Recent reviews by Angel ♡

a cute little hidden object game, bought the dlc to support the devs and their mission to help cats!

Like many, I wish there was a 'neutral' option for reviews, because I don't necessarily like or dislike this game. The best way to explain how I feel about this game is probably by mentioning I got 100% completion and achievements on the previous game (Mask of the Lunar Eclipse) and I still boot up the game to replay it. With Maiden of Black Water, I have very little motivation to try and get the last few 'completionist' achievements, such as getting S+ rank on all the drops just to get the last upgrades I'm missing, or even going back into drop 8 to get my last specter entry. (This is mainly because I love Ren as a character, but I hate his camera).

It's hard not to get hung up on the ultra clunky controls that were once designed for the Wii U and now just get frustrating to deal with on the regular XBOX 360 controller I've been using to play this game. I had very few issues with PZ4, even though it was originally released for the Wii and introduced the ghost hand mechanic that they then also added to the Wii version of PZ2. Now a lot of people hate this mechanic, but it's easy to avoid in those aforementioned games. In MOBW however, you have to cancel the entire animation, which is already slow as it is, and even then sometimes the cancellation doesn't register and you get grabbed anyway. Sometimes your hand is blocked by a branch and you can't even possibly see the ghost hand coming. Too many times I've been grabbed for bs reasons. And at least in PZ4 you only had the possibility of getting grabbed when picking up spirit stones (that are used to upgrade your camera unlike the points in other PZ games) - all files, medicine, lenses, film, etc are all instant pick ups, without having to sit through the slow animation with an 80% chance of a ghost hand ruining your life. I've never been so annoyed at the abundance of items, just because it's a pain to sit through the slow reaching animation every single time. The first time I got grabbed while trying to pick up a file, I really couldn't believe what just happened. The mechanic in itself is fine, but if it's a constant thing that's annoying rather than scary, it should probably be changed.

note: I do realize that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was released for Steam after MOBW so perhaps they took that feedback into consideration? I have no idea, I never played the original releases.

Perhaps I'm comparing the games too much, but after having a really good time playing PZ4 I was excited to play PZ5 and ultimately it was a pretty big letdown. I prefer the story over the previous game (which I liked btw, but it was very vague despite me reading every single file) and I thought I would like having the ability to select a drop/chapter manually without having to replay through the entire game like I did with 4. But in reality, being able to skip back and forth between chapters just ruins your immersion, it disrupts the flow of the story and as I mentioned before, Ren's chapters are especially bad to play through. Spoilers for his camera equipment I guess: His only 'lens' is one that allows him to take 4 pictures in quick succession, but it slows the reload time to an actual snail's pace and I found myself literally never using the lens because I was far more likely to find myself get grabbed due to having to wait 5 minutes for my film to reload. This lens can be upgraded to improve that, but I honestly did not see a difference.

Controls are clunky, I often found myself spamming the dodge button and still getting hit because ? I guess? the dodge animation was too long and didn't allow me to move fast enough? I don't know? Plus the dodge turned my character around most of the time and I would not realize I was running in the wrong direction until I checked my map, because a lot of hallways look the same and don't even get me started on navigating the forest. I had to pull up the map every few seconds to make sure I was still going in the right direction. Additionally, the button to use the equipped lens is the same as pulling up the character menu when you're not using your camera and yet it sometimes opened the menu when I was trying to use a lens during a fatal frame, which ultimately led to me taking damage from the ghost instead of taking a picture. That seemed like the biggest bugged feature to me, because you're not supposed to be able to open that menu while in viewfinder mode.

TLDR; I enjoyed the story, the graphics are good despite the unnecessary ... body physics. Ghost hand and overall controls suck, playing Ren is ruined by his camera. Game flow feels disjointed, even when you are playing the chapters in the right order. Some endings still hit me hard and made me cry, but I still didn't feel rewarded for playing through the entire game.

If you're looking to pick up your first Fatal Frame/Project Zero game on steam, I encourage you strongly to go for Mask of the Lunar Eclipse instead. It may be more expensive, but the gameplay is so much better, even if the characters' running speed is slower than a slight jog. It may feel a little more linear with some obvious hand holding for the player, but it beats running around like a headless chicken with no clue what to do (or even waiting to get attacked by a random ghost to try and farm points to get max rank on an episode zzzz)

Ren Hojo deserves a better camera.

best game to play while listening to rock music 10/10