Catherine Classic

Unusual puzzle platformer with great anime presentation, which thrills especially with its adult story.

The mixture of dialogue adventure, mystery thriller and challenging puzzler didn’t lose a beat. Seven years after its console premiere this still is a captivating experience.

Catherine Classic is a port to PC of one of the more unique and surreal gaming experiences around. Scary, thought provoking, and beautiful to behold, Catherine combines horror, romance, puzzles and platforming into a must play experience for anyone. Highly repeatable and challenging gameplay defines this true classic cult hit that begs to be discovered and rediscovered despite outwardly obscuring its true nature behind the standard expectations of a game in this style.

Catherine is a genuinely funny, fun and altogether unique experience, even now. It merges brilliantly challenging puzzle gameplay with an Animé adult-romance story that is as equally compelling as it is entertaining. It features interesting and deeply flawed characters, particularly the protagonist whose emotions directly affect the challenges he'll face. All of this contained within a game that has aged particularly well due to the colourful and Animé-style design.

Eight years after the original this sexy horror didn’t even get one wrinkle! It’s worth to give it another chance even if you’ve scored with Atlus’ work before. [03/2019, p.79]

Catherine Classic may have lost some of its freshness over time, but it remains an intriguing title for those looking for a game that defies expectations. Its more adult style may seem too simple for some, but it's something that very few visual novels attempt to do. The puzzle aspect remains hellish in difficulty but is still fun once you learn all of the tricks and can deal with the imposed time limits. For longtime fans, there isn't much here to bring you back, but unless you don't have your PS3 anymore or an Xbox One to play the Xbox 360 version, Catherine Classic is worth checking out.

Catherine Classic may not be the definitive way to experience Vincent's journey of self discovery, mainly due to some pesky technical issues, but it is a solid port nonetheless, with a few improvements of its own. Faster loading times, crisper visuals, and dual audio support, elevate the title from beyond just another bog standard PC port. It is unfortunate that English audio clips in when playing in Japanese, but Catherine is so thoughtfully designed, and so well-written that it's easy enough to endure the port's more disappointing qualities in favour of the incredible experience underneath. Catherine Classic is a great alternative to the PS3 original, if flawed.

As a conclusion to this improved edition, Catherine: Classic brings us back a title that has already gone through the consoles of two generations. And it does not have much more improvement than seen in previous editions, apart from some graphic improvement. Still, it's still a very good game, complete, with replayability and hours. It becomes heavy in some places, because the story slows down and does not advance as fast as we would like, making the experience longer than we would expect.

Catherine Classic continues to be one of the most fascinating and unique games of last generation. And the good news is, you no longer need to hook up your last-gen console to enjoy this gem of a game.

The journey to finding out what it means to you is certainly one worth taking.

An adult video game that is neither exploitative nor pretentious, but instead weaves a fun yet incisive tale about all too human characters.

Catherine is a fantastic game, and it being on more platforms is great news, even if it doesn’t offer any new content or relevant new features.

Its story and characters are definetly the Game’s forte. Scenes range from endearing and relateable to completly absurd and hilarious. All the while Gameplay is interesting at first, but becomes pretty tedious and - in parts - nigh unbeatable in later stages of the game. But at no time did we consider quitting, because the creative story and great dialogue always pulls you back in, as soon as you get annoyed by the puzzle sections. Atlu’s erotic-dating-adventure manages to deliver extremely well on various fronts, but sadly falls short of its gameplay variety and interactivity in terms of story. Nonetheless, all the other parts of the game are strong enough to elevate Catherine to a truly great experience.

An odd hybrid of life sim and puzzle game where both flawed halves somehow work well together.

Catherine Classic is a fun puzzler, with a great art-style and a fairly catchy narrative. But Vincent lacks appeal as a protagonist, he’s just so bumbling and incompetent and irritatingly unsure of himself. If nothing else hooks you, the puzzles will — but I’m questioning why this game is a classic, I just don’t think I got it.