As its name clearly suggests, Catherine Classic is a port that does not seek to revolutionize the original experience. It is above all a question of getting the license out of the shackles of the consoles and, in doing so, of bringing the game a little technical boost. Thus, it becomes possible to play on the keyboard, the image refresh rate is no longer limited, and the resolution can be pushed up to the sacrosanct 4K. The graphics are therefore much cleaner than eight years ago on the old generation of consoles (fortunately…), but the experience is not upset for all that. Note however that this PC version offers us Japanese voices in addition to English voices, which is always good to take. The lack of ambitions of the port (especially if we have the bad idea to compare it to the future Catherine Full Body) leaves no doubt: Catherine Classic is intended essentially, if not exclusively, for those who do not know the original title . Therefore, it may be useful to recall what type of game we are dealing with. The scenario puts us in the shoes of Vincent Brooks, a thirty-year-old who chooses his moment very badly to cheat on his partner named Katherine with… Catherine, a young woman he meets in his favorite bar. The subject of infidelity might seem rather ordinary, but here it is coupled with a horrifying, even supernatural dimension. Because for some time now, a curse seems to have affected unfaithful men, who find themselves plagued by strange, potentially fatal nightmares every night. Transformed into sheep, the fickle husbands must climb up a tower made of blocks and above all not fall, because that would immediately lead to their death in the real world. This dichotomy between dreams and real life is taken up by the gameplay, which is therefore divided into two very distinct parts for the player.
CATHERINE ATTACKS HER
During the day, or more exactly at the beginning of the evening, Vincent meets his friends at the Stray Sheep ("the lost sheep") to chat and share a few drinks. The player can then engage in dialogue with his three best friends, the other customers of the bar, the waitress or even the mysterious boss. Close to a visual novel, since we generally just scroll through the text, these sentences still offer a small dose of interactivity. Thus, certain words or actions can change Vincent's thoughts, with the game ultimately offering eight different endings. It is also possible to change the music via a jukebox, to play a few games on a Rapunzel arcade machine (which serves as training for night gameplay), to chain glasses of alcohol in order to benefit from a more high speed of movement in the phases of dreams, and even to send personalized answers to the text messages that we receive on our mobile phone. Jazzy atmosphere, misogynistic dialogues and cinematic scenes worthy of the best anime ensure the comfort of the player. But it would be necessary to see not to relax too much all the same, because the sequences of nightmares constitute a completely different pair of sleeves. When he decides to go to bed, Vincent finds himself trapped in a most devious puzzle game. The famous tower that he must climb is made up of blocks that he must move in order to create stair steps. It sounds simple, but everything is done to make the experience extremely complicated. For starters, the bottom of the level crumbles over time, so you have to think at full speed. In addition, cracked, heavy or trapped blocks complicate the player's task. You also have to be careful not to get crushed by a block that is no longer held by anything, not to get stuck stupidly and not to get in the way of the competing sheep. Regular sequences of bosses come to complicate our task even more, a monstrous creature then regularly emerging from the depths of the level.
As its name clearly suggests, Catherine Classic is a port that does not seek to revolutionize the original experience. It is above all a question of getting the license out of the shackles of the consoles and, in doing so, of bringing the game a little technical boost.
To get out of it, do not hesitate to learn the techniques taught by certain sheep between two levels, and to use the rare objects intended to make our task easier (creation of an additional block, elimination of the surrounding sheep, etc.). But even so, don't expect to get away easily. You will die many times before succeeding in reaching the top of each tower, and we can also regret that the game imposes a limited number of "continuous". This port could have been an opportunity to correct the few flaws of the original game, but that's not the case. Thus, the joystick controls are identical to those of the console experience, ie a little too floating (sometimes we move in the wrong direction when using the stick). Fortunately, you can easily gain precision by using the keyboard. The camera is still as limited as it was eight years ago, since it still does not allow easy observation of the back of the levels. Finally, Catherine Classic gets a little confused when it comes to the control indications displayed on the screen. Most of the time, it's the PlayStation controls that are shown in the image, even when using an Xbox controller. So don't be surprised if nothing happens the first time you are asked to press "X". It is actually the "A" from Microsoft. Clearly and eminently less ambitious than the future Catherine Full Body, Catherine Classic is therefore not the port of the century. But it has the merit of filling a gap on PC.
