Genre: Dating Sim/Puzzle
Platforms: Playstation3, Xbox360 (with a different boxart)
Release date: July 27th (NA), TBA at the time of writing (EU)
Developer/Publisher: Atlus
Presentation
Welcome to Catherine, a game that puts you in the shoes of Vincent, your average early 30s salaryman in one of the weirdest weeks of his life.
Vincent leads a moderately normal life. He just switched jobs, enjoys getting drunk with his friends in the local bar, “Stray sheep”, and spend some time with his girlfriend Katherine. His life seems to be going well for the most part until another woman named Catherine comes into his life. Catherine manages to seduce Vincent and after having a terrifying nightmare, he wakes up the next morning with Catherine by his side, naked, and making sexy commentary about last night.
Vincent tries to go on with this circumstance of events, and tries to convince himself that it was a mistake. Katherine starts pushing in the direction of commitment in their relationship and Vincent is left clueless and at the mercy of the supporting cast that includes his friends, a waitress, two old women, the bar’s boss and random bar-goers.
As you take control of Vincent and navigate your way through this week, you will find a diverse set of characters, each with their own background and character that will provide you with exposition and ways to change your fate. Most of the characters will fall under realistic archetypes of people in real life situations and will either offer advice or ask for help as they pour their heart out at you. The story progression and the dialogue makes “Catherine” a very “Real” type of adventure that is even conveyed in the supernatural elements of the game. The predicament that befalls on Vincent may not be completely feasible, but it does manage to show itself in a way that will you make you relate to the characters you meet, no matter what their background or fate might be.
Gameplay
“Catherine“‘s gameplay is divided into two main segments:
The bar scenes will allow you to raise your intoxication levels that will in turn award you with better speed for the nightmare stage, alcohol related trivia (For gamers over 18/21, of course.) and inner monologues by Vincent that add a little character.
One of the most pivotal parts of the bar scenes is the option to interact with your drinking buddies, ask them about their day, their woes and for their help regarding Vincent’s situation. After you’re done at your table, you have the option of getting up from your booth, walking around the bar and interacting with the rest of the supporting cast. When you do that, some of them will tell you about their life philosophies, what they’ve been through and will even ask for your advice. All of your actions have weight, and your response will have great impact on their fate and Vincent’s outcome in turn.
Almost every action you do in this segment will cost you time, so there is always a chance you will miss out on a patron, a piece of dialogue or even trivia, encouraging the player to replay the game more than once.
Should you feel a little discouraged or challenged by the nightmare level, you have the option to play “Rapunzel” a mini-game that will train your puzzle skills in a similar fashion to the other main portion of the game, and an option to use your cellphone to change the difficulty of the nightmare stages. Changing the difficulty does not change the story of the game, but instead allows players to get through the story without being frustrated or hindered by the nightmare stages, at the cost of some trophies/achievements.
After closing time and the last call, Vincent goes home to sleep. However, his nights are plagued with nightmares, which he must scale and overcome should he want to live and wake up to see the next day.
The nightmare stages represent the second main segment of the game and will test your coordination and memorization skills, as you are tasked with the objective of climbing to the top of the tower, while avoiding the crumbling tower of blocks, other climbers who will try to push you away, and various hazards. Vincent has the ability to climb one block at a time, push/pull blocks out of his path and cling to the sides of hanging blocks. All of those provide different ideas of maneuverability to help you reach the rope or door at the end of the tower.
As you progress through the levels you will be met with a time limit that will hinder your backtracking and a somewhat uneven difficulty curve that will spike up as soon as you hit the 3rd day. Not all is lost though, as mentioned above, switching to easy difficulty has no effect on the story, you have the option to undo your actions up to a certain point which will give you some more time and space to rethink your moves, and at the end of each mid-level scale, a shopkeeper will sell you items that can make the difference between life and death while climbing.
At those mid level checkpoints, you can also save your game, gather more story elements and some techniques that you may or may have not discovered on your own, and buy items from the shopkeeper using coins you can collect along the climb. It’s important to note that you cannot change the difficulty at these points. Between each stage, you are instructed to go inside a confession booth that will challenge players’ morality and ideals with a relationship/personality questions. These questions have the biggest effect of the outcome of the story and a simple answer can change your ending to any of the available 8 endings of the game, adding even more the replay value. The final stages of each day’s climb feature bosses and longer levels, each boss will have a different attack pattern that will affect the blocks and your path, providing players with the greatest challenge for that night.
Graphics
Shigenori Soejima of Persona’s fame is the lead character designer for this game. He manages to bring his style of realism to these characters, but leaves some of the style from the Persona games behind. The characters have been designed to look and feel like their implied personalities in a convincing manner, which really helps sell them out as a believable varied cast.
In game models and environments have a cel-shaded look to them with the use of overall dark tones, amplifying and emphasizing the eerie feeling of the game. The levels themselves feature a good variety of backgrounds and enemy designs, but there are times when it will feel like they fall short and become the victim of visual repetition.
The cutscene animations are made by Studio 4C, who had worked on Transformers Animated and Thundercats 2011. The animated cutscenes are well done and the animators have done a very good job expressing the the different characters with their actions and facial expressions, to the point of them being more eye pleasing than the in-game visuals.
While the overall visual style of this game wouldn’t strike out to be entirely original for the most part, there is enough variety within the levels and the characters to sell the ideas and motifs of the game.
Sound
Shoji Meguro, another member of the Persona team, manages to deliver yet another fitting soundtrack while still experimenting with different styles. The nightmare stages are accompanied by remixed versions of classical music by famous composers such as Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin that have a soothing Jazz overtone to them. The same Jazz overtone is being played at the bar scene with its own tempo and beat, more reminiscent of a typical bar scene.
The voice acting in the game is nothing short of spectacular, with all the different voice actors portraying their roles, reactions and expressions in a way that will help the player relate even more to the character. The main actors, the supporting cast and even the enemies offer the same quality voice acting.
As an added bonus to fans of Shoji Meguro’s works, unlocking trophies/achievements in the game provides you with a selection of his previous works at the bar’s jukebox.
Overall
With 8 different endings, challenging and somewhat unforgiving puzzles, Catherine manages to combine elements of a puzzle game and a dating sim in a very interesting way. The story that’s being told by the cast is carried well and players will have little to no hard time to relate to the characters found throughout the game and enjoy its story. The moral dilemmas brought in the game are sure to keep players questioning themselves and try a different answer at every playthrough just to see the different results you may have missed the first time around.The nightmare levels may have an uneven difficulty and some bizarre control issues, but with a little practice and patience they can become bearable and playable to the point of enduring the puzzles
