Mature Audiences Warning – Catherine is a unique and fantastic game, but it is absolutely and unequivocally intended for mature audiences only. The level of profanity, mature sexual content, and moral ambiguity contained in the game is, while entertaining, quite high. This is not a game for younger audiences under any circumstances and as such, the photos and descriptions in this review reflect that content and contain sexual content and profanity. You have been duly warned.
I played Catherine on the PS3 when it came out. I’m a big Shin Megami Tensei fan and never expected to get a side story like Catherine in English, but there it was and I snagged the Love is Over Deluxe Edition. I even wore around the shirt for a while. I remember bringing it over to a married buddy’s house years ago and showing him the game. He played through a puzzle section, reached the choice at the end and just froze. His wife was at work but he honestly started to panic a little and his face was absolutely priceless. He was so uncomfortable with the idea that you had to select whether you’d cheat on a spouse or lie to them that he couldn’t play the game. He had to turn it off and insisted I take it home with me. He didn’t want to get caught with it!
Flash forward to today. I still have that copy of Catherine. My wife saw it when we got together and was rather put off by the cover, insisting that I should get rid of it and asking me why I have such games in the first place. And now Atlus has brought Catherine: Full Body out for the Switch, remade for modern consoles with additional content. My wife was not thrilled that I was playing it whatsoever. But it’s still a great game that deserves playing, even if it’s not the same game it was a decade ago and I’m not the same person I was then either.
Catherine is a unique story set in the Shin Megami Tensei universe. It starts Vincent Brooks, a 30-something tech worker who’s been dating a girl named Katherine for the last five years or so. They’re comfortable in their relationship, but looking at it now, I see that they’re weirdly distant for how long they’ve been together and that a normal relationship of that length generally doesn’t look like the one presented in Catherine. Regardless, they’ve been together a while and its obvious Katherine wants to take things to the next level and Vincent is comfortable. He goes out and drinks with his buddies, hangs out, and generally has no responsibilities. Meanwhile, things are happening in the city. Men in their 20s and 30s are dying of a weird wasting disease. But of course, that could have nothing to do with Vincent, right?
Vincent gets loaded at the bar and ends up talking with a random girl. He goes home and falls asleep, waking in a weird area with sheep horns on his head and a bunch of anthropomorphic sheep talking to him. He’s forced to climb a tower of blocks as they slowly fall away under his feet and it’s all very surreal and confusing at first. This is the meat of Catherine, a complex block moving game where you climb the tower as it falls away beneath you and you struggle to survive. It’s complex, it’s challenging, and it’s altogether quite immersive. Each level has multiple sections and various moral statements that you either agree or disagree with. Afterwards, you get to see what other players chose, which is absolutely fascinating, especially since it’s been broken down into men and women. Some of the responses, especially by gender, are quite surprising!
He then wakes up in bed with a totally different girl who is noticeably not his girlfriend. She also happens to be named Catherine. That’s not confusing at all, is it? Note that there is no way to avoid this as it’s part of the plot and if you’re not comfortable with stories that focus on infidelity, this is not a game you should play at all. He loses it, of course, as he has absolutely no recollection of going home with her, but there she is, stark naked. They don’t actually show full frontal nudity, but literally everything else is there pretty much on full display. This is about as close to a hentai game as you can get without actually being hentai. That night, Vincent goes to the bar to talk about his issues with his friends. And that’s where things start to get interesting.
Here’s where Catherine: Full Body diverges from the original game. There’s a new character, Rin, who’s a cutesy girl with pink hair. Vincent saves her in a new cinema sequence added to the beginning of the game and she’s added to the bar section of the game. She feels kind of tacked in, especially with her trope-worthy amnesia backstory, and the way she’s kind of slotted in here and there when you wouldn’t expect it. It really changes the game’s focus and lightens things up a bit too. Of course, Rin is a lot more than she appears as well, but if you haven’t heard any spoilers, I certainly don’t want to ruin it for you! Suffice it to say there’s a whole new level of philosophical thought included here that’s surprising and well-written! Other changes include updates to the artwork in-game, additions to the music library on the jukebox in the bar to accommodate more current Shin Megami Tensei music (woot…Persona 5 tracks!) and even modifications to the anime sections to add Rin into things.
It’s important to realize that Catherine is a dark, dark game, and has a lot of incredibly sexist content. It’s entirely consistent with the script, but these days it needs to be at least mentioned. This is not a PC game in any way, shape or form, and although you have choices that you can make, others are foisted upon you pushing you down a particular set of paths that you might not choose in real life. This is a game that’s intentionally designed to make you uncomfortable, to make you second guess your moral compass in a situation where it doesn’t have a lasting impact on your actual life. It’s a devious way of manipulating the player into deciding how honest to be by answering a variety of questions and choosing certain situations to attempt to direct the flow of the game. It’s honestly an incredibly accomplishment in gaming, as it’s the only game I can think of that focuses on people’s choices and the moral consequences they produce in a substantial way.
As I said before, puzzle gaming is the meat of the game. Every night, Vincent falls asleep and has to navigate another set of block towers. You fall, you die. Climbing is challenging, and blocks follow rules that do not align with physics. They can connect in open air by one edge, no matter which edge it is, and pushing and pulling them to move faster is essential as the ground quickly falls away beneath you, especially if you dawdle. There are bonus items that help, traps that kill you instantly, and even bosses that chase you up the tower, intent on your death. Eventually, the puzzles get much more challenging, especially on the higher difficulty settings. On lower ones like easy, you can also reverse moves back to take back a mistake you may have made, thereby pinning yourself and plummeting to your demise. It’s a great game, a little like 3D Tetris on steroids, with a wild, surreal atmosphere.
On top of all that, in Catherine: Full Body you can also play in remix mode which adds Tetris-like multi-bricks, adding more complexity to the puzzles. There are several other quality-of life changes, and subtle differences to puzzle mode in Full Body, but things mostly play very similar. Finish a puzzle, reach the landing and you get a save point where you can talk to other sheeple (sheep people…of course) that are also climbing the tower. These sheeple correspond to real life people in Vincent’s world that you may encounter and talking to them has an impact on their lives both in and out of the nightmare. The rumor is that if you survive eight nights, you get to live and get a wish…
The other major part of the game is the bar. Vincent spends every night at the Stray Sheep, a pizza joint that his buddies come to. They’re all regulars, and they all drink and talk about their lives and Vincent’s situation. Not the dreams though, since he can’t remember those. That’s the entirety of Catherine. Cinema sequences, puzzle-based climbing, and the bar. You can talk to patrons in the bar, play the arcade game which mirrors the dream game and allows you to practice, and go to the bathroom, where you can check the naughty images the girls send you depending on your responses in-game. There’s also a pair of sheep glasses hidden there that allow you to see everyone stark naked except for underwear. Your choices and interactions at the bar affect the game’s pathways as well as your morality indicator. Head towards the blue and you’re trying to make things right with Katherine. Head towards the pink and you’re stepping out with Catherine. And Rin is also a love interest now, so who knows what could stir that along!
Catherine is an incredibly dialogue-heavy game that has limited gameplay interaction and a ton of cut scenes and anime cinema sequences. There are definitely points where it feels like the game is dragging a bit while you try to talk to everyone you can, avoid or visit the girls you’re interested in, and generally waste time. You also send text message to the girls, ignore them, or answer their calls. They’ll send you naughty photos from time to time too, and your choices in responding or not responding, and how you react will not only affect what they send you but also whether you even get to see certain cut scenes at all. For example, an early bar scene with Catherine is incredibly entertaining, but doesn’t happen if you don’t stay at the bar long enough for her to show up. Even how much you drink has an impact on gameplay, actually letting you move faster up the blocks if you drink more!
Eventually things start to culminate, with Vincent being forced to choose between Catherine, Katherine , and Rin, and RIn shows up in Vincent’s dream, adding a whole extra dimension to her character. It’s a bizarre and uncomfortable love triangle that, depending on your puzzle skill and level of difficulty, should take you around 15 hours or so, depending on how long you dilly dally and whether you are any good at puzzle mechanics. Musically and graphically, Catherine has held up well, with excellent visual design that doesn’t feel like it’s aged a day (though I’m sure it’s enhanced a bit) and fantastic music, almost a jazz soundtrack. Not a surprise there, since the Shin Megami Tensei games are known for their outstanding music already. Every detail in Catherine has been attended to and it simply shines. The new content mostly feels seamless, although Rin’s character is a bit two-dimensional, especially at first. When things heat up though, it’s a different story though(no pun intended)!
The best part about Catherine coming to the Switch is, of course, portability. Now you can play it on the go, and this is one game that translates incredibly well to the handheld focus of the Switch. Everything loads smoothly, though there are a few tiny background hiccups during loading, and all the menus are easy to read and dialogue is crisp and not blindingly small in undocked mode. Playing Catherine in bed next to your significant other is a nerve-wracking experience that honestly only enhances gameplay and makes you incredibly nervous. It’s fantastic! And there are other perks to handheld mode as well. I haven’t even mentioned the other gameplay modes in Catherine yet, but if you just want to relax and puzzle game, especially in handheld, then check these out.
Babel, the first of the non-story modes, allows you to climb various endless towers to see how far you can get. It gets challenging fast, especially around the 100 level mark or so, and will definitely test the mettle of any serious puzzle gamer. Babel mode allows for single player play and two player play, and also records your achievements. Additionally there is a local competitive Colosseum mode where you and a friend can battle it out for dominance. Finally, there’s even an online arena where you can play co-op or battle online foes. It’s a lot of extra content that doesn’t feel tacked on like some modes. In Catherine: Full Body, you can even choose Joker from Persona 5 as a playable character and there is actual dialogue from the P5 cast as well! Unlike the original PS3 game, all modes are unlocked right from the start, and you can enjoy the game anyway you want!
For a game that’s entirely about adultery, infidelity, and the consequences of your life choices, Catherine: Full Body is an amazing game, full of content, surprises, excellent writing, and a strong, varied cast. It does have some very questionable content and dialogue, but that’s also kind of the point, and it’s not a game that’s supposed to be PC in any way, so one can let it slide to an extent. I thought it was thought provoking and interesting, regardless of how you choose to play it. That being said, playing it again a decade later, I feel like Vincent and Katherine’s relationship and interactions are less realistic than I did when I was younger, and that the new Rin content was interesting, but not as compelling as I’d like and was noticeably added on in parts. It felt like the new version of the game with Rin lessened the impact of the game that I remember feeling when I first played it. Something about having an extra girl takes some of the intensity away somehow, just enough to be noticeable.
Looking at the entirety of Catherine: Full Body, I love the unlocked bonus modes and still found the game to be an immersive experience, even if it’s a bit more long-winded than I remembered. The storyline is great, the characters are memorable, and the whole experience is one of the most interesting excursions available in gaming. The puzzle sections are challenging and fun, though I honestly wanted to kill whoever decided to put the bell in every single waystation in the nightmare section of the game. Just hearing that church bell makes me cringe and there’s no way to shut the damned thing off! Oh, and I played with English dialogue, but if you want Japanese or to turn of the subs, no problem! The game is enhanced with a boatload of new content, still just as fun as ever, and back for a new generation of gamers to discover! Catherine: Full Body is an absolutely great puzzle game that blends narrative in a unique way to create a one-of-a-kind experience! Just don’t let your girlfriend catch you playing it!!!
This review was based on a digital copy of Catherine: Full Body provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked mode and was fabulous in both! Catherine: Full Body is also available on the PS4. All screenshots are of actual gameplay.
