More or less my thoughts, yeah. I can't say that the game is great overall, because its flaws are obvious (lots of backtracking, clumsy controls...). But I think it's worth it because of the atmosphere and immersive Gamepad experience. Also, I like the plot and the simbolism of the game. It provides some really creepy moments. I'll buy VI if it ever releases, of course.

That's a notion I whole-heartedly reject.

Fatal Frame is certainly not without its flaws, but in an era where the horror genre has largely regenerated into action-oriented blockbusters and a tsunami of slapped-together Slender wannabes, I find it a refreshing return to the glory days of survival horror. With this comes a certain set of archaic design tropes, like excessive backtracking and tank controls, but I consider these a worthwhile tradeoff for such potent atmosphere and genuine dread. Not to mention its probably the best use of the Gamepad to date.

The real masterpiece of the series is Fatal Frame 4 though. It's absolutely criminal that Nintendo never brought it to West. Thank god for custom firmware and fan translations mods.

They may not be as popular as they once were, but these kind of games are still around, they're just mostly the domain of indie devs these days.

As far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with a game being simple, arcadey, and linear.

After playing V I really want to play the other games of the series. I can play easily to 1-3, but I've no idea how to play 4. And the things you've just mentioned are what has made me beat the game twice. That and complete the ghost list :P. It's different. Not a massive evolution if we compared it to the rest of the games of the franchise (at least, based on what I've seen about them), but it's different compared to modern horror games. I'd gladly play a FF game once in a while, so I hope that Nintendo keeps the franchise alive. 

4 can be played either via Dolphin, or by modding your Wii and installing a fan mod that adds English substitles and text translations. I'm not sure what VGChartz's rules are like regarding modding so I'd probably best not go into specifics here, but google will tell you everything you need to know. It's worth the hassle if you enjoyed 5.

Yep, I really enjoyed it. I'll take a look then and see if I can manage to know about it. I wonder how FFV has sold in the West. It'd be nice to know if they'll bother to localize the next one.

4 is very similar to 5, but I found its story more interesting and its backtracking, while still significant, more gracefully handled.

5's Western sales were likely quite low, but they would have known that before they even released it, so I doubt they'll be disappointed.

I didn't find the backtracking painful, it was getting worse as chapters went by but it makes sense story-wise so I can overlook it. It was overdone in the final chapters of V, but I don't mind backtracking if it's well handled. I liked in 5 when I reached the same place as the prologue , I didn't expect that and it was nicely done. So if it's well handled I won't have any problems. 

Yeah, the franchise has never sold like hotcakes, so it'd be no surprising at all. I think it was a rare case of Nintendo listening to fans, thanks to people reaching to them and asking them to bring it to the West. It also gives good press. Also bad press with all that censorship problem, but, hey, I'm glad that those outfits were gone for good XD. They were really ridiculous imo.

Hmm, the trailer is not very impressive and it's going to be split up into segments..

Does look a bit interesting though

Yeah, I have no problem with the "censorship" either. We got cool Nintendo costumes instead of silly lingerie costumes.

As for the fact it was localized at all, I like to think it had something to do with me and many others spamming the game's Japanese miiverse page with requests to bring it to the West for like 7 months straight. ;)