Incredibly stylish game with great characters and kinda bad gameplay. The game is based around music and it SHOWS, the OST is by far the greatest part of this game. The voice acting is great as well, as is the writing. It manages to make all the bosses likeable while still keeping the battles fairly short. The boss battles themselves are very unique and every single one of them is good, with the unfortunate exception of the final boss. As for the gameplay, I found the camera to be annoying while running around the main areas, the movement suffered because of the camera, and attacks felt slow. Even despite this it gets such a high rating because of its pure charm. Definitely worth playing.

By far my favourite Undertale fanwork. It's a really great balance of feeling like the source material while still having its own merits. I think the spritework is great and the characters are interesting, and I also like how all of them are connected even if loosely. Even though it uses its inspiration well, the game is at its best in its entirely original sections, The Wild East and The Steamworks. And being an undertale fangame, it's only natural that the soundtrack is great. You can definitely play the game even if you haven't played undertale, but understanding it all and beating the game will be much easier if you've already finished UT.

I don’t know how in the world Atlus came up with an idea for a game that was half visual novel half puzzle with a splash of social sim/questions that would shape the many endings the game offers and revolve all of that around mature themes like love, death, and sex. But they did and it is brilliant.

I don’t know what I was expecting coming into this game but it was way more wild than I ever could have imagined. The story is goofy yet also very interesting and awesome. I loved how many of the choices they give you in the social sim are not so black and white and answering them can change Vincent’s romantic life as well as spell life or death of minor characters. I also loved many of the characters in this game especially the three “Catherin”s and Vincent’s main core of friends.

The puzzles were at first very frustrating, maybe because I am dumb, but once I got the hang of them I really enjoyed them. I think it’s awesome that they give you an option to skip the puzzles in case you want to just see the story unfold as well. I didn’t use that feature but it’s nice they added it in especially if you want to replay several times to see the multiple endings.

I never played the original but I know that Rin wasn’t in the original. I didn’t choose her path so maybe I would feel differently if I would have but I feel the game was clearly about Catherine and Katherine and you could feel Rin was an add on. For instance, again I’m sure if I chose her path it would be different, but in my playthrough it was building up to something big with her but then she legit just left and never came back. It felt off to me and knowing she was an add on to this version it made sense to me but if I didn’t know that I would have been wondering wtf that was all about.

The story has some amazing twist and turns and kept my interest for the 12 hour playtime. I only finished one path but I am going to go back and see how many different endings I can unlock but using the puzzle skip I spoke on earlier. But I am very excited to jump back in and see the various outcomes. If I enjoy them enough I may come back and give this game an extra half star or so but I feel like I know enough to rate and review it.

Catherine is a very unique game and it’s one I feel like you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot even if visual novels aren’t your thing.

My 2024 ranked

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

It made my top 100 (preliminary ranking. Will finalize after getting all endings)

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

Recently replayed and I still honestly think it's the best singleplayer campaign in any splatoon game. Splatoon 3's story mode is pretty good, a close secound, but it just doesn't compare to the sheer beauty of octo expansion's story. It added so much to the current knowledge of octarian society and really helped expand on Marina & Pearl's characters as well as expand on the story modes from Splatoon 1 and 2. And of course, the final boss is incredible and the boss theme is one of my favorites from the entire series. DEFINITELY worth a play if you're at all interested in splatoon.