SH3 is my least favorite game in the trilogy, but it's still a really good game. To get my grievances out of the way, I think the first half of the game's story is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too sparse in comparison to the other games which I think detracts from the enjoyment of the experience a bit. I think you don't get enough of the characters early on and are busy exploring and all that stuff which does hinder this game a bit for me. I think some of the enemies in this game are a bit tedious to fight against too and really don't enhance the game's atmosphere too much or horror, like the crawling enemies are just not fun to deal with for example. I think the final area in the game is a BIT too strict with its healing items distribution early on (getting into it right after a boss fight and taking forever to find a healing item in the first place on "getting killed by anything" hp territory did lead to some annoyances for sure,) and the final boss is easily the worst final boss in the series (which is funny given how lacking every other final boss is) so the gameplay ends on a bit of an annoying note.

With that said though, I think Sh3 has higher high than Sh1 and it does a great job of recontextualizing a lot of thing from Sh1 and adds great character context a lot. I think generally while I prefer how the characters in SH1 are distributed throughout the story, Sh3 definitely has the far better and more meaningful cast out of it and Sh1. I think Sh3 is tied with 1 for being the scariest game in the series, which is something I think a game like SH2 lacks a bit in comparison. SH3 is a very beautiful game graphically and it does enhance the horror of the game by a lot! Also the voice acting while not fantastic, is definitely the best in the series, I played with the patch which has the original voices in the game. Everyone sounds nice, though some performances can be iffy here and there. I think SH3 is overall a really enjoyable experience, I might have a bunch more emotional investment and thoughts poured into a game like SH2 (which I've not written a review yet because it's a game that is kinda hard for me to write about because of a bunch of factors), but I absolutely admire the experience of SH3 and I am happy I finally got to play this.

Also please don't skip this game just for Heather, you lose a lot of subtext of this game if you don't play SH1 at the very least. You should play the entire trilogy, but I think so much narrative weight is dampened or outright lost when you play this first.