This review contains spoilers
Siren (or known as Forbidden Siren in the Europe/Asia markets) is a game developed by Japan Studio under the banner of Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 2 console. This game is a fascination to me, in fact it’s been a fascination to me I believe since I watched NitroRad’s video on it (link below) though the truth is I’ve known about it for a bit longer than that due to the fact I’m a weird Sony exclusive historian guy so I’ve always gone out of my way to collect these. However, I originally bought it on PS4 for ten dollars or so due to Nitro’s video on it; and that’s basically the console I played it on because the game is expensive (though I’d love to collect to own it in the future) due to the fact that the game didn’t exactly sell well due to it’s gameplay concepts, of which I will discuss here in a bit. This is due to the fact that the game’s director, Keiichiro Toyama (originally of Silent Hill 1 fame), wanted to create something unique with the series, something that hadn’t been done before. Though I can’t confirm this because writing this review is off the cuff, apparently he wanted this game to be a sort of puzzle that players would have to put together with other people, preferably on the internet. Again, I don't remember the source other than a few offhand bits of info I heard from Youtubists (which could be wrong), but this stuff is kind of rare in concept (the only other example I heard being like this was Kojima’s P.T.; which in a sudden twist of fate was a Silent Hill game but that’s a whole nother bag of shit to get into) and even more rare in the fact that this game came out in 2003, so not a lot of people we’re really doing that as far as I’m aware, at least not like it is now. Because of this, the game didn’t exactly sell well, garnering two more games (the second which only sold in Europe and Japan with no way to play other than region locked PS2 consoles from those versions or alternatively emulating via PC, as well as a “Reimagining” of the first game which I heard was not so great), as well as some movie adaptations in Japan and some manga comics. Truth be told, with how this game plays out, I’m not surprised that more people didn’t play this game, and whereas I’m disappointed and sad, I also can’t really fault anyone. It took me 10 hours to beat based on in game stats but it doesn’t count the constant retrying of deaths so it was more like 15 I would make a guess, which factors into the gameplay which is up next.
So here’s the basic concept of the gameplay: you start out as one of ten characters (which range from main character Kyoya Suda, professor Tamon Takeuchi, Priest Kei Makino, his twin brother Shiro Miyata, Risa Onda (a woman who is also looking for her twin sister, who was dating Shiro), teacher Reiko Takato, student/child Harumi Yomoda, celebrity/70s sitcom mom looking Naoko Mihama, old badass/poopy diaper grandpa (as a friend called him lol) Akira Shimura and finally Tomoko Maeda, a student who ran away from home after her parents read her diary. You get placed in a random section of a map and you’re often told to do an objective, and for the first couple of loops you can do those objectives while also completing secret secondary objectives (which are basically kept secret unless you’re following a guide, look to the bottom of the page) so other people in different missions down the line can do other objectives needed in order to pass. After you beat a bunch of these missions, you’ll unlock the “Link Navigator”, which helps you choose which missions you wanna do as well as tell you which missions haven’t gotten their secondary objectives done. However, sometimes these objectives don’t even pop up properly unless you do a bunch of other missions first and get the prerequisites done, even if you already unlocked certain missions previously. For example, there’s this mission where you play as Akira Shimura and you have to protect Tamon Takeuchi’s student, Yoriko Anno, as she’s attacked by Shibito (the main enemy fodder, they’re reanimated villagers who are kind of like zombies except a whole lot more human and can be armed with anything from shovels to big ass rifles) and one of the prerequisites for a later mission (spoiler) is to “Remember Akira”. To do that, you need to tell Yoriko to hide in an area around some houses, however if you hadn’t completed some other missions (which I have no clue what missions are needed and if they even tie into anything) she won’t find a picture of Akira lying on the ground which won’t be used later by Tamon to remember Akira after he’s been Shibitofied and plugs him with some bullets. Another example, you play as Kei Makino as you have to escort Tomoko through a cliffside village area, once you get to the end and split up you’re supposed to (as a secondary objective), go back to the nearby temple, sightjack (give me a second) and watch as a nearby Shibito puts in a code to unlock the temple door so you can grab something and leave; problem is the fucker doesn’t spawn until you do a bunch of other missions beforehand.
This, while I enjoy the meta concept to the whole “Time Loop” concept that the game has (which will be explored in the story section), and whilst I understand that it plays into the “Cooperate with other players to figure out how to continue the game”, nobody was doing that shit back then that I’m aware of so it came off more frustrating than most, unless of course you use a guide which I’m gonna be honest with you, in order to understand what’s going on YOU WILL NEED A GUIDE. Trust me on this, I suck at puzzles cause I’m a dummy idiot simpleton fuck who can’t solve most puzzle games without one, but dude I doubt anyone could sit through this game and intuitively think “Wow, this game is really cohesive with what it wants me to do and I’ll snap to it like that”, it’s unique don’t get me wrong but it’s obtuse as hell, especially for it’s time period which was 2003. This is I think one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, but again also a strength with how it ties into the metanarrative it’s got going, a strange catch-22 of sorts because while I like it a lot for it, it’s really confusing and I guarantee you because of this (as well as some of the controls), not a lot of people got passed the first mission, as for some people the first impression is the only impression you get.
Hell, I’ve been kind of afraid to touch it, having wanted to but knowing I would get way too frustrated on my own, I’ve been streaming it once or twice every week for a friend as a sort of excuse to delve head first into it, and having gotten to the end and beaten it I’m glad, but I also understand. Bringing it back to the controls for a second, this game is a bit of a confusing mish mash; it’s a third person over the shoulder survival horror, except it doesn’t play all in one go. You play a mission at a time, with maybe a checkpoint here and there dependent on how long the stage is but because of these short, segmented stages you won’t get much in the way of guns and ammo, sometimes you’ll get a melee weapon and sometimes you just won’t get shit at all and have to survive only using your wits. This can actually lead to some tense moments (and frustrating moments). The more frustrating side tends to come when the Shibito have guns, specifically long rifles, if you are seen it’s a death sentence; for example there’s a mission with Kyoya where you have to escort Yoriko through a giant nest of buildings with armed guards patrolling the place, of which I was only able to get through with the IGN guide as well as a Youtube channel whose moves I replicated (thanks to P.B. Horror Gaming, link on the bottom). With this in mind, another thing I want to bring up; if I wasn’t streaming the game I would’ve gotten really pissed at this game as it’s very much trial and error; you will die A LOT in order to figure out a pattern to complete the objective and it can really try your patience so make sure to have A LOT of that as well as the guide because sometimes it’s not explained properly.
My scariest moment was playing as Harumi trapped in a house, defenseless against three other Shibito (all of them being Tomoko and her family); the only tool you have is the Sightjack ability, which you use to close your eyes and moving the left thumbstick around can sort of “tune in” to different Shibito, seeing from their eyes as they move around the area. This is both useful in the sense that you can figure out their patterns and learn to avoid or confront them and scary as fuck cause if one of those guys sees you while you’re sightjacking? Run. It’s a unique game mechanic I haven’t seen pretty much ever except one game, Atama (which takes inspiration from Siren anyways) on Steam (Link below). Other than the sightjacking, you have combat which if you can you should probably avoid unless absolutely necessary. Ranged combat should only be used for people you need to knock out in a jam (they don’t die, they WILL get back up so shoot wisely) or for certain objectives (mainly involving the Onda twin shibitos) because you could both run out of bullets quickly. Melee combat isn’t bad but can be a bit funky, if you get too close you have a good chance of getting grabbed which means you lose health and there aren’t any health packs in the slightest and you can die really quickly without button mashing; of which I don’t know which button to press whether it’s X or Square (EDIT: Just learned it was the left thumb stick, I’m an idiot my apologies). Also, for melee you have the light attack by tapping X and the strong attack by holding X; learn the timing for the strong attack not only because it knocks em’ out faster but if you’re in a shorter area like a tight hallway, the light attack is useless as your range is stopped by nearby walls, trust me on this. Along with the fact that the more the game progresses, the tougher the Shibito get: spider shibito are fast and can get in your ass quick while climbing around and fly shibito are basically mobile sentries that usually have a revolver and can blast your ass quick, along with other forms. I should also bring up the controls really quick:
Controls:
Square is the flashlight
X is to open doors, and interact with stuff in the environment like collectibles
Circle is to crouch
Triangle is to open up the interaction menu, which allows you to: Call/tell people to wait, shout at enemies to lure them to you, interaction with certain objectives, etc.
L1 is to strafe and you move left or right
L2 is to Sightjack, with the left thumbstick helping you channel to different enemies
R1 is to aim, if you have a rifle like Akira, it’s zoomed in and you move the right thumb sticks though keep in mind it’s kind of awkward
R2 is to go into First Person mode, where you can move but very slowly
Start (or right on the PS4 face pad) is to open up the main menu
Select (or left on the PS4 face pad) is to open up a map (you won’t be told where you are so you kind of have to triangulate yourself and figure it out)
As far as I know clicking the thumbsticks does nothing, but moving the right thumb stick quickly moves your camera a tad but doesn’t exactly move your character in a way that’s normal as it’s still a survival horror game. Any movement you do will be primarily the left stick, which I’ll give you some advice: the tight maneuvering (as well as the longer animations sometimes) can lead to Shibito gaining on you if you’re running away, so if you’re in an open space it’s fine to run but if you have a tight corner, slow down then move to the desired direction because I ran into so many walls and it takes a bit for your character to get out of it. Also goes for jumping off of or climbing stuff, the animations are slow and if you get hit you’re back to square one, so you have to gauge the distance/pray the shibito miss if they have a gun. It gets especially frustrating when trying to help people up whatever cliffside, as it takes a while to do so. I don’t think I have much else to put out there in the way of gameplay, except three things: as Kyoya you’ll be escorting a blind girl named Miyako sometimes, don’t run too far ahead of her or else she won’t be able to sightjack through you (because she’s blind of course) and it helps her orientation if you’re looking at her. Another thing to note is that you can get into vehicles sometimes, but when you do you’ll be first person and each section will be its own thing you have to press Triangle on to figure out what does what (mainly throwing this out there for the first mission as Kyoya), the third is to take your time with it’s game and get comfortable with repetition as if you’re trying to do the collectibles/secret objectives and you die after getting some progress done, if you’re not restarted at the beginning stage then there’s this glitch where certain things don’t actually count towards your progress and they get erased so either you’ll have to go get this stuff again or alternatively restart. Keep in mind, though a lot of it is clunky and definitely frustrating, once you get the hang of it, it all sort of clicks and there were times where I felt REALLY good playing the game. If there’s something I’m missing, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it in. I’m gonna go onto the story here because there’s a lot to unpack for me personally.
The story starts out relatively simple but gets complicated and rather confusing and convoluted quickly. You start out as Kyoya Suda, traveling to a remote village in the Japanese mountains called Hanuda, investigating a massacre that happened decades ago along with the paranormal side effects (which I didn’t even catch this, shoutout to the wiki). Of course, like all horror games, there’s a cult that is trying to sacrifice a blind girl named Miyako in a ritual, Kyoya’s presence lets her escape and the ritual is foiled, leading to the entire area to go to hell really quickly. After escaping a drunk cop (not officially a Shibito as he hasn’t died yet but drunk cops shooting at civilians? Why does that sound familiar?) and getting shot he lands in a red river and wakes up next to a village with a priestess named Hisako Yao, who helps him get his bearings. Along the way you’ll discover the motives of other people involved: Tamon was originally from Hanuda and his parents died in a mysterious landslide in 1977, Kei Makino is a priest in the local religion (called the Mana Religion) but is apparently a really nice guy and a bit of a wimp while his twin, Shiro is a bit of a sociopath who murdered his girlfriend Mina Onda, a nurse who worked with him, for telling him that she’s pregnant with his baby, and after the Shibito outbreak guess who pops out of her grave. Meanwhile her sister Risa Onda is looking to find her, like keep in mind there are so many plot details and intricacies that I can’t really put it all in this review as it would just be blatant copy paste wiki articles at this point.
What I can say is this: everything is happening because of an event centuries ago: a famine happened long ago in the late 7th century, and the people of Hanuda was suffering through a drought that really hurt their ability to consume; they perform a ritual rite calling for rain and all the sudden a decade later a creature comes falling down on a comet where it’s mistaken for a fish and is eaten; it doesn’t exactly like that so it screams and brings about a curse, specifically on Hisako Yao; that’s right the priestess is immortal and has erected this Mana Religion in this creature’s honor, named Datatsushi as everyone else dies a painful death. She’s also pregnant apparently and starts the Kajiro family bloodline, known in Hanuda as royalty and is shown to have gained the sightjacking ability as a sort of miracle and having been cursed to resurrect Datatsushi, forgets her duty. With this in mind, she interrupted another ritual in 1976/7, which sunk another part of Hanuda into a landslide (which Tamon’s parents died in) and sending that piece into an alternate dimension, or as the game would say “The dimension that’s between life and death” or something along those lines. After that she regains her memories to revive her god, and has since been determined to appease it yet again, so sacrifices Miyako in 2003. Kyoya fucks it up of course and everything goes to hell; what I liked out of the game is the interconnectivity between the characters and the plot, for example Akira’s son was apparently 1976 Miyako’s boyfriend and that’s led to a long line of depression and hatred for the local cult; Shiro has always been jealous of his brother Kei’s upbringing and has longed to become him, he’s also a bit of a mad scientist as he conducts experiments on the Shibito to learn their secrets; however he disappears after Day 2 because he grabs the Uryen (a plot macguffin that helps both harm the undead as well as representing Yin and Yang (which little note here, symbolically is represented multiple times between Shiro/Kei as well as Risa and her twin Mina Onda)) and from then on you just play as Kei Makino. But wait, his voice sounds familiar right? Well if you play one of Harumi’s alternate missions in Day 3 you learn why, out of sheer jealousy (as well as due to the fact that Kei’s stepfather gifted the entire control of the religion to him in his will) murders his own brother and dons the garb, with Shiro finally becoming the person he wanted to be all along: his brother. I love this twist, and it’s the little details like that even when out of order, if it’s brought back together correctly it makes for a fantastic twist. Again, there are so many details that sort of loop back into itself that even logically speaking make sense, like something that I got from Nitro’s video was that Miyako had a dog (until her adoptive brother killed the pup and attempted to kidnap Miyako back before getting wacked in the head with a stick), and since she’s blind and sees through sightjacking, they’re a literal seeing eye dog. Another thing I enjoy is Harumi’s bond with her teacher, Ms. Takato who takes a motherly bond with her and refers to Harumi as her daughter, and goes out protecting her in a fantastic send off involving explosives. Another detail I like, Naoko is career obsessed and worries about her beauty so a remark from Akira (in a negative light) about being immortal due to the red water (final bit here before I explain the red water and wrap up the plot) leads to her getting the idea that she can get eternal youth and beauty by bathing in the red water; that’s not the case and it leads to her transforming into a shibito. In fact, anyone who gets in contact with the red water will eventually become a Shibito, with Kyoya being the only difference due to a blood transfusion between him and Miyako, and she’s immune due to her bloodline. The titular siren the game talks about is the call of Datatsushi, which leads shibito to bathe in the red water so they can transform into more fucked up versions of themselves (which is a reason why spider shibito and fly shibito exist).
The game finally starts to close when Miyako is sacrifice and Datatsushi sort of reincarnates; shit gets even worse as the fates of Shiro/Kei and Tamon are revealed; Shiro sacrifices himself to kill off all the remaining Shibito I believe with the Uryen (of which there are two, one which he gives to Kyoya, and also he floods the shibito nest by opening up the dam) while Tamon gets a tragic ending and ends up finding his parents, to him they look the same but he’s had contact with the red water so to others they’re not. In fact, barely anyone gets out alive save (thank fuck) for Harumi, who is rescued via helicopter from the ruins of the town which were revealed to be, shock, “a landslide”, repeating the same events from the 70s (of which since it’s the same dimension both the 2003 timeline and 1970s timeline kind of merge in this one dimension). Kyoya however confronts Hisako Yao and her underling, Miyako’s brother (and piece of shit dog killer Jun Kajiro) in a difficult sniper battle that ends up in a final confrontation with Datatsushi itself; however you have someone who could help you: Miyako in spirit. After picking up the Homuranagi (an ancient sword of which only really works to decapitate if you knocked down four separate stone markers as four separate people before playing as Reiko Takato and knocking down four other stone markers in one mission in a specific order) and killing Datatsushi (of which if you sightjack the praying mantis/wasp elder god looking fucker you can see Miyako point to a nearby pyramid which will help you reveal the location/distance of Datatsushi, or alternatively you could just run a bit, do a 180 and either activate the Uryen immediately or wait between 3-6 seconds to stab it with a sword) the fate of the remaining characters are revealed: Hisako Yao grows old and falls through a time vortex with the fallen god’s head, later giving it to her past self so the time loop continues and Kyoya Suda is now trapped in the underworld with Miyako’s blood in his veins. However he proceeds to roam the dimension armed with both the Uryen, the Homuranagi and a rifle he picked up along the way, and proceeds to annihilate the shibito.
Overall, to wrap this story up; I don’t usually care for stories that make you get all the collectibles in order to understand ANYTHING about what’s going on (talking about you Outlast 2), but this game does it in a way where I LOVE it and how it goes together. It’s a fascinating take on time loops, yin and yang, good and evil; there’s a lot of stuff in there to unpack and on top of it I consider this game to be Lovecraftian horror and in that sense it’s fucking amazing too. The only complaint I have is that a couple different times when you follow certain mission paths and go from mission to mission they’ll bring you to the final cutscene out of context: Kyoya murdering Shibito while loud rock music plays (bringing his loop full circle as he was up in Hanuda investigating a massacre from the 1930s, which he’s doing right now though I don’t know where the 1930s part comes in? I’ll have to look it up), which is tonally inconsistent and funny as fuck when just viewed out of nowhere. Me and my one friend nearly shat ourselves (more me of course) trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. In fact, that’s kind of the whole game in a nutshell; it’s confusing as hell and you’re trying to unravel everything and figure out what the hell is going on and truth be told I can’t believe I’m saying this: in the words of Todd Howard? “It Just Works”. Because the more you play the more invested you get, and the more you kind of connect the dots together. I’m gonna quickly move onto the other stuff before wrapping up here:
The graphics are PS2 era but are laden with uncanny valley facial movement as the game used a strange early version of motion capture; it looks unsettling as hell in the way it moves as if it’s as NitroRad said, an actual face being projected onto the face of a mannequin. I feel like that’s a huge part of what gives the horror the unique identity it does along with everything else; on PS4 it’s upscaled so it all looks good there. The soundtrack is creepy as hell (though funny in the final cutscene); the track “Hoshingoeika” (created by composer Hitomi Shimizu) does a fantastic and unique job at bringing about all the old creepy cult chants together in a way that helps form the atmosphere, it’s not Akira Yamaoka with Silent Hill but that’s not the vibe it’s going for in the slightest. It’s honestly a lot MORE creepy whereas Yamaoka’s soundtrack is godly and can be creepy but a lot of his stuff his more melancholic and sad (again I LOVE IT) but it contrasts to what this game is trying to do. Speaking of sounds, the environmental sounds are creepy as hell; yeah the Shibito are creepy as fuck with their grey skin and bleeding eyes but dear god when you sightjack them and hear them breathing? That’s the stuff of nightmares and definitely made me feel uneasy as I went through the game. The only thing I could consider a downside is that the voice acting isn’t great; you get used to it after a while but I really wish they had a Japanese dub/English subs thing because the british voice acting is more hilarious than anything else, though it can help add levity to the game even though it wasn’t quite meant to originally. I think my favorite is when Harumi calls out “MRS. TAKATO”, mainly because it sounds like an old H3H3 bit where Ethan would get into that weird high pitched voice and say something messed up after coughing violently. Basically the VA ranges from “somewhat ok and not noticeable, to unintentionally hilarious/kind of bad.
To finish up here, I actually really love this game; however I’m giving it a 4 instead of a 4.5 or a 5 for a number of reasons; it has a lot of confusing fridge logic and jank, the VA isn’t that great, some of the enemy placements feel really unfair sometimes and it’s based in trial and error, and for some people the whole “look at collectibles to understand what’s going on” can 100 percent be frustrating. In fact I’ll even say, if I wasn’t streaming this for a friend over a period of two months once or twice every week I’d probably want to smash my head into a wall as I’m not really the patient type and I'm unsure as to whether or not I would really play this ever again. However beneath all of the dirt and grime there’s a real solid gem here, something beautiful and special that I feel deserves way more credit than it gets, even if it understandably doesn’t get a lot of points with people over it’s confusing direction and design. It makes it even worse that Siren 2 wasn’t even ported or released in the U.S. and that Siren: Blood Curse got a digital only copy (though the physical copy which I bought for 80 dollars cause I’m a collector) only released on the PSN Store. Since the release of Siren, he worked on both sequel games as well as another series I platinumed last year: Gravity Rush (of which one day I will come back and review both of these games because I have thoughts about them too). After these games he left Sony to start up his own studio: Bokeh Game Studio, which is in the process of developing a game called Slitterhead. Now I’m VERY interested in this game, however I’ll admit I still miss Siren. As always, I wish Siren had a PC port, I wish Forbidden Siren 2 had both a PS5 AND a PC port, and Siren: Blood Curse I think you can play through PSN Plus but don’t quote that but even if it’s not the best game apparently it deserves the same amount of treatment. However, as our capitalist system would incline: money talks and fuck everything else, which is sad that even for preservations sake doesn’t get more. Also I’d really like them to make a Siren 3, and if I had a choice I’d say do it with the old PS2 styled graphics and Mocap, it really seals in the unease. I’m also gonna leave some links down below for those who want to watch or listen to some stuff or read up on some of the guides I used or wiki pages I read to refresh my memory on certain things and if I ever think of something else to add to this review then I will. Thank you for reading if you did and if you would rather a single sentence summarization, look below.
tl;dr good but jank, no normal person would ever play this.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/31/siren-walkthrough-508738
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114Ygup5-x4&ab_channel=NitroRad
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2019840/Atama/
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Siren/Controls
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hanuda_Village#History:
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hisako_Yao
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Homuranagi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_(video_game)#Playable_characters
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Datatsushi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Harumi_Yomoda?so=search#Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Water
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Uryen?so=search#The_Uryen_in_Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Kei_Makino#Story
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Miyata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6EgutJLqA&t=18s&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rEyCVRelds&list=PLEE2727EDFDE65968&index=1&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoLtWQ1Pnc&list=PLd4jZRAzc5n8R0gE9U90SsUqJt4V04PHe&ab_channel=P.B.HorrorGaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZI968UaZw&ab_channel=Fakan
https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/275063-siren-trophy-guide-amp-roadmap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkG3DH6IZw0&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZcsWN_KBc&ab_channel=BoulderPunch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2wj65MimUc
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Siren
UPDATE:
Found some more sources for stuff if you want to look into it, just be careful with security of the site.
http://siren.kakurezato.com/
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/siren-arg.1636588/
Didn't know there was an ARG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYdxGjgSrA&ab_channel=InfiniteRetry
https://web.archive.org/web/20040110033312/http://www.occultland.com/
So here’s the basic concept of the gameplay: you start out as one of ten characters (which range from main character Kyoya Suda, professor Tamon Takeuchi, Priest Kei Makino, his twin brother Shiro Miyata, Risa Onda (a woman who is also looking for her twin sister, who was dating Shiro), teacher Reiko Takato, student/child Harumi Yomoda, celebrity/70s sitcom mom looking Naoko Mihama, old badass/poopy diaper grandpa (as a friend called him lol) Akira Shimura and finally Tomoko Maeda, a student who ran away from home after her parents read her diary. You get placed in a random section of a map and you’re often told to do an objective, and for the first couple of loops you can do those objectives while also completing secret secondary objectives (which are basically kept secret unless you’re following a guide, look to the bottom of the page) so other people in different missions down the line can do other objectives needed in order to pass. After you beat a bunch of these missions, you’ll unlock the “Link Navigator”, which helps you choose which missions you wanna do as well as tell you which missions haven’t gotten their secondary objectives done. However, sometimes these objectives don’t even pop up properly unless you do a bunch of other missions first and get the prerequisites done, even if you already unlocked certain missions previously. For example, there’s this mission where you play as Akira Shimura and you have to protect Tamon Takeuchi’s student, Yoriko Anno, as she’s attacked by Shibito (the main enemy fodder, they’re reanimated villagers who are kind of like zombies except a whole lot more human and can be armed with anything from shovels to big ass rifles) and one of the prerequisites for a later mission (spoiler) is to “Remember Akira”. To do that, you need to tell Yoriko to hide in an area around some houses, however if you hadn’t completed some other missions (which I have no clue what missions are needed and if they even tie into anything) she won’t find a picture of Akira lying on the ground which won’t be used later by Tamon to remember Akira after he’s been Shibitofied and plugs him with some bullets. Another example, you play as Kei Makino as you have to escort Tomoko through a cliffside village area, once you get to the end and split up you’re supposed to (as a secondary objective), go back to the nearby temple, sightjack (give me a second) and watch as a nearby Shibito puts in a code to unlock the temple door so you can grab something and leave; problem is the fucker doesn’t spawn until you do a bunch of other missions beforehand.
This, while I enjoy the meta concept to the whole “Time Loop” concept that the game has (which will be explored in the story section), and whilst I understand that it plays into the “Cooperate with other players to figure out how to continue the game”, nobody was doing that shit back then that I’m aware of so it came off more frustrating than most, unless of course you use a guide which I’m gonna be honest with you, in order to understand what’s going on YOU WILL NEED A GUIDE. Trust me on this, I suck at puzzles cause I’m a dummy idiot simpleton fuck who can’t solve most puzzle games without one, but dude I doubt anyone could sit through this game and intuitively think “Wow, this game is really cohesive with what it wants me to do and I’ll snap to it like that”, it’s unique don’t get me wrong but it’s obtuse as hell, especially for it’s time period which was 2003. This is I think one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, but again also a strength with how it ties into the metanarrative it’s got going, a strange catch-22 of sorts because while I like it a lot for it, it’s really confusing and I guarantee you because of this (as well as some of the controls), not a lot of people got passed the first mission, as for some people the first impression is the only impression you get.
Hell, I’ve been kind of afraid to touch it, having wanted to but knowing I would get way too frustrated on my own, I’ve been streaming it once or twice every week for a friend as a sort of excuse to delve head first into it, and having gotten to the end and beaten it I’m glad, but I also understand. Bringing it back to the controls for a second, this game is a bit of a confusing mish mash; it’s a third person over the shoulder survival horror, except it doesn’t play all in one go. You play a mission at a time, with maybe a checkpoint here and there dependent on how long the stage is but because of these short, segmented stages you won’t get much in the way of guns and ammo, sometimes you’ll get a melee weapon and sometimes you just won’t get shit at all and have to survive only using your wits. This can actually lead to some tense moments (and frustrating moments). The more frustrating side tends to come when the Shibito have guns, specifically long rifles, if you are seen it’s a death sentence; for example there’s a mission with Kyoya where you have to escort Yoriko through a giant nest of buildings with armed guards patrolling the place, of which I was only able to get through with the IGN guide as well as a Youtube channel whose moves I replicated (thanks to P.B. Horror Gaming, link on the bottom). With this in mind, another thing I want to bring up; if I wasn’t streaming the game I would’ve gotten really pissed at this game as it’s very much trial and error; you will die A LOT in order to figure out a pattern to complete the objective and it can really try your patience so make sure to have A LOT of that as well as the guide because sometimes it’s not explained properly.
My scariest moment was playing as Harumi trapped in a house, defenseless against three other Shibito (all of them being Tomoko and her family); the only tool you have is the Sightjack ability, which you use to close your eyes and moving the left thumbstick around can sort of “tune in” to different Shibito, seeing from their eyes as they move around the area. This is both useful in the sense that you can figure out their patterns and learn to avoid or confront them and scary as fuck cause if one of those guys sees you while you’re sightjacking? Run. It’s a unique game mechanic I haven’t seen pretty much ever except one game, Atama (which takes inspiration from Siren anyways) on Steam (Link below). Other than the sightjacking, you have combat which if you can you should probably avoid unless absolutely necessary. Ranged combat should only be used for people you need to knock out in a jam (they don’t die, they WILL get back up so shoot wisely) or for certain objectives (mainly involving the Onda twin shibitos) because you could both run out of bullets quickly. Melee combat isn’t bad but can be a bit funky, if you get too close you have a good chance of getting grabbed which means you lose health and there aren’t any health packs in the slightest and you can die really quickly without button mashing; of which I don’t know which button to press whether it’s X or Square (EDIT: Just learned it was the left thumb stick, I’m an idiot my apologies). Also, for melee you have the light attack by tapping X and the strong attack by holding X; learn the timing for the strong attack not only because it knocks em’ out faster but if you’re in a shorter area like a tight hallway, the light attack is useless as your range is stopped by nearby walls, trust me on this. Along with the fact that the more the game progresses, the tougher the Shibito get: spider shibito are fast and can get in your ass quick while climbing around and fly shibito are basically mobile sentries that usually have a revolver and can blast your ass quick, along with other forms. I should also bring up the controls really quick:
Controls:
Square is the flashlight
X is to open doors, and interact with stuff in the environment like collectibles
Circle is to crouch
Triangle is to open up the interaction menu, which allows you to: Call/tell people to wait, shout at enemies to lure them to you, interaction with certain objectives, etc.
L1 is to strafe and you move left or right
L2 is to Sightjack, with the left thumbstick helping you channel to different enemies
R1 is to aim, if you have a rifle like Akira, it’s zoomed in and you move the right thumb sticks though keep in mind it’s kind of awkward
R2 is to go into First Person mode, where you can move but very slowly
Start (or right on the PS4 face pad) is to open up the main menu
Select (or left on the PS4 face pad) is to open up a map (you won’t be told where you are so you kind of have to triangulate yourself and figure it out)
As far as I know clicking the thumbsticks does nothing, but moving the right thumb stick quickly moves your camera a tad but doesn’t exactly move your character in a way that’s normal as it’s still a survival horror game. Any movement you do will be primarily the left stick, which I’ll give you some advice: the tight maneuvering (as well as the longer animations sometimes) can lead to Shibito gaining on you if you’re running away, so if you’re in an open space it’s fine to run but if you have a tight corner, slow down then move to the desired direction because I ran into so many walls and it takes a bit for your character to get out of it. Also goes for jumping off of or climbing stuff, the animations are slow and if you get hit you’re back to square one, so you have to gauge the distance/pray the shibito miss if they have a gun. It gets especially frustrating when trying to help people up whatever cliffside, as it takes a while to do so. I don’t think I have much else to put out there in the way of gameplay, except three things: as Kyoya you’ll be escorting a blind girl named Miyako sometimes, don’t run too far ahead of her or else she won’t be able to sightjack through you (because she’s blind of course) and it helps her orientation if you’re looking at her. Another thing to note is that you can get into vehicles sometimes, but when you do you’ll be first person and each section will be its own thing you have to press Triangle on to figure out what does what (mainly throwing this out there for the first mission as Kyoya), the third is to take your time with it’s game and get comfortable with repetition as if you’re trying to do the collectibles/secret objectives and you die after getting some progress done, if you’re not restarted at the beginning stage then there’s this glitch where certain things don’t actually count towards your progress and they get erased so either you’ll have to go get this stuff again or alternatively restart. Keep in mind, though a lot of it is clunky and definitely frustrating, once you get the hang of it, it all sort of clicks and there were times where I felt REALLY good playing the game. If there’s something I’m missing, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it in. I’m gonna go onto the story here because there’s a lot to unpack for me personally.
The story starts out relatively simple but gets complicated and rather confusing and convoluted quickly. You start out as Kyoya Suda, traveling to a remote village in the Japanese mountains called Hanuda, investigating a massacre that happened decades ago along with the paranormal side effects (which I didn’t even catch this, shoutout to the wiki). Of course, like all horror games, there’s a cult that is trying to sacrifice a blind girl named Miyako in a ritual, Kyoya’s presence lets her escape and the ritual is foiled, leading to the entire area to go to hell really quickly. After escaping a drunk cop (not officially a Shibito as he hasn’t died yet but drunk cops shooting at civilians? Why does that sound familiar?) and getting shot he lands in a red river and wakes up next to a village with a priestess named Hisako Yao, who helps him get his bearings. Along the way you’ll discover the motives of other people involved: Tamon was originally from Hanuda and his parents died in a mysterious landslide in 1977, Kei Makino is a priest in the local religion (called the Mana Religion) but is apparently a really nice guy and a bit of a wimp while his twin, Shiro is a bit of a sociopath who murdered his girlfriend Mina Onda, a nurse who worked with him, for telling him that she’s pregnant with his baby, and after the Shibito outbreak guess who pops out of her grave. Meanwhile her sister Risa Onda is looking to find her, like keep in mind there are so many plot details and intricacies that I can’t really put it all in this review as it would just be blatant copy paste wiki articles at this point.
What I can say is this: everything is happening because of an event centuries ago: a famine happened long ago in the late 7th century, and the people of Hanuda was suffering through a drought that really hurt their ability to consume; they perform a ritual rite calling for rain and all the sudden a decade later a creature comes falling down on a comet where it’s mistaken for a fish and is eaten; it doesn’t exactly like that so it screams and brings about a curse, specifically on Hisako Yao; that’s right the priestess is immortal and has erected this Mana Religion in this creature’s honor, named Datatsushi as everyone else dies a painful death. She’s also pregnant apparently and starts the Kajiro family bloodline, known in Hanuda as royalty and is shown to have gained the sightjacking ability as a sort of miracle and having been cursed to resurrect Datatsushi, forgets her duty. With this in mind, she interrupted another ritual in 1976/7, which sunk another part of Hanuda into a landslide (which Tamon’s parents died in) and sending that piece into an alternate dimension, or as the game would say “The dimension that’s between life and death” or something along those lines. After that she regains her memories to revive her god, and has since been determined to appease it yet again, so sacrifices Miyako in 2003. Kyoya fucks it up of course and everything goes to hell; what I liked out of the game is the interconnectivity between the characters and the plot, for example Akira’s son was apparently 1976 Miyako’s boyfriend and that’s led to a long line of depression and hatred for the local cult; Shiro has always been jealous of his brother Kei’s upbringing and has longed to become him, he’s also a bit of a mad scientist as he conducts experiments on the Shibito to learn their secrets; however he disappears after Day 2 because he grabs the Uryen (a plot macguffin that helps both harm the undead as well as representing Yin and Yang (which little note here, symbolically is represented multiple times between Shiro/Kei as well as Risa and her twin Mina Onda)) and from then on you just play as Kei Makino. But wait, his voice sounds familiar right? Well if you play one of Harumi’s alternate missions in Day 3 you learn why, out of sheer jealousy (as well as due to the fact that Kei’s stepfather gifted the entire control of the religion to him in his will) murders his own brother and dons the garb, with Shiro finally becoming the person he wanted to be all along: his brother. I love this twist, and it’s the little details like that even when out of order, if it’s brought back together correctly it makes for a fantastic twist. Again, there are so many details that sort of loop back into itself that even logically speaking make sense, like something that I got from Nitro’s video was that Miyako had a dog (until her adoptive brother killed the pup and attempted to kidnap Miyako back before getting wacked in the head with a stick), and since she’s blind and sees through sightjacking, they’re a literal seeing eye dog. Another thing I enjoy is Harumi’s bond with her teacher, Ms. Takato who takes a motherly bond with her and refers to Harumi as her daughter, and goes out protecting her in a fantastic send off involving explosives. Another detail I like, Naoko is career obsessed and worries about her beauty so a remark from Akira (in a negative light) about being immortal due to the red water (final bit here before I explain the red water and wrap up the plot) leads to her getting the idea that she can get eternal youth and beauty by bathing in the red water; that’s not the case and it leads to her transforming into a shibito. In fact, anyone who gets in contact with the red water will eventually become a Shibito, with Kyoya being the only difference due to a blood transfusion between him and Miyako, and she’s immune due to her bloodline. The titular siren the game talks about is the call of Datatsushi, which leads shibito to bathe in the red water so they can transform into more fucked up versions of themselves (which is a reason why spider shibito and fly shibito exist).
The game finally starts to close when Miyako is sacrifice and Datatsushi sort of reincarnates; shit gets even worse as the fates of Shiro/Kei and Tamon are revealed; Shiro sacrifices himself to kill off all the remaining Shibito I believe with the Uryen (of which there are two, one which he gives to Kyoya, and also he floods the shibito nest by opening up the dam) while Tamon gets a tragic ending and ends up finding his parents, to him they look the same but he’s had contact with the red water so to others they’re not. In fact, barely anyone gets out alive save (thank fuck) for Harumi, who is rescued via helicopter from the ruins of the town which were revealed to be, shock, “a landslide”, repeating the same events from the 70s (of which since it’s the same dimension both the 2003 timeline and 1970s timeline kind of merge in this one dimension). Kyoya however confronts Hisako Yao and her underling, Miyako’s brother (and piece of shit dog killer Jun Kajiro) in a difficult sniper battle that ends up in a final confrontation with Datatsushi itself; however you have someone who could help you: Miyako in spirit. After picking up the Homuranagi (an ancient sword of which only really works to decapitate if you knocked down four separate stone markers as four separate people before playing as Reiko Takato and knocking down four other stone markers in one mission in a specific order) and killing Datatsushi (of which if you sightjack the praying mantis/wasp elder god looking fucker you can see Miyako point to a nearby pyramid which will help you reveal the location/distance of Datatsushi, or alternatively you could just run a bit, do a 180 and either activate the Uryen immediately or wait between 3-6 seconds to stab it with a sword) the fate of the remaining characters are revealed: Hisako Yao grows old and falls through a time vortex with the fallen god’s head, later giving it to her past self so the time loop continues and Kyoya Suda is now trapped in the underworld with Miyako’s blood in his veins. However he proceeds to roam the dimension armed with both the Uryen, the Homuranagi and a rifle he picked up along the way, and proceeds to annihilate the shibito.
Overall, to wrap this story up; I don’t usually care for stories that make you get all the collectibles in order to understand ANYTHING about what’s going on (talking about you Outlast 2), but this game does it in a way where I LOVE it and how it goes together. It’s a fascinating take on time loops, yin and yang, good and evil; there’s a lot of stuff in there to unpack and on top of it I consider this game to be Lovecraftian horror and in that sense it’s fucking amazing too. The only complaint I have is that a couple different times when you follow certain mission paths and go from mission to mission they’ll bring you to the final cutscene out of context: Kyoya murdering Shibito while loud rock music plays (bringing his loop full circle as he was up in Hanuda investigating a massacre from the 1930s, which he’s doing right now though I don’t know where the 1930s part comes in? I’ll have to look it up), which is tonally inconsistent and funny as fuck when just viewed out of nowhere. Me and my one friend nearly shat ourselves (more me of course) trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. In fact, that’s kind of the whole game in a nutshell; it’s confusing as hell and you’re trying to unravel everything and figure out what the hell is going on and truth be told I can’t believe I’m saying this: in the words of Todd Howard? “It Just Works”. Because the more you play the more invested you get, and the more you kind of connect the dots together. I’m gonna quickly move onto the other stuff before wrapping up here:
The graphics are PS2 era but are laden with uncanny valley facial movement as the game used a strange early version of motion capture; it looks unsettling as hell in the way it moves as if it’s as NitroRad said, an actual face being projected onto the face of a mannequin. I feel like that’s a huge part of what gives the horror the unique identity it does along with everything else; on PS4 it’s upscaled so it all looks good there. The soundtrack is creepy as hell (though funny in the final cutscene); the track “Hoshingoeika” (created by composer Hitomi Shimizu) does a fantastic and unique job at bringing about all the old creepy cult chants together in a way that helps form the atmosphere, it’s not Akira Yamaoka with Silent Hill but that’s not the vibe it’s going for in the slightest. It’s honestly a lot MORE creepy whereas Yamaoka’s soundtrack is godly and can be creepy but a lot of his stuff his more melancholic and sad (again I LOVE IT) but it contrasts to what this game is trying to do. Speaking of sounds, the environmental sounds are creepy as hell; yeah the Shibito are creepy as fuck with their grey skin and bleeding eyes but dear god when you sightjack them and hear them breathing? That’s the stuff of nightmares and definitely made me feel uneasy as I went through the game. The only thing I could consider a downside is that the voice acting isn’t great; you get used to it after a while but I really wish they had a Japanese dub/English subs thing because the british voice acting is more hilarious than anything else, though it can help add levity to the game even though it wasn’t quite meant to originally. I think my favorite is when Harumi calls out “MRS. TAKATO”, mainly because it sounds like an old H3H3 bit where Ethan would get into that weird high pitched voice and say something messed up after coughing violently. Basically the VA ranges from “somewhat ok and not noticeable, to unintentionally hilarious/kind of bad.
To finish up here, I actually really love this game; however I’m giving it a 4 instead of a 4.5 or a 5 for a number of reasons; it has a lot of confusing fridge logic and jank, the VA isn’t that great, some of the enemy placements feel really unfair sometimes and it’s based in trial and error, and for some people the whole “look at collectibles to understand what’s going on” can 100 percent be frustrating. In fact I’ll even say, if I wasn’t streaming this for a friend over a period of two months once or twice every week I’d probably want to smash my head into a wall as I’m not really the patient type and I'm unsure as to whether or not I would really play this ever again. However beneath all of the dirt and grime there’s a real solid gem here, something beautiful and special that I feel deserves way more credit than it gets, even if it understandably doesn’t get a lot of points with people over it’s confusing direction and design. It makes it even worse that Siren 2 wasn’t even ported or released in the U.S. and that Siren: Blood Curse got a digital only copy (though the physical copy which I bought for 80 dollars cause I’m a collector) only released on the PSN Store. Since the release of Siren, he worked on both sequel games as well as another series I platinumed last year: Gravity Rush (of which one day I will come back and review both of these games because I have thoughts about them too). After these games he left Sony to start up his own studio: Bokeh Game Studio, which is in the process of developing a game called Slitterhead. Now I’m VERY interested in this game, however I’ll admit I still miss Siren. As always, I wish Siren had a PC port, I wish Forbidden Siren 2 had both a PS5 AND a PC port, and Siren: Blood Curse I think you can play through PSN Plus but don’t quote that but even if it’s not the best game apparently it deserves the same amount of treatment. However, as our capitalist system would incline: money talks and fuck everything else, which is sad that even for preservations sake doesn’t get more. Also I’d really like them to make a Siren 3, and if I had a choice I’d say do it with the old PS2 styled graphics and Mocap, it really seals in the unease. I’m also gonna leave some links down below for those who want to watch or listen to some stuff or read up on some of the guides I used or wiki pages I read to refresh my memory on certain things and if I ever think of something else to add to this review then I will. Thank you for reading if you did and if you would rather a single sentence summarization, look below.
tl;dr good but jank, no normal person would ever play this.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/31/siren-walkthrough-508738
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114Ygup5-x4&ab_channel=NitroRad
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2019840/Atama/
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Siren/Controls
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hanuda_Village#History:
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hisako_Yao
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Homuranagi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_(video_game)#Playable_characters
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Datatsushi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Harumi_Yomoda?so=search#Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Water
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Uryen?so=search#The_Uryen_in_Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Kei_Makino#Story
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Miyata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6EgutJLqA&t=18s&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rEyCVRelds&list=PLEE2727EDFDE65968&index=1&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoLtWQ1Pnc&list=PLd4jZRAzc5n8R0gE9U90SsUqJt4V04PHe&ab_channel=P.B.HorrorGaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZI968UaZw&ab_channel=Fakan
https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/275063-siren-trophy-guide-amp-roadmap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkG3DH6IZw0&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZcsWN_KBc&ab_channel=BoulderPunch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2wj65MimUc
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Siren
UPDATE:
Found some more sources for stuff if you want to look into it, just be careful with security of the site.
http://siren.kakurezato.com/
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/siren-arg.1636588/
Didn't know there was an ARG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYdxGjgSrA&ab_channel=InfiniteRetry
https://web.archive.org/web/20040110033312/http://www.occultland.com/