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Fatal Frame has a LOT of ghosts. In fact, the latter day installments have a metric OG XBox load of ghosts to fill out cannon fodder. But there are a few types of ghosts that kinda categorize themselves in groups, with some types that appear in nearly all the games. SO I thought I'd try to find at least one per game that qualifies for these groupings.
And what better type to start with than with a group of GREAT ghosts that all of us totally enjoy seeing in every horror game: the doll type ghosts! (I know Choco LOOOOOOVES doll ghosts XD). Now I know not every game has ghosts that are dolls but we can makes some criteria and then I can ignore it when I want because its my article and I can do that 8D. But we'll make a baseline for some and I'll try conforming to each with reasonings, battle tactics, history/lore, and things I love about them.
So let's start with some vague criteria. For this group, the ghost should either 1) actually be a doll, or have doll-like qualities like ball-joints or bodies made of things like wood, porcelain, or artificial material, or 2) incorporate a doll into their moveset or design philosophy. And that's about it. I'll enter honorable mentions for those who don't quite fit the above criteria, but for the most part I'll try to stick with it.
ALSO ALSO, there will be major spoilers for every mainline and side game (well, just Spirit Camera), so be warned if you haven't played certain games.
Fatal Frame 1
Right off the bat.....uh....we don't have doll ghosts 8D;;;; So we're starting off nice and strong! But let's talk about some dolls in the game, which do make up a few key puzzles and rooms. So to that end, our first honorable mention is Crawling Girl, since she appears in the aptly appropriate Doll Room of Himuro Mansion. Dragged by Long Arms into a drawer/wall in the room while playing Demon Tag with Mikoto and friends, Crawling Girl presumably died, and haunts this room almost exclusively (a vanishing ghost appears nearby outside in the cherry atrium).
Crawling Girl achieves new levels of flatness because of her death for some reason, and perhaps may have been crushed to the point that she can only crawl around, which makes the fight in this room a little challenging. The nice thing about the first Fatal Frame game is that taking a photo very briefly stunlocks most ghosts, so if you struggle, try to snap a good pic and reposition yourself by walking backwards. Always keep her in front and you should be fine. Her teleports aren't super annoying so as long as you utilize the headphones or pay close attention to sound and the filament, she shouldn't be too bad.
I don't mind her fight, its not too bad though if she appears in a later chapter, in the doll room, the floor won't have a hole to deal with. She has a VERY tough vanishing ghost to snap outside as she crawls from underthe deck, but other than that, she's a good ghost. to fight, and isn't as mutilated as the Well Girl or Clock Boy.
A side note regarding the Doll Room is that is has the Kagome Kagome dolls which does play into the Demon Tag game, (and its one of my favorite puzzles in the series) and so in a VERY roundabout way, Crawling Girl is my doll pick for the game. Also, it's not the only time you see doll festival dolls or doll set up since 2 has a Hina matsuri set up as well.
Fatal Frame 2
The first of the games that have a doll enemy and it comes in twos! Kinda. Twin Doll attacks with her sister Akane Kiryu. You first encounter them as a pair in chapter 6, chasing them down until you encounter them in a narrow hallway where they can pincer attack you. The doll can hurt you but doesn't get damaged (you despawn her when you take her picture properly); the only way to beat them is to take pictures of the twin girl instead. It's a very creepy and intimidating fight and they kinda stay that way for every encounter of them. You normally encounter them in narrow spots, and you have to shoot the right girl or else get tapped on your backside by the correct twin.
The doll was built as a replacement for her sister after their Crimson Sacrifice by their father Yoshitatsu, and while Akane initially recovered, the doll gained sentience as an evil spirit and possessed Akane. When he realized too late what he had done, and after receiving a vision of his dead daughter telling him to kill the doll, he set out to try destroying it. However, the doll was clever enough to keep him from operating the underground passage he needed to the Abyss to destroy it, and influence Akane to murder him. This led to the downfall of the Kiryu family and is one of the more tragic twins' fates since the Kiryu twins were much younger than the usual age for them to perform the ritual.
The best way to beat them quickly is to go into camera mode, and approach the twin that's advancing on them. If the ghost drops her head and bobs unnaturally like a doll, you have the wrong twin. She can't attack you if you want into her, as she disappears for them to respawn and try again. Akane will lift her head and open her mouth, and can attack, so you have a narrow but also generous tell and window to take her picture. A late game encounter near the end will spawn both so you have to take your chances, but it's not as bad as long as you have room to keep any eye on each twin and be able to walk into the doll.
I LOVE and dread the twin doll because most of the time, they're a time sink but you can reasonably not die, provided you have room and keep aware of surroundings. In narrow places, they can spawn in walls and that's big negative buenos. But as the first doll ghost in the series, she leaves a great impression. And for the most part, she has very predictable movements. That won't be the case for later doll ghosts, unfortunately. >>
Fatal Frame 3
Another game that lacks doll ghosts but we do have dolls in general. If we take into account that Miku's doll's hair grows without explaination, I can count her, right? XD
To be perfectly fair, the growing hair does coincide with the ghostly happenings that start in Rei's house and slowly gain intensity as the game goes on. It's one of the things that Miku brought with her when she moved in with Yuu and Rei, so maybe it was always haunted but from the outset, it starts with short hair, and I can't imagine nobody making mention of its hair growing if it did before XD. Its presumably based on the Japanese doll Okiku, whose hair grows, allegedly human hair at that.
Other dolls in the game are the skewered dolls that are impaled and prayed over by the Handmaidens in Kuze shrine. They would be erected in different places to symbolize the sorrows or pain of pilgrims that gave their pains to the Tattooed Priestess or were made for the shrine carpenters that gave their lives to the shine during the Unleashing. The impaled dolls in the Doll Altars were pacified by the Handmaidens in each of their altars, as they sang and hammered them into the walls. The sheer number in each altar shows the long legacy of the Kuze shine and make for quite a memorable fight when you do fight some Handmaidens in their rooms.
Probaly the most chilling diary of the game is from Minamo, who wants "to impale a real priestess soon" after fantasizing about the pain of being impaled. Though to be fair, she does get a taste of that in the end....
Fatal Frame 4
Back to games with some doll ghosts and this one has a whopping 2. The first on our list is Watashi, or "Me", who is the life-sized doll that Kageri Sendo pushes around in a red wheelchair. The sight is quite striking and creepy, with her decidedly goth attire and languid speech until you try to touch the doll in chapter 4, and then the intensity Kageri approaches you is pretty creepy. Like the Kiryu fight, you normally encounter them together, however there is one chapter where you fight Watashi solo, and in every instance, she isn't exactly easy. She can't be knocked back or stunlocked without special lenses like slow, and approaches you in halting, wobbling steps pretty aggressively, which is a problem when fighting her and Kageri, as well as in her solo fight in Kageri's room, which has a massive coffin in the middle of the room that blocks walking backwards if you're not careful.
She's a doll based on Kageri Sendo's sister, whom took her own life preumably because of her sister's obsession. Its a kind of different sisterly obsession from Mio and Mayu where both sisters depend on one another, while Kaoru, Kageri's sister, was resistant to her sister. To deal with her loss as well as her onset of Moonlight Syndrome, Kageri takes care of the doll as if it was her sister, sleeping in a room full of coffins, and doting on it. Like Azami, she's a replacement for a dead twin, yet the execution has a much different vibe.
Watashi's movement patterns are erratic and quick, which makes things difficult with her, so my go to tactic in any encounter with her is to stunlock her with the slow lens and take shutter chances to whittle her down. FF4's slow lens is pretty much my one and only lens to slow down ghosts and with its nearly 360 radius, it makes a lot of ghosts quite trivial. Except in the Watashi and Kageri fight since they teleport EVERYWHERE and Watashi will respawn after taking her out until you take care of Kageri. She's not my favorite to fight, but one of my favorites for style and design. The peeling paint on her face is so cool looking. She isn't the most erratic of the dolls, though so she's got that....but she is pretty close.
Our second doll is Miya, which is of course a massive part of the story, but we first see her as the mysterious Girl in Black that entices Misaki to return to the island to find her lost memories. She's usually leading her around and beckoning her to remember her (often at the detriment of finding Madoka XD;;;). Her face is very familiar, and its not until we get to the end of Misaki's story (chapter 8), that we see why. In one big twist, we find out that Miya is actually Misaki's beloved doll, a gift from Sakuya, the main antagonist spirit of the game. The girl Misaki was following through Rougetsu Isle was really Sakuya in Miya's form.
As they both suffered from Moonlight Syndrome, Sakuya and Misaki found a connection and resonated with one another through their incredibly strong 6th sense. Some patients of the disease use dolls to help keep their sense of self and Sakuya was one of them, and her gift of one to Misaki also help stabilize her, even after she could no longer see her friend. Since her name is a combination of Misaki and Sakuya (Mi-Ya), it makes sense that she would appear as the doll to ease Misaki into her memories. The doll had remained in the bottom of the ritual hall all these years as she beckoned her to come back, and it actually stays there after Misaki collapses. We don't know her fate until the photograph ending of the game, where Madoka's spirit guides Misaki to the exit of the underground caves to watch all the spirits cross over, but she leaves Miya behind, which signifies her leaving her past behind and finally choosing Madoka over her and Sakuya. Its a sad ending yet I think also very fitting for her story.
But dang, it is a little cold XD Still, I'd like to think it made Madoka at peace and satisfied after her tumultuous relationship with Misaki.
Honorable mention to the Hozuki dolls in the doll sidequest. Man, was that a fun game long quest XD. There's 80 of them and they're in really concealed places in many places of the game. Its worth getting all of them because outfits and we all know how much we like fashion in this house XD
Fatal Frame 5
We got a couple doll ghosts and a ghost associated with dolls so we're sitting pretty in the doll section. Maybe I should have started with blind ghosts, lmao....
The 2 doll ghosts we encounter are in the Shrine of Dolls, and will hang out the first time you enter there, jump scaring you randomly. Shion is the one in red and black, and Shiranui is in black with a yellow obi. They move pretty slow and take one shot to take out but sometimes you really don't see them coming. Their main big encounter will be when summoned by Shiragiku, and can attack at different angles to ambush you during fights with her. Shiragiku's appearance in her 2 boss fights aren't very easy, since she can attack with friends and it takes a while for her to directly attack you, but I suppose stunning her with slow or stop and then chipping at her works, though with Ren's multishot, it also is effective (though he eats a crap ton of film).
The 2 dolls aren't really in the game much outside of fights with Shiragiku, and her fights are also very few and far between. Still she's a huge part of Ren's story so her honorable mention is more than honorable. XD While Shion and Shiranui don't appear very often in the Shrine of Dolls after the first time you get there, they left a huge impression on me since their little jumpscares by hiding in your blind spots are my favorite part of them. Also it is a shame they don't appear often because their designs are so cool.
Shiragiku is also a favorite since her story is sad and tragic as well, but what leaves the most impression on me about her is that she gets 2 dedicated endings with Ren, which gives him a whopping total of 4 endings (everyone else in 5 gets 2), AND he also survives to the end which is of itself is rare AF since most male characters in Fatal Frame DIE. XD
Go Ren. Not that this is a Ren appreciation article, but we appreciate Ren in this house as well.
Spirit Camera
What, you thought we were done? Heck no, SC is one of my absolute favorite games in the series and it has a doll ghost so we are definitely covering it. One of the least populated games, SC actually does have a number of ghosts that I could include on lists like this (masked ghosts? Dismembered ghosts? Blind--dunno about that one >>), and this one is actually one of the harder ghosts based on movements.
Shiori is a student teacher who got sucked into the diary by playing the music sheet in the diary, and was turned into a doll by the antagonist ghost of the game. Its never explained why Shiori looks just like the abandoned doll of the manor Maya lived in, but she did and that's why she might have also been called in. After multiple bouts of sleep paralysis and dreams, she's spirited away by Dark Maya, and her brother endes up getting caught up in the curse; he's the first ghost you meet in the game, and also appears in the side story webnovel for the website.
She hides in dark places, and you need a special lens to see into the darkness to make her tangible and attackable. And this is where Shiori goes from cool ghost to actually kind of the most difficult doll ghost of the series. More erratic than Watashi and quicker, Shiori also has moves that make her pivot and sway violently in opposite directions, which makes tracking her absurdly difficult, ESPECIALLY on hard mode where she can fake out sways with spinning turns and crawling, as well as delay her movements to trick you. By far she had been one of the most difficult ghosts to fight, despite the fact that the motion control on the 3DS is actually one of the most responsive of the series. SC isn't hard by any stretch but Shiori on hard, and the final bosses on hard can be one of the hardest grinds in the entire franchse. And for that I'm grateful because SC really is a hidden gem.
In short, I love and hate Shiori, but there are times she had been harder than some final bosses on harder difficulties.
On retrospect, I think I should have leadf off with blind ghosts but doll ghosts just hit different, you know? Children's toys that become antagonists are one of my favorite horror game tropes, and dolls especially. For someone who sleeps with tons of plushies, you'd think I'd be more freaked out, but I just aren't XD. Except Chuckie, cuz fuck that guy. He's creepy af.
I think next group article might be blind ghosts unless I decide on a different grouping. I could talk about these games til the cows come home. XD
--Dio (10/21/24)
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