I'm going to admit something, before Catherine I had never heard of/played an Atlus game. I had heard the Persona series mentioned before, but long after I got rid of my PS2, so I chalked it off into the "missed opportunity" category along with a few FF games. However, I was hooked on Catherine from the very first screenshot and trailer. Hell, I pre-ordered the special edition as soon as it was announced, something I rarely ever do. So what was it about this game that caught my interest so and was my interest misplaced?
Trying to define Catherine is rather difficult. At it's core, it's a puzzle game, wrapped up in a dating sim rpg, tied together with an erotic/psycho horror story with a healthy dose of the supernatural. The entire game is presented as a japanese anime, with gorgeously animated cutscenes courtesy of Studio 4°C. Outside of the cutscenes, the entire game is done in a cell-shaded/anime style, creating a smooth transition between gameplay and cutscene. I feel especially sorry for the character animators, the japanese over-the-top anime style carries over from the cutscenes to the gameworld, creating some ridiculous facial and body expressions. So what is the story? You are Vincent Brooks, 32, slacker and man child. He's been dating his girlfriend Katherine, also 32 with long flowing hair and glasses, not attractive in the conventional sense but she certainly has a captivating allure. Vincent loves her dearly but is having trouble committing, and when Katherine begins dropping "hints" towards marriage and an unexpected pregnancy, Vincent's life begins to go to shit. After experiencing a bizarre nightmare, he then proceeds to have a drunken one night stand with Catherine, a young mysterious blonde bombshell. Thus begins a spiral into insanity as Vincent struggles to deal with the pressures of responsibility, faithfulness and maturity, all whilst trying to work out just why he is having these nightmares and who is trying to kill him. Atlus handles the story with a surprising maturity, even with the anime craziness exterior. A surpising amount of men could sympathise with Vincent's plight, despite every second word coming out of his mouth being completely the wrong one; though let's be honest, we've all been there. The intensity of the story is matched by the intensity of the nightmare stages. These crushingly difficult block-pulling sections get the heart rate and stress flying, pulling you violently into Vincent's shoes, making you feel his desperate fight for survival in this crazy world.
For those that don't know, I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games. Whilst I like to challenge my mind, I do not find them enjoyable, especially the hard ones and trust me when I say that Catherine is hard. Probably one of the hardest games I've played, easily matching wits with the likes of Witcher 2 or Demon's Souls. Catherine's saving grace, however, is that the difficulty is rarely unfair. All puzzles are solvable if you wrap your mind around it, and apart from some AI quirks and dodgy camera controls (I fucking hate static cameras), Catherine is always tough but fair. The puzzles constantly evolve, requiring more and more complex techniques and throwing in all sorts of traps and tricks to send you to your doom; slippery ice blocks, unmovable blocks, spike traps, mystery boxes and boxes that move on their own to name but a few. Oh, and did I mention the bottom of the tower is always falling away? So you better reach the top fast or it's game over. Thankfully, at least on easy, retries are plentiful and you can undo any mistakes you make. Switch it up to hard though, and suddenly the undo is gone and the retries vanish as fast as you find them. Thankfully, you can change difficulty between nightmares, but sadly not during. My advice, start on Easy. Seriously. Don't forget this is a Japanese game you're playing.
The other gameplay element is the "dating sim rpg". This is the daytime missions and basically involve drinking at the bar with your friends, talking to friends and strangers trying to piece together the mystery, and fielding texts from your increasingly concerned girlfriend and increasingly flirtatious mistress. Did I mention there's dirty pictures involved? The more Vincent drinks, the faster he is in the nightmare, so the alcohol flows freely. There is also an arcade game version of the block puzzles provided, giving you some welcome practise, though it would have been nice to have some different arcade games mixed in, maybe a fighting game (Atlus makes a fighting series whose name escapes me), just to break the repetition a little. All the time, Vincent and his actions are judged by a mysterious red and blue meter. After each stage, he is asked a simple binary question, which also affects this meter. This meter and Vincent's actions push him towards one of 8 endings. I really enjoyed the small online aspect of being able to see everyone's first time answers to the questions, some of them were really eyeopening. There's also competitive and co-op online modes, though I haven't tried these out yet.
I mentioned the gorgeous cutscenes earlier but they really deserve a repeat mention. Studio 4C is one of my favourite japanese animation studios, right up there with Ghibli and Production I.G and they really lend a lot of credibility to the story. The only complaint I have is that the audio in the cutscenes is mixed way louder than the gameplay sections, causing me to ride the volume nob quite violently at times throughout Catherine. On the subject of audio, the music and voice acting is top notch. The music is basically remixed versions of famous classical tunes and really matches the overall feel of the game. I kinda wish there was some option to get Japanese VO, just because I'm a stickler like that, but the english voice acting is great quality all around, avoiding the usual English dub pitfalls. The localisation is flawless, and if you didn't know otherwise you would swear it was a Western game.
So, how do you some up Catherine? In the end, I have to applaud it's originality. Atlus has given us something here that is truly, truly unique. It feels concise, thematically and visually everything ties together. The gameplay, while at times frustrating, is tempered b the driving need to see what happens next in the story, the gorgeous visuals and the driving soundtrack. This isn't a game for everyone, but it's a game everyone should play. And with 8 different endings, replayability is a must. So congrats, Atlus, for creating one of the first games I can truly call original in a long time. Aren't games wonderful creations? Stay Golden, everyone. *cue Japanese wave animation and fade out*
