Okay, so come on, this is the graphics engine? Really? Because so far, it's not doing anything special. In an outdoor area – directly repeated from the original Siren, by the way – the fogging is terrible, as if the engine can't quite render anything more than thirty feet away. Hopefully, this is an atmosphere choice and not a technical limitation. And hopefully, there aren't going to be a lot of directly ported levels. It's kind of disappointing to remember things as you're doing them.

Also, episode 3 opens with what looks like a fairly open-ended environment. Only it's not. You're carefully guided from point A to point B. What's more, it seems like a certain event in the outdoor area is entirely scripted for a little fake tension. I hope Siren: Blood Curse will open up more as it goes on, and won't be hewing so close to the plot of the first Siren.

On the positive side, I'm really enjoying the character development. Above are the three American characters added to give the game more of an international hook than the original, which featured an almost entirely Japanese cast. To find out the backstory on these character, it looks like you are indeed expected to carefully explore or replay parts of the game to unlock all the archive items. Now I'm torn between wanting to fill in the gaps by replaying the current episode, and wanting to progress the storyline by moving on to the next episode. But I guess that's the nature of the game.

Spoiler talk about episode 3 after the jump.

In case you haven't played Siren, all the stuff with Howard guiding Miyako through the farmland is directly ported over. As with episode two, I'm only remembering this as it happens, so I have no idea what the deal is with Miyako being cursed, and why the guy with the rifle just lets her go. What's that guy's deal? I thought he was some bad-ass zombie hunter? He's not very persistent about his quarry.

Great work with Sol showing up at the hospital. I love that not only did they kill him, but you discover the guy was a lovesick sap. I would have hated to have missed Sol's script, which sheds light on the message he left Melissa in episode 1. His fate does make me wonder about the rules of Siren's "zombies". Sol goes from being in love with Melissa and protecting Bella to trying to kill both of them, but he seems to remember them. The "shibito", as they're called, obviously aren't mindless. What are they?

Finally, Amana's diary from 1976 cuts off at the point where she notes that there was something on the back of her locket. Note that Melissa also has a locket with Bella's picture in it. Could there be something on the back? Melissa, like Amana, is blonde and that seems to be an operative part of Amana's back story.

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