Catherine: Full Body

 Catherine is like no other game ever made. Part puzzle platformer and part social life simulator, It plays in some areas like a Persona game. You as Vincent Brooks spend time in the Stray Sheep, a fictional city bar filled to the brim with interesting and quirky characters who all need your help to deal with their problems. By talking to them and listening to their issues, Vincent can try to save them in the nightmares (which we will talk about soon). The best thing about these discussions is how down to earth and real these conversations and problems feel. The characters of the Stray Sheep are all floored individuals who sometimes pretend they are not. However, the character with the biggest problem is clearly Vincent. His tale of infidelity is presented so naturally that you cannot help but root for him and the addition of a third Qatherine gives him even more options than were offered in the game’s initial release. 

Rin assumes the role of Qatherine in Full Body

 

Even though the interactions, script and overall tone of Catherine are what make it such a unique experience, it is the nightmare scenarios that arguably steal the show. These sequences give the game its depth and complex and truly present the player with a challenge. The towers offer the player a plethora of ways to scale them and in Full Body, more options are presented through various powerups that can make the towers easier to climb. The various boss stages capitalise on the mindset Vincent has going in such knowing that Katherine is pregnant, and I do not want to spoil too many of the situations because visually and from a storytelling perspective they are fantastic and a great way to payoff Vincent’s activities throughout the day. Making stairways and bridges will seem easy at first but as the challenge ramps up, you will be forced to use your wits and skills to conjure spontaneous routes up the towers. These routes grant you the sweet satisfaction of feeling like you accomplished some gargantuan task and make seeing the cutscenes and scenarios Vincent gets up to in the daytime that much more rewarding. Quality of life improvements include retry assist and the ability to watch tutorials, but luckily these do not make the game too easy. There are several levels that feel narrow however, seeming to offer only a single way up the tower which relinquishes a lot of control from the player. Another issues these stages suffer from are the commentary. It can be endearing at first but hearing edge every second of a five-to-ten-minute stage becomes grinding very quickly and will make you want to turn the commentary off.

The puzzle-platforming is deep, rich and satisfying and the various blocks offer new challenges to those who played the original.

Catherine’s plot is told over a week of Vincent’s life and as previously mentioned, it deals with Vincent cheating on his girlfriend Katherine with Catherine. The Full Body version throws a wrench into those plans with the introduction of Rin who seamlessly fits into the story as the pianist at the Stray Sheep. Her story adds another layer to the narrative, offers some surprising revelations and while her endings are fairly campy, it is not like Atlus have not utilised shameless camp before. Vincent’s connection with either of the Catherine’s is determined by the player and culminates with a multitude of endings for you to uncover with various routes that will lead to each. This gives the game an insane amount of replay value and I am tempted to run through the game again just to randomly encounter another. It seems as though the Full Body edition wanted to rectify the initial release’s notion that Catherine (the one Vincent cheats with) was the villain of the story by offering new endings that allow her to be as good a choice for Vincent as either of the other two Catherine’s and I am all for that. Overall, the plot seems to be a sort of realisation of potential for Atlus. They created something with the initial game that most people really liked and here I believe that they were allowed to tell a fully focused story about infidelity with a satisfying conclusion regardless of the ending you get.

Vincent's unfaithfulness with Catherine is what sparks the nightmares.

Catherine: Full Body frankly is exactly the game I needed to play this year. It’s a down to earth tale about infidelity, regret and owning up to your own mistakes that is surprisingly deep for a game where sex is a core theme. The visuals are gorgeous and truly capitalise on the visual novel aesthetic and the music is brilliantly mellow, leading to moments of calm where you can just sit back, drink a rum and coke with your buddies and talk about the issues you are all facing. It is a story that’s surprisingly self-reflective. After finishing the game, it hit me that I have had people with similar issues in my life and how by talking about them, we were able to overcome them. It’s a story that clearly knows what it wants to see and even without diving into the intricacies and the minutia of each character’s story arcs there are clear themes of love, maturity and identity that  hit home profoundly and appropriately. I also love all the nods Atlus makes towards the Persona series. The jukebox in the Stray Sheep is full of songs from Personas 3 through 5 and I basically had Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There on repeat throughout my playthrough. The DLC costumes that allow you to play as the Phantom Thieves during the Tower of Babel mode also demonstrate how much care Atlus showed towards the package, especially given that the main story alone is what most people are going to buy the game for. Perhaps the game is not a handcrafted love letter to Atlus’ fans, but it is a visually stunning, moving and powerful story about something so simple and that is where Atlus needto be commended most. 

Rin gives the player a third option that strikes a balance between order and freedom and her scenes are definatley some of the best in the game.

 Rating: Nearly a Full Body

8/10