Maiden of Black Water is a textbook example of style over substance. Visually it looks beautiful and plays with no issues. There's some useful quality of life improvements over the previous titles, some cool costumes, and the Snap Mode is the best and most elaborate photo mode I've seen in a game. The incorporation of motion controls for the Camera Obscura is really well done. Playing handheld on a Switch feels especially immersive with motion controls and is probably the closest you can get to the original experience of using the Wii U GamePad as the camera. Sadly, underneath the alluring presentation the game is kinda boring and more tedious than fun. The story is all over the place and just not interesting. The Dead or Alive levels of horniness that plague this game and the general lack of scariness make it difficult to take it seriously as a survival horror game, and it feels like a massive outlier in the series in terms of tone. None of the characters are well developed, but Ren and Miu feel especially disconnected from the main plotline. The game is pointlessly drawn out in a way that makes me wonder if the developers had a certain chapter count or overall game length goal they were trying to meet. Half of your playtime is spent backtracking through the same areas, repeating the same actions and fighting the same ghosts as different protagonists—or sometimes the same protagonist (were two separate chapters where you play tower defense as Ren in the antique shop really necessary?). The chapters are very unbalanced, ranging from 20 minutes to 2 hours, and most of them involve little to no plot progression. The finale attempts to wrap up the subplots of each protagonist in a single chapter that has three endings (with Yuri and Miu each having two possible endings and Ren having four), has too many enemy encounters, does too many back and forths between the protagonists, and altogether is too long and messy.
Much like other reviews when you go down my page, this was written at the time of the games release
So around June last year my best friend, my partner and I decided to play through Fatal Frame 1-5 together. Sadly we couldn't play 4 since it is stuck in Japan with no official translation.
However through lockdowns and moving houses, we all did it. We played some of the best horror video games have to offer and then, we played Maiden of Black Water.
This game is a tough one. It changes so much about the series and makes it less old school horror and almost anime etchi horror.
First off, this game isn't as scary as the first 3. I'm still not sure if it's due to them trying to make it more modern but it loses so much scare factor in favour of a more action packed game where you combo forever with your camera.
Sadly the game does kick itself in the behind due to it's lack of respect for the past series. They grab characters who had a great ending and character development and crush it. It was sad to see strong characters be thrown into a place where they were helpless and were given a plot that didn't need to exist. It spits on how 3 ends.
As an entry point, it's not going to be the wost thing but if you play the rest, I'm sorry in advance.
Also the re-use of areas is just not great at all. Halfway through the game, you have seen every area and then the game just repeats every area multiple times in the same chapter. It's a huge shame.
What the game did good for me was be fun. I genuinely had a blast with it. I do love how stupid it is. I still love the series tropes of using a camera to kill spirits. I love the gameplay so much. It feels like a weird hack n slash with a camera.
I do like the lolita and kimono outfits you can put them in but I am a degen sooooooo they got me there.
Overall, I do believe my enjoyment with this game came from the banter and making fun of the game together as a group.
Playing it on my own for the nightmare S+ rank was a dreadful experience. Which made it even more obvious it was the company I kept that made this game fun.
I cannot believe the whole franchise rests on this games success
So around June last year my best friend, my partner and I decided to play through Fatal Frame 1-5 together. Sadly we couldn't play 4 since it is stuck in Japan with no official translation.
However through lockdowns and moving houses, we all did it. We played some of the best horror video games have to offer and then, we played Maiden of Black Water.
This game is a tough one. It changes so much about the series and makes it less old school horror and almost anime etchi horror.
First off, this game isn't as scary as the first 3. I'm still not sure if it's due to them trying to make it more modern but it loses so much scare factor in favour of a more action packed game where you combo forever with your camera.
Sadly the game does kick itself in the behind due to it's lack of respect for the past series. They grab characters who had a great ending and character development and crush it. It was sad to see strong characters be thrown into a place where they were helpless and were given a plot that didn't need to exist. It spits on how 3 ends.
As an entry point, it's not going to be the wost thing but if you play the rest, I'm sorry in advance.
Also the re-use of areas is just not great at all. Halfway through the game, you have seen every area and then the game just repeats every area multiple times in the same chapter. It's a huge shame.
What the game did good for me was be fun. I genuinely had a blast with it. I do love how stupid it is. I still love the series tropes of using a camera to kill spirits. I love the gameplay so much. It feels like a weird hack n slash with a camera.
I do like the lolita and kimono outfits you can put them in but I am a degen sooooooo they got me there.
Overall, I do believe my enjoyment with this game came from the banter and making fun of the game together as a group.
Playing it on my own for the nightmare S+ rank was a dreadful experience. Which made it even more obvious it was the company I kept that made this game fun.
I cannot believe the whole franchise rests on this games success