11th Game Completed in 2023

Whew, so Clock Tower 3. I'll start by saying uh... This game is absolutely insane. Like batshit bonkers. It's probably one of the last games released during an era of Japanese horror games where there really wasn't a formula on how to make a "horror game," so all kinds of chancers took a shot and released whatever insane vision they could come up with.

What's interesting about Clock Tower 3 is just how tonally weird it is. It's a horror game, but also something of a comedy. And not unintentionally, either - the game knows it's completely ridiculous, and dives right into it with cackling villains, posh British accents, and a goofy character named Dennis. But none of this diminishes the horror at all, which is a balance that is damn near impossible to pull off. It will have some really goofy scenes that hard shift into some really shocking horror violence, and it all feels right in the mode of insanity this game sets itself into right from the start.

You play as a 15 year old girl thrown completely into chaos, through circumstances she has to rapidly understand. And as a protagonist, Alyssa is actually really fun. There's not a TON of voiced scenes in this game, but it's enough to establish her as someone gradually finding her strength in a completely bewildering situation. Villains chase her around the game's levels, malevolently muttering her name whilst in pursuit. And the game does a lot to really centre Alyssa as a character - in contrast to most horror games, where the lead character often is a bit of a blank slate outside of story scenes.

In terms of gameplay though... The game has some problems. Don't get me wrong, the core survival horror stuff here is good, and the levels are really well designed to accommodate fleeing pursuers. The core mechanics are great too - your defensive tools are holy water that can stun enemies, environmental context prompts that can temporarily disable your attacker, and hiding spots. And this stuff is really tense and fun. What's LESS fun is the god damn turning controls. In a fixed camera angle game, tank controls are ideal for a reason: When the camera shifts scenes, you can continue moving straight. In THIS game, there's some weird hybrid of tank controls... If you exit a screen holding right, and continue holding it, you will continue straight... Until you move the stick even slightly, at which point Alyssa wildly flies into whatever direction the stick is pointing. What this usually means is that you will be fleeing an enemy, change a screen, and then wind up running right into toward the enemy behind you. It's intensely frustrating, and resulted in numerous cheap deaths. Additionally, a lot of the movements in this game have an arbitrary wind-up time before and wind-down time after the animation - chiefly, the bow weapon during boss fights, and the crouch control. Both of these are required during the final boss fight, and it can become infuriating when you drop the bow, and have to wait for a delay before you can start a crouch.

While we're on the negatives, the soundtrack in this game SUCKS. It legitimately sounds like it's generated by an algorithm slapping sound samples together, and it's headache inducing. Absolutely awful.

Criticism aside though, this is a special little game. It's janky as shit, but there's really nothing else like it. If you are on the fence about this game, look up "Clock Tower 3 Corroder Introduction" on YouTube. If that scene strikes your fancy, you will love this game. It has a lot of completely unhinged moments like that, and it's absolutely worth tolerating the jank to experience this eccentric bit of madness. Games like this, where insanity is given enough of a budget to deliver a playable product with fairly high production values, are incredibly rare nowadays. This is a game that would absolutely benefit from a remake or a sequel that takes the same bones and builds better on them.

And as a bit of a side note... I have this game on a disc, but I actually played this through emulation with widescreen patched in and 4K upscaling. It looks and runs AMAZING, and really benefits from the emulation glow-up. I might say it's the best way to play it, and given the way this game's shot up in price... Not a bad thing.

Clock Tower 3 has a really fun take on the survival horror genre. You'll control Alyssa, running from horrendous supernatural killers while trying to piece together clues about the identity of the killer and finding sentimental items from his victims by solving puzzles. Once the ghost-mystery is solved Alyssa is able to directly fights the killer in a magical girl inspired battle armed with a mystical bow and bring peace to the souls of the dead. It's a unique concept and wonderfully fun being able to turn the tables on her pursuer.

Alyssia's role as a type of spirit-healer extends to the game's inventory items. Through-out the zones you will find restless ghosts, that will either try to attack Alyssa or reward her with some sort of important item if brings them some object that let's them rest in peace. One of the more interesting items you can get is a ring that grants temporary invisibility to help you run away.

  Found you!

In the boss fights Alyssa has normal health but for the rest of the game success depends on her 'panic meter', a great health system for a horror game. Merely being near the killer raises panic as does certain frightful things in the environment, and if she is directly attacked it almost fills up completely. At full panic Alyssa might start stumbling when you try to move her, or simply cower and not move at all, she might randomly burst out of hiding places, and during panic any attack from the killer is lethal.

There's a few neat survival mechanics. Alyssa has a vial which can be filled with holy water, that allows her to stun her stalker, there's one-time-use events you can trigger that will completely disable the killer for a good deal of time complete with an elaborate cutscene: stuff like causing a huge pile of debris to fall on him. She can also interact with parts of the environment to hide, like crawling under desks, and hope that the stalker runs away before panic (literally) sets in.

The game felt rushed near the end, I actually stopped playing at the third chapter. Another vice with the game is that its story is too episodic to be really engaging since every chapter introduces a new killer in a story and seemed to be only loosely connected to the main plot. It's not a top survival horror but I really did love how they managed to make it work with a magical girl theme.

I imagine it's fairly obscure because the concept is 'too Japanese'.

Trading the classic point and click gameplay for analog controls and fixed camera angles, Clock Tower 3 is a revolutionary installment in a severely underrated franchise.

Bringing one of the best atmospherical playgrounds in the survival horror genre, Clock Tower 3 brings a lot more to be had than its subtlety beautiful yet eerie locations, it's stalkers.

Featuring some of the most bizzare homicidal maniacs in the series, each having their own backstory, you will find yourself scampering to the nearest hiding place just to escape there deadly touch, a franchise signature. Still all awhile you find items of interest that help you discover the mystery of your missing parents.

Another new feature, although a frustrating bit, boss battles. Being armed with magical arrows you must hit your target until their health bar empties, a lot easier said than done! Especially the final battle, which will always remain as one of the hardest boss battles I have ever completed.

Clock Tower 3 is superior to its predecessors graphically, atmospherically, mechanically, and features the best villains in the series. Sadly, it's the last in the franchise, perhaps being too late in the game for its upgrades and being overshadowed by more financially successful franchises.