Now’s not the time to be dead
It’s been a while sinceCatherinecame out, about eight years actually, yet it’s never escaped my mind. I loved playing through the game in 2011 and its block-moving puzzles paired with thePersona-esque flair left a huge impact on me.
So when I heard it was coming to PC, I knew I had to jump on it. It felt like the right time to re-live that experience and see if it would have the same impact on me all these years later. Here’s one piece of advice though: if you played it on normal eight years ago, youare notready to play it on hard now.
Tested on:Intel i7-4770k 3.50 GHz, 8GB of RAM, Geforce GTX 970, Windows 10.Framerate measured with NVIDIA GeForce Experience
Yeah, I instantly regretted playing on Hard mode, but damnit I stuck with it anyway and started to brute force my way through the puzzles. Anyway, take my advice: Hard mode is no joke, just stick with Normal and enjoy your time throughCatherine Classic.
Another thing worth noting is, as the name implies, this is the 2011 version ofCatherineexcept on PC.Catherine: Full Bodyis an updated version with a new storyline and plenty of new features that is coming to the PS4 next month. It kind of sucks to know that the release of abetterversion of the game is just around the corner, on a different system, but hey, at least this re-release is something, and it’s still great!
The PC Port ofCatherine Classicran very well for me. I have seen reports on the Steam forums of crashes and failures to launch, but I have not experienced much difficulty. I did have one crash, while changing some of the graphics options, but that was it. Other than that,Classichas run smoothly with no issues.
The framerate is notalwaysat 60 frames per second, but for the majority of the time, it is. There are someelements of the game where the logic is tied to running at 30 FPSand uncapping the framerate would cause issues. The video cutscenes are also locked at 30 FPS, since that’s how the assets were created in 2011. It’s really not an issue. During gameplay, I have rarely seen the framerate drop. It’s more than just “playable”, it runs very well. Of course you’ll see plenty of anecdotal evidence of poor performance, but again, I haven’t encountered anything like that.
I’d recommend a controller when playing throughCatherine Classic.The game fully supports keyboard controls, remappable keybinds, and even updates the UI instantly when it recognizes an input change, but it just feels a bit clunky to use the keyboard to play. I had no issues using my Xbox One wireless controller, and its D-pad is pretty decent for the grid-based movement of the puzzles.
Perhaps the most important element of this PC port is the fact that SEGA is paying attention to performance and patching any issues. Earlier this week, theyreleased a patch onto a beta branchof the game that looks to fix many of the early problems. So not only are they committed to this re-release, but they are even usingbeta branchesbefore pushing those patches out onto the entire userbase. To me, this is crucial, because it shows that the developer cares about their product and thatClassicclearly isn’t a “port it and forget it” scenario.
If you’ve been itching to playCatherinefor the better part of a decade but never owned a console to do so, pick upCatherine Classic. At only $20, it’s an excellent way to experience the original title.
