Catherine: Full Body - Aged Like A Fine Wine

Eight years after the original release of Catherine (aka Catherine Classic), Atlus released an updated version titled Catherine: Full Body, which among other things included a number of quality-of-life changes, remastered graphics and its main selling point, a third possible love interest for Vincent named Rin (short for Qatherine). As much as I enjoyed the original game, it was also flawed in some areas, so I was curious to see what the Full Body version had to offer, pre-ordering the “Hearts Desire” Premium Edition to go with the “Love Is Over” Deluxe Edition I own for the Classic release. After going through it once to see what a Rin Route looked like, I will say I found the Full Body re-release to be superior to the original on a technical level in just about every way, though the execution of the additional story content is a little iffy.

Second Look - Catherine

Note: The following review contains spoilers for Catherine.

In 2011, Atlus, developer behind the Megami Tensei series and Persona sub-series, released an odd-sounding game called Catherine in 2011, which detailed the story of a man going through an affair, with some block puzzles mixed in. The ideas presented in the trailers intrigued me and the result turned out be more interesting than I expected. Eight years later, a re-release with extra content dubbed Catherine: Full Body was announced, among its new features being a new character that leads to new story paths. While the game is already out in its native Japan, the announcement of the English version’s release date led me to play the original game again, both to see how it holds up and to have a comparison point for the Full Body version. After playing the game three times to view multiple endings, I can say that the game is just as good as I remembered it being, though it doesn’t quite hold up as well in some areas.

Persona 5

Before I played Persona 5, I knew next to nothing about the series. All I knew was that the Persona games were a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei games by Atlus and that Personas as a concept were similar in nature to Stands from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. I had somewhat of an interest in playing one of the games, so I went with Persona 5 since the imagery intrigued me. When I got the Take Your Heart Edition on release day, I immediately began playing. About four months later, I finally beat what I now consider one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played.