I’ve tried to find Japanese horror games from the PS2 era that has this same feel, but I can’t :(
Some quick facts:
The VAs for Siren were British, so every Japanese person had a posh accent and didn’t pronounce Japanese words so well
Siren 2’s main setting, Yamijima Island, was inspired by an actual Japanese Island, Hashima island. The Island was an industrial hub for coal mining and was known for forced labor involving Korean and Chinese slaves.
Both games used facial scans from multiple angles to create the uncanny, and horrifying, expressions of the various protagonists and enemies
These games were written by the writer for Silent Hill. So if you havent played the original first or second games, those will most likely be most similar.
Maybe Kuon? FromSoft developed game, and a horror game on PS2, but its not got the same unique feeling to it. Just a Japanese PS2 horror game.
I’ve played Kuon. The story line and horror was great, but the combat was very clunky and I felt like the storyline was too vague, if you didn’t pay very close attention. I really didn’t notice the big plot twist until I played through a second time and paid VERY close attention to who was being dragged into the red chest, when, and by who, lol.
I see “clunky” used to critique true Survival Horror combat a lot. I think this comes from a misunderstanding about the genre: the developers are trying to disincentivize you to engage in combat.
Its a big part of the game design of Survival Horror that is important: getting into combat should be a lost resort action, not a preference. How do you do that? Make combat feel bad. If the combat is fun and feels fluid, the player will want to engage in combat. But that goes against the entire point of Survival Horror. The peak, most optimal way to play should be to avoid any combat that is not mandatory to beat the game. This is because Survival Horror relies on the player constantly having to choose: Do I risk losing health and ammo in this fight, or can I avoid the fight and go around the enemy? Will I need to come back again, and if so, will I be able to make the same choice again?
So when someone tells me combat in a true Survival Horror game feels clunky, that is exactly what it is supposed to feel like. Otherwise the game will become an Action Shooter, like Resident Evil, Silent Hill Remake, Dino Crisis 2 and 3, etc.
Kuon’s story is just the result of poor localization, honestly. The Japanese audience could understand it much better. Us English speakers didn’t even get all the puzzles translated.