I was very excited last week when I heard that the Catherine demo was available for my enjoyment. Alas, it was for Gold members only, so I was stuck waiting for it until… Tuesday I think? In any case, it’s available to the general public now, so I downloaded that.
Let me start by saying that I was interested in Catherine before it was cool. Because I’m super hip. The kids over at Talking Time were all abuzz about it when the first trailer was announced, because it seemed to be a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff of some sort. SMT, and the Persona games in particular, are a big thing over there, so a sexy spinoff was big news. Turns out it has little to do with SMT, and is not even branded as part of the series, but after playing it I can see that there are a few similarities.
Catherine is a puzzle game. Technically it is a falling block game, but not in the “match-three” way that falling block games are. In this one, you must climb a tower made of blocks before they fall out from under you. It’s a little more complicated than that, but such is the basic premise of the gameplay. Also, there is a story that plays out in between the tower-climbing. And this is where it parallels SMT, or Persona 3, at least. During the daytime, you walk around and talk to people, affecting your relationships with them as you go. And then at nighttime, it’s tower climb time. This is the same formula that P3 follows, except that in that game there is an RPG instead of puzzles during the night segments. Again, that’s a very basic summary, but it gets my point across.
After playing the demo, I’m not only interested in Catherine because the Talking Time crew told me to be, but mostly because if you ignore the fact that it is not technically a Persona game, it’s a Persona game I can play. I really would like to get into the series, but from what I’ve heard, they seem to have an issue with requiring perfection. Having to memorize enemy weaknesses and switch up your party all the time to take advantage of them is a little more than I want to deal with in a standard RPG. In a tactical RPG? Sure, that’s part of the genre’s charm. But coming off of Final Fantasy XIII, where your characters learn weaknesses and exploit them automatically, having to tweak your characters/party for each encounter? Too much work.
So Catherine here, the other reason I want to get into it is because the social element and story really interest me. Your social interactions appear to have an effect on how the story plays out, even if it just results in whether your character (Vincent) picks the blond (Catherine) or the brunette (Katherine) in the end, it looks like it’ll be a fun ride. Of course, me being me, I’d definitely do everything to rope Vince into marrying his longtime girlfriend. It’s nice to feel like you have that choice, anyway.
I do want to play the full game, but I’m wondering if it’ll be worth the entry price. $60 is an awful lot for someone with so little disposable income to pay for a game about climbing blocks. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy the daytime segments and the story more than enough to justify the price. It’s hard to say whether I’d play it more than once though. Maybe it’d make a good birthday gift? It is only a month and a half away… Then again, I did play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories several times, and that game was even less about gameplay than Catherine is. I suppose it’ll probably boil down to whether I have enough self-control to avoid buying it or not, though I know how guilty I’ll feel if I do. Huh. Listen to me ramble about finances. Not exactly the most entertaining thing to blog about. Point is, the demo is good, but not $60 good.
In a related story, I’m highly considering getting SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked for 3DS next month. This one is a tactical RPG, so that’s perfect! I love tactical RPGs! Which reminds me, the PSP port of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has been sitting on my floor unopened for at least a month now. Probably should put Dissidia down for a while and start hacking away at that.
(At this point, you’re likely trying to reason out exactly why I think I need to buy more video games.)