Geekscape Games Reviews ‘Catherine: Full Body’

Originally released in 2012, Catherine reached cult hit status thanks to its unique combination of action-puzzle game play mixed with an enthralling narrative driven by the player’s values. As a man caught between an expected marriage proposal, facing his unknown future and the other woman who woke up in his bed, the narrative kept us coming back, even when the platforming stages became increasingly difficult. Returning and rebuilt using the Persona 5 engine, Catherine: Full Body is here to make life even more complicated, with new modes, over twice the amount of stages compared to the original, numerous quality of life changes and a new love interest to steal our hearts. But is it worth checking out again?

Like the vanilla version of the game, Catherine: Full Body puts us in the role of Vincent Brooks, a man in his early 30’s who’s feeling lost in life. An over-spender, heavy drinker and constant smoker with little money to his name after just finding employment, he’s not the most reliable guy in the world, a fact that his girlfriend of five years, Katherine, is sure to remind him of. When expectations of marriage begin to surface, Vincent’s life becomes even more stressful. Yet, that’s nothing compared to the nightmares he’s been having where he’s forced to climb a seemingly endless tower to avoid falling to his death. Rumors say that unfaithful men are the only ones who have these strange dreams, with some of them dying in their sleep. Once Vincent wakes up next to a strange woman that is definitely NOT his girlfriend after a night of drinking, will the rumors prove to be true and eventually claim his life? And what role does Rin, the amnesiac who has moved in next door, play in this mystery?

As suggested, Full Body redefines the original game in a number of ways. The core game play remains largely unchanged, which is split into two sections. The puzzle stages are the meat of the game, where Vincent will have to push and pull a variety of blocks to build pathways that allow him to climb his way to freedom. As the stages progress, new types of blocks are introduced that keep players on their feet, such as exploding blocks, ice blocks that make other blocks and characters slide and spiked blocks that will kill you if stepped on for too long. Each stage is timed, with the bottom of the tower slowly collapsing, so there’s rarely much time to think about your actions before you move. However, after a certain point in the story, Rin can show up when the tower is about to collapse and slow its decent by playing her piano, buying the player a little more time.

The fast pace nature of the game could lead to some frustrating moments in the original game, but Full Body has improved on the game play immensely thanks to some small changes that make a big difference. Hanging on edges now displays a lit path showing where Vincent can shimmy across other blocks, something that was unclear originally. When climbing behind the tower, the camera now swings directly to the back of the stage rather than having to fight with an unresponsive camera. Some item properties have changed, namely the white block, which went from placing one block in front and above Vincent to creating a 3 x 3 platform surrounding his position. But the biggest and best change has to be the reworking of the lives system. What could make the first game tedious at times was that dying led to a lengthy game over screen before being sent back to either a checkpoint or the beginning of a stage. If you ran out of lives, you would be kicked out of the game altogether and have to re-load from your last save, placing you at the beginning of your most recent tower while losing your checkpoints. Now, the lives are tied into your “undo” allocation, which allows you to reset your last block movement. This cuts down on time while allowing you to maintain your train of thought, rather than being reminded of your failure multiple times a stage. All these quality of life changes made the game much more manageable, increasing the fun factor of a game I already enjoyed thoroughly, especially when considering the Remix Mode, which adds new types of blocks for veterans who want a unique challenge. Though I found the game to be significantly easier, (although I can’t be sure if it’s because of the updates, the fact that Remix mode’s long blocks allowed for less room for error or due to me finishing the original game recently), those who still have trouble have the choice to either allow the CPU to recreate their movements before their most recent death to bring them back to where they left off, select Safety Mode to let the CPU play for them completely so they can enjoy the story while studying their techniques, or even skip the stages altogether.

The second portion of the game is the social simulation portion of the game, which takes place both in the nightmares and in the real world. In the nightmares, Vincent can talk to the sheep that occupy his dreams, (including two new sheep unique to this game), most of which correspond to people he knows in real life. Sharing climbing techniques, listening to them vent about their problems and calming their nerves as they all fight for their lives can help determine whether or not they live or die while simultaneously helping to shape Vincent’s moral compass. As each climbing stage is completed, Vincent will be asked a variety of questions regarding his values on relationships. Each choice helps guide the player towards one of its 13 endings, (five of which are new), using a morality meter that ultimately determines his outlook and which love interest he will choose. New choices unique to this remake might even let you break the meter to allow for new possibilities…

Outside of the nightmare, Vincent spends most of his time at the Stray Sheep, a local bar where players can get to know Vincent’s friends, the friendly bar staff, his new neighbor, Rin, who works as a pianist, and the local patrons who have strange resemblances to the sheep in his dreams. Here, players can talk to the patrons, drink a variety of alcoholic beverages that help Vincent move faster in his dreams, (each of which result in some fun alcohol trivia when the drink is finished), listen to some familiar tunes, play the Rapunzel mini-game that houses hundreds of extra puzzles, answer phone calls and reply to text messages. Those who are extra salacious can even check out racy photos of their homewrecking mistress. Each conversation takes up a limited amount of time at the bar, so missing important dialogue can prove to be detrimental to the survival of your peers, making every action count both in and out of the nightmare. Thankfully, if you mess up and want to see what the other choices result in, that’s much easier to accomplish now thanks to the skip feature. Originally only possible in stages that you’ve received a gold medal on, it’s now possible to skip any stage on any difficulty that has already been completed. This makes extra runs to collect all the endings much easier to finish.

Each game play section is broken up by lengthy cutscenes that show the fallout of the nightmares and Vincent’s affair. Much like the in-game visuals, the cutscenes look much better thanks to the visual bump the remaster has received. More importantly, the new scenes help flesh out the story immensely, giving more context to the relationship with Katherine that was sorely missing from the first one. Originally coming off as a well meaning, but naggy and slightly condescending love interest, Katherine now feels like more real, making it easy to see why Vincent fell for her to begin with. Catherine also gets some new scenes, showing in more detail how she was able to seduce Vincent at the bar instead of being a near silent patron until she was in his apartment. Even if the game play doesn’t hook you, (and why wouldn’t it?), the game’s story is still one of the most gripping tales you’ll find in a game, with twists and turns that will have you sweating bullets right alongside Vincent.

Perhaps most importantly, the game tackles some pretty heavy themes such as infidelity, regret, the fear of commitment both in and out of the realm of romance, how scary finding one’s path in life can be, same sex marriage and transitioning one’s gender. While games can often stumble hard when tackling such subject matter, (including Atlus’ own Persona series), Catherine largely presents it from a place of understanding and acceptance outside of a few potentially problematic scenes, (one of which is an infamous portion of one of the original game’s endings, with another feeling wildly out of character). All in all, the core story mode has taken an already great mode and made it easier to play, navigate and enjoy without taking away the challenge.

Speaking of challenge, progressing through the story unlocks stages in the returning Babel mode, a set of four incredibly difficult stages that can be played either by yourself or with a friend in co-op using the game’s colorful cast. The Colosseum lets two players compete across 11 stages against each other to see who can reach the top first, (or at least not fall). Each of these modes can be played online, which is unique to Full Body, and are available to an extent from the start of the game rather than having to unlock them. To tie everything together, each mode also has an introduction that gives them its own narrative spin.

Cathrine: Full Body manages to be one of the few games to justify its remaster, retaining and expanding on everything that made the original one of the best games of last generation as far as I’m concerned. Games will often ignore story for game play or treat game play as a chore in between the next cool cutscene, but Catherine blends both so well that each aspect drives the other to create a cohesive whole in a way that most games struggle to achieve. This leads to a strong attachment to the cast, the danger of the puzzles and truly caring about how Vincent’s fate will eventually turn out. With so many twists and turns, anyone who hasn’t played Catherine before definitely needs to give Full Body a shot. Veterans would do well to give this old fling a second chance too, with so many quality of life changes that virtually eliminates every flaw the original had. My only nitpick would be its characterization of Vincent during a certain scene, but with more story, twice the amount of stages, an incredible soundtrack, countless improvements and a visual bump that helps the game stand out even further, there’s no better game to wake up to.

Final Score: 4.75/5