New Girl, New Drama
Arguably the biggest appeal of Catherine’s original release was that the plot explored the morality of a 30-something-year-old male who feels like he’s being pressured into marriage by his long-term girlfriend. The story becomes a lot more intriguing when a new woman shows up in his life, and she ends up being everything he ever wanted in a partner. Vincent Brooke isn’t exactly the most likable protagonist in a video game, but Catherine ended up being so popular because it was one of the only games that dealt so heavily with romantic relationships and wasn’t afraid to delve into the more erotic side of matters.
With Catherine: Full Body, Atlus isn’t content with just re-releasing the exact same game on PS4 and Vita with a slight graphical upgrade. Instead, they’re pulling a Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden and are adding a whole new character to the story, along with new animated scenes and plot threads for Catherine and Katherine – the new girl, and the girlfriend.
The third girl is named Rin (guess they couldn’t name her Kyatherine), and she works as a pianist at the Stray Sheep, which is the bar Vincent and his friends hang out at. Her appearance in the game will cause the original love triangle to turn into a love square, which should spice things up considerably. With Atlus’ track record, we know that they aren’t half-assed about ports and re-releases, so we’re probably safe in assuming that Full Body’s new content will be substantial and meaningful additions to the story.
Improved Online Functionality
If you’ve never played the Babel levels outside of Catherine’s single-player campaign, you probably wouldn’t be aware of the wide competitive scene surrounding this game. Babel is a series of puzzle levels where the layout is never the same, and you’ll have to think quickly on your feet to try to reach the end.
One of the biggest gripes players had with the original release was that while it did have local multiplayer support, it didn’t have any online functionality. Players could share their critical decisions in the story online, and see what other players chose, but they couldn’t actually play with each other over the internet. Atlus aims to rectify this with Catherine: Full Body, and they’ve included an online battle feature where players will be able to challenge each other on various levels. This should please the competitive players greatly.
New Gameplay Mechanics and Improvements
Aside from some big changes to the story, the debut trailer has also revealed that there will be a few new gameplay mechanics introduced in Catherine: Full Body. In the original game, the story levels were littered with trap blocks like mimics and spikes, and the re-release will include even more block variety to mix things up.
As seen in the trailer, there will be different colored blocks and laser blocks that can insta-kill Vincent. In addition to that, Famitsu via Persona Central also reports that players will be able to link multiple blocks together in a line and push them all at once.
The original release was also quite a challenge even on normal difficulty, and Atlus also mentioned that there will be several quality of life improvements to make the overall experience smoother. There will also be more difficulty options and other settings to cater to players who want a more casual experience, and those who want a challenge.
PS Vita Support
Alright, so it’s kind of a bummer that Catherine: Full Body isn’t coming to the Switch, but it is coming to the Vita, and being able to play this game on the go is a huge deal. Catherine’s puzzle levels are short, making it an easy game to play in short bursts. Furthermore, Atlus has also confirmed that there will be cross-save support between the PS4 and PS Vita versions of the game. This means that you can transfer your save progress between both systems, and play the game however you want. However, there’s no info on whether there will be cross-buy.
At the moment, the game is slated for a winter 2018 release for PS4 and PS Vita in Japan. There’s no word on when the localized version will be coming stateside, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated as more info comes our way.
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