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Fatal Frame / Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water |OT| Pokémon Snap U: After Dark

Finished the demo. I really wanted to like this game but alas. While I did enjoy the soundtrack, visuals and overall vibe, I didn’t find the combat fun, the transitions to and from cut scenes were painfully slow and honestly, I thought it would be scarier.

There's definitely several lost scares because of heavy handed usage of cutscenes. But that's a trademark of the series. Unfortunately they still didn't learn that non-interactivity isn't scary.
If Resident Evil was a FF game, then during going through the first hallway it would have faded to black, showed a cutscene in which dogs jump through window and then again fade to black before returning to gameplay, lol. While something like FF2 still had enough strenghts to overcome that and still become quite scary, this game often struggles even after the first chapter because of new problems.
 

adroit

Member
Is there a secret to not getting hit by those cliff-diving ghosts in the final drop? In earlier drops all I had to do was keep moving backwards and they'd fall in front of me. In the final drop, they fall on me even if I put down the camera and break into a run. Blam. 95% life gone. Health recovery items wasted on something I can't seem to avoid. Is there a trick?

I've made it through to the beginning of Miu's first segment. So I'm talking about the cliff-divers in Yuri and Ren's segments prior to Miu.
 

adroit

Member
I'm sorry to post again. I am completely stuck on Yuri's boss battle in the final drop.
When I deplete the boss under water, there is no ZR prompt. I have watched YouTube videos and everyone else gets a ZR prompt. I have played the scene over and over and over. There is NEVER a ZR prompt. So the fight shifts above water. And above water my camera is LOCKED on. Pressing X will not exit camera mode. I get bombarded until I die.

Is this some "die, you idiot" mode I've triggered because I'm doing something wrong? Is this happening because I'm not killing the minions under water? I'm only depleting the boss.
 

fliesatnight

Neo Member
The game actually doesn't let you glance Ose until after you've gone through the above water and below water fights at least once.

Sounds like you're getting stuck in the reliquary, which is what happens when Ose grabs you in the above water fight? As far as I know the only way to get out of that is to hold the pad vertically to get a shot of all three ghosts at once.
 

Andyliini

Member
I finished the main game the other day, and I gotta say I liked it. It was not really scary, but the atmosphere really got on my nerves sometimes, especially in the houses full of dolls.Gameplay worked fine, the GamePad was really made for this game.

I too had problems with the final battle, but in the end, as able to clear it after a few rounds. Great game, hopefully we will get more of these games.
 
There's definitely several lost scares because of heavy handed usage of cutscenes. But that's a trademark of the series. Unfortunately they still didn't learn that non-interactivity isn't scary.

That's basically what 1 and 3 are more like, less cutscenes in those than what 2 and 5 have. 1 and 3 are just far more scary to me anyway, just the thought process behind 3 of it being about having nightmares becoming reality has always freaked me out, so that game was the scariest game I have ever played, gets under your skin far more than a simple jump scare. Plus the sound design and brutality/anger of the ghosts in 3 (3 is definitely the hardest one in the series) makes it more impactful and memorable, whereas a lot of the ghosts in 5 are kind of forgettable really, plus the music in 5 just sounds really recycled from past games...
 

h0tp0ck3t

Member
I would NEVER have figured that out. Thank you very much for the help. I was getting nowhere with Google and YouTube searches. I am apparently the only person dumb enough to get stuck without a clue.

Also when you deplete her health underwater move away from her first and keep your camera centered on her. You can snap her as soon as you get above water and avoid that whole part. For the above water fight I just circled around her to avoid the enemies spamming type 00 and type 90 film
 
Just beat this.

In the final fight,
I got stuck when I was surrounded by the ghosts playing ring-around-the-rosy. I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do, so it was very frustrating as they kept draining my health. Eventually I just kept taking photos of the main ghost and it just broke for whatever reason. I thought there was something specific I needed to do and over-complicated things, so I guess that was my fault. Oh well. EDIT: I'll clarify that the ring-around-the-rosy broke, not the game.

BTW I went with the Ren ending where he's pulled inside the box. Worked out well I thought. I'll go watch the other endings on youtube.

Good game. The Gamepad was the real star of the show here.
 

adroit

Member
Also when you deplete her health underwater move away from her first and keep your camera centered on her. You can snap her as soon as you get above water and avoid that whole part.
That is a great tip. Thanks!

I finally found a good YouTube video. What I learned from it is you only have to
deplete her once (under water) to touch her. You don't have to deplete her above water unless you want to. So, why won't my game give me a ZR prompt? It's not like I only tried once. I tried it over and over. I never get a ZR prompt. I walk up to her. I walk through her. I turn around and walk back through her. No ZR prompt.

One thing I've noticed about the YouTube videos I've watched is that they never deplete her efficiently. No fatal crushes. They just peck away at her instead. When she comes swooping in, they take damage instead of fatal crushing her. Am I depleting her too quickly? I'm all about the fatal crush. Two swoops and she's done with type 61 film. Except I cannot get a ZR prompt.

UPDATE: After countless checkpoint restarts, I finally got the ZR prompt (
after depleting the boss below, above, and below the water
). I have no clue why no one else on Earth has had this problem. I must be some kind of major-league klutz.
 
That final boss is garbage. Twice in a row I've gotten to the above water part, get grabbed, and a few seconds later GAME OVER with no explanation why. And then I have to start the whole boring battle over again. What kind of horrible game design is this? Why am I getting game over when I have the mirror revive items? I have no idea what to do. I see I'm not the only one who ran into this, judging from the above posts :p
 

ohlawd

Member
That final boss is garbage. Twice in a row I've gotten to the above water part, get grabbed, and a few seconds later GAME OVER with no explanation why. And then I have to start the whole boring battle over again. What kind of horrible game design is this? Why am I getting game over when I have the mirror revive items? I have no idea what to do. I see I'm not the only one who ran into this, judging from the above posts :p

don't play the older FFs :D

one-shot galore
 

MagiusNecros

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Just beat this.

In the final fight,
I got stuck when I was surrounded by the ghosts playing ring-around-the-rosy. I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do, so it was very frustrating as they kept draining my health. Eventually I just kept taking photos of the main ghost and it just broke for whatever reason. I thought there was something specific I needed to do and over-complicated things, so I guess that was my fault. Oh well. EDIT: I'll clarify that the ring-around-the-rosy broke, not the game.

BTW I went with the Ren ending where he's pulled inside the box. Worked out well I thought. I'll go watch the other endings on youtube.

Good game. The Gamepad was the real star of the show here.

If you have a ring of ghosts just target their hands and let off a shot and they will disperse.
 
That's basically what 1 and 3 are more like, less cutscenes in those than what 2 and 5 have. 1 and 3 are just far more scary to me anyway, just the thought process behind 3 of it being about having nightmares becoming reality has always freaked me out, so that game was the scariest game I have ever played, gets under your skin far more than a simple jump scare. Plus the sound design and brutality/anger of the ghosts in 3 (3 is definitely the hardest one in the series) makes it more impactful and memorable, whereas a lot of the ghosts in 5 are kind of forgettable really, plus the music in 5 just sounds really recycled from past games...

I need to play 1 at some point, I really hope PS2 bc on PS4 is worthwile (since EU PSN doesn't have any game from the series right now on PS3).
 

adroit

Member
Closure on the final boss ZR. Today I replayed that battle using the cheap unlimited film and just went back and forth with her over and over until....I actually saw a whole sentence at the bottom of the screen telling me to approach and press ZR.

So apparently on every depletion you get a fraction of a second to press ZR if you are standing at exactly the right distance from the boss. If you miss that fraction of a second you have to battle again. This goes back and forth between locations until the game finally decides to give you that sentence telling you to approach and press ZR.

Fortunately I got that sentence on the ending I still needed to collect. So now I've unlocked the zero suit, ironically the most appropriate garb for the watery missions in this game.

I can't believe I have to do that whole drop yet again to unlock all the costumes. At least now it doesn't matter what ending I get and I know to just keep battling with the unlimited film until I get the sentence to approach and touch.

Sorry for posting so much on this topic. I will now shut up. Finally.
 
I finished the trial two days ago and, I have to say, I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I knew I would like it, but my expectations were exceeded in the gameplay department. The gamepad use is great in this and I've loved every single encounter in the first chapter.

It made me want the game ASAP, that's for sure. I never did finish my playthrough of FFI, but the gamepad use was so fun in this...

Hopefully I can get it before the end of the year, but there's just so much that needs my attention.
 
Finished it over the weekend. Really enjoyed it, but definitely the weakest storyline/scenario in the series. I can see where people were coming from by saying everything doesn't really gel together at the end, which is a shame since the other games did that so much better...

Everything did kinda feel "been there, done that" I appreciated 3 more for doing something different for the series (which is why it's my favourite) and 4 seems fresh versus other titles in the series too, 5 on the other hand seems to have gone back for the more "traditional" experience. Hope they change things up more next time, whatever platform they decide to do it on (even under a new IP or whatever).

Ayane's missions were rather fun post game content, shame it's so damn short.

don't play the older FFs :D

one-shot galore

Yup. This game was cake, compared to earlier games. Too easy, to be quite frank. Think I died like once and got like pretty much S ranks on every single mission aside from like, two.

I need to play 1 at some point, I really hope PS2 bc on PS4 is worthwile (since EU PSN doesn't have any game from the series right now on PS3).

Yeah, keep in mind though the first game has the old school fixed cameras and the controls are more clunky than the later games, everything was still in experimental phase back then, which they later perfected the mechanics for, but it's still very much worth playing, since in its own way, the "dated" graphics and clunky controls end up making the game more frightening, the ghosts are some of the most freaky in the series too, there's literally fucking hellspawn in that game that has half of its body missing trying to drag people into hell and the whole "broken neck" woman in that one is definitely the scariest in the series.

Honestly though, I'd just create a US PSN account on PS3 and a buy a US PSN card to use to buy the games, that's what I did. If you still have an OG Xbox or PS2 you can get them on those too, but keep in mind if you just have an OG Xbox you won't be able to get 3, since that's PS2 exclusive. They should do a HD re-release collection with them all or something.
 
Finished it over the weekend. Really enjoyed it, but definitely the weakest storyline/scenario in the series. I can see where people were coming from by saying everything doesn't really gel together at the end, which is a shame since the other games did that so much better...

Everything did kinda feel "been there, done that" I appreciated 3 more for doing something different for the series (which is why it's my favourite) and 4 seems fresh versus other titles in the series too, 5 on the other hand seems to have gone back for the more "traditional" experience. Hope they change things up more next time, whatever platform they decide to do it on (even under a new IP or whatever).

Yup. This game was cake, compared to earlier games. Too easy, to be quite frank. Think I died like once and got like pretty much S ranks on every single mission aside from like, two.

Yeah, too easy and redundantly convoluted story hurt the atmosphere in the long run. I think the game might be better played with big breaks between your sessions. Less risk of burnout whenever you start seeing through the title.
I got back recently for another ending and it felt a little more fun. Speaking of which, why are my episode percent only at 71%? Hard mode doing the rest?

Yeah, keep in mind though the first game has the old school fixed cameras and the controls are more clunky than the later games, everything was still in experimental phase back then, which they later perfected the mechanics for, but it's still very much worth playing, since in its own way, the "dated" graphics and clunky controls end up making the game more frightening, the ghosts are some of the most freaky in the series too, there's literally fucking hellspawn in that game that has half of its body missing trying to drag people into hell and the whole "broken neck" woman in that one is definitely the scariest in the series.

If it's good, it's good. I only played the first Silent Hill this year and it was amazing (and scary as hell).

Honestly though, I'd just create a US PSN account on PS3 and a buy a US PSN card to use to buy the games, that's what I did. If you still have an OG Xbox or PS2 you can get them on those too, but keep in mind if you just have an OG Xbox you won't be able to get 3, since that's PS2 exclusive. They should do a HD re-release collection with them all or something.

I know, but it's too much of a hassle right now. My PS3 is full and I don't have a credit card for convenient US cards. Maybe I'll get back to a PS2, but probably not anytime soon.
 
I honestly liked the game but my motivation to play it decreased after each drop.

In contrast to pretty much every other entry of the franchise, I took the time to read everything in order to grasp the story. On to drop 10 and I really couldn't give a summary despite my best intents. It's extremely vage, riddled with timelines, unknown persons and terms...just what the fuck. The story just does not come together.

Add to this the reused enemies/locations and shit gets tedious really fast. I'm also not a fan of this insta ko bullsit they pulled at some point. I don't know whether I'll be able to finish it....
 
Yeah, too easy and redundantly convoluted story hurt the atmosphere in the long run. I think the game might be better played with big breaks between your sessions. Less risk of burnout whenever you start seeing through the title.
I got back recently for another ending and it felt a little more fun. Speaking of which, why are my episode percent only at 71%? Hard mode doing the rest?

Yeah, I think the percentage is related to the Nightmare difficulty, could be wrong though. I did my best to space out my playtime with the game, but my biggest nitpick was just how much they use the same three types of ghosts and annoyingly never use
the Tall Woman (long limbed creepy pasta woman with the evil grin), Crushed Man (guy who got crushed by his own car and has that awful scream) and Pushing Woman (woman with the messed up face who kept pushing other people off high places) ghosts enough...those were definitely the best ones.

I honestly liked the game but my motivation to play it decreased after each drop.

In contrast to pretty much every other entry of the franchise, I took the time to read everything in order to grasp the story. On to drop 10 and I really couldn't give a summary despite my best intents. It's extremely vage, riddled with timelines, unknown persons and terms...just what the fuck. The story just does not come together.

Add to this the reused enemies/locations and shit gets tedious really fast. I'm also not a fan of this insta ko bullsit they pulled at some point. I don't know whether I'll be able to finish it....

So tempted to post an avatar quote. lol.

It gets really good again in the last two Drops. You're nearing that now anyway, I'd push on with it, honestly. It does get repetitive as they throw the same enemies at you over and over again when they have some really interesting ghosts they vastly underuse in comparison, it's weird.

The post game content is fun too.
 

-shadow-

Member
Just finished drop 7 and 8. They were quite a less than drop 6. They were still fun and
the fight that starts in the box
was actually pretty fun. Hadn't expected this to happen.

Also Ren screwed up royally in this drop, man...
 
The final boss is complete and utter garbage.

I also had the problem with the missing prompt. I saw it for maybe a second and then it suddenly vanished. Additionally I was killed multiple times by an insta KO grab. It's not even that the battle is remotely difficult. If the main difficulty for a boss fight is to avoid a cheap deadly grab and to press a button in a millisecond, you know you fucked up.

Oh and fuck the controls. Hated them the whole way through...it's not fun to do anything in this game. Everything takes ages, even mundane stuff like taking items. These ghost hands are seriously the worst. The controls did not add anything to the atmosphere so lol@ these 'but it's intentional!' Arguments.

Fuck this convoluted, horribly told plot. Who are these characters and why should I care about them? And why does everything have to be so vague and oddly paced?

What a pierce of shit game. I'm really angry and feel that I wasted both time and money on this game. It fails on every level: gameplay, scariness, plot, characters. Oh well, at least it looks good. While it was promising till drop 6, I have to say that this is my disappointment of 2015.
 

-shadow-

Member
I wouldn't say it's that bad overall (but I just finished Drop 10). But what the hell is drop 9 about? It's exactly the same as drop 8 but with the other girl instead of Yuri. It's outright bizarre that they'd do that directly after each other...
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
Man im trying to get into it but it's just so clunky.

Clunky controls.
Clunky story telling with constant cutscene interruptions. No immersion.
Clunky combat.
Clunky menus.

Should i keep pushing or is it not worth it?

The lack of polish is just so disappointing.
 
Man im trying to get into it but it's just so clunky.

Clunky controls.
Clunky story telling with constant cutscene interruptions. No immersion.
Clunky combat.
Clunky menus.

Should i keep pushing or is it not worth it?

The lack of polish is just so disappointing.

In my opinion: drop it. It only becomes worse once you realize how much the game consists of recycled content and the story is mostly gibberish.

The atmosphere is really nice so it's a damn shame that the game is such a mess. (I actially like old school horror and Project Zero 2 btw)
 

-shadow-

Member
I just finished the final two drops, 13 was just another repeat of an earlier drop, but the final one was great. Everything got wrapped up pretty well in the end. I had to do the final fight over once because I missed the absolutely ridiculous minimal timeslot on the Glance, but hit it exactly right on the second chance. And the setting was gorgeous! I wish I had a capture card or something, because a couple of moments I really would love as a wallpaper!

I do have some questions however:

I ended up picking the little girl over the Maiden when I was given the choice. Does this effect much of the ending? Does it also reward me with other outfits other than the white kimono if I redo the drop and take the other option?

Also
the game tells you about children born from post mortem marriages. Is it me or does the game heavily imply that Miu is actually Mafuyu's dauhter?
Because if so, that's a whole other level of plain wrong.


Overall I really enjoyed the game, even with some serious overall flaws. I really hope they go on with the series. I enjoyed the last three games (Mask, Wiimake and Maiden) way more than I ever thought I would and truly want more!


Also seeing Satoru Iwata in the credits was an absolute gut punch. Man... It still stings :(
 

ohlawd

Member
spoilers to your ending and second questions

Ren has four endings. one good and bad for Ose and one good and bad for Shiragiku. the choices you make for Ren do not affect how the endings go for Yuri and Miu and vice versa

I think only Ose good gets you a costume for Ren, and that's only costume you can get for him. Yuri gets costumes by getting both of her endings. Miu gets one for her good end and her final costume needs every ending except Shiragiku good

well, it's so heavily implied it's pretty much true. Miku was shown being wed to Mafuyu in that pic, so uhhh yeah I guess he's Miu's dad.
 

-shadow-

Member
I thought about half an hour ago that I could play the post game content before playing the original on the original Xbox. And I finished the extra content now about ten minutes ago. I really liked the concept, but it was about 15 minutes tops and I have no idea why they even bothered too split the sections up. It could've worked perfectly as a single chapter.

I hope if they'll develop another game in the series an entire chapter you're completely dependant on stealth. I know that there's a chapter in Crimson Butterfly has you shortly without the camera, but that lasted just a few minutes.

Also that outfit was ridiculous, damn.
 

myco666

Member
Just managed to finish this game after starting it almost two months ago. Great game but little bit too much usage of same environments back to back. Also having to fight multiple ghosts in small space is really annoying.

Drop 13 was probably my favorite one even if it was pretty much the same as one of the earlier drops and had ghosts in small spaces. That Drop still managed to make me let go of the controller and close my eyes as I was way too scared. Seriously had trouble playing through that Drop due it making me so scared.

I still don't get how most reviews state that this game is boring and not scary at all. This is easily one of the scariest games I've played.
 
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