From “Real Ghost Footage” compilations on YouTube to staged ectoplasmic photographs, our species has been fascinated with attempting to record the supernatural ever since it first became possible to do so. I mean, spirit photography was popularized almost immediately after the first camera was invented, so it makes sense that we’re still chasing spirits from behind the safety of a lens well into the new millennium. Naturally, this obsession with the paranormal would eventually find its way to video games, with one specific survival horror franchise turning haunted cameras into the basis for an interactive J-horror experience.
Often referred to as some of the scariest Survival Horror titles ever released, Fatal Frame I and II are almost universally recognized as classics even by those who’ve never played them. However, this love doesn’t extend to the third installment in Tecmo’s iconic series, with The Tormented often being overlooked when fans discuss the highlights of the franchise.
I only bring this up because I’ve recently finished replaying Fatal Frame III: The Tormented for the first time in years, and while I once agreed that it was the weakest game in the original trilogy, I’ve since come to the conclusion that the title is just as scary as its predecessors – only stumbling when it comes to a handful of structural issues as it attempts to explore the (literal) nightmarish horror of facing grief and your own mortality.
And in order to understand why this title has more up its ghostly sleeve than you might initially realize, I think it’s worth diving into the history of this digital black sheep. Work on The Tormented began before Crimson Butterfly was even completed, with series director Makoto Shibata wanting to provide the PS2 with a terrifyingly beautiful swansong before the release of the PS3. However, after two action-packed titles, Shibata and his team wanted to this proposed final entry to feel more mature and deliberately paced, telling a more emotional story and placing the characters in a realm completely controlled by the spirits of the dead.
Of course, you can only explore the same haunted mansions so many times before the experience gets stale, so the developers decided to take a more mature abstract approach when justifying this return to the world of kimono-clad haunts and gamified jump-scares. Taking inspiration from films like Ringu and even A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Tormented transforms the exploration of a liminal hellscape into a nightly ritual that its characters can’t escape.
The only game series where subjecting yourself to a jump-scare allows you to deal extra damage!
In the finished game, players take control of a trio of unlucky characters who find themselves forced to visit the haunted “Manor of Sleep” in their dreams after seeing visions of deceased loved ones. As the nights go on, Rei, Miku and Kei explore this horrific dreamscape and discover that this curse will soon consume them if they can’t solve the mystery of the Kuze Shrine and the strange rituals that created this rift between the world of the living and the dead.
On paper, this sounds like a worthy sequel to Tecmo’s previous endeavors, with the game retaining the solid gameplay loop of scrounging for key items while defending yourself with the iconic Camera Obscura, which allows you to fight these ghosts with the aid of supernatural film stock and a quick trigger finger. In fact, the moment-to-moment experience of playing through The Tormented is downright impeccable, as the title even goes so far as to make the combat more engaging by adding more equipment and enhanced ghost AI– and that’s not even mentioning the legitimately chilling narrative powering the experience.
The real problem here comes in the form of pacing. The episodic nature of the story means that our protagonists are constantly moving back and forth between the dream world and the real world, resulting in frustrating stops and starts just as things are starting to get interesting. This is made even more infuriating due to an overreliance on backtracking, with the player frequently being forced to embark on completely unnecessary resource-draining journeys just to get back to where they were at the end of the previous dream sequence.
And while I concede that backtracking is a long-standing staple of the survival horror genre, a game should at least let players know what exactly they’re looking for as they trek through labyrinthian environments – something that Fatal Frame III often refuses to do. From obtuse hints to unpredictable scripted moments that must be triggered in order to progress, it’s hard to truly enjoy this title without a proper guide explaining things that should already have been made clear by the developers.
That being said, a genuine desire to see this story through to the end does wonders for motivation as you’re forced to deal with these inconveniences. I mean, there’s something to be said about the epistolary terror of piecing together the manor’s sordid history as you conduct research in “real life” and read diary entries in your dreams, with players slowly uncovering the tragic identity of the ghosts you’ve been battling on a nightly basis. Honestly, there are plenty of genre treats to be found here if you’re willing to wade through some poor structuring.
These ghosts better not bother the cat!
For example, I absolutely love how the ghosts start to appear in the safety of your own home as the curse takes its toll, with these subtle scares harkening back to the domestic horror of Silent Hill 4 and reminding you that there is no escape. Sure, I think Tecmo could have done a bit more with the real life portion of the game, but there’s no denying that this was a great first step in making this threequel stand out from the rest of the series.
It’s also worth noting how much work went into crafting the title’s perfectly unsettling atmosphere, with the dingy textures and highly detailed models bringing the PS2’s hardware to its absolute limits as the game attempts to depict a wintery wasteland. In fact, the ruined mansion itself looks just real enough to feel architecturally sound while also operating on enough dream logic to make you constantly uneasy as you traverse its hallways – something that’s made even spookier due to the game’s consistently unnerving music and sound design.
I also really appreciate the interconnected nature of these environments, with pathways folding in on themselves and often revealing shortcuts in ways that are sure to help any potential speed-runners. The fact that the entirety of the map can technically be explored in an hour or two means that things start to feel repetitive by the end of the experience, but I know that the layout of this cursed mansion will remain burned into my brain for years to come, which I think is a sure sign of great level design.
Fatal Frame III isn’t as polished as its predecessors, suffering from a plethora of minor inconveniences and often feeling excessively player-unfriendly, but it’s certainly not a bad game. From its compelling plot to its masterful use of carefully orchestrated scares, this is still one of the best survival horror experiences of the 2000s even if it can’t quite compete with the likes of Crimson Butterfly. That’s why I’d argue that the Manor of Sleep is still worth revisiting nearly two decades later if you’re a fan of slow-burn J-horror and eerie ghost designs.
Just be sure to bring plenty of film along for the ride.
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