Played Catherine Classic! I guess you could say it really is a classic.. Catherine Classic is a modern release of the 2011 title "Catherine" By Atlus.

I really enjoyed this video game. I feel it's because it has such a strong identity and core it holds itself to. The core of the story is in relationships and trials, choices, and growing up. It's the particular way that Catherine expresses these themes
that makes it such a fun experience. It has a visual style that feels uniquely distinct. A kind of hot pink, black, and white for its UI and official art. This feels to me in contrast to its gray, brownish, muted in tone colorwork in the nightmares. The
contrast works wonderfully. Its morality system is quite interesting too leaving us with 3 endings each playing into that system. Whether you go with freedom, order, or an in-between choice all depends on your communication with all the characters and important questions in the confessional booth before going into the next level.

The game sees its protagonist, Vincent, go through these nightmares as a trail, a trail to see what the hell he's going to do with his future. Because the time is now that he makes
an important choice, it's a turning point. I think the way the nightmares/the climbing is a really cool way to fuse the gameplay and story elements together in a cohesive way. I like that the sheep we talk to in the nightmare sections later are able to be talked to again in their actual human form. Because of that, it ends up never feeling separated from each other. The game is really well put together in ways like this. Also switching between gameplay, interaction adventure game-styled events, 3d model animation cutscenes, 2d animated cutscenes makes the game all the more dynamic.
Even other elements such as the arcade game can be explained as being prepared for further nightmare-level beating. It feels that elements such as the sheep having real-life counterparts to talk to ends up making you try all kinds of options and availabilities in front of you, because you have been provoked to do so, to play, to try and to indulge. It's so good in awakening the players curiosity, mine especially.

Other games will also have choices, but I think because of the particular matter in which Catherine provokes you through its construction that you are able to follow through so heavily and in such a natural way. Well, I sure did anyway. I really felt like fiddling with all of it, reading through as much available dialogue as i could each night.

Catherine also has a really amazing soundtrack, which will have you at the edge of your seat as you solve these climbing puzzles. Classical remixes really never fall out of style.

I'm grateful that the game never felt the need to be too indulgent with its side characters or friends of Vincent. I think we might have lost the focus of this bullet of a game if we would get even more dialogue to bite on from them. The game finds a perfect balance between making the characters interesting with the amount of spotlight they get in the game itself.

The two main female characters, Catherine and Katherine are really lovely too. Being complete opposites of
each other and representing either side of the morality system. For who I love the most well.. ;)

Anyway, the game is absolutely full sassiness and you should totally play it. I really like it when a work goes about difficult themes like this in a completely unique way.

Good game! That's all I had to say. Might edit later.

У игры есть свой стиль, она может доставить удовольствие. Сам геймплей довольно уникальный, да и механику все время дополняют и усложняют.

Но чёт я блять задушился нереально. Бесконечная ебля с блоками в конечном счете заебывает. Сюжет вроде и толкается вперед, да только далеко все равно не проходит. Диалоги со всякими челиками вроде норм, а вроде одно и то же из раза в раз. В итоге получается следующее: начало игры впечатляет и цепляет, но после происходит ничего, кроме новых фишек в головоломках. Такое себе короче, вряд ли когда-нибудь закончу её.

Horny game that talks about adulthood and relationships. How they can be corrupted, talks about responsability and CHAOS WITH THE SUCCUBUS YES, it can be a Megami Tensei game just for the alligment system alone, right?

Let me explain. You take the role of this man Vince, Vincent. And he's having trouble with his actual couple, Katherine; with a "K". Thing is, she wants to get married, but our man isn't ready to take the big step forward yet. It's very relatable in that sense.

And then it appears this girl Catherine; with a "C" which wants to be with you too. You met her at the Café Vincent visits regularly with his friends. "Stray Sheep". She, uh gets in love instantly with our alpha male.

And here is the main conflict. Who would you rather choose? Take responsability for your acts and mature? Be alone? Stay with the pretty lady of the cover? It's yours to decide. There are more endings too. But I won't spoil anything.

It's a puzzle game. You'll be moving blocks to climb to the top. I won't say more because that's mostly it about the game. It's simple but it gets the job done.

Surprisingly engaging puzzle gameplay, with a nice degree of depth and variety, though it does sometimes suffer from "figure this mind bender out in 2.5 seconds or you die". On top of that, it is in desperate need of a dedicated climb button - way too many deaths / lost time because "turn around" was interpreted as "hurl yourself into danger". I would also, to some degree, question how well the gameplay sections really feel integrated with the rest of the experience.

The primary draw here is obviously meant to be the story which is... something of a mixed bag? I do enjoy the characters, though I never feel like there's enough interaction with either K/Catherine to get too attached either way. Additionally, despite the framing of this as an exploration of questions around relationships, freedom, commitment, etc, it is absolutely framed as a good vs bad story. In fact, the bad choice is bad to a comical degree that really kind of sucks away any attempts at nuance.

As I said, the gameplay and story sections feel very segmented, but the bar sections, in particular Vincent's conversations with his friends, are fun. The other patrons' stories (the only crossover with the night sections) are fine seasoning, though not anything mind-blowing.

If this delved more into the fleshing out Vincent's two possible relationships and created an actual dichotomy between two valid choices, it would be quite a bit more compelling. As is, it's a somewhat so-so story with solid gameplay so... eh, it's pretty good.

So let's break my thoughts up into a few sections. Firstly let's get the "game" aspect out of the way. Satisfying when it goes right, but incredibly punishing too, I had to switch to easy not too long afterwards. Maybe it comes with practice, but right now it's the only thing stopping me from playing the game over and over again.

The story, and the moral interactions. On closer inspection it does seem to follow the Hashino persona mechanic of having a couple of timeslots to interact with people in, however I think it's done in a very natural way that makes you want to play the game naturally. The texting mechanic is also a great way to allow you to really shape Vincent's actions, as indicated by the mysterious meter.

I think the one issue I have is that morality and feelings are muddied a bit.
I answered mostly because I felt Vincent was the dick here by not fessing up sooner, and I think it was entirely fair he got the Katherine ending. But a lot of why I ended up leaning towards her ending were just the good dialogue choices- like trying to stop people losing hope during the nightmares- it doesn't necessarily correlate with the character Katherine especially, but the game decides that hopeful dialogue corresponds to stability, when I don't think it does.

I do like the idea of Catherine representing hedonism, Katherine representing stability, and Vincent representing freedom, just a tad disappointed that some of the options didn't always correspond to that. In my opinion it might have been better to only have the mysterious meter be affected by decisions directly correlated to law/chaos. Of course, I might just be missing the nuance to some interactions.

That aside, I think this game was extremely successful in exploring love, lust and freedom, and if it weren't for how tough I found it, I'd be going back for more.