Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2008) pt. 4 of 4 - spoilers & conclusion

Welcome back! In the last part of this analysis, we finally got around to discussing my overall feeling toward the game in terms of narrative, gameplay, presentation, and spooks. Now, it’s time to finish summarizing and bring this series to a close... for now.

*start of spoilers*

Last time around, we left Ruka finally managing to make it down into the moonlit basement of the hospital, only to find it empty. Now, we’re in control of Detective Choushiro once more and, strangely, despite the fact that he’s in exactly the same place as Ruka, neither of the two sees the other. Choushiro even remarks at one point that he hears someone approaching, but no one ever shows… Oh well!

If you’ll remember back to our earlier discussion of the Ceremony of Passage and its being practiced in secret by Shigeto Haibara as a way of attempting to cure Moonlight Syndrome, it’s time for more clarification: while the phony ceremony was practiced in plain view with the entire island in attendance, the real ceremony happened directly underneath in the bowels of the Earth. This information comes just in time as well, because we soon witness a compelling flashback that finally lets us in on what happened on the day that Ruka and her friends were kidnapped, or at least part of it. While we don’t see what was happening underground, we do see the part that the rest of the island saw, and it isn’t pretty; the Utsuwa, becoming suddenly distraught and frenzied mid-performance, suddenly fell dead, along with her entire band of young kanades. Oops. And Choushiro was front and center for the whole thing.

But put that aside for now because the lore just keeps coming hard and fast. Namely, we now have an explanation for who our antagonist, Sakuya, really is: sister to You Haibara, daughter to Shigeto Haibara, and inpatient at Rougetsu Hall. You see, she was the driving force behind Director Haibara’s obsession with curing Moonlight Syndrome, and the reason why he began performing the Ceremony of Passage again with a real Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. Presumably, this is what Ruka’s father, a master craftsman of masks, remember) was so busy with in that flashback sequence from before the spoiler break.

So Sakuya was the comatose patient that those spooked nurses were so afraid of. This also makes her the woman in red with the distorted face we keep running into.

So while we don’t know what happened below ground exactly as tragedy struck above, we do know that the five underground/kidnapped kanades somehow survived with nothing but a few missing memories and Sakuya was rendered comatose rather than killed outright. We’re told that after the girls were discovered, their families moved away to get them as far away from Rougetsu Island as possible, which is just as well because soon after, everyone on the island was of course killed in a mysterious calamity.

As this chapter comes to a close and Choushiro finds himself getting nowhere fast on finding Ruka, I suddenly notice something: how on earth is Sakuya on her deathbed in Choushiro’s old tapes from the time of Ruka’s original kidnapping if she’s still well enough now to send Choushiro on a mission to save her daughter?

The “sliding” scale of puzzle quality

As Chapter Nine opens, let me introduce you to the worst puzzle in Fatal Frame history and certainly one of the worst in the history of survival horror games: a sliding block puzzle. If that doesn’t sound all that bad, keep in mind that this isn’t exactly a 6x6 grid with a few pieces out of place. This is a behemoth that requires a lot of careful manipulation of individual blocks, where the order you do things is crucial. And don’t think you can just cheat and go follow a walkthrough. A video walkthrough? Maybe, but you’d have to slow it down to half-speed and follow each and every move made for god knows how long before it would be concluded. Needless to say, there’s no easy way to get around it and even after the months it's been since I last played it, I hate this puzzle and wouldn’t be shocked if the devs actually tone it down in time for the upcoming localization, but I digress.

Our reward for this herculean task is more clarification, this time revealing why exactly the five girls were spared the same grisly fates as their fellow kanades above-ground and poor Sakuya: the moonlight that shines down into the hospital basement somehow miraculously saved them but not Sakuya. 

Speaking of Sakuya, we’re told her mother committed suicide as a result of her daughter’s affliction, which only furthered the dedication of Shigeto Haibara to curing it. It’s around this time that it's also confirmed that You Haibara is the young man in a suit that we keep seeing in flashbacks, who was responsible for snatching the girls, getting them into position, and placing their respective masks on their faces before the ritual was to begin.

We find all of this out as Misaki continues to wander around the hospital looking for Miya, coming to a head when she makes it to a large outdoor stage, presumably the one where the phony ceremony was performed for a crowd of spectators, and finds in its center a… doll? Suddenly, she sees a flashback of her dropping it as You Haibara pulled her away all those years ago, and in a shocking moment that feels like pure Twilight Zone tomfoolery, it’s revealed that Miya was a doll all along. Misaki is and has always been alone. While Misaki squeezes the doll tight and sobs, Sakuya approaches her from behind and gives her a big ole’ hug. Misaki then goes limp and collapses to the ground.

Three characters in search of an exit

With that cliffhanger dangling, it’s time for a mostly uneventful tenth chapter, wherein Ruka explores the tunnels under the hospital. Along the way, she witnesses flashbacks of islanders trying and failing to hide from Sakuya in her “blooming” form, having apparently awakened from her coma at some point. In case you haven't put it together yet, this is how everyone on the island was killed just after the five girls were found and relocated to the mainland. 

A moment later, we’re forced to defeat probably the single most annoying boss in the entire series, which we’ll cover in a bit more detail after all our summarizing is done, but rest assured: it’s something to behold, man. 

That done, we’re back in Ruka’s childhood home, only this time it’s for real and all too brief before we’re back in the shoes of one Choushiro Hirishima. Ugh.

As he descends ever deeper into the earth looking for leads, who should he run into but Sayaka herself. No, seriously. And she’s here to ask Choushiro for help “one last time.” Yeah, no red flags there.

The bottom line is that she needs Choushiro to take a piece of the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse to Ruka when he finds her. She’ll need this to complete the mask and set right what once went wrong, yada yada, you know the drill. Apparently, she’s just been waiting here for him all this time so that she could give it to him, and with it passed on, she disappears as quickly as she came. 

Choushiro then books it back to where he originally found the girls at the “moon well,” fights off Shigeto Haibara along with an entourage of spirits, and bestows Ruka with the mask piece her mother had given him. Choushiro doesn’t even seem bothered that the girls are all the same age they were when he originally found them, but hey ho: all that matters now is that he spots You Haibara fleeing the scene, and this time, his ass is going down for good!

Choushiro gives chase as Haibara taunts him with vagaries. When he reaches the roof, however, Haibara gets the drop on our hero and he’s stabbed in the chest for his troubles. At this point, Choushiro does what I think anyone in his position would do: namely, he football tackles Haibara off the roof, and the two of them fall to their deaths on the hard ground below. This leaves Choushiro lying sprawled out on the ground in precisely the same fashion as he was when we first were introduced to him. 

A moment later, he’s standing over his own corpse, suddenly all too aware of what’s going on. He came back to the island just after the five girls had been located and were safe someplace else hoping to nail Haibara, surviving Sakuya’s awakening only to die from his fateful tumble long before the events in the present took place. Sayaka appears to him a moment later to comfort him. Until someone comes along and breaks the cycle, poor Detective Kirishima will be forever doomed to retrace his actions that day...

Waxing…

Back in the land of the living, Ruka searches for all of the pieces of the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, which she must use against Sakuya to stop her blooming and put her to rest. Apparently, the mask allows the Utsuwa to mingle amongst the dead, so that for a moment they are neither living nor dead. Unfortunately, Sakuya freaked out in the middle of the ritual and fell comatose, trapping her soul between the two extremes. I believe it's implying here that Sakuya’s vengeful form is actually her body being used by the legions of the dead to take revenge for taking too lightly the divide between life and death and its customs, but I admit, I may have misunderstood the finer points.

Remember that letter from much earlier in the game, where she spoke of the significance of the Tsukimori name? Well, despite Ruka’s last name ostensibly being Yomotsuki, which means she’s the latest in a long line of master mask craftsmen, her mother was a Tsukimori, and so had the Tsukimori Shrine Maiden song passed down to her. At some point during Ruka’s childhood, it’s revealed her mother began teaching the tune to her on the piano. This is apparently the so-called “lunar melody.”

Needless to say, none of this is mentioned in Haibara’s notes and it’s heavily implied that this is the real reason the ritual failed. They knew they needed a Tsukimori present, but apparently didn’t know why. They were certainly aware of the melody given that they used it as therapy for patients at Rougetsu Hall, but somehow never made the connection between the two. Oh and apparently Ruka’s father, who devoted himself entirely to the ritual, also didn’t make this connection. Doh!

Speaking of which, our dear-old dad is the very next foe we must defeat before we’re allowed to move on to the final chapter. When he’s dealt with, he warns Ruka that the lunar eclipse is fast approaching and she must hurry if she wants to put things to rest during the very tight window available to her.

Total eclipse of the heart

The plan is pretty typical for Fatal Frame at this point: the ritual must be performed again, but right this time. However, in a break from series tradition, we actually ascend up to the top of a lighthouse on a beach instead of descending deep down into the earth to get to the final boss. How novel. Along the way, the last piece of the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is located.

When Ruka reaches Sakuya, she must get her health low enough to temporarily stun her, whereupon she’s to quickly play the Tsukimori Shrine Maiden song to calm the souls of the dead that have taken up residence in Sakuya’s body before placing the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse on her face. If this is done correctly, Sakuya can be put to rest, the dead can return to where they belong, and the souls of the dead islanders can be released from their bondage.

Ruka and, by extension, the player pulls this off perfectly (I've heard horror stories but I had zero difficulties with the piano bits.) Then, Ruka fucking trips and falls in a cutscene when going to place the mask on Sakuya’s face…

Luckily, the ghost of our favorite detective shows up at the last moment to totally save the day and finally justify his presence in this story! He places the mask on Skauya, which instantly ends calms the chaos surrounding the island. The damned souls, including that of Choushiro himself, all begin to float up into the sky before descending out of view into a hole in the ocean created by the eclipsed moon’s reflection over the water. Ruka’s father briefly makes an appearance as he passes through, and for the very first time, Ruka can see his face clearly and distinctly: it’s a kind one. The end. Happy ever after and all that. You know what they say: you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. Now, shoo!

And before you say, “But the alternate ending!” let me point out that it, just like the one in Fatal Frame III, is nothing but the same ending with a few (and I mean just a few) still photographs inserted into the credits that illuminate a few characters’ fates. In this case, that of Misaki. Apparently, she didn’t die when the ghost who can kill you just by looking at you hugged her tight from behind; no, she was just sleeping! Everything is good… I mean, besides Madoka dying thanks to Misaki’s own negligence in the beginning but whatever!

Needless to say, this isn’t a positive change for me, and it would barely even be worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that it takes a decent character's death scene and cheapens it entirely. And for what purpose is anyone’s guess. I guess they just couldn’t bear to kill off an Asou just in case they needed her in a future game. What a crock of shite.

Full moon, empty arms

Unfortunately, that phrase sums up much of my thoughts on Fatal Frame IV across the board. While the ending of the story certainly wasn’t half-bad, that’s hardly enough to save what was kind of a miserable horror experience for me. Before I wrap things up, I have a few things we didn’t discuss last time around that I feel are worth discussing.

I feel I ought to briefly address the game’s biggest and most obvious atrocities, which would be the outrageously difficult and time-consuming sliding block puzzle in Chapter Nine and the bizarre boss fight against the Utsuwa and her Kanades in Chapter Ten. We’ve already said enough about the puzzle, but the aforementioned boss fight is material ripe for the threshing. It's cruel, bordering on unfair, not to mention poorly designed and unintentionally confusing.

To explain, let’s just say you must fight a big boss with lots of health along with a few bratty hint-pints who give you wedgies while you attempt to deal with the bigger threat. Obviously, the best method would seem to be to take the little fuckers out first so that you don’t have to worry about them as you joust with Utsuwa, only the game bungles everything by having the children respawn as you kill them. But they don’t respawn infinitely, you see; no, they just respawn until you’ve fought five kanades total, and then they’re gone for the rest of the fight. Let me ask you, dear reader: what kind of bullshit is that? Aren’t you practically asking for players to assume that the children are a problem that can’t permanently be dealt with by doing this, resulting in one frustrating death after another as they attempt desperately to deal with the Utsuwa while her minions nip at their heels. Making matters worse is that this is a game with significantly less precision in its controls than prior entries. Needless to say, this fight might just cause you to pack things in and stop playing altogether, even if you know to deal with the little ones first.

The polar opposite is true of the game’s final boss, which assumes you’ll fail so miserably at playing piano that it’ll take several attempts, each of which would result in something of a reset of the fight. The thing is, I had no trouble playing the lunar melody at all, so the whole thing felt extremely anti-climatic, though I’m told many others struggle with this bit so your mileage may vary. In any event, it comes nowhere near closing things out the way the previous game in the series did.

*end of spoilers*

Bridge over troubled water

Otherwise, what is there to say that wasn’t already obvious before the spoiler break? I find Mask of the Lunar Eclipse’s story to be both far too dense and exhausting for something that ultimately boils down to a simple and familiar yarn that doesn’t need to be this padded. I think the fact that the narrative bombards us with exposition and clarification and yet still makes little sense on a first playthrough is a genuine problem, not something to try and explain away or excuse. New-fangled television epics have proved that audiences can keep up with complex stories if they’re properly told, so why do I have such a hard time making heads nor tails of the endless lore being tossed at me while playing this game?

And speaking of playing it, Fatal Frame IV marks the point where the franchise kind of loses its vintage survival horror feel that marked it out as something special then and now. At this point, we’re just playing a watered-down version of both Fatal Frame and Resident Evil 4. Yes, some things have survived: combat, while much easier thanks to the lock-on button, is still rhythmic and fun (discounting the mystical flashlight) and of course, there’s…. ....Actually, on second thought, I think the basic combat is the only thing that has survived intact. Progression through levels has gone from putting all the onus on the player to keep up with what’s going on in previous games to suddenly pulling up a map every time you pick up anything to show you exactly where it needs to be placed, resulting in the entire game feeling like a game of monkey-see, monkey-do. The levels themselves are no longer the sprawling recreations of old rural Japanese homes they once were, instead comprising two very similar - and very small - clinical environments that you’ll be seeing alot of over the course of this very looong game.

The presentation sees the game looking especially crisp and character models looking extra detailed, but to what end? Fixed camera angles are out, and so the game looks on the whole a world apart from something like Fatal Frame III: The Tormented, which knew how to use those angles for maximum impact. Which of course, brings me to the scares: Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse can occasionally make you jump early on, sure, but after a while, you start to get desensitized at precisely the same moment the developers started sleeping in their office to get the game done, resulting in a number of unfinished or otherwise hilariously goofy “scares.” Atmosphere can really pick up in certain memorable locations thanks to solid sound design, which is nice, but it's not enough to save this from being the least frightening game in the series. Some might would argue the story, which deals with medical experimentation by a mad doctor, supplies the chills, but I’ve just seen this kind of setting too much in video games at this point and don’t feel this game does enough to distinguish itself in that manner. And early promise of a more human sort of horror, reminiscent of the challenges facing people with dementia, is never adequately explored.

So what else is there for me to say? I went in with nothing but excitement, and I came out feeling extremely disappointed and wondering if I should even cover the damn thing. Fans of this game have been defending it mostly unchallenged for over a decade now, and fans who can’t play it, but who are about to finally get the opportunity, aren’t going to want to listen to some jerk on the internet tell them that it’s bad. I get it. And I am happy that the game is getting the big port people have been hoping for. I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s fun, I just want to throw it out there that I think Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a perfect example of the kind of game that, on the surface, seems to be just another entry in a venerable series, yet gets every single aspect wrong in subtle ways, resulting in an experience most would probably file under “It’s alright” but which annoyed me tremendously. I would rather a game offend and shock me with its awfulness than just be boring and miserable to play for fifteen hours for mostly benign reasons, which is exactly why I think I hated this game and probably won’t pick up Maiden of Blackwater for a good, long while. 

I hope you guys have enjoyed this little journey we’ve taken together across these four games, and rest assured, I have more video game analyses coming down the pipeline. The next one is probably technically a survival horror game, but it is the epitome of camp. I hope to see you then!