Catherine, as a whole, is made up of three parts. You have a part of the game where Vincent can talk to his friends at the bar, a part that is obviously told with cut scenes and makes up the bulk of where the story happens and, finally, an adventure part where you take control of Vincent in his nightmares.

This final part we’ve heard little about, but more details were revealed in this week’s Famitsu spread on the subject. It seems like you have a stairway of sorts to climb each night. This stairway, in the pictures seen in that issue, seems to be more of a giant Jenga tower than anything, where Vincent is tasked to climb straight up, moving bricks around to find footholds to make his journey as safe as can be.

There are a couple caveats, however. Different bricks, or stairs, can have different properties, such as being explosive, or having other such traps. These can be dangerous, because they can make Vincent fall. However, they can also be of some help, for example, purposefully exploding a brick to eliminate those surrounding it to create more footholds for him to use.

Two things can lead to Vincent’s untimely demise. First off, if you fall, you’re dead. Secondly, these stages seem to be on some sort of timer, so if you don’t make it to the top and exit the nightmare before the timer is up, Vincent will die, as well. So, this seems to add an air of urgency to the proceedings, and I’m honestly not too fond of that idea. However, this is Team Persona we’re talking about – I wasn’t too fond of the idea of “timed” game play in the Persona titles, either, before I played them when the thought was just rattling around in my mind of “will I have enough time to do this stuff?”.

Time constantly passing in the Persona titles was never an issue, ultimately, so I’m pretty confident that it won’t be too much of an issue here, but it is an added incentive to find the safest, most efficient route to the top of these stages.

Catherine is currently set for a February 17, 2011 release date in Japan.

[Andriasang]