Catherine is a tough game. Released in 2011 and created by Atlus, it’s a title renowned for both it’s difficulty and it’s mature story line. While the gameplay difficulty ranges from hard to extremely hard, the game itself is also difficult. When I played it, I loved it- I thought it was great. But when I sat down to think about it, and write about it, my feelings changed. More and more of the traits that initially made it positive were turning negative, and my feelings went back and forth between the two until my opinion of the game ended up being somewhere in the middle. It’s a fitting feeling to have for this game, and breaking it down into it’s parts can help get a clearer picture of what Catherine is and where it stands now, five years after it’s release.
If you have not played Catherine and have any interest in doing so, do not read on as I spoil basically the whole game. Though I don’t describe exactly what happens, I do mention the end result, so that’ll probably spoil the fun if you haven’t experienced it for yourself.
A Golden Show: Presentation
Catherine’s artistic style, soundtrack, and user interface are brilliant. It’s presentation is the one part of the game that is almost perfect. The graphic style consists of anime cutscenes and anime-esque 3D models, and the game flows well between the two styles. Shoji Meguro delivers as well, with music ranging from dramatic to ambient, and nailing each mood he goes for. Menus are generally overlooked, but everything from the typeface to the way the cursor moves between options feels distinctly Catherine. The additional graphics that pop-up are a nice touch, and feel less like interruptions and more like bonus content for the game.
The voice acting is another strong point of Catherine’s presentation. Each actor performs their role convincingly, and the acting of the main characters is especially strong. Tension couldn’t exist with bad acting, and tension is something Catherine has in spades. Though it’s often overlooked, it’s especially important here and it deserves praise.
The game looks great and sounds great, and those two facts help boost the quality of both the story and the gameplay, and make it easier to immerse yourself into Catherine’s worlds.
It’s the killer. Do not die: Gameplay
The gameplay is crisp, though it’s certainly clunky at points, and it fully lives up to it’s reputation for difficulty. The game has two main sections- the bar and the nightmare sequences, which alternate with each other and other cutscenes over the course of a week of game time.
The bar sections are basic, but effective, and for the limited time players spend there, there’s enough to stay entertained with. Sitting and talking with other patrons, slamming drinks, playing around in Repunzel, and checking text messages all feels natural. With Meguro’s smooth jams tying everything together, the atmosphere is spot on. As someone who’s been to more dive bars than they’d like to admit, I can attest that the feeling in-game is about as accurate to the dive bar experience as a video game is going to get.
The other half of gameplay, also known as the nightmare stages, revolve around arranging blocks to climb up a tower of other blocks, while the blocks below you crumble into the void, or are destroyed by a disturbingly designed boss character. The game throws these blocks into different formations, and each night, introduces you to ones with different properties in order to keep things fresh. This works surprisingly well, and these different blocks and challenges keep things both new and refreshing enough to keep you engaged. Any new block type or stage type is introduced on the first level of each night, and the player is put through another level or two until the boss ends the night. This is a great formula, until the last few levels. This is when more mechanics are introduced, but they are neither entertaining nor worthwhile additions to the game. Each of the new mechanics adds the element of randomness, and in a game that’s hard enough without it, these concepts make some stages nearly impossible. These stages are not enough to break the game, they are inherently frustrating and add a certain amount of cheapness to the gameplay.
While the level design is great with the exception of a few areas, there are numerous technical issues with the gameplay. The camera and the weird, unnecessarily reversed controls on the back side of a wall are the two major ones, and these are the ones that will likely come back to bite anyone who didn’t pick up on them quickly enough. Catherine is a difficult game, but it only gets really irritating when you die at the hands of poor controls, cameras, or anything else you can’t control in-game.
Speaking of controls, many aside from the very basic ones are only explained after you’ve already learned them for yourself. And by “learned for yourself” I mean you learned them through many deaths and nearly completed stages before you finally ‘got’ them, just for the game to tell you the techniques explicitly. Looking at the game’s flow, it makes sense why they’re positioned this way. Techniques are taught on the landings between nightmare stages, and there would be no way within the nightmare world to teach them otherwise without interrupting gameplay. It’s set up the only logical way, but it still creates a huge amount of frustration, and it’s a wonder why they couldn’t have incorporated the bar aspects of the game to teach the techniques for the nightmare stages in some way.
The difficulty has been mentioned, but it’s worth reiterating- this is not an easy game. I played on Normal and spent about half of my game time dying, collecting pillows to get extra lives, and dying some more. Again, this difficulty in and of itself is not frustrating, but when it comes down to not knowing things the game specifically does not teach you, or falling off a ledge because you didn’t know there wasn’t a block there, or getting killed by boss characters because the controls didn’t respond and lagged you back, it’s so rage-inducing that it makes it almost not worth the trouble. When the game works, it’s difficulty is engaging, and finishing levels feels like an accomplishment. The sense of relief of getting to the end door is very real, and it’s only when the game causes your death out of no control of your own that it really becomes grating.
This is your first question: Catherine and Choice
While the game does struggle with certain issues, it still mostly works. But there is one area of gameplay that really, really doesn’t- the choice mechanics. This plays out as both a gameplay option (in that you’re selecting answers through conversation and in-between levels), but it more so ties into the plot. Or, more accurately, it should tie into the plot.
This game plays like every decision made is super important, like everything hinges on each answer the player gives. But in reality, a lot of the decisions you make have little to no bearing on the ultimate ending, and answering questions in a way that you would assume to be one way or another may have the opposite effect. Most of the direct moral questions are asked between nightmare stages, and these are pre-generated, randomly selected ones. The questions are extremely black and white- they don’t allow for any in-between, and that can make your answers a mix of both Freedom and Order unless you’re trying specifically for one ending or another.
Even if you do wind up heavily one way or the other, the game doesn’t seem to respond to that path. It’s like it doesn’t even bother changing anything until the very end, making each replay less and less enjoyable. While it’s understandable that there couldn’t be major changes due to time and resource restrictions, the fact that almost nothing changes at all makes the game seem insincere.
When I was first thinking this over, I wondered if maybe the choices were intentionally designed in this black and white, insincere sort of way- of course the questions are black and white when asked, but when you combine all answers you get something in the middle, which is more murky and hard to define. Or, maybe the importance isn’t in the game at all- maybe this is something the player assigns their own weight too, and something that makes them think introspectively.
But, when the questions are as vague and sometimes as ridiculous as they are, that effect isn’t there. I didn’t have to think about the way I answered the questions and what that meant about me, because I was answering very generic questions with my moral code already in place. Had the questions been worded better, or taken themselves more seriously, then this could have been the case. Considering the fact that the questions are neither thought provoking, nor do they impact the plot significantly until the ending, they feel like a hollow mechanic.
The choice system in Catherine is a trick to make the story seem more full than it is, and it’s unfortunate that this is not the only time the game tries to fool the player this way.
Lamb Game: Story
On day one of Vincent Brooks’ week, the first thing he does is wake from a living nightmare. Later that day, his long time girlfriend, Katherine, mentions they should think about marriage as her parents are pressuring her about it. That night, while doing the very adult thing and drinking away his problems, Vincent meets an alluring stranger named Catherine.
The next day, after yet another nightmare, he wakes up next to Catherine, who he apparently slept with. A day later, Katherine tells Vincent she’s pregnant. The rest of the plot spirals from there into a web of questions, responsibilities, drama to the max, and grotesque monsters bearing semi-resemblance to people in Vincent’s life.
When it was first released in 2011, Catherine’s story was praised as being almost ground-breaking, or at least, something refreshing and different. Video games then and now are an immature medium. Who was talking about adultery and pregnancy in games in 2011? Well, no one. So Catherine was rightfully treated like it was something of an oddity, and a refreshing change of pace for taking on an adult subject in what is frankly a prepubescent medium.
However, simply writing it off for being unique and telling a mature story, and not examining Catherine’s shortfalls, would be a tremendous disservice to video games as a whole. This game was the first step, and not the last, and many of the failures of it could be improved on for future releases that want to respectfully handle such complex topics.
Affairs are not something I have experience with, nor expertise. But I have seen enough people in my life struggle with the exact kind of indecision Vincent does that I recognize the weight of the topic, and the humanity it needs to be approached with. After all, everyone who is involved with an affair is a person, and each brings their own experiences and their own motivations to the encounter. No matter how you view cheating and the people who do it, it’s often more complex than simply right and wrong.
In this area, Catherine does deserve praise- lingering on Vincent’s indecision was something the game did well, and emphasized each night, as the intensity of the situation became more and more pressured. The game does make sex feel like more than just a plot point- like something significant, which in the event of a sexual affair, it very much is. The game also performs well in keeping attention- each near Catherine on Katherine encounter proves stressful, even just viewing it, and sometimes it feels more like one’s watching a drama rather than playing a game. It’s entertaining and has just enough suspense to keep you going through a playthrough. But the game distinctly lacks depth, and when you play through it multiple times, it becomes more and more apparent.
For a game attempting to showcase the complexity of people and their relationships, that complexity is notably absent. Vincent is the most well-developed character of the main trio, and even he can be boiled down to being simply indecisive.
Vincent’s inability to make a choice is likely intentional, as it’s meant for the player to determine which characteristics he takes on, but even then, his options are limited to essentially three different paths. And as described above, the player’s choice really doesn’t reflect on his character until the very end of the game, keeping Vincent as a vague, wishy-washy kind of guy for the majority of the experience.
Of course, there are people who relate to that sort of main character, and being in the situation that Vincent is in throughout the game, it’s almost natural to be confused and overwhelmed. But for a game that attempts to convince the player that their choices matter, and yet, doesn’t change anything about the main character based on the player’s actions until the last second, it feels like a failed cover-up for poor character development.
Though Catherine builds up enough suspense to keep players hooked through often horribly difficult puzzle stages, it’s almost all just hot air-and, in fact, this never becomes more apparent than the endings, which it all builds up to. The two major reveals- that Catherine is a succubus sent specifically to seduce men who aren’t committed to having children with their partners, and that Katherine is not actually pregnant but went along with it for longer than necessary to see Vincent’s reaction, are two of the most disappointing turns this game could have taken. They undermine the entire situation through finales that were ultimately cop-outs. However, the implications these twists carry are what ultimately spoil the game, and not necessarily the twists themselves.
First, I’ll tackle Catherine, whose underlying plot I surprisingly took less issue with than Katherine’s, which isn’t saying much. While the idea of a succubus is pretty ridiculous, this is Atlus, and it’s not out of their league to involve demons and the supernatural in a game of theirs. Though silly, it’s easily the part of Catherine’s character I enjoyed the most, even if it is just a way to explain away her promiscuity and chaotic nature.
In fact, my biggest issue with Catherine’s character arc isn’t her sexuality at all. I think it’s fine that she’s blatantly sexual, and open about it- succubus or not. The problem comes in the form of her supposed independence, yet dependence on the main character. While she’s initially presented as a character who does whatever she wants, and who doesn’t want to be tied down to marriage, this is quickly shown as just a front as she becomes aggressive and possessive around Vincent.
This makes sense in terms of her being a succubus for Thomas Mutton, and trying to lure Vincent away from Katherine so he doesn’t keep her from making babies by whatever means necessary, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. Here was a chance for the game to really make waves- an independent female character, who controls her own sexuality but isn’t bound by her relationship to a man? Now that would have been a first. Not only do video games have a track record of poorly demonstrating the emotional weight of sex and relationships, more often than not, female sexuality is portrayed as being at the whim of a man, or to distract and bring down men. Catherine could have been one of only a few characters in gaming to buck that trend, but instead, became creepily dependent on the Vincent to the point of violence. In many ways, the way she appears to Vincent when they first meet is only designed to trap him, both literally for the game’s overall plot and figuratively into a very unhealthy relationship.
While Catherine’s character unfortunately boils down to her being a vehicle for the overall plot and a possessive freak, at least she has some character. Katherine, on the other hand, gets an unfair shake. Her existence, and her relationship to Vincent, consists primarily of cheap, overused plot points that are designed to make things dramatic. They frequently do, but when one really examines it, it’s because we’re trained to see these situations as ones of drama, and not of the emotional weight they actually represent in real life.
At the start of the game, Katherine pressures Vincent about moving their relationship into marriage. This is not a negative story tool-thousands of couples deal with the same scenario every day, and when it’s dealt with in a way that’s respectful, it can be an emotional story in and of itself. Catherine actually treats this whole plot respectfully- because in reality, there isn’t much behind it, and since it’s introduced in the beginning of the game, there doesn’t really need to be.
When Katherine tells Vincent she’s pregnant, the game shifts. It becomes less about a decision between Katherine and Catherine, and more about a decision between Catherine and not abandoning your child. This actually goes with the game’s true theme of Freedom versus Order, and it could have really sold that point had it actually treated the pregnancy and the weight of it’s related decision with any sincerity at all.
Instead, Catherine gives us nightmares about chainsaw-wielding babies.
The game never gives any of Katherine’s opinions on the pregnancy. Instead, it shows the dilemma as being more of an annoyance and an excuse to have Katherine nag Vincent about changing his habits. It’s a tacked-on plot, and that’s disappointing for a number of reasons.
Pregnancy is a huge, emotional thing, and it’s almost never only one person’s dilemma unless the other is absent. And there are definitely ‘trap’ pregnancies, or one’s where one party gets pregnant just to keep the other person around. But the game doesn’t treat this pregnancy as such- it treats it as just another layer of drama, and when it’s revealed at the end that Katherine never really was pregnant, it puts the cherry on top of a mess of a relationship, and the portrayal of one.
The pregnancy is unnecessary, and is used to cover up a total lack of character development for Katherine and her relationship to Vincent. It’s mentioned that Vincent and Katherine are together for five years, yet all we know about is how they started dating. The rest of this relationship is presumed to be a boring blur, and the pregnancy is needed to build tension because their relationship, outside of the marriage talk, has none. If the pregnancy wasn’t on the table, Vincent would leave Katherine for Catherine with no reservations. But it’s needed to bring value to Katherine’s plot, which makes the game feel shallow on repeated playthroughs. Even marrying Katherine in one of the endings gives you no insight into the past of their relationship or any emotional weight to their bond at all.
The game not only screws Katherine over by pulling the old ‘you’re pregnant but you’re actually not but we didn’t respectfully showcase your side of things or relationship anyway’ trick, it also manages to make light of a situation that is incredibly emotionally heavy. Just about the only worries Vincent ever shows about having a child are how much money it’s going to cost and how much it’s going to pry away from him being able to go out with his friends. Those are very real anxieties to have about parenthood, but there’s a huge chunk of worries missing- how he’s even going to shape up to be a good parent, for instance. Had this been addressed, the pregnancy might have gained a layer of emotion, and depth. Instead, it feels like a setup for a bait-and-switch from the start.
In the end, Vincent is immature and indecisive, Katherine is organized, and Catherine is a weird cocktail of faux-independent and batshit-dependent. That’s about all the characterization there is for the main three. There are moments of good characterization in the game- but they mostly come with the other bar-goers, whose side stories often hint at depth and interwoven emotions that are unfortunately regulated to once-per-night conversations and hasty exchanges between nightmare stages.
Strong Women: On Erica
One of the most well-developed side characters is Erica, which makes the game’s treatment of her even more disappointing. Almost every single character in the game is portrayed as being a terrible person, except for Erica. Of course, an unlikeable character isn’t necessarily a bad character- that all depends on the amount of character development. But in a game of asshole characters, Erica manages to be both likeable, and well-developed. It’s a shame the game treats her poorly.
Erica is a trans woman. She is portrayed as being smart and energetic, and is also the only one who seems to openly care about Vincent when he stays out too late and drinks too much, often asking him if he’s okay before he leaves the bar. She is one of the best characters in the game, and yet, is treated like garbage due to poor writing throughout it.
The writing in Catherine is transphobic. Even the overall plot of the game- that men are put through nightmares as a punishment for keeping women to themselves and not increasing the population- is inherently transphobic in premise, though Erica is the only character who is openly insulted this way. Each main character makes cracks at her ‘not actually being a woman’, and even the supposed good guy Toby is visually disgusted when he finds out she is a trans woman after he has sex with her. It’s been written about in a lot of places, and it wasn’t originally my intention to bring it up here, but playing through the game and seeing how much more character Erica is given compared to even Katherine and Catherine, I couldn’t keep quiet about it. There was so much potential that was squandered in her character arc, in exchange for jokes and allusions that are played for cheap laughs and that go right over the character’s head. It’s cringe-worthy at best, and offensive and harmful at worst.
This isn’t to say that trans people can’t be sexual or flirtatious, and it could even be argued that in a game like this, everyone is sexualized. But that simply is not true. The only overtly sexual characters are Catherine, a succubus, and Erica, a trans woman. This is all part of an old, trite stereotype of trans people as ‘traps’, and being overtly sexual to lure people in- more often than not, heterosexual men- and only after the encounter revealing that they’re trans. It plays off the idea that they ‘tricked’ the person into having sex with them and that the tricked party should be embarrassed or disgusted for doing so. It’s an old, gross stereotype and one that’s exceedingly harmful to anyone who identifies as trans. This is also the entire basis for a joke and ‘reveal’ during one of the endings, which is arguably the worst point of the game.
To compound things, it’s mentioned that Erica also starts going through the nightmares the main characters do- nightmares that are exclusive to men. The game would explain that she starts seeing the nightmares since she’s ‘robbing’ Toby of the ability to have children, but that’s never explicitly stated, and even if it were, it would be too little too late. The game insults and dismisses her identity, and that’s too damaging to explain away.
Is Catherine transphobic? Definitely. No amount of canonical or in-game arguments can take that truth away. But is Atlus transphobic? Possibly. I mean, it’s not as though Atlus has ever done the “character presents one way but is ‘actually’ another way” plot before.
What ultimately determines how Atlus views LGTBA+ and gender issues is how they approach these topics in future releases, if they do at all. This game came out in 2011, and Persona 4 (referenced in the above screenshot) three years before that, and though it doesn’t seem like long ago, many things have changed since, including trans visibility. More and more, people are starting to grasp the concept of gender as being a fluid thing, versus a rigid binary, at least in the west. And though LGTBA+ Japanese people and teenagers in particular face severe levels of discrimination, Atlus’ works have always been about going beyond the surface of assumed cultural norms and questioning them at a very base level. Hopefully, Atlus moves forward in the future and their next big release that rhymes with Verona Dive doesn’t contain any of the gross narrative and possibly even contains positive LGTBA+ representation.
Catherine’s story is exciting, suspenseful, and entertaining enough to keep you going through at least once. But taking a deeper look at the plot and the characters is almost nothing but disappointing. We often play games to escape the heaviness and complications of our own life, but that doesn’t mean we forget how those things feel. When a team decides to take on the weight of such mature topics, it’s on them to portray that weight. Anything else is a disservice to those who have experienced it, and the story itself.
Love is Over: Last thoughts on Catherine
Catherine tries. Really, it does. It’s a game that wants so hard to be taken seriously, and to showcase itself as a mature story that gets people to feel as torn apart as the main character should be, or to question their own lot in life. But in reality, the game is about as decisive as Vincent himself, and when asked a hard question or put under any kind of investigation, it can respond with only a nervous laugh, a shrug of the shoulders or a bad lie.
Atlus does deserve praise- it’s a unique game, in every aspect. It’s not like anything else that had been on the market before it’s release, and still now, there’s next to nothing like it. When it works, it works brilliantly- when it stumbles, it often does so drunkenly, crashing into tables and spilling drinks.
Catherine is an entertaining game, and even a great game in some aspects. If you’re interested in playing it, for any reason, the game is worth picking up. Especially now, since sales happen regularly enough and you can catch it for less than $10 if you’re skilled.
Take Catherine for what it is- an entertaining, albeit frustrating, romp that makes you think it’s more important than it is. Enjoy it your time with it. Just don’t look to it for any sort of deeper relationship or commitment.
Editors note: I have changed the title of this piece. Formally, it was titled ‘A Dangerous Game Of Traps’, which was a reference to the game mechanic. But given the game’s transphobic depiction of a character it could also be read as calling a trans woman a ‘trap’, which is a slur and absolutely not the connotation I was going for. This was broken down in the piece but I fear that folks who didn’t read it and only read the title wouldn’t get to that portion and would take the wrong message away. For that reason, I decided to edit it, but wanted to give full transparency as to what was changed (and why)
