So, it's no secret that my girlfriend Lindsey is a huge nerd. She cosplays Persona and Phoenix Wright with me at conventions, watched me play through all of Persona 4 twice, and we sit together and play DS RPGs together on the couch before we go to bed. She even puts up with me running the twitter account @NarukamiYu, which documents the events of Persona 4 (Endurance Run timeline) as they occur throughout 2011. So when we heard that the Persona team was putting together a game about mature themes like love, marriage and betrayal, we were all for playing it together.

However, this is a game you should NOT play with your girlfriend if you don't want her yelling at you the entire fucking time. I'm not going to give any real spoilers aside from minor ones, themes and general mechanics of the game, but if you don't want to know anything about the game, you should probably stop reading (although I haven't finished the game either, I just finished Stage 6 at the time of this writing).

In the beginning of the game, Vincent and his friends talk about commitment and how scary it is, and Lindsey couldn't believe that there were men who thought like that. I bit my tongue and avoided telling her that actually, all men are like that, and they just don't say it to their girlfriend because they don't want her to explode.

Every time Vincent has the option to write a text message to Katherine (his committed girlfriend), I kind of wanted to blow her off and be like "I'm drinking with my friends, leave me alone!" But Lindsey was horrified every time I wanted to say it, and made me change all my responses to "Sorry, can we talk later?" I mean, honestly, Katherine is really controlling and overbearing, I kind of wanted Vincent to just break free (though he can't for...various reasons). And she didn't even want me responding to Catherine's texts. "You can't be nice to both of them!" "Are you TRYING to destroy your relationship?" "What kind of person are you?!" were things that I heard as I played through the game. I mean, I kind of wanted to play the game like I would respond in real life...I don't want to be mean and dismissive of a girl just because it's the "right thing to do," because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings...maybe I'm just naive, but I felt terrible ignoring Catherine's texts or telling her that I couldn't see her that night.

And then there were the questions that you get asked in between puzzle levels in the game. "Would you ever lie to your significant other if you knew there was no possibility of getting caught?" There was no way I could possibly even deliberate answering that honestly with Lindsey sitting right next to me. Then there was the worst question of all, which we came to last night: "Could you reveal the entire contents of your cell phone inbox to your significant other?" I was like well shit. Either way I answer this, it's ALL bad news. Now I mean, I'm not cheating on her, but I do talk to a good number of girls, including one of my ex-girlfriends, through text messages. There are a few topics that I talk about that I wouldn't exactly be comfortable showing Lindsey...but, if I said "no," then she would ask to see my phone, and if I said "yes" she would probably ask anyway. I picked yes, and of course, she asked me to show her my phone.

FORTUNATELY for me, my phone had been having trouble that weekend so I took it into the store to get it fixed, and they performed a hard reset which cleared all of my text messages. The only things there were texts to a mutual friend of ours asking when she could pick up my Pop'n Music controller, a text from a friend whose computer crashed saying "FUCK THIS COMPUTER," and a text to another friend asking him when he got off work Saturday.

Long story short, playing Catherine with your significant other will probably be a horrifying experience, and an eye opening one as you realize all women in relationships think like Katherine, and all men in committed relationships probably think like Vincent. Do you disagree? Would you play Catherine with your girlfriend? Leave a comment!