Those with a taste for adventure should check it out, but if you're frustrated easily, you might want to run and hide.
Clock Tower 3 is the story of Alyssa, a 14-year-old girl who has been away at boarding school for most of her life. Mere days before her 15th birthday, she receives a cryptic letter from her mother urging her to go into hiding until the special day is past. Unable to understand her mother's plea, Alyssa goes running home, only to find her house abandoned. After meeting with a frightening stranger, she descends a spiral down into the darkest depths of dreary fantasy, traversing the fields of time and reality to become a warrior of light. It soon becomes clear to her that only she can extricate herself from the dangerous situation she finds herself in, though others will try and help her along the way.
Clock Tower 3 takes good steps towards establishing a plausible storyline for an otherwise fantastic premise. In fact, the back of the box makes the game sound downright corny. Fortunately, the game's fast pace remedies this. With very little information, Alyssa must do some quick and creative thinking to get out of some tight spots. As each piece of the puzzle becomes more clear, the player finds a solid background for the story to stand on. Unfortunately, this solid background disappears less than halfway through the game and takes a turn for the worst.
Clock Tower 3 is the type of game that establishes rules. Now, the old cliche is that rules were meant to be broken, but who likes cliches anyway? After Clock Tower 3 establishes it's few good rules and regulations, it proceeds to break every one of them. The story literally falls apart in the third act when it is no longer clear exactly how this series of strange events fits together. In addition, the villains get worse and worse with each chapter. While the sledgehammer-wielding masked menace of the first section is enough to make anyone want to wet their pants, the Scissor Twins showcased before the final showdown will make a player want to stab their eyeballs out. Throw in the most ridiculously difficult final boss for a game of this caliber, and you come up with a game experience that can be thoroughly disappointing for some.
The graphics in the game are fairly decent. While the environments are rather drab and not very detailed, they have a certain creepy atmosphere that is appealing. The characters are well-rendered, albeit slightly stiff in their movements. One large disappointment in the game are the ghosts, who look like the badly-rendered versions of a 4-year-old's watercolor painting and are not frightening in the least.
The sound effects in the game also deteriorate as time goes by. Alyssa's voice is mostly appropriate for her character, although she is a little whiny at times. The first villain's voiceovers are good, but each time you advance a little, the catchphrases get a little worse. In the second act, the game introduces who could possibly be remembered as the most annoying video game character ever. The music is on a neverending loop and becomes increasingly annoying.
Despite all the above faults, overall Clock Tower 3 isn't a bad game. The concept of hiding and evasion is a good one to bring into horror games, and is a little more interesting than just carrying around a big shotgun all the time (not that there's anything wrong with that). Once you've beaten the game once, you can restart on a harder mode and unlock new outfits for Alyssa (none of which should really be worn by a 14-year-old). However, most players will find that they don't particularly want to brave another playing of Clock Tower 3, although hardcore fans will be happy to.