Catherine: Full Body is the puzzle horror-ish remake developed by ‘Atlus: Studio zero’. Catherine: Full body came out the 3rd of September 2019 on PlayStation 4. It was released earlier in Japan though. We definitely liked the Catherine games and want to talk about a couple things concerning the remake. Let’s take a look.
Let’s just go through these points as quickly as possible. First of all we didn’t get to play the game ourselves but saw the entire game. Now this isn’t just a remake as in a sense of just better graphics. There is new paths to the story, some changed and new dialogue, new scenes, a new character and just additional stuff. They definitely kept the same style of visuals for both the gameplay and cinematic parts and that’s a good thing as they worked well in the original game. Things do seem smoother though when it comes to the cinematic. The additional cinematic scenes are primarily about the new character Rin (Qatherine). There’s more interaction between Vincent and his friends. Something you will need to see for yourself and the developers did good in these areas.
Let’s get straight into the gameplay. There is a new block altogether and we believe it’s called the Laser block. This block you only see in the very last extra levels of the game if you take the Rin path. These blocks literally just fire a laser which will kill you. Just wait for it to stop firing and then move by or whatever. Sadly they are the only new block and they could have added more. The next is the difficulty and we have a problem with this one. First of all we hate the idea of a very easy mode is embarrassing. X35 Earthwalker himself beat the original Catherine game with gold price for each level and beat all the Babel levels, easy difficulty is actually a complete joke. Yet very easy is unacceptable. If someone can’t beat your game they need to practice and use their heads. it’s a puzzle game after all. Then it gets worse as there’s a ‘safety mode’. WHAT!? Anyone who plays with that feature needs to put down the controller and back away from the game. You should be ashamed.
This is what Gematsu said concerning safety mode, “In Safety mode, you can use the ‘Skip Feature’ to skip stages you have not cleared with the press of a button, and solely enjoy the event scenes. For players who want to see the puzzles, both Safety and ‘Easy’ modes have an ‘Auto-Play’ feature where Vincent moves on his own during the action puzzle segments”. Well the best use of this would be to just see the cinematic scenes and get the different endings quickly AFTER you have already beaten the game. We don’t like the ides of a safety mode at all. Just take time and practice, you even have undo in normal mode so you could figure things out move by move if you need to.
Catherine: Full Body also a Remix mode which basically has “new mechanics and gimmicks”. For example you will see blocks that are all joined together and look like precious stones. They can be two blocks next to each other or even form a big shape etc. You have to move the whole thing as one big block, not separately. It does overall make the whole game easier but in less parts can really mess you up. Pull out a whole shape and end up hanging over the edge with no where to go. It’s a cool concept and we like the addition of remix mode to shake things up. Just play through once with remix and then another in classic mode. Also Catherine: Full body has better lighting with some places receiving some small changes. The stray Sheep is more lit for example. Some of the nightmare stages have less fog too.
Now we think Rin is a great edition to the game as she’s a very different person from both Katherine and Catherine. Players really can’t help but like Rin, she’s the happy, bubbly, optimistic person many wish they had as a friend. We would gladly have her as a friend but how they handled Vincent’s decision to be with Rin and his thought process is very bad. It doesn’t make any sense. Think about it imagine you are in a serious relationship with your girlfriend for 5 years (ladies you can reverse the situation to make it applicable to yourself). The choice of marriage is now a present thing and in your mind, she even told you that she is pregnant, don’t forget that you actually like your girlfriend and had such a romantic beginning. Would you then break up with her for someone you just met and have known for 5 days? Worse, that person has amnesia and remembers nothing of themself (they could be a terrorist undercover for all you know). Even worse, you thought that person was a woman but instead learn by accident that they are a man. Off course you wouldn’t. You have to be the biggest scum to do that to someone. There’s so many problems with this. Would Vincent have developed any feelings like that for Rin if he knew from the start that Rin was a man like how his friends Orlando, Johnny are men? Nothing from the original game or this game suggests he would go down that path. This whole thing is just clearly forced.
Next that we believe doesn’t make any sense is Katherine’s reaction to Vincent admitting cheating on her. In the original she was on the calm side (the nightmare doesn’t count) but made it clear she was not happy about it ad that she wanted Vincent to leave her alone by ignoring her messages and call. Yet in the original, taking everything we mentioned earlier from our example into account, was even more calm than ever and remained friends. We can’t think of a single girl who would react like that to being cheated on with a man (he knew you was pregnant), have 5 years wasted and had to confront them about it. We know it’s just a game but that isn’t realistic at all. We definitely love Johnny’s reaction to the news of Vincent leaving Katherine for Rin. He gave him a nasty punch that floored him. Which does make sense since Katherine is also his friend. Vincent’s reaction to the punch by not fighting back or even getting angry shows that they are like brothers in a sense and good friends. Vincent won’t fight back but understands why Johnny did that, knowing he deserved it. They brushed off, accepted each others decisions and went back to having drinks and talking together. They are bros for sure and in some ways can relate to that. So we give a thumbs up for that interaction.
We didn’t like the great reveal that Rin is an alien. It feels completely out of place and makes no sense concerning other matters. For starters we initially though that Rin was an angel since Catherine is the demon and Katherine is the human but Rin could also appear in the nightmares, which Astaroth and Dumuzid couldn’t really do anything about it, until much later which made no sense, why didn’t they attack her, unless she was something powerful too on level or above demons like an angel. Astaroth knew Rin wasn’t normal at all and hiding a big secret. If Rin is not an angel then why is a god like Dumuzid who is a demon basically scared of her and her brothers? I can understand demons being scared of angels but not an alien. Aliens aren’t supernatural. Wouldn’t aliens go to alien hell and therefore demons can torment them? At night wouldn’t Dumuzid have the advantage? Or is he only useful in dreams (if so then what kind of lame god is he)? It just doesn’t go. Also the bunch of alien brothers look so out of place reminding us of the minions from Despicable Me. We thought they could have made the end game of Rin much better.
There are additional stuff in Catherine: Full Body like how some items have new effects. The white block now creates white blocks in a 3×3 shape around the block you are standing on. The energy drink allows you to jump up two blocks but up to three times, when you decide to use it, giving players more control over it. The Rapunzel game has been renamed Super Rapunzel and has more levels with both a remix and classic mode. Rin’s piano can slow down the rate that the blocks fall away and how fast the boss moves after you. The undo system has been reworked, can view the back of the stage more easily, unlimited retries if you die, Babel and Colosseum have new stages (happy about this). O
Online has some new stuff going for it as well. If you play the story while online, you can see the spots where other players have died, which is quite useful so you know which parts can be tough. You get to see the number of deaths in that level nationwide and how they died, like by falling, crushed etc. Catherine: Full Body has gotten quite competitive as you can face and climb off against other players online. There’s even a ranking system too.
The last thing we hate about Catherine: Full Body is definitely the undo system. It’s basically impossible to die unless you are that bad at the game. If you step on a trap block and get spiked, you ‘undo’ and you’re right back where the block is, cancelling your death basically. If you fall off, same thing. Deaths don’t matter as much anymore. In the originally if you died, you died and had to go back to checkpoint or start of level. These changes make the game too easy. Even players who aren’t good at the game like Jay from the kubz scouts can beat Catherine: Full Body. No, beating the game doesn’t make you good at it. Eventually DSP beat the original too. Literally the second boss the immoral beast was the easiest level we have ever seen. It was a joke. Overall the game is easier than the original. We haven’t seen how difficult it is on hard mode though. We can only go by what we know.
Overall Catherine: Full Body is a very good game. We had more to say but it’s long enough as it is. The original Catherine had a better story. Catherine: Full Body is bigger with more features but the main thing that stands out about Catherine is the story so we say the original was the better game from the main part (story) but Catherine: Full Body is better overall with the cool additions, more options, better graphics, more scenes, longer gameplay, more endings, new character etc. It doesn’t have the same Catherine feel but a great game still.
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