Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Black Water - almost the best, close to the worst

Pictured from left to right: Yuri, Miu, and Ren; our three protagonists. All credit to the respective authors.

Fatal Frame 5 is a strong game. It has a lot going on in favor, but it has some strong downsides too.

It follows three people primarily: Yuri, Miu, and Ren. More on their significance later.

Fatal Frame 5 is a blend of everything the previous games did. The trio’s journeys take them all across the spiritually-significant Mt. Hikami, from abandoned stations and a once-thriving inn to dead shrines and impossibly pristine temples.

FF5 has some of the more disturbing elements of the series, equally on-par with some of the elements in FF1 and FF3. The ghost designs are amazing, and something I’d like to call the ghost implication designs are absolutely phenomenal. There is excellent use of this implication design with nearly every encounter, from the basic ghouls to the mountain’s previous victims. Some of these moments had me genuinely thinking '“What the actual fuck?”, and I had to put my controller down more than once to process whatever revelations I’d just made.

The colors for FF5 are mainly a stark black and a deep orange-red scheme that makes for some beautiful and beautifully eerie shots. There’s a recurring use of sunsets and sundowns to illustrate both the mood and Mt. Hikami’s very vibes.

The voice acting in this game is by far the best, and the facial animations have that perfect amount of expression both for the ghosts and the living cast. Yuri and Miu in particular deserve honorable mentions for their acting in the game.

MOBW also adds some new mechanics, and while the game doesn’t feel as hard as some of the previous it still has moments. The camera mechanics are overhauled, yet almost too busy, as whatever you’re targeting and attacking might end up visually cluttering the screen (and that’s to say nothing of when you’re fighting multiple enemies at once in later encounters). Many of these moments are satisfying, and yet an equal amount of them forced the game into a single digit chugging that took several seconds or more to recover.

Now, MOBW’s story is actually great, but there are some glaring issues with its overall pacing. It felt far more resolved by the end (compared to Mask of the Lunar Eclipse), but pacing was a massive issue by the end of the story. The downside, or rather, the elephant-ghost in the room, is that MOBW’s entire focus as a story and as a game is on suicide.

Multiple characters both playable or not are right off the bat stated or shown to be suicidal, and Mt. Hikami is a place steeped in suicide-related traditions.

Yet, and I can’t stress this enough, as heavy as the topic is, and how much it frontloads said topic within the game, it never feels glorified or mocking or disrespectful in any way. I cannot stress enough that the game contains this as a focus, because the game itself doesn’t tell you it’s coming up. I like to keep these reviews generally spoiler-free, but this is one thing that needs to be known before you play MOBW.

FF5 also ties back into all of the previous games, whether it be the Camera Obscura or the familial ties in FF1 and 3, it ties a clever bow around all of these things.

Pictured: Best Girl Fuyuhi. All credit to the respective authors.

Mt. Hikami is a large place, a spirit-steeped forest that you can explore the entirety of. While I wish you could explore it more often (as the game is somewhat linear compared to previous titles) I do appreciate the sheer amount of scope and detail within that scope. Hikami has some of the prettiest and most beautifully designed locations in the entire series, and it has (at least in the good endings) a surprisingly positive end note for a game literally drenched in suicide.

This series is a (no pun intended, you’ll get this joke if you play FF5) Pillar of the survival horror genre. I’ve greatly enjoyed the series, I like all of the games greatly, but every single one of them feels like it’s just… missing something. I’d sum up the series this way too: great! Genuinely great. But, it feels like each game is just missing some things. A little more here, a lot more there, just some things they needed more of. Pacing, design, balance, those kinds of things. I’d like to hope that the Fatal Frame series continues, I’d love to see it continue, but if this is all we get I’m glad it ended on a decent note.

Pictured: Mt. Hikami at night. All credit to Koei Tecmo.

Here’s to you Shibata-san. Your freaky, wacky, experience-inspired series is loved by one more person!

Pictured: one of the many beautiful shots in this game. All credit to Koei Tecmo.