YMMV / Haunting Ground

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Some people believe that Fiona's parents ending up near the castle with her in the car that evening was a horrible Contrived Coincidence that lead to tragedy for all of them, while others believe that they had their own ulterior motives, and planned on using her for her Azoth too. The lyrics of "Endless Zero" very heavily imply that they, or at the very least Ayla, wanted Fiona's Azoth.
  • Daniella's crying (and weeping bloody tears at that) before her boss fight could either be seen as her being driven insane in failing to kill Fiona time and time again, or a desperate plea to Fiona to end her miserable life, having given up in wanting to become human and thus has no desire to continue living as a broken being. Daniella making no attempt to stop the falling glass shard from piercing her heart after her boss fight seems to suggest that Daniella cornered Fiona in the stargazing room not to kill her, but to force Fiona to kill Daniella.
  • In the worst ending, it's generally believed that Hewie died because his bond with Fiona wasn't strong enough to help him pull himself together and rescue her. However, since your bond with Hewie has to be as weak as possible to get this ending, it's possible that he survived and just decided that she wasn't worth the trouble of helping.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Given that most of the bosses are Puzzle Bosses, most of them become this once you know what to do. However, Riccardo takes the cake; it's possible to beat him in seconds, assuming you don't beat him up for items first.
• Awesome Music: The chase themes for the Nightmare Fuel factor, particularly "Innocent Freak", and "Last Debilitas" for the boss music, both fittingly tense. On the less Nightmare Fuel-y side of things, "Precious Hewie" is an absolutely beautiful piece, calming and gentle, and fitting for the Heroic Dog who helps and comforts Fiona throughout the game.
• Catharsis Factor: Ending C, obtained by beating the game once and ensuring Debilitas lives in his boss fight has Fiona succeed in escaping the castle early. With the added bonus of seeing Lorenzo tumble down the castle stairs in a feeble attempt to chase after her.
• Complete Monster:
  • Aureolus Lorenzo Belli is a mad alchemist and the architect of the nightmare of Belli Castle. A man obsessed with immortality and knowledge, Lorenzo conducted countless human experiments for many decades, his victims killed or turned into living corpses. As he grew older, Lorenzo decided to create two clones of himself, Riccardo and Ugo, to continue his cruel machinations if he ever expires. Mentoring Riccardo into the same evil he practices, they performed even more experiments and together kidnapped and brainwash a young Daniella into their slave and guinea pig who they abuse horribly. After learning that Ugo has a daughter, Fiona Belli, who has an abundant gift of Azoth, which he believes is the key to immortality, Lorenzo arranged a meeting with him and his family, letting Riccardo kill them and take Fiona. Once Fiona is brought to Belli Castle, Lorenzo deceives her by helping her escape and eliminate Riccardo, luring her to him so he could personally kill her and absorb her Azoth. After relentlessly chasing and attacking her, Lorenzo, pushed to the brink of death, tried to use the last of his life force to take Fiona with him in a desperate bid for her Azoth.
  • Aureolus Riccardo Belli is the third stalker and Fiona's Evil Uncle. An imperfect clone of Lorenzo, Riccardo kills his brother, Ugo, and his sister-in-law by causing a car crash, both out of rage and envy for Ugo being a better clone than him. Hated by his father for his disobedience since childhood and his inability to understand emotions, Riccardo works as the castle's keeper and captures any animal he can find to extract their Azoth. Riccardo was responsible for Debilitas, a simple-minded homunculus he had created using a dog's placenta. Not only cruel to animals, Riccardo also beats his father's maid, Daniella, whenever he has the chance. Despite following his father's orders, Riccardo secretly wants to usurp his position by raping and impregnating Fiona, his niece, so she can give birth to a perfect version of him, and succeeds in doing so in Ending D. If Fiona is killed by Riccardo, he takes the opportunity to rape her corpse.
• Cult Classic: The game was largely ignored on release, partially due to another big Capcom title overshadowing it. Over the years it's gained a cult following and considered a worthwhile and interesting survival horror game in its own right.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Daniella is, to put it lightly, mentally unwell, with her abrupt shifts of mood, hatred of her own reflection and having No Sense of Personal Space. Fans have semi-frequently speculated on just what exactly is causing her issues, and the Clock Tower wiki lists no less than 10 mental disorders she shows signs of, including but not limited to dissociative identity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Daniella, Riccardo and young Lorenzo often receive this treatment within the fandom. Never mind the fact all three are trying to harm, and potentially kill, a teenage girl who just lost her family and is being kept prisoner there. Likewise, some fans will invoke Ron the Death Eater on Fiona, or at least be petty and call her a whore and idiot while praising the villains.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Daniella is pretty darn popular with the fandom.
  • Hewie could probably count, for being the main protection against the stalkers and in gameplay-wise, making the game original.
• Fanfic Fuel: The origins of the Belli family, particularly if Lorenzo was driven into a Start of Darkness.
• Fan-Preferred Pairing: This game has no pairings, aside from the one-sided advances of Riccardo regarding Fiona, but you'd be surprised to find Daniella/Fiona is a very popular pairing within the fandom.
• Game-Breaker: Fiona's Texas Cowgirl costume, unlocked for simply getting the game's A ending, trivializes any and all encounters with stalkers barring perhaps gun wielding Riccardo and young Lorenzo. It grants her a pistol that nonetheless has the blast radius and raw power of a shotgun, and will lay out your enemies in just a half a dozen shots in most cases. It's only real downsides are how long Fiona takes to ready each shot and that it can be somewhat difficult to avoid hitting Hewie, but otherwise, it has unlimited ammo and doesn't even require proper aiming in many situations.
• Good Bad Bugs: This video shows you how to trigger a glitch with the golden candlestick, which enables a series of other glitches. Such as making Lorenzo invisible when he pursues Fiona, and also allows you to skip two of the boss battles against him, making it useful for speedruns (seen at 2:55). However, one of the doors, which you can usually open, will be locked while the glitch is active.
• Les Yay: Depending on whether Girl on Girl Is Hot or not, you might be more or less creeped out by Daniella groping Fiona in her sleep.
• Memetic Mutation: It's cleaning time.
  • Let me into your womb!
• Moral Event Horizon: When Riccardo shoots Hewie in the forest, and uses him as bait for Fiona to come to his aid. If that wasn't when he what crossed it, then Riccardo raping Fiona in Ending D was what did it!
• Narm: The game's strange tendency to show Fiona's Catapult Nightmare awakening repeated three times from different angles. When it first happens at the beginning of the game it's easy enough to brush aside, but when it happens again within the first half an hour of playing, it just feels silly.
  • Young Lorenzo draining Fiona of her Azoth in his game over sequence sounds less like sucking out a young woman's life force and more like slurping down a large soda.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The failed homunculi. While they are arguably creepy in their own right, some of them just look (and sound) stupid.
  • Old Lorenzo chasing after Fiona in his wheelchair in the cutscene where you first meet him, then his coughing and spluttering whenever Hewie attacks him after he's reduced to crawling along the ground after said cutscene, is as ridiculous as it sounds. The former could be creepy in its own unsettling way were it not for Fiona's rather ridiculous Big "NO!" making it even harder to take seriously.
• Squick:
  • Lorenzo's voice. Those weird sucking noises!
  • Or how about the fact that Riccardo is Fiona's uncle (who, due to cloning, also counts as her father) and is making it his mission in the game to rape and impregnate her?
• That One Boss: Every boss in the game has to be defeated in a specific manner and it's easy if you know what you're doing. But if you want to get items before you defeat them, things get difficult. But the best example (and the only one which doesn't involve getting items off the boss) is the last chase with Lorenzo's burning corpse and the damn statue! The part is so hard that players believe the statue is the real final boss.
• Vindicated by History: The game didn't sell particularly well on release, partly because it was massively overshadowed by Capcom's own Resident Evil 4 that released the same year. It also was met with lukewarm critical reviews, with the general sentiment being that it had a well-crafted atmosphere and impressive visuals but didn't do much to stand out from other japanese horror games. Over time the game has become more well-regarded by survival horror fans as a worthwhile entry in the genre, and you won't find many people trying to argue it doesn't hold its own with unique mechanics and narrative elements, such as the psychosexual narrative surrounding Fiona and the gameplay and story implementation of Hewie.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Many players have taken notice of the incredible character models in cutscenes, especially the detailed facial animations that allow for expressive emotions, which still hold up very well in modern times.
• The Woobie:
  • Fiona. The poor girl looks like she's going to cry in most cutscenes she's in involving the stalkers. Doesn't help that her parents were killed by a man who not only looks like her father, but also intends to rape her, and the castle that could kill her with death traps turns out to be hers!
  • Possibly Daniella as well. Riccardo inhumanely interrogates her about Lorenzo, she's hinted to have been sexually abused, and expresses discontent at being an Artificial Human (or so she was brainwashed into believing). Is it any wonder she goes insane? Though trying to kill Fiona out of jealousy and Hewie, whether or not he gets in the way, makes Daniella more of a Jerkass Woobie.
  • Debilitas too, considering that he doesn't really know that what he's doing is wrong.
  • Hewie! You'll want to kill Riccardo for shooting the poor pooch and leaving him to die in the forest.

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