Dance of the Dead.

I'm saved just into Night 2 - Demon Tag after Night 1 - The Strangling Ritual in Fatal Frame. Fatal Frame has you capturing ghosts via a special camera. It's the only way to deal with them. You can't attack them or effect them in any other way. The game has you controlling your character in the third person with stylized camera angles like those of the original Resident Evil titles. When you look through your camera's viewfinder, the game switches to a first person view. The game is composed entirely from realtime 3D graphics. There isn't a single instance of prerendering anywhere to be found. Even the game's cutscenes use the game engine. When controlling your character, your movement is slow at best. Even when using the run feature, she chugs along at a snail's pace. You can't run in the viewfinder mode. You can only creep along. Herein lies the problem. The ghosts can move, unencumbered by physical forms such as they are, they don't have to worry about going around whatever, they can just float right through it.  See, your camera can't defeat a ghost in one shot. You have to aim your viewfinder reticule and target a ghost. You need to keep them targeted. Targeting builds up spirit power. The more spirit power you have, the stronger the power of the picture will be, doing more damage to the ghost. The ghosts move all over the place, they dart around, they even warp. Lose the target and the spirit power fades. Come in contact with the ghost and all stored spirit power is lost as well as you taking damage. So you need to avoid the ghosts, while keeping them targeted long enough to build up spirit power to do the most damage possible, and then take their picture. Damage them enough, and the picture will capture them. It's a great idea. The problem is your character's speed compared to that of the ghosts. She's just so slow, and they're not. It creates situations that can be rather cheap. Especially with some of the ghosts that respawn just to keep you on your toes. They can spawn just about on top of you, and if you're in a confined space with nowhere to go, you can be screwed. This dancing with the dead would be so more enjoyable if they had given her a decent speed.  I'm not asking for an easy game. I'm asking for one that lets you have a fair chance in some instances. The other solution would have been removing the random nature of some of the ghosts. I think the speed fix would be the better solution. The game needs the randomness of some of the ghosts. The game allows for you to upgrade your camera, which should help alleviate some of this issue. Unless the ghosts become tougher at a rate which negates the upgrades. The basic function of the camera can be upgraded in three ways. Capture circle range increases the range in which the camera can capture the ghosts so you can capture them from further away. Increase maximum value will increase the maximum level of spirit power you can charge up for a single photo, creating a stronger attack. Increase spirit charge speed lessens the time needed to charge spirit power to maximum, speeding up your attack. The camera has bonus functions which can also be unlocked. The bonus functions use spirit stones which are found throughout the game in a limited supply so you have to hold off on using them willy-nilly. A couple of examples of bonus functions would be pressure and slow. Pressure pushes a ghost back. Slow lowers their movement speed. There are also different types of film, each with a different level of ghost stopping power. I'm the kind of guy who hordes ammo in survival horror games. I just never want to use it. So I make it tougher on myself than I probably need to. By the time I'm facing the final boss I'm too prepared. I'm spending my accumulated spirit points which are earned from capturing ghosts on unlocking the basic functions of the camera before moving on to the bonus functions. I am however saving the more powerful film. Old habits are hard to break. Hopefully upgrading the camera functions will help things along. I'm well past where I stopped originally and I'm not even that annoyed with the combat this time around. I believe my real world situation took its toll on playing a few of these titles the first time around. I just didn't have any tolerance or patience. I am enjoying the game this time around. The combat flaw, as I see it, isn't anywhere near the breaking point I felt it to be last time...

Next time I'll talk about the story of Fatal Frame.