Catherine

I don’t know the best way to describe how the game plays.It’s part puzzler.

There are blocks that you push and pull in an attempt to arrange them in such a way that you can climb to the top of the level and reach the exit.

Blocks can have different properties. For instance there’s a heavy block that is much slower to move than a regular block, there’s an ice block that could potentially slide you to your death should it be near enough to the edge and there’s a spring block capable of bouncing you up a good five levels.

At the last level of a stage there will be a boss to shake things up. Whether by trying to stab you with a fork or slicing off sections of the level with a chainsaw, these levels require you to think and act just that much quicker.

Now I’m perfectly willing to admit that I’m not altogether capable of such things.

I’m not particularly good at puzzle games in general, much less when they throw in giant, demonic looking babies to distract you. Though even without such threats I found the game quite difficult.

Eventually I hit a point where I just couldn’t take it and switched it to easy.

The game play is okay, but puzzles really aren’t my thing. I’m here for the story.

Despite putting the game on easy there were still a few stages in the middle that I found quite maddening. Funnily enough it was the last few levels at the end game that I found to be the easiest since the initial ones.

When you’re not clambering up a tower you’ll be at the Stray Sheep, the games bar and where the majority of your interaction with other characters will take place. You talk to the bars patrons and maybe help them up with their problems. There will be the occasional dialogue choice and that can effect a morality meter that will effect the games ending.

Between the choices at the bar and the questions posed to you in the confessional at the end of most levels, the meter can potentially make some pretty hard swings so you’ll have plenty of time within the games roughly 10 hour run time to change your mind should you want to go the other way.

Catherine is a very attractive game with a striking, Anime inspire art style.

That goes for both the in game visuals as well as the games gorgeous, professionally animated cinematic handled by STUDIO4°C.

Catherine not only looks great, but sounds amazing to boot.

The game has a fantastic soundtrack, largely consisting of remixes of classical music.

Whilst I didn’t think to check if you could change the voice work to the original Japanese, it didn’t seem necessary as the English dub is actually quite good.

I’m not a huge fan of the game play portions of Catherine, but it weaves an interesting tale that I feel is worth the hassle. Though with that said I’ll probably just Youtube the other ending, cause damned if I’m going to suffer another ten hours of block pulling.