Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (2003) pt. 2 of 3 - analysis & criticism

Last time in this looong-running analysis of the Fatal Frame franchise, we got through roughly half of Crimson Butterfly's dense narrative and are finally primed to start picking apart what works and what doesn't. Intrigued? Of course you are! If anything seems to have been glossed over here, there's a good chance I covered it in pt. 2 of my original Fatal Frame analysis, which you can read here.

As we transition into actual criticism and analysis, let’s just take a moment to give it up for the Fatal Frame wiki and all those who have contributed to it over the years. While the bits of the wiki that just regurgitate questionably true claims by the game’s authors are often more than a little grating, the fact that one can use it to actually make sense of this game’s complex story is a godsend. It’s actually confused things just a bit for this review, because as much as I want to voice my frustrations with how tough the narrative can be to make sense of, at this point I feel like such an expert it’s hard to go back and put myself in that mindset. 

As I said about the first game, the story really expects you to see it through twice if you intend to understand it fully; there are so many little details and connections that players simply will not cotton on to if they haven’t. Yet, also like the first game, a lot of it doesn’t really need to be understood in order for the story at its core to make sense, which I’m of two minds about. One begins to question if all that junk really needs to be here in the first place.

You want an example? How about poor Miyako, the ghost that hangs around Osaka House, and the first hostile spirit you encounter in the game: her story is a prime example of needless complication in the backstory. Her boyfriend goes missing in a spooky area, and so she goes after him. In a twisted turn of fate, she is killed by the very person she was searching for, her beau’s now-violent ghost. Super simple and effective little yarn, right? Even ties into the narrative’s themes a bit, but I get ahead of myself. 

But that’s not really the way the story is told. You see, first Miyako goes to All God’s Village and finds her boyfriend alive and well in the Osaka House. O…K, sure, I can dig it. I mean, what the hell was he doing all that time he was missing, and how was he able to survive without food or water in a haunted mansion, but nevermind all that. Just accept it. How does he become a ghost and kill Miyako then? Well, you see, he tells her to stay put and he goes… somewhere to go check on something and is killed by a wandering ghost, whereupon he goes back to Osaka House and murders his sweetheart. Now, tell me: doesn’t that seem far more complicated than it needs to be? Sure, you can make the argument that it strengthens the whole ‘abandonment’ aspect of the story, which eventually becomes quite important to our protagonists’ story, but I just don’t buy it. 

And that’s far from the only spot where this is an issue. The biggest and hairiest issue is the game’s convoluted ritual, a staple of every Fatal Frame game, sure, but the first game was able to come up with something that was both simple and heavily symbolic, if absurdly cruel. Here, not only is the core ceremony far less interesting and imaginative, but there’s also a ‘back-up’ ritual that we keep reading about which only further muddies everything. The backup ritual, that of creating a Kusabi, feels like something that came entirely out of a desire to have two different final bosses more than anything, so that the Kusabi’s presence in general feels like something crowbarred into the narrative. Not to mention, it’s even less creative than the Crimson Sacrifice, which I'll remind you is little more than one sister strangling the other and dumping her body in a deep pit.

I do tend to enjoy the ways that this game’s story ties into the original, though this is the original sin that would eventually lead to disaster by the time of the third game and beyond. Here, however, it’s tastefully done and very subtle. It certainly wasn’t planned from the start or anything, but the idea that the Yae that killed herself in the first game is the same one from this game makes a lot of sense, though it does stretch my suspension of disbelief a bit. This relatively tight circle of people just keep having brushes with the supernatural; it would be like having a circle of people that are all related that somehow keep getting struck by lightning every time they left their house, though I say again that it’s at least comparatively subtle here when compared to how silly things get circa Fatal Frame III.

But let’s move on and talk about the atmosphere, the scares: the core of what makes a Fatal Frame game a Fatal Frame game. Well, I’m happy to share that this aspect of Fatal Frame II is very much so on par with the original, only now with a bleaker, even more manically-depressed narrative and Lynchian atmospherics carrying it. As before, this game was based on the dreams of its creator Mikoto Shibata, and thus feels genuinely nightmarish. It makes the most of the horror of arriving at an unfamiliar place where everyone seems to recognize you as someone else, to the point where you begin to wonder if you're not the one who has mistaken your identity. Not to mention the horror of being sucked up, used like cattle, and then disposed of by some ancient conspiracy that has nothing to do with you. 

But the horror that’s the strongest is entirely thematic and, for me at least, extremely relatable. While the majority of this discussion has to wait until after the spoiler break, it’s worth noting that one place where this game far outstrips its predecessor is in its core metaphor. This is no longer a fairy tale about a woman torn between her duty and her heart’s desires, no; this is a horror story dealing with the cold, hard facts of life, with no easy answers or resolution to rely on for comfort. It’s about the depression of realizing that you’re growing apart from those that you love, and that in a few years time, your life will seem almost entirely alien from the life you’re living now. In short: it’s a very angsty game for teenagers who never wanna leave their halcyon days behind but can already feel the change occurring inside them. Like some fucked up Japanese horror take on The Catcher in the Rye or something. In this sense, I feel a kinship with the story of this game moreso than the first, and it combines with the sleepy atmosphere to deliver a very powerful, very different sort of horror story than one typically expects from a video game, especially one of this vintage.

But beyond these aspects, the minute-to-minute gameplay is full of tension, the scares are effective, and the violence is disturbing thanks to what we don’t see more than what we do. The cutscenes often feel a bit much, making use of that particular style of horror that was unique to the late 90s, early 00s that’s a bit busy for my tastes. And yes, it can all seem a bit overwrought, especially thanks to the ‘improved’ voice acting during all the audio logs you find, and the general repetition of everything involving enemy ghosts, but I can dig it. Not to mention, that, too, is best left until after our spoiler break. Damn, is there anything I can talk about? Maybe I need to play around with my format a bit more... Ah well.

One interesting change is that you spend a good deal of the game with a partner. Your sister is hardly ever around thanks to her insistence on constantly running off every time your back is turned, but her occasional presence does serve to make the bits where she’s not there feel even lonelier. Mayu shouldn’t be any sort of comfort, especially around the time she’s babbling to herself about “the ritual” over and over again, yet here we are. Plus, she’s handy as a sort of decoy to distract enemies and give you time to line up your shots.

It’s still a mixed bag though, seeing as, in a touch of gameplay and story segregation, she tends to grate on the player whenever they have to lug her around for any length of time. She’s so slow with her damn limp, and she constantly calls out for the player to slow down. This winds up making the darker aspects of the story to come even more disturbing, probably because they’re so damn satisfying.

Before we dive into the gameplay of Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly though, I would like to take time to appreciate the impressive improvements across the board, presentation-wise. The first Fatal Frame was very washed-out looking by comparison, and equally blurry thanks to a greasy filter that acted as a cheap way to apply anti-aliasing to the game back when the team was just getting to grips with the then-new PlayStation 2 hardware; this game, by comparison, seems at least a generation ahead of its predecessor and then some.

True, there’s still an emphasis on earthy browns and reddish clays, but with an added emphasis on warm colors in general, particularly crimson, which appropriately puts a lot of color in this game’s cheeks. Then there’s the generally sharp, detailed look of the game. Throw in some rather impressive-looking character models, stylish FMVs, and artful camera angles, and you have one handsome-looking survival horror sequel. It helps that playing this game with PCSX2 allows one to take this one well into the current gen with a high resolution and widescreen support, while still staying true to its original experience with support for vibration and cutscenes that still play in their original aspect ratio. There is one annoying bug that involves the audio having a strangely garbled quality, which can be fixed by downloading a single .dll file and swapping it into PCSX2 before playing, so that's hardly any kind of real issue. This same issue and fix also applies to Fatal Frame III, by the way, but it's also replete with visual glitches, however minor, and of course we all remember the game-hanging bug that crops up in the final boss fight of the first game. So overall, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly comes out the most unscathed on modern hardware and is thus the most easily appreciated in 2022, I'd say.

The sound design is as strong and independent of traditional melody or instrumentation as ever. The deep hums and unsettling rattles of its harsh metallic soundscape reflect the nihilism at the core of its tale quite well, and go a long way towards delivering an even more unforgiving and brutal atmosphere than anything seen in the first game. Still, nothing is perfect and I do have a small nitpick with the voice acting: while far more professional than last time around, it loses its more charming qualities, and can even become a bit repetitive and wearying, though that’s more of a result of the writing more than anything. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to that later. 

Now that we finally get to the actual gameplay in this video game, I have to say that those who grew up with this game and just love it to death and consider it near perfect are probably about to become very angry, but I can’t help it. If the first game seemed like it was barely held together by a series of fetch quests and monkey-see-monkey-do-style objectives, far more transparent than most similar objectives in other horror games, wait until you play this one. 

Sure, everything has been tightened up, most noticeably the series's signature combat with the Camera Obscura, and that's great. Don't want to seem like a Negative Nancy here. But... what Fatal Frame II lacks in generally wonky combat, it far more than makes up for in terms of sheer volume of samey-looking environments that you must slowly worm your way through time and time again, complete with sometimes obscure objectives which make taking a break from the game for even an afternoon and coming back seem nigh-on impossible. The actual path of progression through the game is very ill-considered and hacked together at times, with lots of plainly unsexy design.

Sometimes a solution will just materialize in front of you the moment you've given up and try to leave a clearly important area, which is always a pain in the ass because when I give up, I might just give up for real and shut off the game rather than desperately retrace my steps looking for a solution. This is made far more annoying thanks to the game’s playable area and the amount that you have access to at any given time, which is far too large for a game where you generally need to be in a very specific place at very specific times to make progress. Why it doesn’t do like the first game often did and lock us out of places we don’t need to presently worry with while locking us into wherever we ought to be I can’t fathom. God help you if you lose the thread and can’t remember where you need to be going or where you were in the process of going; there are just too many places to double check, an issue that’s made far worse thanks to the still-useless map that gives each room in the game a unique name but doesn’t bother to include information like which red lines are locked doors and which ones are broken doors that can never be opened, nor indications of things like obstructions in the environment or the location of certain puzzle contraptions for when you’re attempting to return with whatever you need to unlock it. 

I’ve already mentioned the hide-and-seek bit, which was unforgivably vague and strict on the conditions required to complete it, but that's really just one example of an issue that’s rather consistent across the whole game. Need to go to work for ten hours and finish up something when you get home later that afternoon? Too bad. Even in that small amount of time, you’ll likely become just rusty enough to necessitate needless wandering for a while or, if you’re particularly fed up, use of a walkthrough to reorient yourself. This game’s, and quite frankly this whole franchise’s, reliance on drawn-out scavenger hunts in familiar areas puts even something like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to shame, it really must be said.

I will admit, though, that the game’s large, divvied-up environments do contribute to these levels feeling like a real feudal Japanese village, and the game’s rhythm of objectives and tense combat scattered across it does at least add up to a very immersive game once you’re in the thick of it all, though the gameplay can’t be blamed as much as the story, oppressive atmosphere, and presentation.

Speaking of tense combat, this game is not immune to the first game’s repetition in terms of hostile spirits. They do alleviate it a bit, thanks to a few subtle decisions, though it’s still far from perfect. Thanks to the game’s structure as taking place in a variety of different houses, there are many hostile and non-hostile spirits tied to specific locations, meaning each area has a unique flavor and challenge, while also having the knock-on effect that the player still has plenty to look forward to once even once they've passed the halfway point. Combine that with legions of generic townspeople ghost mooks, alongside a few more unique ghosts that still crop up in multiple areas, and you have a decent variety of encounters at any given time.

Why then, does it still feel far, far too repetitive? Why does the game repeat a ghost like the Kimono Box Lady again and again, when she feels like she should be a unique, one-off fight, like the fight with the Sunken Lady, that trio of little ruffians in the Osaka House, or the only slightly-more repetitive fight against the Falling Lady? And why do we have a hostile enemy spirit in this game that’s a woman with a broken neck, heading lolling about in a disturbing fashion, when they already did that in the first game?

The same goes for the environments. None of the mainline Silent Hill games felt the need to shamelessly repeat their levels again and again in this fashion. Well, Silent Hill 4 did, but it still only did it once per environment. By contrast: in Fatal Frame II, you visit the Osaka House three times in the course of the game, and very little changes between visits. I know Resident Evil repeats its environments, and so did Alone in the Dark waaaaaay back in the day, but they did so with more creativity and ceremony than this. It gets to the point that if it weren’t for the lovingly told narrative, this would feel like highway robbery of survival horror fans, passing off something that feels like it belongs in a bargain bin as an equal to something like the greatest game of all time, Silent Hill 2.

Some adjustments to the difficulty have been made since last time around, and there now exists an unlimited supply of “Type-007” film that does almost no damage to enemies but is at least there if you run out. More practically, it’s best put to use by remembering to swap to it every time you need to take a picture of a non-hostile ghost or some interactive element in the environment, preserving your more powerful ammo for use against your opponents. Still, checkpoints are often too few and far between, considering how often the game likes to pit you against unkillable ghosts which you must intuit that you need to flee from rather than fight, generally after you've died to it at least once, made all the worse by the fact that every one of those fuckers ignores the Stone Mirror! What is the the point of an item that allows me to bounce back from a death blow, if all the enemies that kill in one hit can bypass it? This all but guarantees a lot of progress wasted the first time players meet the Kusabi in Kurosawa House, and some level of frustration with the game’s final boss, where the last checkpoint is, as ever, back behind a bunch of time-consuming combat, obstacles, and impactful cutscenes that aren’t so impactful the fifth time you’re seeing them. 

This is an issue made far worse by the game’s stubborn insistence on doing away with honest tank controls and using this weird hybrid system that involves too much guesswork on the computer’s part, and results in many moments where Mio will spin on her heels during a camera change and walk right into a pursuing ghost’s mouth. So for those of us playing on PCSX2, save states present yet another reason that it's the definitive way to play. If only it also had the first-person mode and additional ending from the Xbox version, but what can you do?

And there you go. The story is interesting, the content and scares more disturbing and startling respectively, the combat more graceful, and the presentation improved in every way. And yet, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly still has a long way to go if it wants to play with the big boys. I’m sure hardcore fans will take issue with this, as it generally resembles other great survival horror games at a glance, only Fatal Frame II ignores all the little things that made those games so great as video games, and hopes that its angsty, metaphorical folk horror yarn will be enough to differentiate it and give it an audience. And you know what? It may just be right about that. 

Next time around, we'll be bringing this discussion to a close, getting into spoilers and the game's infamous ending before summing it all up and moving on to the next entry. Until next time!

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