Backlog Review: Catherine

Catherine is owned by Atlus

I debated whether or not to review Catherine because it got a lot of coverage due to its sheer strangeness in combination with being developed by the Persona team. The game also sold very well considering what it is. Despite this, I feel obligated to touch on it due to its sheer uniqueness.

Catherine is a puzzle game about adult relationships. If that doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would like to play turn back now, it only gets worse from here. I should also mention that when I say adult relationships I mean marriage and commitment and maturity, not sex (though there is a healthy amount of that too). Still here? Good. Lets get into the nitty gritty.

Catherine stars Vincent, a typical average Joe in a steady relationship with his high school sweetheart Katherine (with a K). Katherine is pressuring Vincent to tie the knot, while Vincent is unsure due to a mix of fear and resistance to change. While getting drunk at the bar with his friends he runs into a girl named Catherine (with a C) who he has a drunken affair with. Meanwhile a string of mysterious deaths has afflicted the town, and Vincent starts having strange dreams, which is where the real gameplay comes in.

Most of the game takes place in Vincent's dreams, which consists of a block pushing puzzle. The rest of the game takes place in both the bar Vincent frequents, and lengthy cutscenes that change depending on Vincent's decisions in the rest of the game.

The block pushing part of the game is very entertaining and surprising deep. Solutions for the various puzzles are numerous and require serious noggin use to figure out. Some of these puzzles get agonizingly frustrating (I almost threw my controller during the clocktower stage) and take a lot of fun out the game. Sometimes I wish I could have just skipped the dream segments and seen the rest of the story. When a player wants to skip the actual game to watch a cutscene it doesn't exactly scream praise for the design of the game.

The bar bits of the game are a nice break up of the more intense block climbing segments. Vincent can talk to his fellow alcoholics and learn about their problems. Turns out a lot of them are having the same strange dreams as Vincent, I wonder why. Who Vincent talks to can change a good portion of the story, as many side tales are hidden with other characters. Another delightful side point to the bar is the random alcohol trivia that is given out whenever Vincent finishes a drink. These quickly became my favorite part of the bar scenes.

The story of Catherine is somewhat disorderly. Towards the beginning it tries to be a horror game, but it sort of fails due to the repetition of the levels. The story then focuses very heavily on Vincent's relationship to K/Catherine. After a while this focus gets downright tedious. Then, the story makes a 180 degree turn and pulls all sorts of strange stuff out of its ass. It leaves off being one of the strangest endings I've ever seen; not really satisfying, just strange.

Surprisingly, this isn't the strangest thing the game has to offer

Catherine in whole is a unique experience. Giving it an adjective like "great" doesn't really make a lot of sense in this case. If this is something that sounds appealing, check it out. Otherwise, steer clear. Don't worry, I won't think any less of you.