4/5 ★ – hfhow's review of Catherine: Full Body.

I remember the original Catherine game making the rounds back in 2011. I was 16 at the time and I played it a little bit and boy was that game not for me. The story was way too weird, the visuals way too horrifying, the themes too adult, and it was SO DAMN HARD. Well 10 years later 26, going on 27 I decided to take another attempt at Catherine, this time the new Full Body edition that came out a few years ago. Now with a 3rd girl called Rin. Short for... Well play the game to find that out. I geniuenly really dug my experience through Catherine Full Body, one of the reasons being I have actual life experience as a 26 year old and I have actual opinions and a point of view regarding the themes of the game. Catherine famously is about a guy in his early 30s who cheats on his girlfriend Katherine with a younger girl called Catherine. But of course it being a game made in Japan it inevitably has a supernatural twist where in this universe men that cheat on their girlfriends is forced every night to climb a tower of nightmares. The tower climbs I hated the first time I tried this game and I barely got anywhere. But this time I really loved it. It is such a clever puzzle mechanic where it's part Tetris, part jenga, part japanese horror. And like they say. "There is no one way to climb the tower". Which leads me into the way the gameplay of the tower connects to the central theme of finding your way through adulthood. A neverending climb that everyone thinks they got figured out, yet nobody climbs it the same way. Normal peaceful life, or a life of excitement and unknown. These are the types of things I would have missed at 16. Since there really is no such thing as a "bad ending" for Vincent. No matter where you take him he will find his way, and sure some might have more downs than ups. But such is life. Kinda dope to see a puzzle game get that deep. But fuck me is it hard... I played it on Normal and this might be the hardest game I've ever played on Normal.