This is one of the funniest pieces of media I've ever experienced and the best part is I really can't tell if it's on purpose or not. The Clock Tower series seemed to take itself seriously and then this came out. Everything about this game is just insanity. The actual gameplay is pure jank but then the cutscenes are choreographed and animated like a professional play. Most of the time you're running away and hiding with no way to defend yourself besides holy water but suddenly sometimes you awaken to your divine magical girl powers and summon a sky rending bow to chain your enemies who are all serial killers. This is like the Scary movie of horror games and I wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you. Thank you. Good bye, May. Good bye Mr. Norton. Good bye. Good bye. Thank you. Good bye. Good bye.

a satisfying mix of silly & scary, more so silly. i had a lot of fun enjoying the over the top motion capture, & the comedic timing among the baby jumpscares. it's like if silent hill 3 & devil may cry were combined for a goofy horror game. love it.

but after the doozy of a final boss it was hard to remember what i did like in the game. the boss fight combat was actually really fun for the other ones, but the final one was so hard i was actually screaming.

i laughed, raged, felt for the characters, enjoyed my notes & lore. pretty classic game! some of the music was absolute bangers & some could give resident evil's basement theme a run for its money. i played haunting ground before this & gotta admit they did the not-clock-tower themed stalker horror better in that one. nevertheless it was an entertaining night playing this game!

Complete total bonkers. One of the most absurd horror (?) experiences i've played in a long time and I kinda loved it for it. Can't think of many games that are like this, A weird mixture of gothic horror, time travel, ghost stories and... Mahou Shoujo, of all things. The cutscenes are very entertaining and the acting is extremely over the top, specially thanks to how fluid the mocap is.

It's very flawed, however. The purser A.I. is broken and is a complete pest throughout the whole game, there's barely any quiet time due to how often they show up and it tends to make a lot of the puzzles pretty annoying (and I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything wrong either, I would finally avoid them and they show up like 10 seconds afterwards no matter how quiet I was).

A very interesting experience, but don't go in expecting a traditional horror game.

Well, compared to 2 it is very good, some controls they managed to update well but several mechanics seemed dated even for the time of its release.

The story is also well traveled, but it's still entertaining. Overall, it's a good game.

Played time: 10hrs

Incredibly bizarre survival horror game sporting some uneven gameplay and a narrative that's generally just campy shlock (in a fun way) but will occasionally veer into being grotesque and shocking (that acid bath murder sequence is genuinely unsettling). I was surprised to learn that this was directed by Kinji Fukasaku (film director of Battle Royale and the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series) but in hindsight Survival Horror is just naturally cinematic, especially when fixed camera angles are involved, so it's honestly a pretty nice fit even if some of those motion capture scenes have aged horrendously.

I think this might be one of those games that falls into the 'so bad it's good' category for me and it's absolutely the type of game that couldn't get made today (outside of a misguided crowdfunded revival project perhaps) but honestly it was consistently entertaining and really managed to invoke the feeling of watching a B-Horror movie (though I'm mostly certain that wasn't their intention), which is a pastime I quite enjoy.

ok i'm editing my review because i do have stuff to say

from an outside perspective looking in i initially thought the game looked quite goofy and stupid but a good time overall. like one of those 'so bad it's good' games, but i was so pleasantly surprised, it was definitely worth my time.

the universe and characters are quite silly but i found myself getting very immersed and attached to them. there's a lot of interesting story in this game, once everything comes together it tells quite a sad coming of age story with a lot of family drama.

of course, it is very theatrical and has some very funny moments, but i felt that those didn't take from the horror, because believe me this game definitely has a lot of good scares. the gameplay may be a little clunky but the chase sequences can be very stress inducing especially with the chase theme for the first 2 stalkers being very loud and abrupt.

best way to summarise this game for me would be if disney made a disney princess survival horror game where you play as a young princess being trapped in the past with stalkers based on real life serial killers. it's super theatrical with a lot of fun colourful characters and very over the top cutscenes and acting, but under all that is a very relatable and grounded story about societal expectations for little girls and generational trauma.

Unlike the previous games, this one was far more action packed and even featured one or two real-life serial killers as an enemy such as the infamous Acid-Bath murderer. Though I doubt he acted like James Stephanie Sterling IRL.

After a period of running and hiding from the horror that's chasing you, you get to a certain location and unlock the power of a magical bow to shoot down and destroy these evil spirits!

Stream + gameplay

I was expecting kind of a survivor-horror game where the main character struggles with monsters from other dimensions while solves the puzzles to unlock the path ahead (because it's made by Capcom).

The main character Alyssa is just a teen-age girl who is just... an ordinary girl. I thought this was a perfect choice because the other highly popular survivor-horror games had protagonists who can fight against threats, kill the prime-evil and save the world. So this game would step aside with different kind of protagonist and focus on horror and survival. The first episode met my expectations, it did so well that even managed to scare me a few times. It was like you're playing "Dead by Daylight but with puzzles" (and with a story). The developers even put hiding spots, so you can temporarily hide from the killer until he's gone or use the rings that turns you invisible (temporarily). And I found the animations too good when you think about this is a PS2 game from 2002. But... the whole aspect of survival-horror went to 0 when the game put me in a fight with the killer at the end of the episode.

The fight was out from nowhere dude, Alyssa just got a magical bow in the boss introduction scene and for a second I thought she was going to turn into a fairy like the girls in Winx Club... lol. The boss was waiting while moving his body down and up like he's a character from Street Fighter (and it's actually so funny when you think about the fact that Capcom is the owner of SF too.)

The boss battle was so simple too, when you figure out how to stun and chain him you can easily abuse it. After the fight, whole game repeats the same process. You enter a new location, solve the puzzles while new killer runs after you, after you complete all quests you fight the killer, stun-lock the them and kill them easily.

I played more than %50 percent of the game, I was actually close to complete it but after repeating the same thing for 3-4 times and the game introduced me with the new killer and a new location I was like "okay that's enough"