Catherine Classic

10/10 if this was just a puzzle game, or just an anime, it would still be top tier. It's both at once and then some

Цю гру я вперше побачив в одному огляді на YouTube, і, здається, закохався ще до того, як запустив її. Незвична історія, стильна аніме-естетика, чудова музика, та ще й одразу дві дівчини, між якими доводиться розриватися. І, що мені особливо сподобалося, світ не крутиться лише навколо них. У барі постійно можна поговорити з різними людьми, послухати їхні історії, дізнатися щось нове. Через це гра відчувається живою, ніби ти справді заходиш туди після важкого дня. А потім гра різко згадує, що вона не тільки про сюжет. Настає ніч. Перед тобою з'являється вежа з кубів, і потрібно будь-що дістатися вершини. Спочатку все здається навіть кумедним: пересунув куб, підтягнувся, заліз вище. "Та що тут складного?" думав я. Гра у відповідь лише мовчки посміхнулася. За кілька рівнів я вже дивився на ті куби так, ніби вони особисто вирішили зіпсувати мені вечір. Руки пітніють, таймер підганяє, підлога розвалюється, а ти в паніці намагаєшся зрозуміти, який геній придумав саме таку головоломку. У якийсь момент уже не ти проходиш рівень, а рівень проходить тебе. Бували моменти, коли хотілося просто покласти геймпад на стіл, подивитися у стелю й поставити собі кілька дуже серйозних життєвих запитань. А потім... натиснути "Спробувати ще раз". Бо гра дивним чином змушує повертатися знову і знову. Найсумніше було те, що спочатку Catherine залишалася ексклюзивом консолей. Пам'ятаю, як дивився проходження й розумів, що найближчим часом самому зіграти не вийде. Було прикро. Але одного дня з'явилася новина про реліз на ПК. Я, не роздумуючи, дочекався першого розпродажу в Steam і одразу купив її. Деякі покупки робиш головою, а деякі серцем. Це був саме той випадок. Catherine Classic для мене стала однією з тих ігор, які важко порівнювати з іншими. Вона одночасно розповідає цікаву історію, дає можливість просто посидіти в затишному барі, а потім без найменшого сорому перетворює тебе на людину, яка сперечається з кубами о другій ночі. І що найдивніше... куби іноді навіть перемагають.

Thought my evil chud laptop could run it because I met the specs but unfortunately I must move on and refund because it crashes immediately upon launch and requires very complex, hit or miss fixes. This is a great game though, I really loved playing it on Xbox! Better off playing on a high-end PC or just getting the console port, Atlus likely wont fix this game anytime soon :)

As someone who was also struggling with relationships in his early 30s and happened to be a software engineer back then, I see a bit of myself in Vincent Brooks. That’s why the story of Catherine resonates with me so much. And that’s rare for video game stories. However, if weren’t for the unique theme, I probably would’ve abandoned this game. Thing is, I love puzzle games. And Catherine has some of the most challenging and clever puzzles I’ve seen. But, I absolutely hate solving puzzles with a clock ticking behind me. I would love this game much more if the Rapunzel mini-game (where you have a limited number of moves instead of limited time) was the main mode.

Güzel bir hikayesi var ancak oynanışı bana kolay zorlukta bile zor geldi, guide kullanmak zorunda kaldım.

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Unfortunately the game crashes on startup on modern PCs and I doubt a patch is coming. Other people are saying the issue is with Windows 11 but I'm running Windows 10 and it crashes without fail. The game literally does not function. If it does miraculously work for your computer, the game is great! I've finished it on other platforms and it's such an interesting wacky blend of a surprisingly in depth puzzle system with an engaging, if a little anime silly, story. The nighttime puzzles start pretty intuitive, but they slowly introduce more mechanics that make mastery super hard but rewarding. The daytime conversation is usually entertaining with impactful choices that involve saving certain NPCs or driving you towards several endings. Basically, good game bad port. Tale as old as time.

Catherine Classic is Atlus at their most focused and creative. Sure, it shares the basic Persona loop of chatting with friends and locals mixed with dungeon crawling, but everything here feels so much tighter and purposeful. Gone are the constant story recaps and repetitive navigation. Instead, Catherine tells its story with confidence, constantly evolving its gameplay and challenging you further, all while offering meaningful choices that lead to multiple endings. And it does all of this in a focused 8-hour experience. The difficulties change the puzzle layouts which results in each difficulty playing differently from each other, freshening up the experience even further. The Rapunzel arcade game in the bar is an entire game in itself, well crafted and challenging which tallies up the hours of enjoyment even further. The gameplay is so damn addicting and in a way, this can negatively effect your experience with the story as you may want to get back into it instead of watching cutscenes and interacting with the other bar patrons - I certainly did. On this note, the bar socialising can pad the game out a touch but it adds to the depth of the story and complements it nicely. This might genuinely be Atlus' magnum opus. They should experiment more with their ideas and design a new game with a fresh gameplay experience like Catherine. Sure, Shin Megami Tensei is different to Persona, but not by that much. What they did here is stellar and they should definitely let their ideas run wild more often. Hard to find a fault with this game really, its pretty much perfect! Would be good if they decided to port full body to pc, but this version of the game is not needy for more content, its structurally consistent and a great experience as is.

+++

Earning every achievement on Steam has solidified the opinion I already had that Catherine is my bar-none favorite Atlus game (I adore Persona and ReFantazio too, please don't kill me) and a hugely nostalgic puzzle game that has climbed into my top ten of all time as I've grown older and better understood it. It's brutally hard and requires an insane amount of focus and quick thinking, making for uniquely immersive gameplay that really instills the same stress and terror that Vincent experiences firsthand. While I have also played the remake of this game, Catherine: Full Body, and think it's easily the superior Catherine experience, make no mistake that Catherine Classic is still fantastic and has aged like a fine wine. As you can see, I have way too much to say about this game. As this is primarily a narrative title, I'll be staying away from spoilers for this review, but as a brief but thorough plot synopsis: In an American space colony on an unknown planet, you play as Vincent, a financially insecure coder for a tech company, who through a series of unfortunate events is entangled between two women; Katherine, his loyal and long-term girlfriend, and Catherine, who he unknowingly has an affair with after incidentally meeting her at the bar he spends most days in with his friends. In this universe, unfaithful men develop extremely vivid nightmares turning them into anthropomorphic sheep and requiring them to climb up elaborate block structures that crumble beneath them. If they cannot push the blocks around to climb to the top fast enough and fall to their death in the dream, they die in real life. If they survive, they'll continue to get the same dreams night after night, and this begins to pile yet more stress and exhaustion onto Vincent. Catherine is a choice-based game, so the decisions you'll periodically make and the conversations you'll choose to have slightly alter your story and pushes you towards 8 possible endings. The endings can generally be grouped into who you lean towards pursuing a relationship with (Katherine, Catherine, or neither) but all 8 endings remain distinct and compelling, and I think it's 100% worth replaying the game a bunch of times to see how they all pan out. The themes of commitment, relationships, and sacrificing a part of yourself for another are all wonderfully integrated into gameplay and how your choices can affect the ending you end up getting. The story is the main draw of Catherine, but its gameplay is still really beefy and novel despite how much gameplay design has saturated in the decade and a half since Catherine's release. In the span of nine in-game days, there exists two main gameplay loops: The bar sections during the day, and the nightmares at the Great Trials. In the former, Vincent can freely explore the Stray Sheep bar, interact with a slew of other characters in person or over the phone, read emails and potentially get useful gameplay or story insights, drink (which affects his movement speed during nightmares), play a Rapunzel arcade game that provides some extra climbing practice, and learn more about Vincent's headspace as he navigates his "situation." In the nightmare scenarios, Vincent races against the clock to escape a variable number of stages depending on the night. Between stages, Vincent can speak to other cheaters in the same predicament to share climbing strategies or learn of their personal lives, manually save progress, and answer questions about relationships/commitment that will ultimately play a part in the ending of your playthrough. Each night introduces new block types or gimmicks to further augment the gameplay loop, and there's lies a boss in the final stage of every night (with the exception of the first level), that all present special offensive abilities to spice up the climb. While I love the gameplay, I will admit this game gets unbelievably difficult if you're someone who isn't amazing at puzzle games; It's one of the hardest games I've ever fully completed. It demands absolute mastery of the climbing and the strategies it teaches you, and nothing less; You can't get by through sheer luck. The flexible two-hour refund window Steam has is a pretty good span of time to gauge how difficult and/or enjoyable the climbing is for you, and you'll likely have a good idea of whether this is the right game for you or not before that window ends. The game stays pretty diverse from start to end considering the consistent day/night system and is one of those games that gives you a glorious feeling of fulfillment when you beat stages just by how punishing it can get. There's quite a bit of secondary content in addition to the replayability of the main story, including a split-screen multiplayer mode and the brutal, pseudo-randomized Babel's Tower stages, unlocked from beating portions of the game on the hard difficulty and acting as the ultimate challenge of the game. I platinumed the game in a pretty quick amount of time by already playing it a few times on other platforms and planning out my repeat playthroughs, so the 41 hours I have total is definitely a lowball; You could certainly stretch this game to a good 80-100 hours without getting bored, with story playthroughs typically being in the rough ballpark of 6-8 hours. I edged tens of thousands of times without it ever losing its fun, and I don't mean that in a perverted way. Catherine has the typical striking, captivating visual/artistic style most of Atlus' other games have and still looks amazing for being as old as it is. Characters are well-designed, with distinct visual traits that set them apart in clever ways. The 3D animated cutscenes are solid, albeit a bit stilted due to the rigidity of the 3D models, and the 2D animated ones are stellar, genuinely TV show-caliber. Environments do a good job evoking a certain feeling in the player, whether it be the claustrophobic nature of Vincent's tiny apartment, the normalcy and comfort of the Stray Sheep, and the surreal vibe of the Great Trials, with the random, fittingly dream-like assortment of objects/blocks and the sheer scale of the location. Bosses are masterfully designed, most being body-horror manifestations of Vincent's active fears and worries. Other stylistic aspects like voice acting and UI design were well-done and fitting. I quite liked the pink and black aesthetic of the UI and how the UI is integrated into the game by being Vincent's phone while in the bar. Many reviews note performance and crashing problems with this game, that likely won't be patched out due to the age of the game and the port. I didn't have significant performance issues, maybe one crash ever, and thus can't pitch in with anything insightful here, but I do recommend scouring some of the more performance-focused reviews since it may well be very relevant to you. The size of this review probably says enough about how passionate I am about this game. It's a gem that feels a bit forgotten in recent years, though that's not surprising as this game didn't necessarily innovate to the same effect some of Atlus' other titles have. There's a lot of merit to games that don't try to innovate, but instead just focus on being a really damn good video game, and I feel this is a masterclass in that design formula. Catherine is a beautiful, melodramatic, difficult, stressful, rage-inducing, depressing masterpiece loaded with twists and turns that I'd recommend to anyone.