Catherine is like an alluring enchantress that commands your attention and doesn't let you go
The story follows our hero Vincent Brooks on his quest through his personal troubles with relationships by day and his trek up a nightmarish tower at night. The story is excellent overall, complemented by its colorful cast of characters. The story deals with themes of infidelity, relationships, maturity, and commitment. You are given the choice of how you want to act in the game. Do you want to live a life of quiet and familiar comfort or do you want a life of chaotic excitement? It's a question the game makes you consider, and your choices mostly revolve around these two questions.
Catherine sports a lovable cast of characters that are brought to life by the superb voice acting and the hilarious and well written script. You won't see any cheesy one liners, flat tones, and cringe worthy delivery here. The all-star cast of veteran voice actors were obviously having a lot of fun with their roles. In addition to the more serious scenes, Catherine has a number of comical moments that even make their appearance in the various endings. Its story has the perfect balance of comedy and thought provoking themes to keep you hooked from the very start. Though to be totally honest, there was a lot of room for Atlus to do much more flesh out the characters and further explore the themes presented. But as it stands, Atlus did a very admirable job in trying to explore more serious themes in a game.
The beginning of the game shows you the basics of scaling the tower. You will push and pull several sets of blocks in order to reach the goal. Each stage has a different setup and requires a different strategy. Each night you are put in a different dungeon with a different boss at the end. It sounds simple enough but there's more to Catherine's gameplay than simply pushing blocks.
The bottom of the dungeon will collapse, so you'll need to get up that tower quickly. As you advance through the game, you will be taught and expected to master different types of techniques for scaling the tower, especially if you choose to take on the harder difficulties. Different types of blocks are also littered across the tower. You have your normal white blocks, heavy blocks, immovable blocks, cracked blocks, bomb blocks, trap blocks, monster blocks, slippery ice blocks, trampoline blocks, and mystery blocks. These blocks can be a big help or an annoying hindrance. In addition, other sheep will sometimes block your path to the top. They'll move blocks to mess up your path, knock you off a block, and some may even kill you. You can also nab some pillows to gain retries and special items that will help you out of a jam, destroy enemies, or give you a special boost.
Catherine's puzzle type gameplay is oddly addicting and very fun. But it's also very hard, regardless of what difficulty you play on. You are given a choice to play on easy, normal, and hard (read: hard, torture, hell). It takes practice to get good at the game. That and the proper utilization of the techniques you learn. But the challenging gameplay never feels cheap. It's frustrating yes, but cheap? No way. Sure you'll rage quit quite a few times while playing, but you'll always want to come back. If not for the satisfaction of clearing a particularly difficult puzzle, then definitely to continue the interesting story.
Now that's all during the nightmare stage. When Vincent is awake, he hangs with his buddies at the Stray Sheep bar. Here you can drink to your heart's content, boosting your speed in the nightmare stages. You can also talk to the other inhabitants of the Stray Sheep. Many of the bargoers are deeply troubled individuals. The player will occasionally be prompted by various dialogue choices that will ultimately decide the fate of the character later in the game. You can also play Rapunzel, an adorable 8-bit version of the nightmare stages. You can also talk to Erica, Boss, Jonny, Orlando, and Toby for some often humorous and playful banter. You can send text messages to both Catherine and Katherine. When composing a message, you are given 2 or 3 lines to say your piece. Each line gives you 2 or 3 different sentences that you can mix and match to compose a text message. A lot of Vincent's actions will affect the little red and blue meter that pops up from time to time. This meter will play a hand in which ending you get.
It is possible to beat the game in a reasonable and even fairly short amount of time despite its difficulty. With 8 different possible endings that depend on your choices in the game, there is plenty of replay value.
Outside of the main story, there's the two player competitive coliseum and four extra stages known as Babel. Babel is a far more intense and punishing version of the nightmares stages that are unlocked by gathering enough gold prizes on normal and hard difficulty.
Packed with extra content, eight different endings, multiple difficulties, and a story you'll want to experience more than once, Atlus has really outdone themselves with this game. It's mature and interesting story along with its addictive gameplay truly make it one the most unique and enjoyable games I've ever played. I'd recommend everyone give this game a go. I guarantee you won't regret it.