Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly

Developer: Tecmo
Publisher: Tecmo
Released (UK): Apr '04
Released (US): Nov '03

May contain Spoilers: After playing Silent Hill 3 I had thoughts to try Silent Hill 1 but wasn't willing to buy a PSOne memory card for the pleasure so I thought back to a game I saw when reading on Silent Hill 4.

Another game came out around the same time as Silent Hill 4 and it was Project Zero II (Fatal Frame in the US). I remember reading the premise of the game in the Official Playstation Magazine, thinking of how different it was. I even thought it was a child’s game where you just took pictures but after seeing the cover, my opinion changed.

The game begins with just a black picture, a female voice is heard to say “Didn’t we always promise each other... that we will always be together? You then see a girl in a ditch, another girl looking on.
The scene then cuts to see Mio Amakura, our main character sat by a pool. Another girl comes behind her and they reminisce about the times they both spent there. The other girl is Mio’s twin, Mayu.
“Is your leg OK? Does it hurt?” Mio askers her twin, who’s leg is bandaged. Another cut scene is shown that shows a younger Mayu running after Mio who had run ahead of her. We find out how Mayu hurt her leg and realise that the girl in the ditch earlier was Mayu who had fallen after failing to keep up with her twin.
The scene switches again back to the pool and Mio...May however, is missing. She’s gone limping off chasing a red butterfly, Mio chases her.
Eventually you’re led to a shrine gate where a woman in a white Kimono is crying “I’m sorry”. Through the gates you find Mayu looking out to a village – The lost village we are sure to find out about later.
Then the game begins...

Mio is the character that you control and Mayu obediently follows her along but she will eventually become a pain to poor Mio.
The game starts you off with a sub-plot to solve before getting you into the main storyline and acts as a little tutorial in how the game works and how to go about the workings of the ghosts.
Our first clue is found on the path leading into the village, a woman’s bag has been dropped on the floor. Inside it we find a newspaper clipping telling of a geological surveyor, Misumi Makimura going missing after surveying the site for a dam. Then we find a follow up article stating the close of the missing person’s case, he’s been missing for ten days and finally there is a picture of a man and a woman, a couple.
The twins go further down the path and your first ghost appears, a woman walking into a house and you start to feel a bit of uneasiness now.

Once you’re in the house you start to get the feel of the game is going to work. The music is scarcely used and when it is used it’s very low in order for the creepy sound effects to come through – bangs, moans etc. When you walk through the door a ghost pops up through a trellis and it looks like the woman form the picture you found earlier and likely owner of the bag it was in.
Once you’re in the main part of the house a cut scene is shown where Mayu seems freaked out by something, shaking in the corner. Twins being Twins, Mio also feels what Mayu feels and when she touches her we see what happened to the missing surveyor’s girlfriend.
It turns out she came to find Misumi and found herself in this house where she thinks she sees him. However, he’s dead (obviously) and what she’s seen is his ghost who eventually kills her. I know that if this had happened to me I would have been right out of there but the exit door has now been sealed shut – we’re stuck now.

It’s Mio and Mayu’s job to figure out what happened to Misumi and why he killed his girlfriend but what can two young girls do? The Fatal Frame/Project Zero games are based around the use of the Camera Obscura which we find within the house. This Camera was invented by Dr. Kunihiko Aso and can see things invisible to the naked eye and has special exorcising abilities. As you proceed throughout the game you’ll come across doors that are blocked by a supernatural power, the camera obscura reveals clues as to how to get rid of these powers shutting the door. The main role of the camera is to get rid of those hostile ghosts that want you dead which brings us to the ghosts of the game.

Battles occur very often throughout the game but ghosts can be hard to beat or easy to beat depending on their part in the story. As already explained the first ghost we have to fight is Myako, Misumi’s bird. She doesn’t have a part in the main story of this game; therefore she doesn’t present much of a challenge. She’s just one of many ghosts with a separate mini story that comes around every so often to pester you. However, ghosts such as the Kusabi and the Mourners do play a big part and they are much, much harder...especially as the game goes on.
Various ghosts have different personalities and move in a different way. Some are fast and some are slow, some move in circles around Mio and some vanish and reappear somewhere else. One particular ghost crawls on the floor and attacks your feet.
Some ghosts are very memorable such as the Kusabi (below), an outside visitor sacrificed to appease the Hellish Abyss of All Gods Village when there were no twins available to complete the longer lasting Crimson Sacrifice which does the same job. In Crimson Butterfly the Kusabi is Seijiro Makabe, a folklorist who had visited the village for research at the time. He was the last Kusabi to be sacrificed before the crimson sacrifice of Sae and Yae Kurasawi (I’ll talk about them later). This Crimson Sacrifice failed and brought on the Repentance where the Kusabi broke through the abyss and slaughtered the town.
Other memorable ghosts for me included the Limbo Woman, a ghost with no arms who was killed by the Kusabi when the Repentance happened.


Sae Kurasawa is the main ghost in this game and is the Antagonist. I’ll talk about her briefly as to not ruin the whole game if you’re intending to play it. Sae and her twin sister Yae were the daughters of the ceremony master at the time of the repentance and were both due to perform the Crimson Sacrifice. The Crimson Sacrifice is performed by twins (shrine maidens for females, Altar Twins for boys). The older twin must kill the younger twin by strangling them whilst priests look on. The dead twin is then thrown into the Abyss to appease the spirit and the Remaining – the older twin stays in the Village to protect it.
The twins grew up with Altar Twins Itsuki and Mutsuki Tachibana and when they were 14, the boys were due to do the ritual where Itsuki killed Mutsuki but the ritual failed and Sae and Yae were forced to do the ritual one year later.

Seijiro Makabe and his companion Ryozo Munakata visited during this period and Ryozo took a liking to the twins and became friendly with them. The twins knew about the Kusabi ritual and were worried one of these men was to become the sacrifice so they helped them escape. Seijiro however, stayed and did the ritual whilst Ryoza went to plan for the twins escape.
Sae was very willing to complete the ritual and only went along with the escape for her sister. With Itsuki’s and Ryozo’s help, the twins escaped but Sae still wanting to do the ritual in order to save the village fell, on purpose hoping Yae would come back for her but she didn’t. Yae kept on running and left Sae to be caught by a mob of villagers (Mio also gets mobbed by these) and brought back home where she waited for Yae’s return. Seijiro had been sacrificed at this time to keep the bad spirits at bay until the twins did their turn. Itsuki had been imprisoned for helping Yae to escape.
Gradually Sae started to lose faith in her sister coming back an went to see Itsuki one last time but the final straw for Sae came when she found Itsuki dead, after committing suicide. She decided to do the ritual by herself and was hung off the last Tori Gate on the way to the Abyss opening where she was thrown.
The whole thing failed because the ritual was not performed correctly and the Abyss opened and a vengeful Sae emerged along with the Kusabi who slaughtered the whole town.
The arrival of Mio and Mayu shake things up as the ghosts of the town consider them to be the next sacrifice. Throughout the game you’ll hear someone shout “The twins that will become the sacrifice have returned” – freaky.
It’s Mio’s job to find out the story of the town and how to get out of there though it’s easier said than done because Mayu becomes possessed by Sae’s spirit who wants to complete the ritual for one last time.

The game is very good and the critics regard this as the best in the series. Though it’s not my favourite in the franchise it definitely provides a lot of scares and good atmosphere which keeps you on edge throughout.
Gamer.TV, the UK gaming magazine show did an experiment where they strapped people up to a machine which measured someone’s heartbeat and reflexes when playing a variety of games. People were told to play games such as Silent Hill, Doom and of course Project Zero – which won.
The series may not be considered the best Survival Horror game to fans (Resident Evil and Silent Hill share that prize) but it is the scariest no matter what people say. Those who say Silent Hill is the scariest haven’t played this game – Silent Hill is brilliant, amazing and fantastic but scary?
I was really surprised at how good this game was because I thought the premise sounded pathetic. I wasn’t prepared to sweat throughout the whole thing.

9/10

After playing this I decided to go hunt for the first in the series to see how it compared to its successor.

Is this the scariest of the series?
Is Sae the better Antagonist?
What did you think of the Twins?