Clocktower 3

[Olvelsper]

Capcom tries its hand on expanding a classic SNES era horror series with...mixed results. If the Clocktower series has always been about mimicking slasher flicks, then the third in this trilogy is more akin to a Nightmare on Elms Street movie because of its departure from reality. In the older games you faced off against crazy humans, but that's just what they were, B-movie styled serial killers.

The tone of the game reminds me of an odd mix of Sailor Moon and the older Clocktower games because now you're given a magical jar of holy water and assorted other mystical powers to fight beings known as Subordinates throughout the four areas of the game. These creatures are insane humans backed by the power of demons named Entities, and seek to destroy your character, who's of a line of female demon hunters that have the power to destroy them forever.

As you run through any given stage, you're hounded constantly by a Subordinate, which comes off as a mixed bag, really. It certainly gives you the feeling of being stalked that was present in the old games, but even after you drive them away they just show up two minutes or so later. Mostly due to the demonic powers that infuse them and keep bringing them back to life. This grows really annoying since you're given only three through five doses of holy water to stun them, and holy water fountains to refill your bottle come very rarely. Considering the fact that you can never destroy the Subordinates until the very end of each stage, you have these annoying dweebs on your back.

True combat doesn't start until you manage to save the main soul that the Subordinates have to torment to gain their powers, but when you do, the environment shifts from a RE style tunnels with prerendered backgrounds and such to a fully 3-D arena where the girl you control uses her power to morph her holy water jar into a bow of mystical power. From there you fight the Subordinates while a really nifty background theme song plays. A neat detail is that the Subordinates' health meters are based on the amount of jail time they would've receieved for their murders, had they ever been caught and stopped beforehand.

You run around dodging their attacks and holding down the action button to charge up your bow with holy energy to smite them, each successive level of the charge in the arrow doing more damage than the last until you finally reach a level where if you nail the killer with the arrow he or she will be binded in place and let you nail it with more high end shots since their movement is impaired. Something I have against the battles is that you can't aim your arrow, which is really annoying, and almost a game breaking affair when you face off against the final boss of the game. You're essentially stuck shooting your arrows in a straight line, and if the Subordinate moves, you're screwed out of a shot.

While I think that it was a noble attempt by Capcom, I think that this game strictly deserves a rental by the majority. Anyone who wants to play a magical girl/exorcist are free to try this game out. It should be cheap by now anyway.