THE MALADJUSTED WEEB'S GUIDE TO GETTING CATHERINE CLASSIC (893180) RUNNING ON YOUR LINUX BOX.

I spent half my morning and most of the afternoon troubleshootings so you don't have to

CONTEXT

Catherine Classic is such an infuriating game to actually get running properly on Linux, and I spent way too much time grepping obscure errors in my Proton logs. I have spent at least six hours today troubleshooting, I hate ProtonDB for not having a nice wiki interface the way that WineHQ's AppDB does, I hate the worthless fucking community that does nothing but shit up the goddamn search results with "guys, does it work yet?" or ProtonDB with "ya m8 shit dont bloody work. issa shame innit?" ass reviews.

WHY WOULD YOU INFLICT THIS PAIN UPON YOURSELF?

Because Catherine Full Body fucking sucks. The original Catherine from 2011 is one of ATLUS's best non-MegaTen games that they ever released. Full Body adds a half-baked re-release waifu like every goddamn MegaTen re-release they've made over the last 5-6 years, they grossly altered the OST such that "Yo" by L Vokal went from being a lowkey hip-hop affair to some fucking acid funk Jamiroquai meets Maroon 5 bullshit. Like no, absolutely the fuck not. If I'm gonna be falling to my death watching the "LOVE IS OVER" banner hang over my corpse multiple times because I panicked at the final stretch against the Shadow of Vincent fight, it damn well should be the original.

DO YOU REALLY NEED TO PLAY CATHERINE CLASSIC ON PC? WHY NOT EMULATE THE PS3 VERSION?

Technically... it's absolutely, 100% possible. The game runs perfectly well at a standard 1280x720p@30fps, FSR comes in clutch to gently upscale it to where you don't wish you had antialiasing on... by all means, go ahead and download RPCS3 and attempt to scale the wall of PS3 piracy in the Year of Our Lord 2026. Good luck with that.

See, I'm a fucking retard who paid the damn $20 for Catherine Classic as a little birthday gift to myself. Problem is that I never bothered to actually check ProtonDB and realise that the game's a fucking Silver medal entry. As in "technically playable but it won't be pretty."

I'm not stupid enough to disclose the methods of traversing the seas here because one, we don't live in the golden age of casual forum downloads anymore and two, this shit's obscure for a reason: if too many damn normies figure out how to do it, it becomes mainstream, and then DMCA strikes and subpoenas and litigation happen. Then it's ruined for everyone.

PERSONALLY... I would suggest the PS3 version via RPCS3 over Catherine Classic if you're able to somehow get a proper dump of the game and overcome the per-game encryption. How you accomplish that is your own business. Just know that it's possible, you need to know where to look, and no one worth their salt will ever deliberately tell you where to look. Have fun trying to find Waldo.

Until then... the only legal way for me to fucking play Catherine, this amazing goddamn puzzle platformer romantic horror drama thingamajigger from 2011 made by a weebshit gaming company, is Catherine Classic. It's still damn well worth playing... but it's basically swallowing your pride and admitting you need to lower your expectations.

STOP BELLYACHING AND GET ON WITH IT! HOW THE FUCK DO I GET CATHERINE CLASSIC WORKING ON LINUX?

STEP 1: Grab either GE-Proton9-5 or GE-Proton9-9. Then move it to $HOME/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d. Extract the folder, delete the tarball, fully exit Steam and log back into it. Properties -> Compatibility -> Force blah blah blah -> choose GE-Proton9-5 or 9-9, depending on what you downloaded. NO launch args.

STEP 2: Fire up the game. It'll take like at least two or three minutes. It will start and fire up the game window. Make damn sure that you have the Atlus logo appearing from the moment the game launches. If you don't, and it starts with the gorilla logo where pressing any of the buttons doesn't skip the opening logos, something else is afoot. Continuing further will only result in aggravation then disappointment in rapid succession.

STEP 3: Select your difficulty. Graphics settings are optional but it defaults to 720p. Start the game. This is the important litmus test. Only one of two things can happen here.

a) IF YOU SAW THE ATLUS LOGO AT THE VERY BEGINNING WHEN THE GAME LAUNCHED: The game should go from a brief loading screen to the bombastic introduction to Golden Playhouse, then it will pivot into Trisha giving you the rundown of the game's story, then it will pivot into the OP sequence. OP sequence stops, it pivots to Vincent and Katherine in an anime cutscene talking to one another, finally the game should make itself wholly playable to you. All the cutscenes are skippable. Most of the cutscenes play fine. Some of them have weird flickering effects. The actual minute-to-minute gameplay however, should be fine.

b) IF YOUR GAME STARTED IMMEDIATELY WITH THE GORILLA LOGO: You're gonna be stuck in an infinite spin where you can select your difficulty and start the game... but then you get stuck on that first loading screen that says "all the world's a stage" from As You Like It by Shakespeare. It won't ever clear up no matter how long you wait. ALT+F4, delete the WINEPREFIX altogether, and start from the beginning.

STEP 4: I don't fucking know man. Enjoy the game if you got it running. Prematurely bald over the stress of this infernal application not working correctly if you didn't get it running. Somehow get Catherine running on RPCS3 if you've got the wherewithal. I dunno, it's your life man. Not mine.

WILL THIS RUN ON X/Y/Z DISTRO?

Yes, with only one exception. If you're running normal, non-Flatpaked Steam like a sensible person does, this shit will work on literally any goddamn Linux distro under the sun. If you're at the mercy of Flatpaks through the consequences of your own actions, similar principles apply but the directory structure is different. You might need to do some shit in Flatseal. I don't know. You're the one with the Flatpak Steam. I got you like 80% of the way there. Do the remaining 20% of the legwork yourself. This is all with the assumption you're using the most up-to-date drivers your distro carries, your Mesa's good enough, details details. If made it this far deep into my rant, you're already a maladjusted turbosped just like me who's spent more than 6 hours trying to accomplish a minuscule task on your computer. You'll be fine. I trust you to pick up the slack.