Fatal Frame 4 is my favourite, then the Wii Edition of 2, then 5. 

Thanks for answerin'. Though I am kinda surprised you rank 2 fairly high. That one is like my least fav. o:

2 was my introduction to the series, could be something to do with that. ;)

4 was the one I fell in love with though.

Hmm, that is true. I started with the first and that one was my fav, though 3 was a close 2nd. I always something odd about 2, and replaying it again, I remembered why I felt that way about it. Though like you, 4 surpassed my fav, haha....

So what about 2 puts you off?

It ultimately came down to it wasn't very scary for me. There were a lot of things that worked against it that ended up putting me off in the end.

o_o I played it to completion...

Hmm, grindy in what sense? There are random encounters you can do if you want to grind, but I don't think you need to do it too much, unless you want to keep all your party members around the same level.

In that case, it's not grindy. You could probably get by without grinding at all. The game makes it harder to over level by giving you little exp if your characters are higher level than the enemies.

And depending on what you do, you'll have either 15 or 16 party members.

Let's see. My playthru was about 50 hours long, I'm not sure what the max level was (I forgot what the highest level I got was...), usually you can deploy 6 to 8 depending on the map, and skills are learned from leveling and building bonds with your party members. It's kind of up to you what characters get more skills.