Isn't Catherine just a puzzle game? It's suprising that they can stretch out the game that long.
It is, but the game structure is basically Persona 3/4-lite
Instead of school sim sections that can last like 30-60 mins between dungeon runs, you have bar sim sections
Instead of social links, you have well...social links but it's more like 6-10 instead of 20 something.
At night instead of climbing a tower dungeon with dungeon crawling, you climb a tower dungeon with block puzzles
Instead of having new enemies every few floors, you have new traps; block types
both have boss fights at each section of the tower
It's really, really similarly designed to P3/P4. Probably because the game was a test bed for getting ready to do P5 in an HD engine.
If you like P3/P4, you'll love Catherine. If you dislike P3/P4...depends on if you dislike it because of the gameplay or the game structure/story/music/art. If it's the former you might still like Catherine, if it's the latter you probably won't.