Animation is really beautiful in this game, I think its one of its strong points.

Its tone is confusing, very cartoonish, very violent and suddenly very sailor-moonish (?). Feels like a prototype of the more serious and grim Haunting Ground. They share aesthetics, menus, sfx and some plot elements.

Even with that weird tonal combination, I was really scared playing this game. I loved the crazy plot, the main character Alyssa and even his goofy friend-maybe romantic interest Dennis.

Each cut-scene is absolutely delicious and I love the concept of fleeing all the stage and finally get to combat your enemies. The mechanics are simple, but hard to master and really addictive.

This game is really sure of what he wants to do and about its crazy story and, even though is short, it has been a refreshing surprise to me, a survival horror fan, and it ranks to my favorites.

Would love to have a Clock Tower 4!!!

With how often videos are randomly deleted, and how seriously spoilers should be taken, there has to be a pretty good reason to link a cutscene for a review. However, this is a case where trying to convey the game’s tone makes words fail me, even when it seems like a normal horror game at first glance. Watch this scene from the linked time (13:25 if it breaks), until its end at about the 15 minute mark. Don’t worry, it’s from the very start of the game and contains no significant plot details.

If you opened up that link expecting something gory or scary, well, me too. I played this soon after the original Clock Tower, which is one of my favorite Super Nintendo games, and one of the first that comes to mind when I think “kino”. It was a genre-pioneering title that still uniquely shines, so after hearing that Clock Tower 3 was also considered an underappreciated classic, I jumped right in, only to find… that. Whatever the hell that was. It’s not just that single scene either; in comparison to most of the other cutscenes, it’s actually pretty soberly directed. The experience feels like House of the Dead with its excessively energetic campiness, and the horror comes more in theme rather than atmosphere. Sure there are big unstoppable monsters to chase you through each stage, but the end is always a boss fight that can only be described as a magical-girl interlude rather than a desperate showdown. If all you ever wanted was a horror game that flies off the rails so hard that it rockets into space, then it will probably end up being your favorite game of all time, but by the end I was just sitting in my chair wondering what in the world I just witnessed. It wasn’t exactly a horror game, it wasn’t an action game, it was a... questionably-localized horror-themed magical-girl historical family drama? I grasp at straws at how to even wrap this up for recommendation purposes, since it’s certainly not great, the aforementioned boss fights are uniformly terrible and the level design is mediocre at best, but it’s just decent enough and so thoroughly unusual that I hope people keep playing it. We might never see big-budget games get this weird ever again, and I would gladly sacrifice some production value if it meant we could get some more games this hard to describe.

Wow... this one is legitimately creepy and scary in the first two levels/chapters.

After that, it goes down the deep end of ridiculous enemy design.

Dang, what a shame.

Coming away from Clock Tower 3, I find myself incredibly impressed by its technical achievements. It looks astonishingly good for its time, with real time cloth deformation, real time reflections, and absurdly busy animations in its cutscenes. What I'll take away from my time with Clock Tower 3 is that Capcom were masters of the Playstation 2, and that someone on this team really knew how to design a final boss. The stop-and-start nature of Clock Tower 3's goofy boss fights are fine but never anything beyond that, right up until that final boss. A tense, excellently designed battle that requires great execution and understanding of the boss' moveset to complete. It feels more like a fighting game than a horror game, particularly in the aesthetics of the scene.

All in all, a clunky and bizarre game but one with great pacing, a lot of love, and a bizzarely good final boss. It's super expensive to play on its original hardware but definitely worth emulating, it's definitely worth the 5 hours it takes to play through to completion.

Clock Tower 3 is the reason why emulation is good cuz I played it for the first time in 2021.

This game is jank and the story sucks and I love every goddamn moment of it, from its combat encounters, to its voice acting, to its cutscene direction, to my all time favourite female protagonist.

Alyssa is a girl chosen by fate to hunt demons and is completely unprepared and fearful while still being motivated, allowing her to be a badass without removing any of her agency.

It's short, it's sweet and it deserves to be in your halloween queue.

Another example of a game that is hated on for no good reason - not that my 2 star rating is helping. CT3 deserves way more love than it gets. It's so flawed, but it has such a heart of gold within.

Even though in my reviews of the other three games I decry them for their lack of speed, I want to say this game was way too fast from what I remember. Granted, I haven't played this game in probably a decade; but it went in the total opposite direction. Between enemies everywhere, boss fights, and a plot that jumps around like no one's business; this game just feels rushed to me. I love the atmosphere; I love the music; and I love the overall design. I just never feel like I got to enjoy any single part of this game long enough for a survival horror. I almost want to call this Rule of Rose if they did everything incorrectly. Maybe I'm also being too harsh on this game though?

All-in-all I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone in checking out PS2 games that flew under the radar of the greatest hits discussion. I just wouldn't come in expecting the world's greatest videogame let alone the best survival horror - maybe I'll review my darling gem Rule of Rose one day - but I would expect a good time none-the-less. Another game that I hopefully want to re-add to my collection one day - assuming I see it for a good price at Hard-Off.

film dweeb revisionists want you to believe battle royale was kinji fukusaku's true swan song oh no no no....(does tch tch tch finger waggle gesture)...it was this. the tragedy of disruption of the family--especially when the cause is from within the family--set against the frenetic, in your face pace and nothing-too-sacred camp that the director pulls off so well. maybe the best mo cap flailing youre gonna find in video game cutscenes, which the english dub unfortunately ruins sometimes. case in point

Genuinely scary chase sequences with the first two baddies or so. This game was where I first heard of not only Chopin’s fantasie impromptu #1, but also where I first learned you can dissolve a whole corpse in an acid bath.

Goes downhill pretty fast when it turns into archery simulator for the boss fights and offers up one of the most bizarre anime-ass narratives I’ve ever seen in a game.

This was directed by Kinji Fukasaku?!

this game is like several different things of varying quality wrestling for the spotlight, it is the mixed bag of mixed bags. when its good, it is DAMN good, like oh my god, must-play survival horror right here... and when its bad, its legit one of the worst things ive ever played.
even tonally, it can never quite settle on anything. sometimes it wants to be a somewhat more grounded horror with an air of supernatural horror, and then sometimes you'll be flying on a clock in a storm as if it were the opening of bayonetta, and sometimes you'll be arguing about destiny with a campy villain while he flips around everywhere. and dont even get me started on the ron weasely lookalike turning the game into something resembling a disney sitcom for a cutscene. this game really has no set tone.
but thats just the cutscenes, theres maybe an hour of em total, how is the gameplay you may ask
well
it starts out good. its atmospheric, you explore around a place, maybe encountering a ghost and trying to offer its corpse something so it can stop scaring you. but then eventually you encounter the boss of the area, but instead of having a boss fight, it just starts chasing you through the level as you're trying to do puzzles. and when the puzzles are easy enough to figure out, this is when the game is at its peak. this is the part where i cant get enough of it and legit want more. if you like your resident evils, your dino crisis, your silent hills then you'll love...most this game. it actually does feel like what the hookman version of re4 would have been and i wouldnt be surprised if this was one of the various games that spawned from re4's development. but the puzzles and navigation does get far more annoying as the game goes on. particularly in the castle with the titular scissorman and the even more TITular scissorwoman. have fun running around in circles for 20 minutes until you cave and look at a guide and realize "i was supposed to notice THAT?" but it's not really a deal breaker, and im sure if you plan on replaying the game you wouldnt have that same problem.
oh and before i get further, i have to point out that this is a fixed camera game without tank controls. maybe that will interest some, but by god i hate having the camera change so often when i just want to walk forward but the direction controls will either lock to where im going, making me skid into a wall or it'll make me 180 into the monster... i really wish this game at least had the option for tank controls where i wouldnt have to worry about that...


as for the...OTHER part of the game...
the boss fights
the bosses are actually another example of the tonal shift you experience in this game, as it goes from "OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD" panicking as you narrowly avoid death from this unavoidable enemy chasing you, even when you escape him, he could be around any corner or bust through any door... and then you get the over the top cutscene with them doing goofy shit, you undergo a magical girl transformation sequence where you get a bow and get this insane boss intro card where you see his stats
now that is not the bad part.
the bad part comes in the actual gameplay, where the closest comparison i have is... devil may cry 2 bosses but you have to stand in place to shoot and you have to hold a charge for 6 seconds before you can shoot and its just a game of who can stun lock who first. the boss will either be the most infuriating sonuvabitch you've fought against in a game or an absolute joke. and if you're lucky you'll trigger a super special move that takes out like 60% of his health bar. otherwise you're stuck trickling away his health with your reagular charged arrows, doing 3-8% of his health with every shot depending on the arrows charge level. and do yourself a favor and save all your damn special arrows that you find around levels. it sounds miserable doing bosses without them (and it is!) but by god they are all necessary for the final boss. even with savestates and my reserve of ammo, he is an absolute bitch. these bosses legit kill the damn game, not just "holding back" what would be an absolute classic, but actively ruining it. i love this game as much as i hate it, and it legit pains me to say that i don't think i'll ever be replaying it


i will say though, this game got a laugh out of me when you go to hell and its a damn sewer level

Even a day after beating it, I struggle to understand how I feel about this game. I think I enjoyed it, but objectively it's pretty middle of the road.

Well, to begin with, the CGI cutscenes are some of the best PS2 has to offer. They are mesmerizing but, the same can't be said for the regular cutscenes. The models look great and hold up today but the characters move so much when barely anything warrants it that it just becomes confusing. I'm not really sure what Kinji Fukusaku was going for. Also, the younger characters sound noticeably older than they should be and it's just really jarring.

As for the story, firstly, it doesn't have anything to do with the previous games but I don't have an issue with that since CT2 wrapped up the Scissorman story nicely. What I do have an issue with though is the tone, this game has no idea whether it wants to be over-the-top hilarious with the hammy vocal performances and the final sequence which is just ridiculous, heartwrenching with the genuinely nice resolutions to the subplots in the first two levels, or scary or all of the above and it's just a mess though it's a very fun and enjoyable mess nonetheless.

In terms of gameplay, it ditches the point and click style of the previous games in favour of a survival horror style very similar to Silent Hill. Personally, I prefer this approach and in terms of being different from its contemporaries, Clock Tower 3 has Subordinate chases in which you try to run away from bosses in a level. Unlike Scissorman, these bosses are relentless, they appear for most of the level and basically never stop. They are great at instilling the same sense of panic that was present in Clock Tower 2 but to a much greater extent here. Also, I do like how getting hit by them raises your Panic meter, which was a mechanic that was extremely worthless in the previous games. The problem is that in other survival horror games, you could take it at your own pace which made the camera a non-issue, in CT3 that's not the case and the dynamic camera angles make it really confusing when trying to frantically run away. This is made worse by the fact that the subordinates have some of the worst hit detection I've seen in all of gaming. If they wind up their attack while you're anywhere near them, You're Getting Hit. Even if you're far away by the time they finish their attack animation. It's really infuriating and the 3rd Subordinate, Chopper, can go to hell.

The game does have other aspects I like, the music is fantastic and I love the use of piano in it, the boss fights are pretty fun if a little repetitive (besides the final boss which is just a boring damage sponge that takes 5 times as long, but is no more engaging than regular boss fights) and the Ghosts which you set free by finding an item that lets their soul move on was a really enjoyable mechanic that reminded me a lot of Echo Night. Despite this though, I can't shake the feeling that anything I like about the game is in some way countered by something I dislike. It's such a hodgepodge of things that work and things that fail that it ultimately results in a mediocre game.