Expressiveness is the quality that defines roleplaying games: they’re judged by how freely players can assert themselves in a reactive space. Players want to convey their personality and make choices, but while these are the obvious core concepts of the genre, Baldur’s Gate 3 has proven to me that they’re not what makes an RPG great. Having the capacity to make decisions is certainly a necessity, but decisions only matter when players care about the outcomes. Choices surround us in every moment of our lives, but most vanish from our minds within seconds for that very reason; they’re so emotionally inconsequential as to be hardly worthy of notice. So, more fundamental than allowing for choice is providing a real adventure in which to make those choices, and defining a journey which has players encountering challenges, learning, changing, and overcoming. This is the critical component which Baldur’s Gate fails to establish, most glaringly from its narrative structure.

(Minor spoilers through act 2)
In the opening cutscene, your character has a mindflayer tadpole inserted into their head, so your call to adventure is getting it out. This is fine in itself, but the game is quick to tell you that there’s no urgency to this task, relieving you of the burden of care. Every quest you receive to accomplish this goal, across the first ~22 hours of gameplay, results in failure where your party just sorta gives up. It takes another ten hours before the main villains are established, a stale group of evil zealots of evil gods who just love being evil, pursuing an agenda which players can't feel meaningfully aligned against. The simplicity of the central narrative gives the impression it’s just supposed to be a foundation for a character-driven story, but the interpersonal aspect is similarly lacking. In what feels like a symptom of the game's long stay in early-access, your companions put their love and trust in you in act 1, before anyone’s had the chance to organically develop relationships or encounter life-changing struggles. Characters don’t have the time and space to have an arc, and you don’t get the chance to express yourself alongside them, you simply skip to the end for an immediate and vacuous payoff. There’s no journey here, you’re simply being presented with scenes from an adventure without actually going on one.

The same can be said for the mechanics, even when they’re lifted from the tabletop game, thanks to a design philosophy where every playstyle is thoroughly accommodated. This seems like a good strategy in a genre where players want to assert themselves, but the refusal to challenge players leaves unique approaches feeling irrelevant. Even with a party led by a Githyanki barbarian, with very little in the way of charisma, intelligence, or skill, there was never a time I couldn’t overcome a situation in an optimal way. I could pick whatever locks I wanted, disarm whatever traps I wanted, circumvent any barrier I wanted; the game never asked me to think ahead or prepare. I didn’t have to be ready with certain spells or proficiencies, it never demanded more than following a clear path. Even if it did, the cheap respecs mean that you’re a maximum of 400 gold away from having a team perfectly suited to the task at hand, and even if you don’t end up using that option, knowing that your choices are so impermanent is a detriment to any feeling of growth.

That’s the key here: growth. My characters leveled up, but I don't feel like they grew. I traveled, but I don’t feel like I went on a journey. I made choices, but I don’t feel like I went in new directions. After a fifty-hour playthrough, all I remember was that I chilled out, ran around some nice maps, and managed my inventory. I spent all that time relaxing well enough, but I didn’t overcome challenge, feel much, or learn anything. All I could confidently state that the game did for me is live up to its basic selling point, of being an adventure I could take at home, a journey where I go nowhere.

I'll be completely candid with this pre-playthrough preamble; I haven't exactly been looking forward to playing this game. I might even say I've been putting it off. The thing about ATLUS re-releases is that they tend to add something completely unnecessary to the original product, frequently mucking up the original story/vision in the process. On the day that Catherine Full Body was revealed to have a third girl(?), I mentally wrote it off. I refrained from replaying Catherine on my PS3 leading up to this (it's been 6 years since my last playthrough), but the part of Catherine that stuck with me the most was the simple but effective tale of Vincent and his love triangle. It's such a natural dilemma: Vincent (a wishy-washy, fence-sitting idiot with a guilty conscience) needs to decide whether or not he's going to tie the knot on the relationship he's been committed to for years, or dump her now that the girl of his dreams has suddenly slithered into his life. The girls are named Katherine and Catherine, respectively. The mere thought of adding a third girl into the mix sounds like it would throw the entire dynamic off, and lead to something overall lesser than the original. It's for this reason that my review will probably be more focused on "what's different". Oh well, hit me with your best shot, ATLUS.

If there's one thing I wish I did in tetrospect, it would be playing this game and gunning for a specific ending. I played it as if I were playing it for the first time, which actually brought up a handful of issues I'd like to discuss. For this playthrough, instead of the conflict being "Katherine or Catherine", I was experiencing the conflict of "Play it the old way or attempt to try the new content".

Let's talk about Rin.

Full name "Qatherine" (not joking), Rin feels like a more lighthearted, innocent fold to the other girls in Vincent's life. She helps draw out a less dimwitted Vincent, showing that he does genuinely care, deep down. At least, I'd like to say that last part's true, but whenever Rin is involved, it feels like the entire cast is replaced with body doubles, or maybe the writers get swapped out. Vincent in particular becomes a complete goody two-shoes in her presence, a far cry from how he's currently treating the other women in his life. The biggest problem is that Rin's implementation is not organic at all. As someone who remembers the original game, it feels like they tried to forcefully wedge her scenes in between other scenes where it would feel the least disruptive. Keyword being "tried", as it never feels like a natural inclusion. I also failed to fully enter Rin's plotline, and after she leaves following Night 6, the game was just regular Catherine from that point on! It honestly blows my fucking mind how she disappears from the game with no consequence. There's a few new "Where's Poochy" styled lines where characters mention her departure, but after that, she's gone.

Rin's presence is completely at odd with the original game's ethos, which sucks because Atlus made some genuine improvements to the original narrative too! I really appreciate the flashbacks to earlier in Vincent's relationship with Katherine. That's an addition that goes a long way towards making both of them more sympathetic. Now you've got a clearer idea of what you've got to lose. If anything, it kinda makes it even harder to lean towards Catherine. Alas, Rin is here, and she's just extra on top of that.

Thankfully, they didn't really screw up the core puzzle gameplay here. "Remix Mode" is a pretty good mixup for people who are already familiar with Catherine's gameplay. It also checks out for freaks like me who are Crashmo fanatics, adding in oddly-shaped blocks that take up more than one square on the wall. The game actually has a lot of small changes that makes the game easier overall. There's no more lives (pillows now increase your maximum undo count), and a move that would result in your death now automatically deploys an undo. When hanging from blocks, the edges you can climb around now glow, and this is the best change. The one change I'm less enthusiastic about is sadly Rin's piano backup when you're close to failing. It's definitely intended to instill a sense of serenity. In my case, I'm filled with a feeling of futility. It doesn't trigger until the blocks beneath you are nearly gone, but if I've reached that point, I've probably backed myself into a corner and am already spamming undos. Speaking of undos, the announcer now recommends you use one if you sit still for more than 5 seconds. I would mind this less if he only did it during the first few stages. Reminding me during the final stages that I can do something I've been doing the whole game feels incredibly condescending. I also feel like they should've taken this re-release as an opportunity to give you manual camera control. The camera swings behind the stage automatically when Vince is hanging there, but being able to manually view it would've assisted a ton of the more awkward, non-hanging moments I had behind the stage.

Catherine Full Body may be like a finely-aged wine in several aspects, but they filled the glass to the brim with overcorrections and extraneous bullshit, to the point where tons of it will spill out the moment you attempt to take a sip. A month before Full Body was released, they casually dropped the original Catherine on PC as "Catherine Classic". Back then, I thought it was a ridiculous, illogical business decision on Atlus's part. Looking back now, I think PC players may have gotten the better game. Now I know which one I prefer, at least. If you want a more accessible version of Catherine, go with Full Body. If you want a more concise, realized experience, play the original.