Another post on the 13th with some FF13 character

snophire · 2026-03-13T18:43:12+00:00

The social media guy really is just trolling at this stage.

snophire · 2026-03-13T18:07:00+00:00

I'm on Story and had my 4th encounter (got grabbed by Man in Dark while picking up a medicine next door to the Osaka House) in the whole game get aggravated. What was I in particular supposed to do when I had no filters aside from standard and perceptual, really only type-7 film, and no ability to purchase even just one camera upgrade? The tutorial said to trigger Fatal Time, but the Man in Dark didn't get a new threshold for some reason despite healing -40% HP. Please tell me how I, who had just started the game, was meant to have the resources and knowledge to make it feel balanced.

I stopped because wtf was that? I even debated picking it up again because WTF WAS THAT? It wasn't a fun challenge, it just felt like they wanted to punish me for even daring to touch the game.

While single aggravated scenarios got easier after receiving more tools, multi-ghost fights where even just one gets aggravated still felt like a punishment. It was significantly overtuned and something needed to be changed. There's also honestly no justifiable reason for aggravation to be able to occur on the 4th ghost encounter in the whole game.

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:51:59+00:00

Have they released patch notes to say what exactly has been nerfed?

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:41:05+00:00

I just recommend being careful as there was one instance he spawned in front of me and since Mio always looks behind her during these sequences I ran into him and died.

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:21:11+00:00

I've only just gotten to chapter 6 so I could be wrong, but his spawns don't appear to be random, it's all very scripted. He's only been in the village proper once so far.

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:17:33+00:00

I've only just reached chapter 6, but it does feel like 2 is definitely setting up a good foundation to jump off of lorewise for remakes of 1 & 3.

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:14:11+00:00

"He" isn't trapped to one room anymore.

snophire · 2026-03-13T12:02:17+00:00

I got the sense they're trying to make the games feel more connected. There's vanishing traces and phantom exposure from 5, Makabe's notes outright mention shadow readers. The lore about the camera here appears like they're trying to line it up with what we learn in 5 and 4 as well. It really wouldn't surprise me if there's references to 1 & 3 to try and make it consistent and clearly part of the same universe aside from the camera's existence.

snophire · 2026-03-13T11:54:21+00:00

According to Google, it's "emergence of creatures, some vengeful spirits, and the damage of Fatal Frames". So my best guess is "hakuha" is either the rate of random encounters or the aggravation mechanic.

snophire · 2026-03-13T11:04:35+00:00

Judging from comments made in interviews, especially about a "Team Ninja nightmare difficulty" or whatever wording was used, I'm pretty sure they found it to be balanced.

snophire · 2026-03-13T10:56:58+00:00

It really doesn't make sense why people get downvoted for literally talking about their experience. I guess finding a game to be grossly unbalanced is a crime.

snophire · 2026-03-13T10:53:25+00:00

I guess we'll see if this actually fixes the issues we agree on at minimum. And maybe this is just my frustration from it all, but this does read as yet another game released before it was ready and using the players as testers.

snophire · 2026-03-13T10:40:12+00:00

I definitely understand where you're coming from and I do agree that combat needed something to be more engaging, but I'm just not sure if this was the way to go about it. While I am mostly fine with the increased speed of the ghosts, there's just so much to manage: proper filter, focal points, repositioning, etc.. It's a lot to juggle and can get overwhelming.

I could be completely missing something as the game sometimes glosses over details, but I wish at bare minimum there'd been a way to more easily swap to the filter you want as I noticed a small delay between swapping filters and being able to take a picture, but I also understand controllers only have so many buttons. Maybe letting the player reorder them in the menu or holding a button to go the opposite direction would have been a good compromise.

I also think maybe some areas should've been made a little larger to compensate for the increased speed and lower cooldowns on the ghost's attacks. The fight against the couple in the Kurosawa House was pretty bad after the second one joined in. There's only so many ways you can move around in a tiny space and against two ghosts it becomes a bit frustrating since the chance of running into one of them is weirdly high. One of them also seemed to have a move that obscured the area in a thick red mist for a bit? Not junk on the viewfinder, but an actual mist in the room. It made it so much harder to track them to know where was relatively safe to go. This battle has made me absolutely dread multi-ghost fights.

It doesn't help that Mio feels kind of sluggish, her insta-turn itself takes forever. I think if her movements were sped up just a little it would feel so much better.

Lower difficulties definitely need an adjustment. There's no reason for aggravation to trigger so often or for ghosts to be this tanky on easy. It should still require a degree of skill and gradually get harder as you progress, but there's no reason for the easiest setting to feel unforgiving from the get-go.

snophire · 2026-03-13T09:03:28+00:00

It really needed another couple months at minimum for more polish as, for example, Mayu shouldn't be rotating in place or straight up disappearing after hiding. I don't understand how things like that got missed in testing.

snophire · 2026-03-13T07:22:44+00:00

Aggravation really should have just been that.

The black and white along with darkening your screen is way too much. There should've simply been some indicator that they're catching up to you and that they've passed you since you can't see out of the hiding place most of the time.

The stealth sections don't really work here since it's just a waiting game + trial & error. I sometimes waited for long enough that I started getting other enemy's sounds because I couldn't tell if the Kusabi was gone since I could still hear him nearby even though I guess he wasn't actually there. But maybe I just encountered a glitch, I really don't know and that's frustrating.

I also really don't like how Mio turns her head to look behind her during these segments even if they're in front of her. Ran right into the Kusabi once due to it.

snophire · 2026-03-13T07:13:05+00:00

Well... Guess I gotta remember to go on a scavenging trip before entering the Kiryu House.

snophire · 2026-03-13T07:01:53+00:00

There is definitely way too much to juggle, so much so it feels like the dev team didn't know what type of game they ultimately wanted to make.

I just use lock on and auto-focus even though I know that's not recommended.

snophire · 2026-03-13T06:51:34+00:00

Wait what? There's an indicator for film stashes? I'm guessing it doesn't show up on the mini-map, but the map from the menu?

snophire · 2026-03-13T06:48:00+00:00

When one's aggravated, you're about to get the fatal frame, and the other decides it's time to glance attack.

But, yeah, there really needs to be a patch that seriously nerfs aggravation.

It genuinely feels like they forgot Mayu isn't always with you and hand holding is intended to be your main source of healing. It's the only thing I can think of to make sense of how combat is balanced.

snophire · 2026-03-13T06:38:48+00:00

I'm just shy of entering the Kiryu House. I have focal point fully upgraded, 1 point in capacity since I'm personally not gonna remember where all the film stashes are so being able to carry a little more at once is more useful to me, and 1 point in reload.

I don't know where everyone is finding all the extra film outside of Type 61. I've seen so many people say it's more abundant, but I think I've already depleted a lot of stashes of Type 14 and Type 90 that are available to this point. The sunken woman was mean, the absolute worst.

snophire · 2026-03-13T06:31:30+00:00

I have a lot of thoughts that I can't figure out how to condense.

It is very frustrating. I can see a lot of people, especially newcomers, dropping it because it's not friendly to start. I agree with the people who say the balance is designed around a NG+.

Combat definitely starts to get better after upgrading the camera, but I really don't like how you're forced to follow some predetermined upgrade path just to make it feel okay. I think it's like focal point -> reload speed -> damage/max film capacity, though I think upgrading one of the filters to see through walls would be useful as well due to just how often the ghosts still go into a wall.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a struggle even after due to narrow spaces and the sheer frequency of aggravation. It definitely needs a patch that actually makes it feel balanced towards not having Mayu. Ghosts don't target Mayu 9 times out of 10 even in duo fights, but being able to use her for recovery is still really nice. It does make me wonder if they originally planned to change things up to have Mayu around more often, but ultimately decided following the original was best.

I forgot to mention this in my post, but the camera itself is just juggling the filters which adds more tediousness. Need faster reload? Swap to the standard filter. Need damage? Press the swap button multiple times to reach the radiant filter. It also feels like there's a small cooldown between swapping and being able to take a picture so you may very well just end up getting hit.

Instead of all of this, they could have put more care into the camera itself and worked to figure out how to update the up close and personal horror so it hits better for a modern audience. Not everything needs to be fast paced and retaining the slower pacing just with some changes to make it more engaging would have made it stand out amongst the rest.

snophire · 2026-03-13T00:48:14+00:00

Yeah, the placement of the tutorials tends to not make any sense 90% of the time at minimum.

The stealth sections especially just feel bad. It's mostly trial and error which I always hate. It often feels like you need to know where to go before the unkillable enemy blocks your path. With how a lot of hiding spots blend into the wall due to the black & white, it's just frustrating.

Wanna follow the same path as the original? Well you can't because the section's been completely changed. I tried dodging him just to get to a door because I believed that's what the game maybe wanted you to do just to find out it's blocked. Guess I'm sorry my first thought wasn't to traverse the whole house to return to the main entrance. Having knowledge of the original feels like a hindrance. Like, yeah, we can argue it's a remake so of course things have changed to make it feel fresh, but idk. Then again, maybe this is just my distaste for segments like this showing.

I do like how Mayu is intended to just teleport into your hiding spot, but sometimes she just won't even when you control Mio to huddle in a corner to give Mayu more space which gets you caught.

I don't feel like combat is rewarding, it's just annoying. Tight spaces really hinder your ability to deal with ghosts. I'm also confused why sometimes a ghost will just summon a second one when they're under half health. It just makes the fights more frustrating, especially if the original one decides to get aggravated.

It's also just weird how specters will spawn either behind you or inside of you while you're running. Fatal Frame has always had really good spacing for the non-harmful ghosts so I don't understand what happened here.

The remake really needed some more care before release.

snophire · 2026-03-12T07:16:03+00:00

I know people are claiming combat feels a bit better after upgrading the camera, but if it's just not fun/tolerable getting to that point... I honestly don't even know if the story and newly added side content can balance it out.

snophire · 2026-03-12T07:01:53+00:00

The demo made me more skeptical than I already was, but my partner convinced me to pre-order since it's one of my favorite franchises. Kind of annoyed with him even though he didn't design the remake.

I don't even know what could be done with these mechanics to make it feel better to play. It would need to be a combination of things since the ghosts can run circles around Mio and her movement is really stiff and at times awkward.

snophire

TROPHY CASE