Love. It can be a crazy thing. There are times when everything can click just right, and you marry the girl (or guy) of your dreams and live what seems to be a happy life together. But then there are the times you meet a crazy person who’s so wrong for you, you end up in a turmoil-filled situation that can become downright unpredictable – and, if you’re not too careful, dangerous. That pretty much is the point trying to be made with Catherine, a new game from Atlus that was specifically built for the HD era. Rather than tell a traditional RPG tale (the kind of fare the company is usually known for), the game instead deals with a man named Vincent, who’s in the midst of a love triangle and finds himself tormented by the dreamy Catherine, who is in fact something of a nightmare.
The game is split up into two portions. The first has to deal with anime sequences, which you’ll watch in order to get an idea which way the story goes. Occasionally, you’ll have to make some choices as your story proceeds, either guiding you down a path of total bliss or the opposite way, depending on how things go. This is probably the most fascinating half of the game, and we’ll get into why in a second. The second half leans more towards traditional puzzle fare. See, Vincent dreams every night that he’s stuck on this tower, and he actually has to climb his way up in order to make it to the next day. If he fails or somehow gets screwed up ascending the blocks, “Love Is Over,” and Vincent never really realizes his dream of love. It’s awkward, especially considering that he could just snap out of the dream, but hey, then we wouldn’t have a game, now would we?
We’re just gonna say it right off the bat – Catherine is ridiculously weird. There are times you’ll find yourself wearing what appears to be lamb ears for no reason (other that, perhaps, you’re whipped), and there are others you’ll reach such a maddening point in a puzzle, you’ll scratch your head trying to figure out what to do next – or perhaps give up entirely. And that’s probably going to be the tipping point that decides which of you Catherine is right for. While the game has intuitiveness we don’t see in games that often (especially when it comes to relationship choices that could make or break your love life), it’s also got an increasingly maddening difficulty scale. The later puzzles in the game are so hard that we actually found ourselves cursing Catherine during gameplay sessions – resorted to screaming at an invisible woman. Great. There are solutions, but then you’ll run into something else that may make you want to tear your heart out, such as a boss encounter with a resolution that could take some time to reach.
This feature review concludes on the next page, please click Page 2 below to read the rest of our take on Catherine.
