The common consensus of this game is that it’s two unrelated halves welded together. There’s the block-pushing puzzle half, and the romance anime half. While I agree that it’s weird how separate each element is, I found it to be an interesting sort of pacing. The gameplay is a hectic puzzler where you have to think on your feet, rearranging a wall of blocks to get to the top as each layer below slowly collapses and prods you to keep moving. It hits a sweet spot where you have to be decisive but calm, with simple mechanics that require you think multiple steps ahead. The low-key romance anime interludes were a nice cooldown period, and you can choose to spend however much time you want chatting people up until you’re ready to take on the next level. The problem is that it’s easy for one of these two parts to disappoint, given that neither are good enough to stand on their own. If you become annoyed by one half and interested only in the other, the amount of interruption will be frustrating. The weaker half was definitely the story for me, with a lot of moments I found pretty questionable, only staying afloat with some good dialog and interesting bizarre moments. The gameplay on the other hand more easily held my interest, with loads of room for creativity once I got a grip on the various techniques, even if the creative potential is at the expense of depth. If there’s a running theme here, it’s that Catherine is a game with a lot of components that barely work, but work nonetheless. It’s a good pick-it-up-on-sale candidate if the sound of this odd construction intrigues you.