I was really looking forward to playing Fatal Frame 3 after playing 1 and 2, as I heard that this is the scariest entry in the series.

Well, Fatal Frame 3 definitely has some pretty creative jumpscares and creepy ghost designs (I'm talking about you Crawling Woman). In addition, the story is more interesting compared to those in the previous games. I was really looking forward to find out how the story unfolds.
Having said that, unfortunately, this time the bad really outweighs the good.

The biggest problem with this game is that it's unnecessarily long. While the previous games could be finished in 6-8 hours, (which was already pretty long for games where you just walk around shooting ghosts with a camera) with FF3, the developers decided to make the game 15 (!!!!) hours long. Whyyyyyy????!!!

FF 1 and 2 had lots of backtracking, but here it's even more extreme, which sadly makes the game really boring after a few hours.

!!SPOILERS
This time there are 3 playable characters.
Rei and Miku are more fun to play with, as they are pretty powerful, but playing as Kei, the weakest of the trio, is an absolute pain in the ass. For some reason, the devs thought that it would be a good idea to have him fight against some of the most powerful enemies in the game.

!!END OF SPOILERS!!

In general, the combat in FF3 is really frustrating because there are way more enemies in this game. Not only that, but they bounce all over the place like in FF1. The slow controls of the camera obscura were not designed for a combat system where you can be ambushed by 3-4 fast ghosts from all directions at the same time.

I don't think I'll ever replay this game due to the length of the campaign. I didn't regret finishing it, because I have a soft spot for these old school PS2 J horror games, but yeah.... this one wasn't my favorite.

What a rollercoaster. When playing Fatal Frame 3, at times I felt this is one of the best games I've ever played, other times I felt the game was a drag that I wanted to get through asap and everything inbetween.

The setup is the best one yet, the game opens up with the main character, Rei, getting up from a car crash which takes her fiancé's life, we then cut to her working as a freelance photographer when she sees a vision of Yuu and follows him into the manor of sleep. The setup establishes the themes that permeate throughout the rest of the game like Grief, Guilt and Loss and I also find it neat how this time, it makes sense for the main character to be well versed in using a camera. This stuff is great, but the best parts of the story for me are when you explore the apartment and really see how empty and meaningless Rei's life became after Yuu's death. The core of this plot is incredibly strong and I do like the stuff with Miku experiencing survivor's guilt too. The supernatural aspects like the tattooed priestess' being harvesters of sorrow and how Reika was awakened from her slumber were pretty solid aswell. One of my favourite parts of the game was learning about how the manor of sleep affects people in the real world, making them sleep more and more as they're lured deeper into the manor until they disappear entirely. There's a lot of things I enjoyed about this games story, but the thing that hurts it is how much detail the game tries to cram into notes and it is beyond excessive. It's not uncommon for notes to be 10 or more pages long and they often elaborate on things that are completely trivial like explaining song lyrics. They're meant to flesh out the story but all these really do is detract from the stuff I cared about and the plot can feel downright muddled at times. Despite this, the game manages to absolutely nail the ending. Rei spends the whole game chasing Yuu as he walks away from her and even after seeing what going too far into the manor does to people like Miku, she still insists on going after her dead loved one. Then, Yuu finally turns around and lets Rei know that she has to continue living her life, to carry on his memory as he literally takes away her pain in the form of the tattoo curse. The entire ending just gave me goosebumps, something that very few games do.

I mentioned in my earlier reviews how I found 1s combat to be frustrating whereas 2s was too easy, 3 hits the right balance as enemies are faster than in 2 but don't teleport too much. The combat is a bit of a mix of the past games with damage being based again on how long you hover the capture circle over the ghosts but you can still wait for enemies to get close and land a Fatal Frame shot if you want to play the game like 2. The game also doesn't bombard you with healing items, I only had around 3-5 at my disposal in each chapter so I still felt that tension when having to fight a ghost. Another really cool addition is that now you can also toggle through different film types with the d-pad instead of having to open up the menu every single time which helps combat encounters flow better.

This game also probably has my favourite sound design thus far. A lot of the sounds just stick out to me a bit more than in the past games, notably the crackling static sounds of some enemies like the tattooed woman or the needle woman, or the insanely loud heartbeat sounds that occur when you're looking in through a peep-hole. The sounds can be ear-grating at times but in a weird way, I think this works. It's a horror game, it's not meant to make you feel good when playing it, and the annoying sounds just add to the stressful atmosphere for me.

This is also easily the scariest game yet. There are a good few times I yelled out loud because the scares got me that good and then I proceeded to smile right after because the scare was just crafted so well. There are too many to point out but some of my favourite would be how if you take a photo of the back of the ghost in the Kimono, she'll jump right into your face. The reason this one works so well is because prior to this, I spent 2 games taking photos of ghosts and usually when they have their back to you, that means they're harmless and you can take a photo of them for free points and then this one flips that entire mechanic on its head. Another one of my favourites is in the projector room and how if you play the Unknown tape, it'll just play a reel of the projector room itself and you see a ghost appear on it. I also like the more subtle scares with the apparitions that appear in Rei's house, especially the ones that show up in the bathroom. The cutscenes are also the scariest ones yet, especially the iconic one that happens after Rei wakes up in one chapter. I also really like the interior design of the manor, aside from blood stains, you also get imprints of faces on the walls and even limbs sticking out of them. I can gush about the scares in this game all day honestly and there's a lot I missed in the form of optional ghosts but they're easily the highlight of the game for me.

With all this praise you'd think this is easily my favourite of the series and at parts I felt like it was, but this games fatal flaw, its achiles' heel, its hamartia is how it's structured. The only area you explore in this game outside of Rei's house is the manor of sleep and it is ginormous. With each chapter, the area gets bigger and the backtracking takes longer and it is less and less clear on where to go. I tried being super patient with the game and going at a slow pace but that didn't help much, getting through this game is simply exhausting and a big reason why is due to how long it is. Fatal Frame took me 7 hours, 2 took me 9, this game took me 14 and the majority of it I've already forgotten about because it just felt like padding. The game doesn't really justify it's length at all with how repetitive it is, one of the most egregious examples would be the ghost in the Kimono room, I swear, you have to fight her about 6 times throughout the game. What makes it worse is the fact that the game has multiple characters, outside of Rei you'll be playing as Miku and Kei. Each character has separate upgrades you can buy for them but Rei is the one you'll be using the most so you're best off saving all your points to use on her, the problem is though that this makes Miku's and especially Kei's chapters feel worse to play. In their chapters you'll visit areas that are just copy and pasted from Fatal Frame 1 and 2. Sure, there is a reason for this since the manor of sleep is meant to be an amalgamation of memories that haunt the people that inhabit it, but from a gameplay perspective it still just feels like cheap way of extending gametime. Miku and Kei have unique gameplay mechanics that differentiate them from Rei, Miku can have an additional charge of the camera obscura stored to do massive damage, she can slow down enemies with the press of the circle button and she can crawl through tight spaces where she may fight a woman under the floorboards which might just be the scariest ghost encounter in the series for me. Kei on the other hand.....well he can hide with the circle button but that does nothing and you're better off just running past any enemy you see because Kei does piss poor damage and the times you're forced to defeat all the ghosts in a room with him before you can proceed are probably the worst parts of the game for me. It also doesn't help that I don't really give a shit about Kei as a character, he's Mio and Mayu's uncle and it's why he goes through areas from the second game in his chapters but I thought 2 had such a good, standalone story that I didn't really care for seeing it getting needlessly expanded upon through his character. You also don't see him until the latter half of the game, prior to that he only exists in letters so it's harder to care about him.

Some other things bother me too, from the lag that happens when you try opening a door in the PS2 version, to the controls being different and requiring some adjustment, to how film 14 resets with each chapter which makes saving them up feel meaningless. There's really more to criticise about this game than there is to praise, and yet the things that stick with me and leave a lasting impression are the things that the game does well. The story, the themes, the scares, the ending are what I think about days after beating it. This is definitely in the same realm as games like Silent Hill 4 and Vagrant Story for me, a game marred with flaws, but one that remains fascinating throughout and for everything it does wrong, it's still a game I'm glad I played even if it's definitely a one and done for me.