The following comes from a website that I will not reveal the name of, I have however copied and pasted what has been written instead of linking it directly because the site has some content that may not be seen as appropriate for younger viewers, normally I wouldn't care, but I'm trying to stick by the rules of KHV here. So here you go: Catherine’s “Impossibly Hard” Gameplay Laid Bare Sexy puzzle game Catherine is being almost universally lambasted for being of the “sadistically difficult” school of game design, to the extent where many players report not even being able to clear it on easy, let alone normal. For the first time, Atlus has actually released a video concentrating on the gameplay and not the events – it is not hard to see why [video=youtube;PIJs6flkRQc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIJs6flkRQc&feature=player_embedded[/video] Reportedly many players have been forced to abandon their games at normal difficulty, and not a few find it impossible to complete even at easy. A sampling of the player reviews which have emerged so far, with the game generally receiving an Amazon average of 3.7 out of 5: Practically every review, whether positive or negative, complains of excessive difficulty and overly punishing design. Its mature content and well developed story are probably at odds with it being an insanely difficult puzzle game requiring hours of repetitive block pulling – one player puts it this way: “If you keep at it you can probably clear it, but I think most adult players will not take kindly to wasting all their precious time on the puzzle parts.” That the game would be something of a disappointment was basically a given from the moment it emerged it was not an RPG and was (as the developers seemed strangely keen to conceal) in fact a block-pushing puzzle game, although Persona fans have generally extended considerable forbearance on the basis that it is supposed to be the immediate precursor to the development of Persona 5. Whilst producing a super-hard puzzle game with a strong story is all very well (if a little strange), the real issue is whether the shade of Atlus can afford to make a lacklustre game given its precarious position – as little more than a brand owned by a mobile phone software company, it may be in danger of being further downsized to the point where it is no longer able or allowed to make full-scale console RPGs. The game is available now for those with sufficiently masochistic personalities.
EDIT: New information has come in: Complaints about Catherine being “too hardcore” have not fallen on deaf ears – Atlus promises a patch to make the game easier for the mewling weaklings they are saddled with as customers. The game’s developers say they are preparing a patch to make the game easier, apologising as “the staff may have become too used to the game.” Just why such matters never came up in the game’s QA testing stages is something of a mystery, particularly considering it has proven a near universal complaint about the game from everyone who bought it…
