that she ends up finding a toy monkey that will be vital to the game later on?) and despite the fact that they add to the length of the game, they add a lot of frustration to the point where the average gamer will probably stop playing this game before they even get close to the ending.
When it comes down to it, all that Siren has going for it is the graphics, sound effects, music, and story. It almost completely fails at everything else. The extremely difficult gameplay and frustrating boring secondary mission objectives will ensure that probably more than 50% of the people who play this game will never be motivated enough to finish it all the way to the end which is quite a shame because I could see that this game had potential. If that isn't enough warning to tell the average gamer to stay away from this game then keep in mind that it also has several other problems like silly unenthusiastic voice acting and weak story progression. The only people who I recommend this game to are the hardcore adventurers who are used to playing survival horror games and can ignore the game's flaws and appreciate the good parts of it. Everyone else should stay clear from this game and either just get the sequel, Forbidden Siren 2 (which was only released in Europe and Japan unfortunately) or Siren: Blood Curse, both of which outshine this game by far.