Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse Preview

Today I am previewing Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (AKA Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse) is the fourth entry in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series and was developed by Tecmo. This title was originally released on the Nintendo Wii in 2008 in Japan and is now remastered and published by Koei Tecmo to be released worldwide on all modern consoles and PC on the 9th of March in 2023. The game takes place on Rougetsu Island and tells of a group of five girls, held captive here for reasons unknown. After being rescued, the surviving three girls are all suffering from amnesia and don’t remember the full events that occurred on that island; they decide to return to find the truth.

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse starts with a prelude called Blossoming that shows Matoka and Misaki arriving at Rougetsu Island and entering the manor where they were held captive. Walking through the dusty and abandoned building, Madoka suddenly has visions that look like an old black-and-white film. The group of young girls were being held against their will, bound, and forced to wear ceremonial masks. Suddenly the vision disappears and along with it, Misaki.

You take on the role of Madoka trying to explore the house and to find where Misak went. Here you learn the controls of the game, like how to walk, strafe, and run. Though “run” is a generous description for the power walking that she is doing. Maybe since the character is wearing high-heeled shoes she can’t run, but seriously if you were going to go exploring in a place like this, why wouldn’t you wear sensible shoes you can run in? She sees what she thinks is Misaki and follows her through this place as spirits and entities appear. You come across a journal that Professor Aso has left telling about the special powers his camera obscura has. He claims that he can capture forms that are invisible to the normal person, these are the souls of the dead. When you take a photograph of them, it is like performing an exorcism sealing the wraith away. Soon after acquiring the camera, Madoka is overwhelmed by supernatural forces and we start the main game.

You then begin playing as Ruka Minazuki has come to Rogetsu Isle, searching for her two missing friends. They disappeared without a trace and she hopes to find some answers and save them from this place. Playing as Ruka is exactly the same as when you played as Madoka, though there is a new feature called Snap Mode that allows you to take a picture of interesting locations and lets you adjust your lens, and reposition everything in the photo. This is where some big bugs occurred.

I was playing with a controller as the developer had warned that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse currently couldn't be played full screen, instead it has a max resolution of 1280 x 720 and that mouse controls were not currently working, but these issues were being addressed before launch. You could use the controller for everything except for taking the actual picture, the game tells you that you need to hit F12 for the picture. If you are playing on the PC and on Steam, you know that F12 is used to take a screen capture, but then it doesn’t trigger the photo taking in the game. There were other bugs in the game, especially with areas looking blocky, some spots look like dark rectangles and cover parts of the character then right beside it, the brightness is turned up for no reason. This wasn’t game-breaking but was kind of annoying when the screen is covered in blocks that shouldn’t be there.

The story for Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was getting very interesting from what I played and I’m looking forward to finding out more about what happened to these girls and what happened to Madoka and Misaki. I’m hoping that the game is patched to fix the issues with the mouse and controller on the PC so players are able to perform all the required modes. If you are a fan of creepy games with crazy stories and photography, you will like this. But I would definitely hold off until the game is patched and these bugs are fixed!