I finished Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly last Saturday night. In the interests of keeping this spoiler-free, I won't say much about the game's ending... except that it was horrifying.
You can definitely feel the ending coming on; your final walk takes you through an underground tunnel where you get jumped by high-level ghosts every couple feet. Then you have to confront the Kusabi himself, a spectre even more gigantic than the mega-corrupted Kirie of the first Fatal Frame. If you haven't finished the game yet, I wouldn't call the Kusabi's appearance a surprise. He's the massive nasty roaming in the Great Hall of Kurosawa House back in the middle of the game. When I met him back there, I ran.
I played through on Normal mode (got the "good" ending) and had quite a bit of film left. I would even guess that I defeated 80% of the game's ghosts on the cheap, infinite film. I'm sure this did nothing for my overall score and rating (E) since it made the fights last longer, but I felt like I was playing smart and saving the really powerful film for the end of the game. Apparantly I over-saved.
One very nice feature is that after you beat the game, that final cinema is selectable off the bonus menu. So you can watch the painful, affecting movie again and again and again. Brrrrr. Many game endings will move me to tears, but it's usually from a combined sense of accomplishment, the satisfied relief of success, and the farewall to characters whose destiny I personally controlled. (If you're not a gamer, try to imagine your favorite dramatic movie... but with your complete and total interaction.) Crimson Butterfly, however, shocks your very soul with loss. This emotion builds during the entire game, augmented by fear, cemented by hope of escape, and then it unravels in a beautiful and terrible finale.
Plus it features a kickass j-pop tune over the credit roll, "Chou" by Tsukiko Amano. It's subtitled when it plays in the game, and the lyrics are completely and creepily appropriate.
Burned on, Burned on,
The inerasable scars left by the palms of my hands.
Sever a rift in the red-stained clouds with my torn hands,
See, I can flutter better than you thought.
That, folks, is freaking cathartic. The song almost makes everything okay... until the brief epilogue. I immediately took to the internet to find the song, and found links to it on an excellent Fatal Frame fansite, Beyond the Camera's Lens. (You can buy the "Chou" CD single at gamemusic.com. Apple hasn't integrated j-pop or game soundtracks into iTunes yet, sadly.) Beyond the Camera's Lens is undergoing a site re-design at the moment, so some of the content is missing and/or hidden. Nevertheless, it is well worth a visit for both Fatal Frame fans and newbies. The timeline of events in both games is especially interesting, particularly the connections between the two storylines.
I sort of doubt I'll do a full game review of Crimson Butterfly. Structurally, it's so similar to the first game that my points would likely be redundant. The sequel loses something of its shock value if you've played the first one - yes, again there's more abandoned buildings and hideous ancient rituals and victimized girls and a camera that vaporizes ghosts with exorcismal film. But it makes up for that by providing a darker, deeper story... and the twins angle works to keep you mentally connected with the characters, since you play one twin and are constantly helping/searching for the other, weaker one. It's easy to empathize with that.
The biggest part of Fatal Frame 1 - Kirie's story - is a story of youth and love crossed with family and tradition. Kirie is a girl who fell in love against her family's wishes... and needs, as it turns out. Miku, your character, acts as more of an explorer, uncovering the secrets of Himuro Mansion while searching for her missing brother. In Fatal Frame 2, the lead characters are more deeply involved in the story... your twin, Mayu, tends to become possessed (or at least manipulated) by the ghosts of All God's Village, and you end up following her as their story is slowly revealed. It's clear from very early on that Mio and Mayu have some kind of connection to previous twins of the village, and that their fates are entwined with the mistakes of the past.
Boy, what a game. This is the one great strength of the PS2: fringe concepts that could only be made viable because the system is already so popular. How would you classify this one? Camera-Based Survival Horror? In racks with cookie-cutter shooters and barely-upgraded sports games, it's great to be able to pluck gems like this. Crimson Butterfly is exactly why I'm proud to be a gamer.
