I’m only on chapter 3 but can already say this is at least a 4.5 from me.

Incredibly elegant, cool tone, beautiful minimalist graphics, nice music, and most importantly, thoughtful puzzle design.

What a nice surprise.

With how often videos are randomly deleted, and how seriously spoilers should be taken, there has to be a pretty good reason to link a cutscene for a review. However, this is a case where trying to convey the game’s tone makes words fail me, even when it seems like a normal horror game at first glance. Watch this scene from the linked time (13:25 if it breaks), until its end at about the 15 minute mark. Don’t worry, it’s from the very start of the game and contains no significant plot details.

If you opened up that link expecting something gory or scary, well, me too. I played this soon after the original Clock Tower, which is one of my favorite Super Nintendo games, and one of the first that comes to mind when I think “kino”. It was a genre-pioneering title that still uniquely shines, so after hearing that Clock Tower 3 was also considered an underappreciated classic, I jumped right in, only to find… that. Whatever the hell that was. It’s not just that single scene either; in comparison to most of the other cutscenes, it’s actually pretty soberly directed. The experience feels like House of the Dead with its excessively energetic campiness, and the horror comes more in theme rather than atmosphere. Sure there are big unstoppable monsters to chase you through each stage, but the end is always a boss fight that can only be described as a magical-girl interlude rather than a desperate showdown. If all you ever wanted was a horror game that flies off the rails so hard that it rockets into space, then it will probably end up being your favorite game of all time, but by the end I was just sitting in my chair wondering what in the world I just witnessed. It wasn’t exactly a horror game, it wasn’t an action game, it was a... questionably-localized horror-themed magical-girl historical family drama? I grasp at straws at how to even wrap this up for recommendation purposes, since it’s certainly not great, the aforementioned boss fights are uniformly terrible and the level design is mediocre at best, but it’s just decent enough and so thoroughly unusual that I hope people keep playing it. We might never see big-budget games get this weird ever again, and I would gladly sacrifice some production value if it meant we could get some more games this hard to describe.

Completely wordless honest master class narrative stressing the importance of care, love, unity. Almost feels like edutainment in the sense that it is perfectly crafted for small hands to slowly worm their way through the world, evolving and experimenting with all the very charming animals to see all the beauty. Didn't leave me with any strong feelings tho ;-; but it was always just,,, nice to experience. Lovely to sit down, interact with the full scope of these kind, unique and alien creatures to find their human, cute, and often interesting sense of becoming friends. L-D-L really Knew the world.

It's gloriously next gen as you'd expect visually, but like with a lot of these remakes, the issue is the last time I played the first game, it was 13 year old me and my beloved PS3, and my mind's eye sees the same gooey, gory grandiose here as from those years ago. Of course the original doesn't look as good as this one really but it plays incredibly similar. Kudos to the original for being so damn good in the first place. I guess the point of these remakes is that we can play them and not feel as old as they are, but honestly who cares.
Anyways it was good fun revisiting this claustrophobic nightmare once again. I hate to be that guy but I like the stoic silent PS3 Isaac better: more mystery = more sexy!