Prologue
Rei and her friend are in some old building for some reason. Rei mentions that she wishes this place were haunted... then suddenly she notices something, and sees what seems to be the ghost of her dead boyfriend down the hallway.
This starts out kinda similar to Fatal Frame 1. There's a grainy noir film filter over everything as you're wandering the hallways. It looks really cool when you use the viewfinder. Right now Rei just has a normal camera, although I can get points for shooting non-aggressive ghosts this early on.
Wow wtf, I just wandered into a hallway and got killed by the first aggressive ghost in the game, since my camera can't capture them yet... At first I thought maybe I wasn't supposed to go that way yet? But then when I respawned, it put me in a whole different area... what's going on?
I'm in some kind of temple/shrine looking building now. Rei sees the ghost of her dead boyfriend, and tries to catch up to him... Then suddenly she wakes up and is on the ground surrounded by a bunch of same-looking priestess girls, and they attack Rei with some cursed stakes or something... then she wakes up for real out of her daydream, she's still in that same building with her friend standing there...
Later, she processes a photo of the guy she saw in the hallway earlier, proving that wasn't just a daydream... Then that night, Rei is dreaming and ends up back at the outside of this huge temple building.
Hour 1 - The Sign
Now I'm wandering the hallways inside this temple like building... There's a few ways to go now. There's a bunch of locked doors, including some with special symbols on them... but the only way I can go is to the 2nd floor where I find the Camera Obscura, and a save lantern.
Then there's a couple fights against some angry woman and a younger girl... These enemy animations are really good.
And then Rei finds some an actual living person who is freaking out and wishing she hadn't survived... and and another person covered in tattoos who starts chasing Rei, and she freaks out and runs out of the house, and wakes up as soon as she steps out of the house.
Right after waking up, some kind of nasty bruise starts appearing on Rei's skin, but it goes away once her friend shows up to snap her out of it. The atmosphere of this bedroom looks so incredibly normal and non-spooky compared to the usual atmosphere...
I really like these summary notes that this game added in. It gives you the synopsis of the story from the protagonist's perspective. In addition to all the usual notes and lore files that the series has always had.
This story is getting really good already... there's even a lot of callbacks to the previous 2 games, which I wasn't expecting.
Rei finds the Camera Obscura in her boyfriend's room, and a bunch of notes showing that him and his friend were investigating the areas from the previous games, as well as a place called "The Manor of Sleep", which is where Rei visited in her dream.
When Rei goes to develop the old film that was in the camera, it turns out to be a picture she took of that woman freaking out in her dream...
So it seems like this game has these intermission sections where you are in Rei's and Miku's house, gathering information... you can develop the images you took in the dream segments and give them to Miku to get more information on them... I bet there's also gonna be some cassette tapes you can bring back from the dream world and listen to them in Rei's room.
10/23/2017
This first chapter has a lot of back and forth, between the first few rooms of the nightmare house and going back to talk to Miku in Rei's house.
That girl who was freaking out, that had tattoos all over her body, Yoshino Takigawa... Miku found out that she's currently in the hospital with a coma... when Rei goes there to see her, she suddenly disappears from her bed.
Those same blue tattoos are gradually appearing on Rei whenever she wakes up, and it's spreading to more and more parts of her body each time. This last time, she even saw Yoshino for a second, right by her bed, grabbing her arm... It's like the dream world is starting to become real the more her tattoos start to spread.
Hour II - The Manor of Sleep
The ghost fights are getting harder now.. I actually had some trouble with that single child ghost that teleports around and is hard to find... and these 2 white robe ghosts in the corridor were tough.
I don't know if I like this mechanic of Rei waking up several times per chapter and you have to do stuff in her house before you can continue further in the dream world... but it has a really interesting feel to it... by now, Rei is even starting to see ghosts in her own house.
Also, I think I'm missing a lot of those wandering non-aggressive ghosts because I can't turn toward them fast enough. Isn't there supposed to be a "quick spin" move you can do? I guess I have to unlock that because I can't do that yet.
Hour III - The Subduing Song
Got further into the mansion, to the place where Rei first chased her boyfriend in her first daydream back in the prologue... After re-exploring the whole Manor of Sleep again, and killing a bunch more ghosts and getting some more photos... I got to a creepy room filled with dolls nailed to the wall, and fought a miniboss ghost, a girl dressed as a shrine maiden who likes hammering nails into people. This shrine maiden girl was one of the ghosts in the prologue that nailed surrounded Rei and neiled something into her.
Then back in Rei's house, I found out that Miku is having similar dreams and is singing a lullaby that Rei heard in the Manor...
Hour IV - The Evil Dream
Now I'm playing Miku... and I'm in the area from the first game that I instantly recognized... Himuro Mansion. She picks up the Camera Obscura, but it's at a different level than the one Rei uses... some of its stats are already a bit leveled up. I need to get some range on this thing.
This is really interesting... and then after fighting a boss, some ghost is leading me to where Mafuyu is, and beyond a door that opened up, I end up back in a section of the Manor of Sleep that Rei explored in chapter 3... then the ghost immediately leads me to a new area... all of the doors leading back to previous sections of the Manor of Sleep are locked.
Rei woke up from Miku's dream just as she was about to find Mafuyu.
Hour V - Vanishing
Now I'm playing as... Kei? In a different part of the Manor of Sleep that I've never been to. This guy doesn't have the Camera Obscura, and instead he has the ability to hide from vengeful ghosts. The ghost meter is red when a ghost catches you, and blue when it loses sight of you.
Wow, I'm totally stuck here. Every door is locked. I'm pretty sure this is the "Fatal Frame 2" section of the house, because one of the doors is locked with a butterfly symbol on it and there's those red butterflies flying around it. After a while the ghosts went away and I was able to explore more freely, and picked up a key that I missed earlier (even though I'm pretty sure I inspected this think before).
Kei's segment ends up going back into the area that Rei explored in chapter 3... At one point you have to hide from the tattooed woman ghost for a long while until the door to the next place unlocks. Eventually he does get the Camera Obscura, but you have to find it by luring away a ghost and randomly inspecting some object that ghost was guarding. It's REALLY weak... I don't like how this game makes you manage your level up points between multiple cameras cuz I don't know which one I'm gonna be needing more often for the later parts.
I found some interesting lore in a bookshelf.
The pain engraved into the tattooed priestess becomes a dream and eats away at her soul. The pain, or the attachment to this world, is impaled as a doll dyed in soul ink and enshrined, and then the handmaiden's song must be sung and prayers must be said for the priestess to lay in peace.Rei wakes up just as Kei goes through the butterfly door to find Mio.
That chapter was pretty hard... also I'm missing so many of the wandering ghosts at this point, I can't really afford to level up Kei's camera.
It's still the middle of the night when Rei wakes up from Kei's dream... there's some weird radio noise going on... Rei finds a ghost in her attic, it grabs her... then she wakes up for real, and gets the tattoo mark spreading again. Then in the real world, when you check out the attic again you find the Spirit Radio.
Hour VI - The Sacrificial Pillar
Finally back in Rei's dream, where she left off in the doll nailing room.
Now there are harder versions of the same ghosts from earlier... there's a lot of places to re-explore, but clearly the way to go next is to follow the bloodstains that weren't there before.
More interesting lore about this dream world...
The "Rift Shrine" makes the priestess wander for eternity, and stakes must be used to impale her limbs while praying for her peaceful rest. When the priestess is restless, it is necessary to build on to "The Shrine of Sleep" and pray for her to slumber. The Shrine of Sleep is sealed within a dream to prevent the priestess from escaping and the spread of the Rift. To keep the Rift from spreading, we must ensure that she stays staked down, and pray for her eternal sleep.That chapter was really long. I had to re-explore the entire manor including the 2 parts that Miku and Kei opened up... killing the 4 miniboss ghosts to open the way forward towards the door where Rei saw Yuu go into.
The scenes in Rei's house are getting a lot creepier now too... the TV turns on by itself and shows static... and there are a couple hidden ghosts in the bathroom and the dark room (although I couldn't figure out how to get a picture of them).
Hour VII - The Hanging Prison
Playing as Miku now... she starts out in this room with a hanging prison cell right above her, and a ghost trapped inside it. This is where Miku left off in Chapter 4. Now it seems like I need to re-explore everywhere again to probably collect another 4 things from another 4 miniboss ghosts... I saved up a bit of points to upgrade Miku's camera but it's still pretty weak.
That wasn't as hard as chapter 6, I just had to find the 4 doll altar rooms, including finding some small tunnel paths that only Miku can get through... then I had to fight that really hard ghost that throws his arms at you.
10/24/2017
Hour VIII - The Vacant Dream
Continuing Kei's story now... Mio is trapped in a cell... This section of the house is pretty much exactly the same as the big house where the twins' ritual takes place in Fatal Frame 2.
omg... I hate playing as Kei. Because of his hiding ability, Kei's segments give you a bunch of parts with unkillable ghosts where you have to escape their line of sight and get out of the room... And because of this, you barely get any chances to actually fight ghosts and increase your camera's level.
Also, some the surprise ghost appearances in this chapter are practically impossible to get a picture of... Like, sometimes the game doesn't follow it's own rules and you have to manually turn towards them after getting your camera out, and by the time you face them it's already too late... and sometimes when it does automatically turn you towards them, it's still like only a split-second window where you are able to capture them before they go out of sight... There's no way I'll ever get 100% in this game. It would be WAY too tedious. I'd be spending half the time saving and reloading.
Fortunately, this chapter was pretty short unlike the last 2. Then when you get back to where Mio is with the keys to the cell, she's already gone. Kei chases her down the dirt hallway and into a room where you have to fight the hardest ghost yet... I used up my Stone Mirror and all my Type 90 film to defeat it.
Rei gets a phone call from Kei, and he finally learns that Yuu has died. Rei asks him to continue his investigation on the Manor of Sleep.
Hour IX - The Unleashing
Rei wakes up in a new room of the manor, Hanging Prison... Everything is in a film noir filter...and as soon as I exit the room, I get teleported out to Garden Corridor for some reason... Then when I go to try and open that door again, the visuals go back to normal, and I get attacked.
I'm sick of having to guess, so from now on I'm using a guide to find out if these scripted ghost battles are meant to be fought or if you're meant to run away from them.
These enemies are getting pretty tricky, but still not as hard as they get in the first game, or in the 2nd game when you have to fight large groups.
Rei's chapters are the most fun, since her camera is nearly fully upgraded... but these random vengeful ghosts are getting more frequent and I'm almost running out of Type 14 film... And you get access to nearly the entire place, making it harder to figure out where to go.
Also I beat the Stroller Granny ghost, after like 4 tries. I just had to use a fully charged Type 90 shot, which is easier said than done, because if you let her pass you, she disappears forever. Defeating this ghost got me the key leading to an optional dead end area with a stone mirror and a new camera feature that shows you the HP meter of the nearest ghost, extremely useful.
At the end of that chapter, Rei finally gets through the double doors in the Garden Corridor, and reaches a huge outdoor area, the Shrine Courtyard...
Back at Rei's house, I got a phone call from Miku, she was crying out for help... then another phone call from Kei, who says he wants Rei to go with him to investigate the abandoned house.
But first, back to sleep I guess... This game is like Yume Nikki at this point.
Hour X - The Piercing of Soul
Another Kei chapter, damn...
Kei now has access to the Shrine Courtyard, that Rei just unlocked in the previous chapter.
Suddenly everything turns monochrome... The lighting looks really cool in this mode... There's no enemies to fight at all, just a bunch of bonus surprise ghosts that can be caught pretty easily.
Later, I get an item called "Purifying Light", which restores color to the world. Apparently, while the world is monochrome, powerful ghosts will appear more often. In the one nearby room I can get to with a save point, there was an invincible tattooed ghost there so I couldn't go in and save. But now with the Purifying Light, I went back there and the ghost is gone.
I found a path that leads up onto the rooftops of the Shrine Courtyard area, and Kei hopped across the roofs to get inside the actual shrine, sneaking around up on the beams, while some ominous ghost activity goes on down below. I can tell I'm getting close to the end now... This shrine seems to be getting very close to where Rei will finally reach her dead boyfriend (and according to the lore, meeting your dead loved one in this dream world will make it so you too are trapped here and can never return).
If the feeling of loss for those who crossed over to the other side begin to spill into dreams, they shall bring great trouble into this world. Those feelings of loss must be etched into the priestess as tattoos in the Piercing of the Soul. The tattooed priestess who has been engraved with the pain shall then bear that pain into her sleep and calm the troubles of this world.
10/25/17
Hour XI - The Last Passage
Resuming Miku's dream, in the Tattoo Altar. The woman is still trapped in the hanging prison above.
The Purifying Light thing from Kei's chapter still carries forward here... Since I'm now on kind of a time limit (if I want to avoid the tattooed ghost attacks), I'm no longer wasting any time fighting the random ghosts that appear and instead just running away from everything and trying to find my next objective.
There was a really weird, non-obvious puzzle to unlock the path up to the top of the hanging prison room... Looking more closely into the notes and files gives you clues on what to do. These are more like the obtuse kind of lock+key puzzles that were in the first game, so it makes sense that Miku's chapters are like this...
Oh, I recognize this from chapter 9, it's the prison cell that Rei started out in... so I guess this chapter takes place at the same time as that.
Rei wakes up after Miku casually wanders into the ominous end-game-looking shrine and goes down the abyss stairway, and across a bridge over a lake to a door to where Mafuyu is. Rei is really worried about Miku now. Miku tells Rei about how she's always been able to see ghosts, and now that she has this tattoo almost covering her body, she knows she's gonna die soon.
Rei goes back to sleep and continues Miku's dream... Here there's a choice where you can either go further into the Rope Palace to chase after Mafuyu, or exit the house and wake up right away. If you go after Mafuyu, Miku meets him face to face, and then Miku runs after him, and Rei is suddenly there, shouting after her... If Miku crosses to the other side then she'll never come back... Rei wakes up, goes to Miku's room, and sees Miku laying there surrounded by ghosts, and tattooed... Miku is now in eternal sleep.
Kei comes over... after sitting around acting worried for a while, Kei brings out some research notes. He says the gates of hell, that the tattooed sleeping priestess was supposed to seal, has been opened somehow... I think it's something like, if you put stakes into the original tattooed priestess, and shatter the mirror to wake her up, that'll free all of the people who have been trapped in the manor or something... or maybe not.
Rei finds a tape in Yuu's room and gives it to Kei. Rei goes to sleep as Kei continues investigating.
Hour XII - The Ceremony of Commandment
Another Kei chapter... this one just involves going back to all the 4 doll altar rooms and solving puzzles there to gain the 4 stakes, then returning to the shrine, and going to where Miku went... There's only a few ghosts you have to fight here and they're all pretty easy as long as you have enough film... Then there's a boss refight against the same ghost that Miku fought at the end of the previous chapter... except Kei's camera is a lot weaker and it takes pretty much all of my strong film to defeat it.
Kei went into the deepest part of the abyss, and found the place where all of the bodies of the tattooed women are staked onto the ground and walls. He notices something about the person he's supposed to put the 4 stakes into, and goes "it can't be, no...", and suddenly the stakes come out of her body and Rei wakes up...
There's now a black stain on the couch where Kei was sleeping.
Rei hears some voices on the spirit radio, and then searches the attic above Miku's room to find some more info... then goes back to sleep after sobbing in the shower and her tattoo growing more...
Reika, the tattooed priestess... she wanted to see her dead boyfriend one more time, just like Rei...
Hour XIII - Calling of the Tatoo
Now I'm playing as Rei again. The Purifying Light system is still in effect. The only ghosts that give me any trouble at this point are the flying priestess. Oh and the invincible tattooed ghost appears a lot here, even after I get the Purifying Light... This part of the game really sucks, I liked it better when I could take my time and explore.
Here I just have to randomly search every room to find the 5 mirror shards, with most of them not having a required battle.
That chapter was pathetically easy... now I'm going into the final chapter... I only managed to get 12/33 of the secret ghosts.
Final Hour - The Abyss of the Horizon
Suddenly the difficulty ramps up... as I walk down the spiral staircase into the abyss, I get attacked by multiple of those flying priestess ghosts... They're incredibly hard when they're in a group. They circle around you so fast you can't keep up with them, and usually as soon as I manage to track one of them and try to wait for a shutter chance, another one will come and grab me from behind.. good thing I have so much type 14 film, camera powerups, and healing items stocked up now.
I don't actually have that much strong film saved up for the final boss though.
A cutscene shows some guy coming into this forbidden chamber where all the sleeping priestesses are, and waking his girlfriend Reika. This causes some big rift to open... This is what Kei was trying to fix, by staking her back into sleep.
Reika is kinda tricky to get the timing down for her shutter chance for her diving attack... but the hardest part is when she sends you into a slow-motion dark monochrome world and chases you down for a while... She kills you in one hit if she catches you during this phase, and the camera angle makes it really hard to know where she is sometimes and it's really easy to get cornered if you're near the sides of the room.
Eventually I beat it after like 5 tries. If not for Rei's special ability that I had saved up, plus a slightly upgraded Zero Shot lens, I don't know if I would've had enough film to defeat her.
After defeating Reika's ghost, Rei closes the eyes of the sleeping priestess so that she doesn't have to lay there forever staring at her dead boyfriend... the she finishes the ritual based on the song lyrics, and pushes Reika and her boyfriend across the water in a boat. She then sees all the other spirits start to walk across the lake as well... and Yuu is among them. Rei shouts at Yuu and gets to talk to him one last time. Rei wants to go with Yuu, but Yuu tells Rei that she needs to live so that a part of him can live on. Yuu somehow absorbs the blue tattoo off of Rei's body and takes it onto his own body, and crosses over with it.
Rei wakes up, and her tattoo is gone and she can finally properly get over his death.
I dunno what happened with Miku and Kei though, I assume they both woke up as well and got over their issues?
Post-game details
Here's what I finished my first playthrough with:
Difficulty: Normal
Rank: E
Finish time: 18:50:51
Max Photo Pts: 5408
Ghost List: 12/33
Unlocked Extra Mode, Mission Mode, Gallery Mode, Hard Mode, Costumes, and an expanded Ghost List. (like I thought, some of the secret ghosts aren't even possible to get on a first playthrough)
When I load my completed file, I get a whole separate menu for the extras I unlocked. There's the option to start a new game plus, do missions, change costumes, etc... Actually I guess I haven't unlocked any costumes yet, just the costumes menu is available.
Oh, I see... the Extras menu option is where you spend photo points to buy costumes and accessories. There's also some new special lenses that I would make a new game plus that much easier (it was already too easy apart from the final boss), and some new camera functions, including a Sense function which I'm guessing would be very useful for finding hidden ghosts.
The missions are just short little ghost battles with pre-defined stats and a score/rank system. It seems like it'll take a LOT of practice to get even close to A rank on all of these.
No comments:
Post a Comment