Catherine
from Random Anime Reviewer
As someone who frequently plays games as a hobby I can recall very few instances where games have made me question my moral outlook on a particular subject. I’ve never questioned the ethics of shooting people in the back in a war environment or if slicing a man in two with a sword would have any consequences other than the possibility of a health item dropping. Granted there have been instances where I’ve questioned my actions within games. In Shadow of the Colossus was killing the giant colossi really the most heroic action. The game conveyed this message rather subtly by having a melancholic melody play as your victory theme rather than the triumphant fanfare most would recognise from a Final Fantasy game. Catherine takes a more direct approach with this and asks the player directly what their views on relationships are. Now I know what you’re thinking “A game that seriously asks me about who I am in my real life and affects the story? How does that work?” Catherine weaves these questions into a narrative where the player assumes the role of Vincent Brooks, your typical 32 year old man who is in a long term relationship with his girlfriend “Katherine” and is panicking at the prospect of committing to marriage. This situation is not uncommon for most people. The thought of committing to something or changing your life in a major way is terrifying to some. Some of us would be looking for a way out and this is where the game introduces the titular “Catherine”, a younger girl, who like Vincent doesn’t want to be tied down by commitments and wants to live life her own way. Catherine represents everything that Katherine is not. She is a free spirit who lives only to indulge her own desires, while Katherine represents Order and responsibility. Whether Vincent ends up living a life filled with freedom and self indulgence with Catherine or a life full of responsibility and commitment is up to the player.
The story of Catherine takes place across several days. Each day will begin with the story for that day, followed by Vincent hanging out at his local bar (The Stray Sheep) drinking and talking with the bars patriots before deciding to head home. This is where the main game play element of Catherine comes to the fore. The Nightmare stages. Each night Vincent has a nightmare where he must scale a collapsing tower of blocks. If he falls and dies in the nightmare he will die in the real world. Vincent finds out that these Nightmares are related to a rumour that is currently spreading stating that if men cheat on their girlfriends or wives they have dreams that will kill them. In the nightmare Vincent is surrounded by other people who appear in the guise of sheep. These men like Vincent, must scale the tower to avoid being killed. The game mechanics are quite simple. You can push or pull a block on the tower. The block will stay in place and won’t fall as long as it is touching the edge of a block underneath it. The game makes this simple mechanic very complex by introducing different types of blocks and unorthodox placements. In order to successfully scale to the top of the tower various techniques must be learned and practiced. By talking to the other sheep during the intervals between each stage new techniques are discussed and learned. More often than not a technique discussed during these intervals will be one of the best methods to complete the next stage.
Earlier I discussed Catherine overtly making the player question their moral stance on relationships. Catherine does this by asking the player a Yes or No styled question during the interval between each level of the nightmare stage. These can be pretty standard from “Would you live with someone without ever marrying them” to “If you met the love of your life and later found out she is a robot would you still love her”. Once a choice has been made a moral compass will appear moving towards the right (blue) or left (red). This moral compass affects certain scenes in the game. The games story will not change however Vincent’s inner monologue will change depending on where his morality on the scale is. These questions bring an interesting mechanic to the game and made me analyse what kind of person I am. On my first play through of the game I answered the questions honestly. During my first play through I was confused by how the moral compass reacted when I answered a question. Answers that I thought were the “good” answer made the compass move to the left into the red while answers I thought would be considered “bad” moved it to the right into blue. It was during my second play through that I realised that the answers weren’t considered to be good and evil answers but were chaos/freedom and Law/Order answers. One question asked “Boxers or briefs”. Choosing Boxers would be considered a freedom choice since you have more room and briefs is considered the order choice. This piece of information isn’t made explicitly clear to the player until the end. Also with regards to questions the final stage’s set of questions determines which of the eight available endings you get. The ending selection is also based upon where Vincent’s moral compass is pointing. Being near the middle or far into one of the two sides can affect which ending the player can get. Knowing this it is possible to reload a saved file from the last stage and answer the last set of questions differently to get a possible of 3 endings per play through. This means all endings can be obtained with at least three playthroughs. Another interesting thing Catherine does with the questions is show you data on how people answered. When online Catherine will display how players answered for the first time. When offline Catherine will show you how a survey of people answered. There were certain questions that had surprising answers to say the least.
With regards to the game’s difficulty I’ve heard a lot of people complain about it. I started the game on Normal and was able to complete it without any major problems. There were times when I had to replay a level several times before completing it but each time I felt more confident that I could complete it. Having said that, I really enjoy puzzle games and for the most part Catherine is a really complex block puzzle game. Most players who want to see the story should play on easy mode. When completing a level a trophy is awarded. The player will receive a bronze, silver or gold trophy based on the amount of money collected while climbing the tower and how big a combo of steps the player accumulated. If the player manages to achieve gold on all levels for that nightmare they receive a gold rank for that nightmare stage and are able to skip the levels during any play through of that stage on any difficulty that is the same or lower than the highest rated difficulty they got the gold trophy on. The stages can be re-attempted anytime from the Stray sheep bar section of the game through by using Vincent’s phone. Even during second playthroughs the game retains all data regarding scores and ranks on stages. Even with the main story being complete there are still four extra levels of challenges in the Babel section which are unlocked by obtaining a certain amount of gold trophies in normal difficulty or higher.
The game is presented very well. The character designs and art work of the game has a distinctly sharp and clean looking art style and cut-scenes are very well animated. The voice acting is fantastic. Troy Baker does an exceptional job voicing Vincent and credit has to be given to the rest of the cast, consisting of Laura Bailey, Michelle Ruff, Yuri Lowenthal and many others that fans of English dubbed anime will recognise. Also the music in the game is fantastic. Each nightmare stage’s theme is a remix of a well known piece of classical music. Amongst them are pieces from Chopin and Beethoven. Also the rest of the music used throughout is composed by Shoji Meguro, who most will recognise as the man responsible for music in the Persona games. I’ve mentioned that game looks really good, sounds amazing and is fun to play if you enjoy puzzles. Here are some negatives. While I enjoyed the story for the most part, there are certain elements in it that are just really bizarre. The last arc of the story goes into an even weirder supernatural territory. Granted the game’s main focus is dreams that kill people in their sleep but the reveal in the games last few chapters takes the weirdness to a whole new level. As someone who plays a lot of games and watches a lot of anime I have a really good suspension of disbelief. Others may not be able to accept what the story is offering and find it hard to take what is going on seriously. Also some of the endings don’t feel justified. Vincent during the story never reveals any intention of being serious with Katherine or that he has any romantic feelings towards Katherine but six of the endings have him decide that he wants to be with one of the two girls. I would compare Vincent in this regard to the protagonist of a harem anime. Always dragging their feet and trying to keep the status quo without having to make a decision. In this case however there is no Harem ending “where everyone is happy” Vincent has to choose one of the girls or gets none of them.
In conclusion Catherine is a unique game that tries something new and tackles a subject that has not been fully explored in video games before. While fumbling in places with its narrative, the game has a very good presentation in terms of looks, sound and style. Catherine offers up both a fun challenging puzzle game and series of question that will get the player to think more about relationships.
8/10
The story of Catherine takes place across several days. Each day will begin with the story for that day, followed by Vincent hanging out at his local bar (The Stray Sheep) drinking and talking with the bars patriots before deciding to head home. This is where the main game play element of Catherine comes to the fore. The Nightmare stages. Each night Vincent has a nightmare where he must scale a collapsing tower of blocks. If he falls and dies in the nightmare he will die in the real world. Vincent finds out that these Nightmares are related to a rumour that is currently spreading stating that if men cheat on their girlfriends or wives they have dreams that will kill them. In the nightmare Vincent is surrounded by other people who appear in the guise of sheep. These men like Vincent, must scale the tower to avoid being killed. The game mechanics are quite simple. You can push or pull a block on the tower. The block will stay in place and won’t fall as long as it is touching the edge of a block underneath it. The game makes this simple mechanic very complex by introducing different types of blocks and unorthodox placements. In order to successfully scale to the top of the tower various techniques must be learned and practiced. By talking to the other sheep during the intervals between each stage new techniques are discussed and learned. More often than not a technique discussed during these intervals will be one of the best methods to complete the next stage.
Earlier I discussed Catherine overtly making the player question their moral stance on relationships. Catherine does this by asking the player a Yes or No styled question during the interval between each level of the nightmare stage. These can be pretty standard from “Would you live with someone without ever marrying them” to “If you met the love of your life and later found out she is a robot would you still love her”. Once a choice has been made a moral compass will appear moving towards the right (blue) or left (red). This moral compass affects certain scenes in the game. The games story will not change however Vincent’s inner monologue will change depending on where his morality on the scale is. These questions bring an interesting mechanic to the game and made me analyse what kind of person I am. On my first play through of the game I answered the questions honestly. During my first play through I was confused by how the moral compass reacted when I answered a question. Answers that I thought were the “good” answer made the compass move to the left into the red while answers I thought would be considered “bad” moved it to the right into blue. It was during my second play through that I realised that the answers weren’t considered to be good and evil answers but were chaos/freedom and Law/Order answers. One question asked “Boxers or briefs”. Choosing Boxers would be considered a freedom choice since you have more room and briefs is considered the order choice. This piece of information isn’t made explicitly clear to the player until the end. Also with regards to questions the final stage’s set of questions determines which of the eight available endings you get. The ending selection is also based upon where Vincent’s moral compass is pointing. Being near the middle or far into one of the two sides can affect which ending the player can get. Knowing this it is possible to reload a saved file from the last stage and answer the last set of questions differently to get a possible of 3 endings per play through. This means all endings can be obtained with at least three playthroughs. Another interesting thing Catherine does with the questions is show you data on how people answered. When online Catherine will display how players answered for the first time. When offline Catherine will show you how a survey of people answered. There were certain questions that had surprising answers to say the least.
With regards to the game’s difficulty I’ve heard a lot of people complain about it. I started the game on Normal and was able to complete it without any major problems. There were times when I had to replay a level several times before completing it but each time I felt more confident that I could complete it. Having said that, I really enjoy puzzle games and for the most part Catherine is a really complex block puzzle game. Most players who want to see the story should play on easy mode. When completing a level a trophy is awarded. The player will receive a bronze, silver or gold trophy based on the amount of money collected while climbing the tower and how big a combo of steps the player accumulated. If the player manages to achieve gold on all levels for that nightmare they receive a gold rank for that nightmare stage and are able to skip the levels during any play through of that stage on any difficulty that is the same or lower than the highest rated difficulty they got the gold trophy on. The stages can be re-attempted anytime from the Stray sheep bar section of the game through by using Vincent’s phone. Even during second playthroughs the game retains all data regarding scores and ranks on stages. Even with the main story being complete there are still four extra levels of challenges in the Babel section which are unlocked by obtaining a certain amount of gold trophies in normal difficulty or higher.
The game is presented very well. The character designs and art work of the game has a distinctly sharp and clean looking art style and cut-scenes are very well animated. The voice acting is fantastic. Troy Baker does an exceptional job voicing Vincent and credit has to be given to the rest of the cast, consisting of Laura Bailey, Michelle Ruff, Yuri Lowenthal and many others that fans of English dubbed anime will recognise. Also the music in the game is fantastic. Each nightmare stage’s theme is a remix of a well known piece of classical music. Amongst them are pieces from Chopin and Beethoven. Also the rest of the music used throughout is composed by Shoji Meguro, who most will recognise as the man responsible for music in the Persona games. I’ve mentioned that game looks really good, sounds amazing and is fun to play if you enjoy puzzles. Here are some negatives. While I enjoyed the story for the most part, there are certain elements in it that are just really bizarre. The last arc of the story goes into an even weirder supernatural territory. Granted the game’s main focus is dreams that kill people in their sleep but the reveal in the games last few chapters takes the weirdness to a whole new level. As someone who plays a lot of games and watches a lot of anime I have a really good suspension of disbelief. Others may not be able to accept what the story is offering and find it hard to take what is going on seriously. Also some of the endings don’t feel justified. Vincent during the story never reveals any intention of being serious with Katherine or that he has any romantic feelings towards Katherine but six of the endings have him decide that he wants to be with one of the two girls. I would compare Vincent in this regard to the protagonist of a harem anime. Always dragging their feet and trying to keep the status quo without having to make a decision. In this case however there is no Harem ending “where everyone is happy” Vincent has to choose one of the girls or gets none of them.
In conclusion Catherine is a unique game that tries something new and tackles a subject that has not been fully explored in video games before. While fumbling in places with its narrative, the game has a very good presentation in terms of looks, sound and style. Catherine offers up both a fun challenging puzzle game and series of question that will get the player to think more about relationships.
8/10
