Catherine is a Flawed but an Amazing Experience
The fact that Catherine seeks to blend a dating simulation and a puzzle game into one experience almost makes this worth checking out in itself. However, the real question remains: did the team behind Persona 4 make a compelling video game out of such a crazy idea? The answer is a resounding yes!
Catherine is about Vincent, an average Joe struggling to find his place in the world and figure out exactly what he wants out of life. The game opens up with him engaged in a long term relationship with a mature woman called Katherine. All she wants out of life is to settle down with the man she loves. However, when Vincent meets a young, care free and attractive woman everything becomes much more complicated. In a drunken state Vincent makes the mistake of cheating on his girlfriend with this new girl who just happens to be called Catherine. He is now forced to juggle both relationships until he can figure out which woman–and by extension which life–he wants.
The game spans about a week in Vincent’s life. During the day the player is controlling Vincent tackling tough life choices through dialogue options and character interaction. During the night, however, is where things get really interesting. In these “nightmare” stages, the player must push and pull blocks allowing Vincent to climb to the top of a tower while it is slowly falling apart. Each nightmare ends with a boss stage where you have to climb the tower while also trying to avoid whatever attacks the boss throws at you. After the first couple of stages the game becomes quite hard. I ended up playing the game on easy just so I could get through the puzzles and see the story. Even with the game being set to easy it still managed to trip me up every once and a while. As you progress your way through the game, each tower will get more complicated as block variants—such as ice blocks, trap blocks, bomb blocks, etc—are introduced. Fortunately, nothing felt insurmountable and after some effort I was able to complete everything the game threw at me. As a result I ended up with an overall satisfaction feeling knowing that I had bested the game but again I was on easy.
Catherine also features a morality system that affects your character as you progress. Throughout the dialogue sequences you will be given options on how to respond to people. Essentially you are choosing which Catherine you want to be with through this morality system. However, as you near end the game becomes a lot more complicated than just simply a question of whether you want Catherine or Katherine. At the beginning of the game I specifically made choices to swing my meter one way but I ended up changing my mind towards the end. Unfortunately, I was not able to recover from my earlier decisions and ended up with an ending that I did not like. Fortunately, I understood why this happened and ultimately I was able to accept it. After all, it really was my fault.
As you would expect from an Atlus game, the cutscenes are divided between in-engine and full blown anime cutscenes. Both are incredibly well written, animated, and voiced. This is great considering how much dialogue there is in Catherine. All of the characters are really well realized thanks to great writing and execution. Which is not only a testament to the original development team but also to the localization team. All of the English dialogue and text feels spot on which couldn’t have been an easy task.
Unfortunately, Catherine does break down a bit as you near the final hour or two in the game. At the point when you are ready to see how everything wraps up, the game throws another hour of gameplay at you. You are forced to climb through six more levels including two boss levels. It felt so incredibly unnecessary and it ultimately felt like a very JRPG thing to do.
While the ending stages are the biggest complaint I have about Catherine that does not mean the rest of the game is without its flaws. The controls for climbing the block tower can be a bit touchy and imprecise at times causing you to make mistakes that really do not like were your fault. The text messages feature is smart and interesting but perhaps a bit limiting. Occasionally I felt like I was forced to respond to a message in a way that I did not want to simply because there were not enough options.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Catherine, minor flaws and all. There is simply not anything like it on the market today. It really was a unique experience that may not be for everybody but I really do hope people will try it out. Who knows, you might enjoy it as much as I did.
