YMMV / Clock Tower 3

• Angst? What Angst?: The end of the game has Alyssa and Dennis hugging, with hopeful music in the background as Alyssa mentally proclaims "We did it, Mum!"... after spending hours witnessing gruesome deaths, being stalked, discovering unsettling truths about her family, watching her mother die, and having to kill her own grandfather when he tried to use her for a ritual. They downplay the Bittersweet Ending so much that it ends up becoming this.
• Awesome Music:
  • The final boss theme is a bombastic, climatic piece that might be the one likable thing Dick Hamilton has going for him.
    • While the regular boss theme is pretty good in itself, there's also the Scissorwoman-exclusive version that's filled with the snipping of scissors.
  • Clock Tower Rebirth, which plays during the scene where the clock tower rises, is an absolute bop and very catchy. Even if it is slightly out of place during what is supposed to be a terrifying scene.
• Base-Breaking Character: Dennis. His character has caused division amongst the fans, with some hating him for being an annoying Plucky Comic Relief character who amps the campiness of the game, to the point he has his own entry on the LiveJournal group hated_character, while others love him for said characterization and campiness, his friendship with Alyssa, and his willingness to protect her even if it costs him his life. Not to mention HE'S the one who deals the finishing blow on Scissorman. He was actually, at one point, listed under both Ensemble Dark Horse and The Scrappy on this very wiki, hence why he was move to Base-Breaking Character.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Alyssa happily laughing to herself as she rides a giant clock face in the sky, all while funky music plays in the background. Seriously, what.
• Broken Base: There's a number of fans who hate Clock Tower 3 for being so different from the previous games, while others are just fine with it. Indeed, some prefer the more light-hearted B-movie style campiness (intentional or not) of it over the earlier games, which took the premise more seriously.
• Complete Monster: Lord Darcy Burroughs was a 17th century landowner who, upon losing his daughter, went into a berserk fury, killing his own wife and over a hundred of his own people. Burroughs also raised the psychotic "Scissor Twins" to torture and kill more people, even demanding village heads execute dozens of their own citizens to appease him. It is revealed Burroughs' daughter Anabel was an intended sacrifice for Burroughs to become a powerful supernatural being known as an Entity. After his physical death, Burroughs reaches out to turn people into murderous, serial-killing Subordinates, and later fuses with his son's sinister descendant Dick Hamilton, the two collaborating to orchestrate the events of the game and sacrifice Dick's granddaughter Alyssa on her fifteenth birthday to achieve the power Burroughs craves at long last.
• Contested Sequel: Probably the most divisive of all three Clock Tower sequels. Many fans praised the sequel for its strong storyline, cinematic visuals, and campiness. Others, however, criticized the game for its repetitive gameplay, short length, and having a comparatively more lighthearted tone than its predecessors.
• Difficulty Spike: The Dark Id mentioned this◊ perfectly in his Let's Play of the game. The final boss not only has the health of nearly every boss you fought so far in the game combined, but can also regain it by draining yours and whip out an attack that kills you instantly.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The story is widely considered the best part of the game, being praised for its more cinematic presentation and audience engagement. The gameplay, on the other hand, was heavily criticized for being difficult and repetitive.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Scissor Twins, who seem to be the most popular of the Subordinates.
  • The rest of the Subordinates aren't lacking in the fandom department either. In fact, aside from Dick Hamilton, the villains of the game seem to be more well loved than the main characters.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In the end, Alyssa Hamilton is left homeless, her mother is dead, and her grandfather turns out to be an incestuous wannabe Entity. It is also implied that since Rooders cannot kill Entities permanently, Alyssa can still be hunted down by them. Horrifying, since it is revealed her powers will wane as she ages and completely disappear when she turns twenty. Yeah, happy ending indeed.
• Evil Is Cool: All the villains aside from Dick Hamilton are this.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Alyssa and the Subordinates get this, but the person she gets paired up the most in particular is probably Ralph the Scissorman.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Despite being one of the villains aiming to kill Alyssa, Chopper's backstory is very tragic. Deformed from birth, he suffered from the ill will and abuse of others all his life for something he couldn't help, and when he fell in love, he was cruelly rejected — which ended up causing him to snap and become the monster he is today. And even then, due to the ambiguous nature of an Entity's possession, it's entirely possible that his butchering of the woman he loved and the countless other women was not of his own volition. Either way, while it doesn't excuse what he's done, it's easy to see why he became what he was.
  • Sledgehammer also counts, since unlike Chopper, his possession by an Entity was obviously and completely against his will, as he was just an average man with no shocking or violent history prior.
• Narm: A lot of cutscenes in the game are utterly hilarious due to the over-the-top Motion Capture that tends to clash with the voice acting. Specifically, scenes with Alyssa and Dennis are often filled with weirdness, particularly Alyssa's insistence on running around like a chicken with its head cut off anytime anything remotely spooky happens.
  • How about the Freeze-Frame Bonus of the photo of Dick while he/Lord Burroughs is crooning for Alyssa to take his hand?
• Narm Charm: That being said, the hilarious cutscenes can be rather enjoyable for those who enjoy campy horror games or find Alyssa and Dennis endearing.
• Nightmare Retardant: Everything after Sledgehammer can be seen as this. While you do see Corroder kill people in a horrifying manner, he can get repelled in very goofy ways like being slammed by an outhouse door, and he also has a butt slam attack.
  • Sledgehammer can still fit the trope, considering he waddles like he wet his pants and has a rather, ahem, noticeable posterior.
  • The spirits can be considered this too. They look and sound like props you'd see in a haunted house attraction.
• No Yay: Alyssa and the Dark Gentleman, aka her grandfather, Dick Hamilton. It's canonical on his side, and incredibly horrifying.
• The Scrappy: Nobody likes Alyssa's grandfather. The man is a creepy, selfish murderer and implied to be a pedophile towards his granddaughter, and his boss fight is probably the worst for being ridiculously tedious and unfair.
• So Bad, It's Good: Can be considered this, though some would argue it's not so bad and in fact has a unique concept.
• That One Attack: Corroder's acid shot comes out extremely fast and can hit you from across the room. When he yells, "THERE SHE IS!", run.
• That One Boss: The final boss. Here's a friendly diagram.◊ The LP it's taken from explains why.
  • The boss in question, Lord Burroughs, has a ton of health (almost as much as every prior boss combined), his attacks are too fast for you to charge a full shot (except on the rare occasion when he stands there and laughs, and yet...), he can bind you in place and hit you with a finishing attack, just like you can do to him (except his always kills you instantly because you don't have as much health as he does), and on top of the tons of health, he can drain your life and replenish his own with one of his attacks. He's beatable, of course, but if you haven't saved enough special arrows, prepare yourself for a very, very long fight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Subordinates are regarded as this, as their concept is considered unique and fascinating among fans. Each one also has a unique backstory or theme. Unfortunately, aside from a few notes, we really don't know too much about them. Same goes for the Rooders, too.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The premise is good and arguably deconstructs the concept of Magical Girls. But due to bad writing, plot holes, and obvious budget issues, the game never got to shine.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: In spite of some of the games issues, it is incredibly well made for a game that came out in 2002. For example, as Matt and Liam in their Clock Tower 3 Let's Play statedtwice, animating beds in video games is incredibly difficult, which is often why most video games have characters sleeping on top of the sheets or have them sleeping off screen. However, Clock Tower 3 not only animates the bed to move under Alyssa and Dennis's weight, but also allows Alyssa to move the sheets and pillows with ease. That may seem like nothing, but for a early Play Station 2 game, that shows incredible graphic quality in a game.
• The Woobie: All of the Subordinates' victims. From central characters like May, Albert and Dorothy, to even side and nameless characters like the man in the sewers who tried to save somebody he loved, but ended up being tricked and left to starve to death.

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