I had never played a Final Fantasy game until I played this, something about 16 entries made it a little daunting to get into. But I had this in my PS store wishlist for a while, and bought it on a sale.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the game. The story does a good job of setting up the rest of the story, while ensuring that it feels like its own arc rather than solely one third of a larger product. The characters were good overall, some of the Shinra villains were a little bland, but for the most part the side characters are good, and the main cast of Cloud, Tifa, Barrett and Aerith are all great. Aerith was easily my favourite part of the entire game.

I was a little mixed on the gameplay though. I know I'm not very good at real-time combat RPGs, I really suck at any Souls-like games, but this game just seemed to be thoroughly split between really easy passages and annoying gimmicky minibosses. It could be my stupid brain that can't use critical thinking skills from years of CoD and Siege that makes me bad at these kinds of games, but I'm pretty good at turn-based RPGs, so I don't know. The split between real-time and turn-based elements is okay, but I really hope they improved on it in FF7 Rebirth. The level design also got old pretty quickly, everything funnels into setups for a mini-boss fights that I would just get mad and yell at. And most of the boss fights were annoying as well, and so were the bike chases. While none of this sounds very positive, the gameplay is well polished, the special moves are pretty cool, and when the game lets you get into a rhythm it is pretty satisfying.

Despite some gameplay hiccups, I still that found FF7 Remake was worth playing, and all the cutscenes with Aerith were easily worth the $25 I spent on this game.

An enjoyable split between time-sensitive puzzle platforming and a dating sim/visual novel, Catherine: Full Body is definitely a worthwhile game to play in 2024, if purchased on sale. Still portraying the original story about pathetic yet kind-hearted Vincent Brooks, who cheats on his longtime girlfriend Katherine with another girl named Catherine, Full Body continues in Atlus re-release fashion by adding on to the story in the form of another character named Qatherine. This introduces a new route and ending, and a few extra scenes throughout the game.

Looking at the game as a whole, the basic gameplay loops functions through a series of cutscenes that play during "the day" that progress the story after the events of the previous day, followed by giving the player free-reign to move Vincent around the Stray Sheep bar and interact with the other characters and Catherines, and ending with a multi-level platforming segment in Vincent's dreams.
The puzzle/platforming elements are fun and engaging, providing somewhat of a challenge that encourages you to think on your feet. I haven't really played enough platforming games to comment extensively on that part of the gameplay, I personally played on Easy so I could focus on the VN/dating sim aspect of the game.
Now, those elements of the game are also quite good. You can control the outcome of the story through answers to questions between platforming stages, as well as through dialogue options and text messages responses while in the Stray Sheep bar. These all affect a mysterious meter that can sway from "blue" to "red", which have an impact on dialogue prompts in the final days that lead to 1 of 13 endings the player can receive on Day 10.
The characters and their interactions are well written and do a good job of portraying the idea that they are meant to have known each other for many years. The voice acting is very good, with many of the characters being voiced by people who were in Persona 3 and 4.
The game also looks a lot like Persona 5, although not stylistically, just in that the character models and animated cutscenes are quite similar. This makes sense given the developmental overlap between the original versions of these two games.

Overall, I quite enjoyed playing this game. The gameplay is engaging, the story is good, and I like the characters. I got the Reunite with Katherine ending, which was what I was aiming for, and while I probably won't replay it for another ending soon, the possibility is definitely there.