Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake is easily one of the most terrifying horror games on the market. The Camera Obscura remains one of the coolest combat systems in gaming, but the movement and combat pacing still feel weirdly stuck in the early 2000s.
Platforms – PC (Reviewed), Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5 (Reviewed)
Review copy given by publisher
There’s a moment early on in the Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake where you reach out for an item sitting on a shelf in a pitch-black, abandoned house. Suddenly, a pair of ghostly hands shoots out of the dark, gripping your wrist. Your heart jumps as you frantically mash the prompt to shake yourself free.
You feel the dread, but your twin sister is still lost somewhere in the dark ahead of you, so you trudge forward into the depths of Minakami Village.
That specific blend of fear and obligation is what this game captures better than almost any other game in the survival horror genre. More than twenty years after the PS2 original, Team Ninja has rebuilt this respected classic from the ground up. The result is a gorgeous, terrifying, yet occasionally frustrating 10 to 15 hour experience.
Team Ninja knew not to mess with the narrative. You play as Mio Amakura, who chases a wandering Mayu and a mysterious crimson butterfly right into a cursed, vanished settlement stuck in perpetual night. The village is overrun by spirits tied to an ancient, failed ritual known as the Crimson Sacrifice.
Instead of dumping lore via massive cutscenes, the game drips exposition through scattered journals, fleeting flashbacks, and violent run-ins with the undead. You know something awful involving twins happened here, and you know Mayu is acting weird, but the game holds back the full truth until the right moment.
The shift from the original fixed camera angles to a modern, over-the-shoulder 3rd person perspective is a massive improvement. I absolutely despise fixed cameras, so this change was incredibly welcome. It makes the decrepit village feel incredibly claustrophobic, and you get an uncomfortably clear, high-definition look at the ghosts lunging at you.
This up-close detail easily makes up for the fact that a lot of the environmental textures look completely flat.
To help navigate this new perspective, they’ve added a minimap and objective markers. However, the best immersion upgrade is the new hand-holding mechanic. Reaching out to guide Mayu through a dark hallway forces you to slow down, and it gets incredibly creepy when you start to doubt if the person holding your hand is even your sister anymore.
Combat still revolves entirely around the iconic Camera Obscura, operating on a brilliant risk-reward system: the closer the ghost and the better your timing, the more damage you do. Wait until the exact second a spirit lunges at your face, and you trigger a massive damage “Fatal Frame” shot.