Clock Tower (series)/YMMV

• Broken Base: Nolan's feelings for Jennifer, and their relationship. Some fans are fine with it because it's not sexual in nature and makes for an effective foil for Harris's feelings, while others are squicked out and disgusted that a relationship between an underage girl and grown-up is being portrayed positively. According to the creator, the latter reaction was somewhat intentional and their relationship isn't intended to work out.
  • 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.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Despite the player being unable to save her, Lotte is the most popular of Jennifer's friends within the Fandom.
  • From Ghost Head is Bates/Sho. Both are complete badasses, but Bates is also played by Roger Jackson, and he's the only voice actor who has any talent.
  • Also, Gotts from the second game for both averting Police Are Useless and being the only character who takes being chased by Scissorman in stride. His best scene is when Scissorman appears, he calmly draws his gun and shoots him. Of course, he quickly discovers his bullets don't have any effect...
  • There's also the Scissor Twins from Clock Tower 3, who seem to be the most popular of the Subordinates.
• Hell Is That Noise: Bobby's scissors in the first game.
  • And Dan's in the second.
• Idiot Plot: Clock Tower 3. Where even to begin?
• Macekre: The third game Ghost Head is set in Osaka, Japan. They try to fit it in California in the localization despite everything being so Japanese. The references to Japanese folklore were completely removed as well.
• Most Annoying Sound: At least in Clock Tower 3. "Alyssa! Alyssa! Alyssa!" or "Oh ho, that's a nice trick! Oh ho, that's a nice trick!".
  • "Snippity snap!"
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • In the first game, the Scare Chord that plays when something scary happens can make some events over-dramatic and ridiculous. Also some of the ways Bobby can spawn, such as falling on the keys of a piano, can be pretty silly.
  • In Clock Tower 3. Sledgehammer is truly frightening but everything afterward is this. Maybe except Corroder because you do see him kill people in horrifying ways, yet he gets repelled in very goofy ways like being slammed by a toilet door.
• The Scrappy:
  • Anne from the first game gets some flak because one of her four lines has her teasing Lotte's nervousness shortly after arriving in the mansion.
  • While not as widely hated as Scrappies in other fandoms, Dennis gets enough flack to at least warrant his own entry on the LiveJournal group hated_character. From a few games back, Nolan receives some squicked out reactions for having a relationship with a 15 year-old, but generally isn't vehemently loathed. Also, no one likes Harris, for some reason.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Struggle Within seems as if it was designed without guns in mind. It gets even worse when you play as Alex since the hit boxes to click on the zombies are really picky to where it is nearly impossible to finish unless you shoot each zombie in order of who walked in before the next. It also drags. The standard gameplay somehow had reduced difficulty over all. The only real difficult part about it is hoping you saved your game before you get locked into any of the bad endings.
• So Bad, It's Good: Ghost Head/The Struggle Within is generally seen as this by fans of the Clock Tower series that are willing to forgive its flaws.
• That One Boss: The final boss of Clock Tower 3. Here's a friendly diagram. The LP it's taken from explains why
  • To elaborate, the boss in question, Lord Burrough, has a ton of health, his attack are too fast for you to charge a full shot (except on the rare occasion when stands there and laugh, and yet...), and he can kill you instantly if he hits you three times, just like you can (except that you don't kill him instantly; you just deal great damage). He's beatable (mainly thanks to his habit of telegraphing each of his attacks), but if you hadn't saved enough special arrows, prepare yourself for a very long fight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As a lot of reviews point out, The Struggle Within/Ghost Head is just a ripoff of Resident Evil (although it didn't start out as such: Memorial Pharmaceuticals was innocent, and George Maxwell was the one who released the zombies). The story however had potential, but the developers decided to Mind Screw us by letting zombies take over the plot after the first scenario and never fully explaining the backstory.
• Uncanny Valley:
  • Happens in Clock Tower 3, inadvertently in which sometimes they look a little off... but this is one of those cases in which the Uncanny Valley can often turn out to be more funny than creepy.
  • Invoked in the fourth game because you do see corpses, but also unintentionally invoked with the character designs.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Players sometimes confuse Lotte from the first game as a boy. Her walking sprite does depict her with a large chest, but it's easy to miss the scene where she does move at all.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While the North American release of Clock Tower 2 got a very appropriate "Mature"-rating, the European release of the game was rated 10+ (as in appropriate for ages 10 and up)! Not only is the game filled with brutal and gory murders, but the game's very cover art depicting a grotesque-looking man wielding a giant pair of shears dripping with blood should have made it abundantly clear to the ELSPA that the game is not appropriate for kids.