Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water review - Too much water in a spooky way

Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is the good old Project Zero series modernized and upgraded for the current generation of systems, and it’s moist and damp, a bit too much.

Known as Fatal Frame in America, Maiden of Black Water originally came out for the Wii U system and got some favorable fan-fare among the horror game and series fans. It is the fifth entry in the long-running Project Zero/Fatal Frame series of videogames by Koei Tecmo.

With Halloween around the corner, Koei Tecmo is remastering the original Wii U game for all the available consoles in the market, and for the first time in the series, Steam.

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Packed with visual enhancements, control revamps, and photo mode added to the latest release, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is the definitive version of the 2015 game. It is a game series fans and newcomers would love to try.

Murky waters, wet atmosphere, and a story of tragedy in Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water

The story of Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water takes place in the fictional mountain locale Mt. Hikami in Japan. It is portrayed as a place of despair and sadness which was abandoned after a landslide years ago.

Mt. Hikami is known for several bizarre and unfortunate occurrences, and the water of the mountain is known to house spirits of tormented souls. Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is not the typical in-your-face horror game. Instead, the game relies a lot on creepiness and atmosphere to spook the players.

The game follows the story of three different protagonists, each with their own motif and goals, but all three of them are interconnected to each other, at-least story-wise.

Yuuri is a psychic, connected to the souls of many victims of Hikami. Miu comes to the mountain in search of her mother (which series fans might be able to remember). Hojo is an author in search of personal answers. All three characters are connected with the simple goal of investigating the mysterious disappearance of people, from different perspectives.

The environment is designed really well, and even though players should not be expecting any scenic views on Mt. Hikami, they certainly can expect some creepy, yet pretty areas. The levels are structured in a linear way, so do not expect to get out of the designated path too much. There is, however, a level of variety in the environments which changes the atmosphere in each location pretty well.

In terms of characters, all the main and supporting characters look pretty, just like any Koei Tecmo game, and are voiced in both English and Japanese. I played the majority of the game in Japanese but did make sure to switch both the tracks across chapters, and they are well-voiced and recorded. However, lip-syncing in both languages was off and looked bad.

The story can sometimes have pacing issues, and splitting the main story among three different characters can sometimes make it confusing to keep track of the overall story. Regardless, this time, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water follows the theme of “water” and uses the theme to its advantage pretty well.

Venture the mountain using a torch and your skill of psychic reading, and stay dry

At its core, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is a survival-horror adventure game, a pretty linear one in fact. The story is provided to players as chapters, and each chapter follows one of the three protagonists of the story. Once in the game, the backdrop of that particular chapter is provided in the form of text, and then the players get to control the characters.

Each chapter follows one of the three protagonists searching for answers in Mt. Hikami, going from one point to another. Players can follow the spirits by using the spirit reading, which works as a waypoint to where the player has to go. There is a lot of back-tracking in each chapter, so that might feel boring sometimes. However, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water does have a goal and motif for the back-tracking, so that makes up for it.

To make the players feel nervous and always on the edge, the movement feels very weighty. Compared to other third-person games where the movement is fast and quick, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water deliberately made the movement slow and weighty. The slow movement allows the players to take in the atmosphere of Mt. Hikami, and the movement itself add a lot of tension during ghost encounters.

Image via Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water

Speaking of controls, they have been revamped to work with conventional consoles. Koei Tecmo did a good job translating the gyro controls of the Wii U to the Dualshock 4, and it feels pretty neat. Players can also control the camera obscura using the gyro controls of Dualshock 4, but it is advisable to turn it off in the settings as it’s pretty annoying and is turned on by default.

Apart from this, characters are armed with only a flashlight and their trusty Camera Obscura, and are recommended to not get wet. With all the locations of the game mostly flooded, the game has a wetness meter. The higher the meter, the higher the damage you will take.

Even though it sounds exciting, it becomes very negligible once you start stocking up on items around the map, effectively removing the sense of dread.

To replenish the health and other components of the game, players have to manually select items from their inventory. Even though Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water adapted the third-person perspective of its peers, it is impressive how its design resembles traditional survival horror games of the PlayStation 2 era.

Say Cheese!

In most survival horror games, players are usually equipped with a weapon to defend themselves. Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water doesn’t have any of that.

Instead, all three protagonists are equipped with a camera called Camera Obscura. This camera allows the players to fend off the evil spirit trying to harm them, by clicking pictures at appropriate times. Using it is simple, as players need to equip the camera using the equip button and click photos at appropriate times to deal damage to the spirit.

Every successful picture taken will cause spirits to emit Spirit Fragments, and taking pictures of the ghost with the spirit fragment in the same frame unleashes something called ‘Fatal Frame’, a high-damage attack.

Fatal Frame can also be done by taking a picture of ghosts exactly at the moment when they are going to attack. Fatal Frame also allows the players to take pictures of the ghost continuously without taking the time to reload the films.

Speaking of films, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water has different types of films which players can find scattered in each chapter. They can even buy films using the points they have gathered by taking pictures of spirits and dealing damage to them.

Points can also be used to upgrade the camera by letting players equip stronger lenses, or increasing the reload times. One thing is for sure - the spirits are definitely not smiling while getting their pictures taken by Camera Obscura.

The Photo Mode

One of the newest additions to this release of the game is the photo mode. Just like every other game in the current year, the photo mode comes packed in with the usual standard options. Players can position the camera at their desired position, select filters, change the depth of field, add frame and also get the spirits in a location in the frame.

One thing that makes it stand out from the other photo modes is the ability to bring in various spirits and characters from past encounters in the game. What’s more, they can be placed wherever a player wants them to, allowing some pretty unique shots to be taken. Photo mode can be triggered in any area, at any time.

One of the pictures I took in photo mode (Image via Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water)

However, some basic features like adjusting the brightness, contrast, and vignettes are not there. The filters provided are also very barebones and some more variety would’ve been preferred. Regardless, the tools provided here allow for a lot of creativity, and it will be interesting to see what kind of unique pictures different players will be taking.

Performance

Project Zero: Maiden of Black Shrine was tested on a base PlayStation 4 Slim, and Koei Tecmo EU was kind enough to provide us with a review copy for the same.

For starters, the game runs at 1080p 30fps. It is quite surprising to see the game running on 30fps even on a base PlayStation 4. I was expecting at least 60fps, seeing that this is a remaster of the Wii U version. Regardless, there were no noticeable frame drops in the game during my 8-hour playthrough.

The lighting looks well done, however, some textures like the ground textures and some items in the environment look very last generation and low resolution. It is not a deal-breaker, but since the game is being marketed as a remaster, it was kind of disappointing. Mirror reflections, however, looked very jaggy.

Image via Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water Enter caption

The character models and the water looks pretty, so much so that the clothing of the character when drenched with water looks good.

In Conclusion

I love Project Zero, and Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly is probably one of my favorite video games of all time. Even though the series went through a lot of changes over the year, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water manages to deliver a solid story of grief, despair, and sadness in an effective way.

However, some aspects of the games, like the story pacing, can get awry sometimes, and the texture works could’ve been better. Regardless, this is a fine addition to the Project Zero universe, and with Koei Tecmo adapting regional pricing on Steam in India, it is certainly worth a buy and play.

PROJECT ZERO: MAIDEN OF BLACK WATER

Reviewed on: PlayStation 4 Slim (Review Code provided by Koei Tecmo Europe)

Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X

Developer: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD.

Publisher: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD.

Release: Oct. 28, 2021