Project Zero 5: Maiden of Black water review prt1
Hello after about 2 years of absence. I’m in fact not dead. Was just being preoccupied with life. Moved jobs, moved cities etc. But I’m back and lets stop blabbering about me and more about this game that I bought a Wii U for. And YES, SPOILERS (ALL OF THEM) Ahead because this game is already damn old and I’m only playing catch-up now!
This game has very pretty graphics (just like the previous games in the series.) The fact you get to hold the Wii U controller like a camera is quite nice. At least in my case I had no issues with the sensors being too difficult.
The lock-on function does make the battles a tad easier if you naturally have shaky hands for this kind of gadget though. Some how even though this type of control is supposed to mimic having to hold a real camera, sometimes I find myself missing the old controls (probably because I am one of those people that HAVE shaky hands).
Another thing they have added in this game is what I call the “cheat-guide” where when you press a button you see a white figure walking off in the distance guiding you as to where you’re supposed to go. I want to say this is really treating the players like retards but at the same time I get why they did it.
Project Zero 5 covers way more area than any of the previous games. In Project Zero 1 you’re in a mansion (which is big) but you really figure out the layout quite quickly after a while (hence why they had to introduce blocked doors etc to force the player take alternative routes or find certain objects to open up the path that were previously unblocked-cheap method me-thinks). In Project Zero 2 the village wasn’t that big, 90% of the houses had really simple small layout, the only two that stuck out to me was the Kurosawa House (final location hence its size but you run around it enough to know where everything is) and maybe the Tachibana House? Project Zero 3 is set in ONE mansion. It’s huge and has bits of Project Zero 1 and 2 locations attached to it later but the whole place is VERY easy to navigate in my opinion. Project Zero 4 is set on an island but most of the time you’re inside a building (Ok I admit I got lost a couple of times in the hospital because I was walking the wrong way apparently and didn’t trigger the ghost apparitions properly it seems) but a fairly big one I guess. But due to the location being a hospital, most hallways and rooms are pretty straight forward to find just because of the structural design. Project Zero 5 has multiple locations (more than the previous game) as it takes place on a mountain. About 70% areas are easy to navigate, but for some reason the shrines and the forest area in this game just kills me. I’ve never really relied on using maps in any of the previous games ever just because trying to read a floor map means I need to use an extra 20% of my brain power and I’ve always been able to muddle my way through the Project Zero games previously. I find myself always looking at the map in the forest area to see where I’m going because I literally go in circles otherwise (because the pathways are designed that way I get it) and don’t get me started on the shrine buildings with their multiple floors and what BS (shrines back then sure are loaded with them buildings better than what you’d get on Grand Designs). The Doll Shrine started it but it wasn’t as bad as the Ephemeral Shrine, whoever built those places have no sense of when to just..STOP BUILDING extra rooms and floors. TIP: When the bottom level is half flooded,it’s BAD! Basements are NEVER a good idea! The ghosts in specific areas respawn indefinitely even if you have defeated them before, hence if you are just wandering around aimlessly (like I was doing in the Ephemeral Shrine for ****ing ages) it’s a bad idea as you end up using all your films on petty normal ghosts. The small rooms and various obstructions in the rooms also makes it quite hard to dodge ghosts if you want to just run pas them.
Now we talk about the ghosts...heh. Most of them are generic drowning or hanging victims. I don’t know the suicide ghosts have against you (the ones that properly took their own life, not the ones that got owned by other malicious ghosts) because they did that to themselves but at least it’s semi entertaining to see how they passed (if you run fast enough to catch their disintegrating apparition after you defeat them with Camera Obscura). Only a few of them are memorable (number one contender in the image above) and most of the battles are heavily biased (mostly due to location) as the ghosts get to phase through walls and floors and everything else) because when the ghosts are not visible you can’t get them with the camera but when they do become visible it’s likely because they have launched an attack at you and you have about half a second to react to a ghost flying in your face at a slightly wrong angle where you were facing. FML right? This really becomes a problem in one specific chapter where you battle a teleport-friendly ghost in a living room surrounded by sofas and desks and book shelves. Did I mention you can’t leave the room to another more open area unless you defeat this miserable soggy spirit? I can take like 3 steps back before I’m stuck against something and the ghost is literally grazing past my camera lens and this is when she’s NOT attacking. Don’t get me started when she does lunge for you because there’s zero hope of dodging and catching her in the camera in time. DOUBLE FML.
Thus I’d like to end part 1 of my rant-review of this game. I just noticed how long I’ve been typing and we shall do some analysis on the CHARACTERS (oh my lord) of this game and if you haven’t figured it out, this game is a game I love to hate. If I type enough sarcasm out of this we may even reach a part 3 where I talk about the good parts of the game but then OMG the extra Ayane content...












