There are two approaches one can take in explaining 2011’s Catherine, developed by Shin Megami Tensei/Disgaea/Persona developer Atlus. Mechanically, it’s a puzzle game. The majority of gameplay consists of pushing and pulling a series of blocks, creating paths that allow you to climb to the top of a massive tower. These boxes often contain special properties that can be useful, like springs, or dangerous, like spikes. The puzzles themselves become fiendishly difficult as the game progresses, but you develop techniques through your successes and failures that start to feel like second nature. It’s a very well-designed and challenging game that (usually) plays fair.

The other way to describe Catherine would be to call it a psycho-sexual morality tale, fixated on the chaos of true romantic freedom and the fear and apprehension that comes with commitment. Catherine’s protagonist is a man named Vincent, who has been dating his girlfriend Katherine (that’s with a K) for a few years. One day, he blacks out and wakes up next to a younger, blonde, completely different girl named Catherine. While he spends his days fretting about his relationship and weighing his increasing guilt against his desires, his nights are spent in a nightmare world filled with anthropomorphic sheep and hellish manifestations of his worst fears. It is in these nightmares that you spend the majority of your play-time, solving the puzzles I described previously.

So, to accurately describe Catherine, you could say that it is a romantic horror dating sim anime puzzle game. I’ll give Atlus this: I’m not sure that there’s a single other game you could say that about. Even if Catherine were a complete novelty it would be worth checking out, but Catherine’s successes go beyond novelty. Unlike a lot of modern AAA games, developed by enormous teams at faceless corporations, Catherine feels like it has a soul.

Katsura Hashino is credited as the “director,” and the game’s engagement with its themes and material feels like a man sharing thoughts, worries, doubts, and questions that have crossed his mind in his own life. Catherine wants to have a conversation with the player. Sometimes this conversation comes through observing the other romantically unfaithful characters (who appear as the sheep in the dream world) and considering whether you agree or disagree with them. Other times you have to actively make decisions that reflect your personal values, such as when you compose text messages to your lovers. Even more directly, there are confessional segments in the nightmares in which the game asks you a question about your values point-blank, and then shows you a pie chart of how other players answered. This all feels like a work of genuine curiosity on the part of the creators.

Admittedly, Catherine does stumble a bit in the end. The weirder, more supernatural story elements begin to take center-stage, and your character’s own infidelity is somewhat alleviated by late-game reveals. Furthermore, the game really, really wants you to know that it’s trying to make a statement here. The story is told within a narrative framework of an anthology series called The Golden Playhouse. Aside from the very beginning, the very end, and a watermark in the corner of the screen, this is completely irrelevant. However, Hashino uses the last Golden Playhouse section to directly explain the game’s symbolism and themes to the player, in case they missed it. It feels like a lapse in confidence, and is completely unnecessary.

There are some mechanical drawbacks to Catherine, too, especially when it comes to maneuvering around the far end of blocks, and the way the camera can obscure your path during boss fights. But these are all minor complaints. Catherine is a truly one-of-a-kind game, and an absolute gem for people fed up with the game industry’s parade of sequels.