Fatal Frame 2 Remake Makes a Camera the Scariest Weapon in Gaming | IGN Preview

Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake doesn't unfastened with a leap scare; it opens successful a trance. As Mio, you ticker helplessly arsenic a crimson butterfly lures your duplicate sister, Mayu, into a fog-covered forest. There, the Lost Village swallows her whole. For implicit twenty-two years, this country has haunted fans, myself included. Seeing the colony look from the mist, modern lighting draping each rooftop and histrion subdivision successful dense volumetric fog, I knew immediately: this isn't a low-budget remaster. The dread successful Fatal Frame 2 stems not lone from the individually named wraiths stalking you done its haunted Japanese colony – a spot trapped successful a festival of decease – but besides from the mode Mayu grips your hand, dragging you toward dangers you're unprepared for. After astir 4 hours with the archetypal 4 chapters connected PC, this remake already has its hooks successful maine — not lone is it a faithful yet modernized instrumentality connected what galore see the scariest crippled ever, its added ocular fidelity makes the halfway mechanic of looking straight astatine what's trying to termination you that overmuch harder to endure.

Fatal Frame 2's cardinal mechanic remains 1 of the cleverest successful endurance horror. Your superior limb is the Camera Obscura — a modified camera that damages wraiths by photographing them. That's it. No shotguns, nary grenades stashed successful a locker. You constituent a camera astatine thing terrifying, and you instrumentality its picture. The bid has been doing this since 2001, and it's inactive dissimilar thing other successful the genre.

The Camera Obscura uses focal points: crosshairs that place a wraith's anemic spots. Aligning much of these points erstwhile you instrumentality a photograph increases the harm dealt. You tin upgrade these focal points with supplication beads recovered passim the environment, making each changeable much lethal and rewarding exploration successful classical endurance fearfulness style. But your camera tin besides present peculiar shots that necessitate willpower, and the effect varies depending connected the equipped filter. While auto-focus helps you fastener onto targets, manual absorption rewards precision with much superior damage. And, contempt Fatal Frame 2's penalties for proximity, keeping the viewfinder pulled backmost and lasting dangerously adjacent to a tone was often the amended strategy for dealing much harm and taking power of a fight.

However, willpower is simply a constricted and invaluable resource. If you get excessively close, a wraith volition drain your willpower, leaving you susceptible to a leering onslaught that flashes your surface and momentarily steals control, oregon allows the wraith to onslaught you much easy than it would astatine range.

Film types service arsenic your ammunition and make their ain furniture of assets tension. The basal Type-07 movie is infinite but reloads dilatory and hits weakly, portion stronger movie similar the Type-61 deals importantly much harm but caps astatine 8 shots and indispensable beryllium scavenged, arsenic you can't bargain much erstwhile you tally out. Interchangeable filters adhd further complexity: the Standard Filter stuns enemies, the Paraceptual Filter blinds them astatine scope and tin yet beryllium upgraded to spot done walls, and the Exposure Filter tin unlock concealed items and areas by reconstructing definite scenes with the Phantom Exposé mode. Each filter has its ain upgrade way covering range, reload speed, and peculiar changeable duration, and since peculiar shots outgo willpower, you're besides incentivized to put your constricted supplication beads into upgrading willpower betterment astatine the disbursal of earthy damage. There's a batch of strategy present for players who privation to excavation into Fatal Frame 2’s intricate system.

There's a batch of strategy present for players who privation to excavation into Fatal Frame 2’s intricate system.“

This fantabulous combat loop revolves astir timing. You participate camera mode by holding the near trigger, framework the wraith with the close thumbstick, and slam the close trigger to activate the shutter. But your shots volition typically beryllium weaker unless you hold for it to telegraph an onslaught — you'll perceive the wraith moaning portion the surface flashes reddish — and past you deed the shutter for a Fatal Frame shot, which staggers the tone and deals monolithic damage. Nail 1 portion a wraith is already susceptible and you trigger Fatal Time, a model for rapid-fire photos that automatically burns done your basal Type-07 film. The full strategy punishes impatience and rewards the nervus to basal inactive portion thing horrible lunges astatine you, but it is slow. Deliberately so. Film reload times are long, enemies instrumentality a portion to spell down, and the bushed of shooting, exiting camera mode, backpedaling, and re-entering is methodical by plan — kinda similar jousting, but with a camera alternatively of a lance. When the ambiance is doing its job, which it usually is, the deliberateness feels meditative. Whether it stays that mode crossed a afloat run is 1 of the bigger questions this preview can't yet answer.

Through the Viewfinder

Three trouble modes are available: Story, Normal, and Hard (Battle). Each is meaningfully tuned, with harder settings expanding wraith harm portion rewarding much Photo Points for skilled shots. Those points provender into an point store wherever you tin acquisition healing items and equippable stat-boosting charms, creating a risk-reward standard that shifts alternatively than simply punishing the player. I played astir of the preview connected Normal earlier switching to Story aft Chapter Three. Even successful Story, enemies deed hard capable to support hostility — meaning these trouble modes sphere the fearfulness alternatively than trivialize it.

Speaking of customizing the experience, I previewed Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake connected a instrumentality equipped with a Ryzen 3900X, RTX 4070 Ti, and 32GB of RAM astatine 3440x1440p ultrawide with max settings. In emblematic PC gamer fashion, my archetypal escapade was the options paper itself, which deserves notation for its satisfying granularity. You tin set vibration strength separately for harm feedback, point searching, and adjacent however hard Mio’s bosom races during cutscenes. You tin fine-tune camera behaviour down to obstacle avoidance and rotation inertia; customize your graphical settings with precision; and adjacent alteration the Camera Obscura's viewfinder benignant betwixt a classical and modern look. If you tin ideate a setting, this remake astir apt has it. It besides ships with some English and Japanese audio, which is simply a invited interaction for a bid with specified heavy roots successful Japanese horror.

PC players expecting an unlocked framework complaint should enactment that it is capped astatine 60fps. Considering the attraction to item successful areas similar viewfinder styles and vibration settings, Fatal Frame 2's deficiency of broader accessibility features stands out. It already offers a heavy UI and subtitle scaling, customizable substance colors, named quality labels, and substance backgrounds — a coagulated foundation. However, the lack of surface speechmaking oregon colorblind modes is peculiarly striking for a crippled built astir photographing ghosts, wherever ocular feedback similar crosshair lock-ons, surface flashes, and colour inversions thrust the halfway loop. Screen scholar enactment for the extended menus, point descriptions, and collectible documents seems a earthy hold of the substance customization already successful place. Games similar The Last of Us Part 2 person shown that colorblind accessibility tin beryllium addressed done audiovisual indicators that don't trust connected colour alone, an attack that could enactment present without undermining the atmosphere.

Spirited Away

Fatal Frame 2’s engrossing communicative centers connected duplicate sisters Mio and Mayu, who stumble into Minakami Village — a spot that vanished from a mountainside connected the nighttime of a failed ritual. The colony was built implicit a gross to the underworld called the Hellish Abyss, and its residents performed a gruesome duplicate sacrifice to support it sealed. When the ritual failed, the colony was consumed by mist, and present it's afloat of restless spirits who privation to reenact the full happening utilizing you.

The communicative setup hooked maine immediately. Every country feels handcrafted to maximize unease — items clattering disconnected shelves successful adjacent hallways, rainfall pattering against rooftops portion ghosts stalk corridors, the distant wail of a wraith telling you precisely wherever it is and precisely wherefore you shouldn't beryllium there. The dependable plan is relentless. Everything is precisely mixed, which makes the leap scares onshore harder due to the fact that the baseline ambiance is already ratcheted tight. Reach retired to prime up an item, and a wraith whitethorn drawback your manus instead, draining your willpower until you frantically mash the A fastener to shingle it off. It's a tiny touch, but it means adjacent looting feels dangerous.

Each shade has a sanction and backstory you tin portion unneurotic done collectible documents and a tone database that catalogs each encounter: the drowned pistillate connected the bridge, the pistillate sealed successful a box, the tone successful the Osaka location inactive searching for her mislaid fellow Masumi. It goes heavy into the lore arsenic well: by digging into the richly elaborate colony for scraps of mislaid journals and different items near behind, I uncovered that Masumi was a folklorist's adjunct who vanished portion surveying a wood slated for a dam, lone for his woman Miyako to travel him into the mist and conscionable the aforesaid fate.

She's the tone I fought successful the Osaka house, and I loved playing done an full 30-minute broadside quest dedicated to demystifying her background. Throughout the campaign, you photograph the erstwhile residents’ spectral remnants and dilatory physique a representation of the calamity that consumed Minakami Village, giving Fatal Frame 2 a level of world-building that rewards curiosity without requiring it and gives each brushwood a furniture of melancholy underneath the fear.

Outside of combat, Fatal Frame 2 plays similar a classical Resident Evil game, and that's a circumstantial comparison.“

The preview physique besides featured the Kusabi, a massive, unkillable entity that patrols definite areas. When it shows up, you can't combat it; you hide. It drains your willpower connected contact, forces your surface into achromatic and white, and disables the Camera Obscura entirely. One extended series successful the Kurosawa mansion strips you of your flashlight portion the Kusabi hunts you done acheronian hallways, and it's the astir effectual fearfulness acceptable portion successful the preview. It's the benignant of series that makes you recognize however overmuch the Camera Obscura usually functions arsenic a information blanket.

What successful the Junji Ito?

Outside of combat, Fatal Frame 2 plays similar a classical Resident Evil game, and that's a circumstantial comparison. Players navigate interconnected rooms, find keys, lick puzzles to unlock caller areas, and occasionally observe that antecedently harmless rooms present incorporate threats. Save points tin beryllium blocked by enemies. The operation creates a loop of dread, relief, and caller dread that endurance fearfulness fans volition instantly recognize.

Puzzles are straightforward — 1 has you arranging dolls connected a temple altar based connected clues from a photograph — but they're woven into the biology storytelling successful ways that support them from feeling similar arbitrary roadblocks. Hidden collectibles see pairs of duplicate dolls that unlock items astatine the Photo Point speech store erstwhile photographed together. The antecedently mentioned Phantom Exposé strategy lets you recreate aged photographs recovered successful the situation to uncover hidden items. You lucifer the framing of an aged photograph to uncover thing that had vanished, giving genuine crushed to revisit earlier areas with caller eyes and a charged filter.

Additionally, your flashlight helps spot items but makes it easier for enemies to observe you, adding a stealth constituent that feeds straight into the tension. Some areas are amended to sneak done if you can’t spend to combat a wraith head-on, and moving distant from a combat to the nearest prevention constituent is usually an option. It’s large that you heal automatically astatine prevention points, and portion holding Mayu's manus besides regenerates health, she was separated from Mio for 2 afloat chapters during the preview, leaving maine reliant connected uncommon healing items and cautious play. Equippable charms supply tiny stat boosts — the Moonstone extends your dodge window, portion Mayu’s Charm increases wellness betterment erstwhile holding hands. They're tiny physique decisions that adhd texture without overcomplicating things.

Finally, Fatal Frame 2 Remake’s controls consciousness deliberately stiff — you dodge connected A, crouch connected B, and unfastened your inventory connected X. There’s besides immoderate inertia erstwhile entering and exiting the Camera Obscura’s viewfinder with the near trigger. This layout makes consciousness aft a while, but during the archetypal 2 chapters, I often fumbled for the close input with a wraith bearing down connected me. Depending connected your tolerance, that's either a power contented oregon a fearfulness feature.

Point and Shoot

It took astir 4 hours to wide the archetypal 4 chapters, partially owed to combat trouble and partially due to the fact that the satellite rewards exploration, with plentifulness of nooks and crannies to dip into portion scavenging for captious items and uncovering the elaborate extent of Minakami Village itself. The graphics and UI construe good to ultrawide, and fans volition find the rebuilt classical scenes affluent with detail. But immoderate questions bash stay astir however good the remainder of the run fares. The 60fps headdress is an annoying albeit forgivable ceiling; the deliberate combat pacing could turn tiresome implicit a afloat campaign. It’s besides excessively aboriginal to archer however faithfully the remake handles the original's aggregate endings, though Fatal Frame 2's past and the deft handling of its run truthful acold suggests greater communicative complexity ahead.

The Camera Obscura strategy remains unsocial successful endurance horror, the ambiance is heavy capable to consciousness physical, and the storytelling rewards the slow, cautious attraction this genre demands. If you loved the original, this is shaping up to beryllium a worthy reintroduction. If you've ne'er played Fatal Frame, this is the spot to commencement — the entries are mostly standalone, and this 1 was already considered the champion backmost successful 2003. Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake launches for PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series connected March 12, 2026.