Fatal Frame III: The Tormented (2005)

Rating: 90/100

Mini-review:

I'm going to give this a 90 but I considered 85. The things I love most about Fatal Frame--the story, atmosphere, music, are all here in spades. The Manor of Sleep is a fantastic location, and I especially love the focus on grief. The Tattooed Priestess is so tragic, but the protagonists all wrestle with some heavy shit too. However, there's way too much repetition/backtracking, which wouldn't be so bad if the game wasn't so insanely obtuse. And combat can be frustrating.

Full review:

Quick disclaimer: I play horror on Easy because it's atmosphere/mood that I care about, not how hard it is. I love Fatal Frame because it's j-horror, less focus on survival horror. But that does mean I had a different experience than a lot of people will have because mine was considerably simpler.

So to elaborate a bit on my points:

• The Manor of Sleep is incredibly memorable. Almost a labyrinth in some ways. Creaky, lonely, sad. Beautiful, like the rest of the game, even for a PS2 game. I would love to see how it would look today.

• Always adore the music, and this is no different. It's just like the Manor, sad more often than not. A little scary at times, but just otherwordly in general.

• Fatal Frame's combat can be a little clunky. Even in the Fatal Frame 2 Remake, while it wasn't as bad, there were fights that I found frustrating. This is a PS2 game and while I was surprised by how good it felt, it does still have some clunkiness. And some ghosts are fucking annoying to fight because they teleport everywhere and it's just a real pain in the ass. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get mad a couple times. I couldn't imagine playing this on a harder difficulty, honestly, and I don't want to.

With that said, combat is not why I'm here. Fatal Frame combat to me is completely fine, and I do like the idea of taking pictures as combat (I didn't at first, which is why I avoided the series until this year), but it's honestly just the thing I accept is there so the game is doable for me. What that means is, I hate running and hiding and so the fact that you can fight almost everything here is appealing to me, even if it can be a little clunky.

• Characters are great. I haven't played the first Fatal Frame so some of Miku's arc is lost on me, but I get the gist of it. I've played the Fatal Frame 2 Remake, but not the original so I don't know how much was changed, but because of that I did have functioning knowledge of Mio and Mayu, which made Kei more memorable for me. But Rei's the main girl and I felt for her. Another character trapped by grief, but I like how the game treats the subject matter and her. The Tattooed Priestess is especially tragic. Her backstory is horrific. She might be my favourite unbeatable (until the end) antagonist in any Fatal Frame, actually.

• I'm going to stick with my 90 score because what this game does well, it does extremely well and I love it, but now I'll talk briefly about why I've considered giving it an 85. I actually considered 80 at some points but the game ended strongly so anything lower than an 85 won't cut it.

Even by Fatal Frame standards there's a lot of repetition. I felt Maiden of Black Water had a bit too much but it feels especially egregious here. But you know, I'd be okay with the repetition if this game wasn't so annoyingly obtuse. This criticism is what I was scared I'd run into. Originally, I wasn't going to play this game. I was just going to hope for a remake or remaster because I loved FF2 Remake, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse Remaster and Maiden of Black Water Remaster.

I know: it's a PS2 game. I get it. This is how it was. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you that a few Hours (chapters) weren't frustrating for me. I would say maybe 3 or 4 of the 13 chapters (well, 14 if you count the Final Hour I guess) were a problem for me. I used a guide for more of the game than I would have liked, and you might think that would rectify the problem, but it was preventing me from getting AS engrossed in the atmosphere as I would have had I not had to look at the guide as often as I did.

Basically, there is a lot of running around aimlessly. Yes, there are clues in the things you read, and sometimes they will have a ghost show up and walk into a room or show you butterflies or whatever, but Fatal Frame 2 expects you to remember way too much. I thought maybe it was simply a skill issue on my end but I saw this as a common complaint. Really, one of the only ones. A remaster would only have to pretty this game up and show some markers, honestly, and the experience becomes a 95 for me.

There's a compelling argument for the vagueness though. If you believe that the design choice mimics the disorientation/dreaminess of The Manor of Sleep, that's cool. You're trapped there, you're confused, you don't know what to do, who to see, whatever. The Manor of Sleep as a location IS that feeling. So I get it. It's cool. But I don't think that translates perfectly to the gameplay itself. That's one of the problems that games has that I don't think artforms like movies do.

• In closing, while there's a bunch of negativity in this review, keep in mind that I ADORE the rest of this game. The things that matter most to me are top tier. I just found the game frustrating at times, and I'm not sure if I'm going to play the first Fatal Frame for this reason. We'll see. Maybe down the road after I've taken a lengthy break from the franchise. I have played 4 Fatal Frames since March, after all.

Iterates on everything 2 does, but better. More impactful camera upgrades, having the ability to charge your shots (you don't have to rely on Fatal Frame or Shutter Shot 24/7), your camera doesn't take about three powdered rifles' worth of reload time to recharge, the ghosts are scarier, the manor is cooler than the village, and I could go on. Lots of QoL too.

This isn't to say that 2 is bad, and I'm not trying to shit on it. In fact, I liked 2 a lot. But in certain aspects it failed to grip me as well as 3 has. I consider this game to be an amazing improvement over what was already great in the second entry, with nearly no flaws. Certain players have criticized the back-tracking, but it wasn't that bad; I wasn't chasing the Mayu McGuffin, and that, already, is much better. There are multiple playable characters, too, and their storylines are entwined very decently with the Manor's overarching plot. I haven't played 1, so I had to sort of figure out what Miku's deal was, though. The one obnoxious thing was when you opened the rift, and thus had to look for purifying candles in order to not get one-shot by Reika. I felt like I was always on a timer, and at one point I actually ran out. Tense, but a bit annoying

I'd recommend the game wholeheartedly as a phenomenal survival horror. Maybe not so much as an entry title, as it wraps up two other storylines.

First few impressions after an hour and a half~ of playing (hey, it's not a very long game)

The gameplay is much improved, with the addition of charge shots, limited films (even the weakest ones). Shutter shots don't knock them back anymore, only fatal frames do, so you have more of an incentive to go for them. Also, you can switch films with the D-Pad (less cumbersome!). The ghost designs are much, much better and I think I'll enjoy the interconnected mansion a lot more than the interspersed locations at the village from 2. It seems this game likes to make references to 1 and 2, but I haven't played the first one (no english subs on a 2004 release wtf). It shouldn't be much of a bother though.

I really like the Silent Hill 4-esque hub area, and here's hoping they do the same thing where your safe haven is invaded by the exterior threat which is maybe bordering on tropey, but I like the concept and SH4... well, it executed it, but it was very very cumbersome regardless.

It's not for everyone, but the bite-sized nights are fun to me. I think this'll keep the game from becoming stale immediately. Wouldn't help that I'm fresh off FF2 (that's my bad, honestly). Whatever may be the case, I'll try to pace myself better than I did with FF2 (I thought that one would be waaaaaay shorter, closer to SH2 in terms of length)

Growing up, I always wanted to play the Fatal Frame series and just never got around to it. I've been making up for that by getting into them now over the past year and despite some jank, the games have held up pretty well. However, while I definitely enjoyed the first two games and I realize the second is pretty universally held to be the best, at this point Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented is easily my favorite. While I appreciate some of the improvements to the gameplay that are apparent in this entry, I think it really nails the series themes in a satisfying and heart-wrenching way that resonated with me significantly more than the other games.

Note: it's been a bit since I actually played this game and in retrospect, I don't remember quite the order things are revealed. I don't plan to give away any major twists, but I am less certain of what would and wouldn't be considered especially "spoilery" after so long, so there may be some untagged spoilers below. There are also some significant spoilers for the endings of previous Fatal Frame games given this title takes place after them that I won't be tagging.

The formula for Fatal Frame remains pretty much the same in the third entry, with some changes. You still control a Japanese girl (or young woman in this game) who explores spooky environments armed only with the Camera Obscura, a magical camera with the power to defeat ghosts. While certainly a survival horror, combat consists not of shooting monsters, but of snapping pictures of ghostly entities as they come at you, generally by keeping them in the frame long enough to charge up spirit power and time your shots just right for additional damage. Like prior games, the story and lore are very sad and the happiest anyone achieves is a bittersweet survival.

Fatal Frame 3 changes this formula up in a few ways. First, there's much more of a multiple-playable-characters format than the previous games which only had a few points of the narrative in which you controlled someone other than the protagonist. In this game, there is a main character, Rei Kurosawa, who you control most, but you also play as Miku Hinasaki (protagonist of the first game), and Kei Amakura (uncle to the main characters of the second game). Which dovetails into another major difference: this game actually has significant ties and callbacks to the first two games, whereas those titles were otherwise unrelated. Lastly, this game came out about a year after Silent Hill 4: The Room and the influence seems apparent as, between your journeys into otherworldly exploration, you return to Rei in the waking world. As the game progresses, your home, that you are mostly confined to by Rei's depression-induced agoraphobia, begins to show progressive signs of haunting. There is also a disturbing cutscene with each waking showing a developing "bruise" suspiciously similar to the tattoos covering the scary antagonist who pursues you in your nightmares.

The main premise of the game is that a progressive illness is causing people to sleep for longer and longer until they fall into a coma-like state before ultimately disappearing completely. Those victims still capable of waking tell tales of a nightmarish labyrinthine house they explore in their dreams, the Manor of Sleep. Unsurprisingly, our heroes all end up there, putting them at risk of deteriorating to the final stages of illness and disappearing. In the waking world, Rei is a freelance photographer and Miku acts as her assistant. Rei is currently mourning the loss of her husband Yuu, who died in a car crash while she was driving. Yuu was a folklorist who happened to be corresponding in joint research with Kei prior to his death. Unwilling to reveal and discuss Yuu's death with this stranger, Rei receives Kei's mailings for a time before telling him that her husband is in fact dead. Given that the characters know each other and are all drawn into the Manor of Sleep, they decide to work together to solve the mysteries trapping people within.

These characters have one primary thing in common: they have all lost someone. Miku's brother Mafuyu was left behind in Himuro Mansion (See Fatal Frame 1). Kei's niece Mio has fallen into the deep slumber of the sleeping sickness after her sister has already been lost to him. And Rei has lost her husband. This commonality binds them together and in fact is the tie that binds all of the inhabitants of the Manor of Sleep to its hallways, which is why Mio is trapped there as well, mourning the rather disturbing loss of her twin sister at her own hands in Fatal Frame 2. Each of them sees their respective lost loved one in the Manor and will be forced to chase after them in various scenes, a will o' the wisp that drives them ever deeper into the Manor despite its terrors. I found the relationships between the main characters rather touching as they worked to help and support each other with what little strength they had left while everything continued to fall apart. This is a game about survivor's guilt and nobody handles it well, at all really. But at least there is the one comfort that they're not alone, even if they often feel like it.

Rei was my favorite character in the game and is my favorite Fatal Frame character by a mile. A large part of this is probably because she is older and more mature. Hell, by Fatal Frame standards, she's an old lady at 23! Though while I joke, she honestly feels more like she's in her early 30s and I almost wonder if 23 was a medium they chose to have a more adult story without featuring a protagonist suddenly twice as old as those in previous games. Regardless, Fatal Frame 3 to me features a much more mature narrative in line with its themes of grief that are more commonly experienced by older people. Either way, for me, watching Rei mourn the loss of Yuu throughout the game was heart-wrenching. This is Fatal Frame, so tragedy is to be expected. However, whereas some of the misery in other titles at times feels overdone with exceptionally violent rituals against innocent victims, the tragedy of Fatal Frame 3 feels a lot more subdued. It's a quiet despondence. There are certainly tales and lore in the game that align with earlier entries in their brutality, but the greatest sadness in the game is never so over-the-top. It's just the blankets of dull melancholy that haunt Rei through her empty days, always in the same place, with the same bland walls, the same routine, wandering the same house where the most noticeable difference is who's missing. She has retreated into her home as her comfort space, but her inability to face her ghosts has made even that house a waking nightmare. As someone who's struggled with depression and learned to cope with its many challenges, Rei's sorrowful trudge toward some resolution, constantly chasing the missing piece that seems forever gone and yet tantalizingly out of reach, really resonated with me even when I was afraid to let it.

As far as the gameplay, I think this entry is a step up from previous titles, if not tremendously. Things still feel a little jank at times and run speed can be at a snail's pace, but the mechanics felt a bit smoother to me overall. As well, I generally felt like I could tell what to do and where to go without just wandering around every area (which was my biggest hang-up with previous games). There is a very minor system of each character having a special knack that only they can do. Rei's "power" is that she's a photographer in the waking world so she's got the most powerful skills with the Camera Obscura. Miku's power is that...she's small and can fit into like one place the others can't. And Kei's is that he's a MAN and he can push this little waist-high bookcase out of the way, which Rei can't do because sexism. I did at least find the sexism somewhat outweighed by the kind of hilarious fact that while Rei and Miku can plow through ghost enemies, Kei has to hide from all enemies early on and even when he gets access to a camera, he sucks at it.

One thing the game has been criticized for is that the Manor of Sleep is an amalgam of places that haunt the various inhabitants, meaning that a substantial chunk of the environments are recycled entirely from the first two games. While I do see the issue with this on paper, I thought the callback was kind of cool and from a gameplay perspective, it never really bothered me. I haven't really gotten into the lore of the Kuze shrine—the real world source of the Manor of Sleep, recreated prominently within it—in large part because I think one of the fun things about these games is gradually uncovering the mysterious past of these locales. However, I do want to note that I found the lore, in addition to the character arcs, much easier to follow in this title than in the first two games.

Given I had some disappointments with the previous games in the series, I really didn't expect to like Fatal Frame 3 as much as I did, especially as it doesn't seem to be very universally appreciated in the fandom. While it's not one of my top favorites of all time, there's still so much I love about the game. Even things its criticized for like being too long and repetitive I feel potently parallel some of the feelings of grief and depression its protagonist deals with that also feel like they're never going to end. The oppressive themes are so competently interwoven with narrative, environment, and tone to create something truly beautiful even in the depths of constant despair. I plan to replay the first two games some day as I feel like I didn't quite "get" them as well as I could've on my first playthroughs, and I'm totally open to the possibility I'll finally grasp Crimson Butterfly for the masterpiece it's renowned for being. But I get the feeling this will remain my favorite in the series. I consume a lot of horror games, but my favorites are those that end up consuming me. That is exactly what this game did. Like Rei, each day I'd detach for a time, only to inevitably return to the Manor of Sleep each evening, over and over until thoughts of the game haunted me even during the daytime. And as I did many times during the time I played the game, I'm now off to the irl Manor of Sleep with thoughts of The Tormented on my mind.

My other Fatal Frame Reviews:

Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse - ★★★★

Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Blackwater - ★★★

Original Review from 2011

Despair. Exhaustion. Agony. Not exactly words you would typically want to hear associated with a video game. All the same, the survival horror genre has made its mark on the history of video games by forcing its players to experience these very emotions. It's an essential part of what makes the games what they are and if you take it away, they become nothing more than extremely clunky action adventure games. By the same token, the survival horror genre is granted a good deal of leniency to mess with gamers, whether it be in the form of incoherent plot, unfair difficulty, shoddy controls and camera, or just plain bad gameplay because, you know, it's designed that way to screw with you. The high water mark of the survival horror genre happened when this concept was still novel and intriguing, the emphasis was put into the art, story and music, and before games, in general, became so damn streamlined. To narrow it down to a single game, this high water mark would be 2001's Silent Hill 2, a game that was equally terrifying, enigmatic, heartbreaking, and somehow beautiful. Although it was painful to play and not what you would call a "fun" video game, it was a towering achievement in the argument for video games as art because it sought to elicit the emotions that the main protagonist would feel in the given scenario, and it achieved this perhaps more so than any other video game… ever.

The Fatal Frame series is famed for being the third wheel of the survival horror golden age. While Resident Evil was more fun and Silent Hill had the best stories, Fatal Frame had the distinction of being the scariest. Its novel idea of having you enter a first-person camera mode to combat ghosts set it apart and gave the series its greatest strength - the sheer terror of having a ghastly apparition rush towards your face, emitting a horrid shriek. It's fucking scary - as scary in the third entry into the series as it was before. So why is it that Fatal Frame 3 isn't another stellar addition to the survival horror pantheon?

Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented might be one of the most aptly named games ever made. Tormented is exactly how I would describe my experience in this game. Imagine, if you will, a nightmare where you continually roam a creepy haunted manor being constantly scared shitless and having no idea where to go or what to do. That is both the concept AND the story of this game and the game. You take the role of three kids as they take turns wandering (very slowly) through the same dilapidated Japanese manor unlocking doors and battling ghosts… in their dreams! Because the game sticks to this concept or a reoccurring nightmare so faithfully, it can be hard to fault the game for being so exhaustingly repetitive. The extreme difficulty and ghosts that refuse to die seem to reinforce the idea that the game is, in fact, fucking with you and you are supposed to be miserable. This is survival horror, after all.

Then you come to realize that the game is just plain evil. It literally never gives you any decent hints as to where you are supposed to go, making every stage of the game an entire manor-wide search for something slightly different, running from the same ghosts who you already killed, who take away half of your health the second they touch you. Said manor is where the entire game takes place. It's definitely big, but it's not enormous either. Every step of the game, you keep thinking "I've got to be able to leave soon right?" Wrong. Just to put things into perspective, it's about the size of the Spencer mansion in Resident Evil. Just the actual mansion part. That's the entire game. Oh, and the real kicker is that the game took me 20 hours to beat! If you've ever played a survival horror game, you know that there is something seriously wrong here. These types of games never last for more than ten hours. Honestly, you wouldn't want them to last any longer. Hell, Silent Hill 3 only clocks in at about 5 hours! By the end you are fried and just want to see the thing to its bloody resolution. Fatal Frame 3 could have been easily chopped in half and it would have been a much slicker, easily digestible experience. Instead, it chooses to be this long, arduous, gradual descent into utter despair.

There is a metric ton of backtracking in this game. That's what the game essentially is. You have this manor to wander around, and you have to find a bunch of things, unlock a bunch of doors, kill a bunch of ghosts in the same rooms over and over and over again. Sound miserable? Yeah it is. Pair this antagonistic level design with the fact that the game is just downright pants-shiningly scary and you have a surefire game that you will always dread playing.

I mean, if you look at the game purely in terms of its ability to make you scream like a girl, its at the top of its class. The sound design is very high quality and the voices, singing, and droning sounds you hear around the mansion will put you on edge so that when a ghost pops out, oftentimes you just lose it. Certain scenarios are set up just to make you freak out too. Here's an example: A doll randomly falls off a dresser in an eerily still room. When you bring the viewfinder of your camera up to get a better look, there is a bloody eyed ghost an inch away from your face who promptly releases an ear shattering scream and contorts her face to a demented scowl as she lunges at you. As a side note, I find it extremely odd that the faces of the ghosts are so able to convey a wide range of convincing and horrific expressions, yet the protagonists are the among most emotionless, expressionless wind-up-dolls you will find in any game.

In the end, the story is decent. More importantly, actually, is the wealth of expansions made to the overarching mythology of the series. The games all concern various fictional-yet-believable sacrificial rituals that supposedly took place in traditional Japan. Each one of this is delightfully twisted, poetic and heartbreaking. They are what the games are really about, not the adventures of slow-moving Japanese kids with magic cameras. Fatal Frame 3 is a decidedly weaker outing than Fatal Frame 2 because it seems like the developers half assed a lot of aspects of the game. The area of the game is significantly smaller. Not enough time was spent on distinguishing the progression of the game. It's lopsided to the point where you can access all but a couple rooms only a third of the way into the game. There are a few new half baked mechanics, like a home base, that never pay off. Hell, there's even less variety of ghosts than before. It's obvious that the game was a downgrade from its predecessor in almost every regard. So, while you could say that in some regards, Fatal Frame 3 is an agonizing experience by design (and I would agree), it does not make up for the fact that it is essentially a borderline broken game. Very few games have been this difficult for me to finish, based mainly on the fact that every time I looked at the box, I got a deep sinking feeling in my gut. This game should be commended however, for being one of the most hardcore survival horror experiences anywhere. I thoroughly believe that if you can make it through this, you can make it through anything.

Synopsis:

This game follows Rei Kurosawa, a 23-year-old free-lance photographer. In a dream, she sees her dead fiance walk into an old mansion surrounded by heavy, eternal snowfall. She follows her fiance into the mansion where her dream becomes a nightmare, when she finds herself in a mansion haunted by gruesome and violent spirits.

Pros:

• History (But do not notice right there first)
• Three different playable characters + Camera in battle
• Side Quests
• Two Ending
• Reika
• Connection with the first 2 games
• Two playable locations (at home throughout the game proceeds paranormal phenomena)
• Extras: Costumes, Ghost list, missions

Cons:

• Mansion too big, sometimes become confused
• Pure light
• Combat with 4 ghost girls
• Rei

Scores:

• History - 8/10
• Music - 10/10
• Graphics - 7/10
• Contents - 6/10
• Gameplay - 7/10

Final Opinion:

Okay first of all I must say that at the beginning I had not realized it was the protagonist Rei who killed her fiancé Yuu in a car accident. Yuu !!! Seriously!!!! You let the Rei drive the car knowing that she was a awful driver, I suppose you did not get to know her the day before. Well, but moving forward, this Title brings the real world and the dream world. In the real world, the player can walk through Rei’s house as he pleases, here Miku, the protagonist of the Fatal Frame 1 will in gathering information from photos taken in the dream. I know it seems confusing but yes, certain photos that are taken with the camera obscura, need to be revealed in the dark chamber that exists in the house. Not forgetting during the game is going to have some paranormal phenomena.

In the dream world the player has a vast mansion to explore but sometimes become confused to the point of going around the larger site to the right place. The villain of this title is one of my favorites, I’m feel sorry that the last thing she saw was his lover dying in front of her eyes. Truthfully I do not know who was to blame whether it was Amane sister’s of Reika lover or himself, assuming he knew men were not allowed in the chamber of thorns. And because of this the collapse happens and the curse is born.

Throughout the adventure the player knows other characters that have become part of the curse. An accident victim, a widow with a child, builders used as sacrifice, victim of assault, etc.

I have to say that I had to play several times to better understand the history of the game. The soundtrack that surrounds the game is one of my favorites. Not to mention the environment itself.

One of the things I liked a lot was the possibility of playing with 3 characters, each of them has different abilities. Rei walks in search of Yuu to say the last farewells, Miku who wants to go with the brother to the other side and Kei walks there looking for a solution for his niece Mio (protagonist of the Fatal Frame 2), where he falls to the curse.

One of the things I do not like much about was the pure light, it’s basically active after breaking the shire seal. Basically there is time before the screen is monochrome and Reika attack, it is not worth fighting because it is dead right, the solution is go looking for a pure light to get out of monochrome. This limits the exploration of the mansion in later chapters.

As in the previous titles there are many varied of ghosts and as such there are cool and boring ghosts and the boring of this title are the Maiden little girls, if a fight with one is already difficult then with 4 is plenty.

In this title there are some side quest, like the one of the mother and daughter, woman of long hair among others. There are two possible endings you can get.

So I do recommend it.

Note: 7/10