The Busy Gamer Reviews: Cat Quest
Everything in Cat Quest is a cat pun. It is remorseless in it’s presentation of this to the point of pure despair…and then you come out the other side and start laughing again because everything is a cat pun. Cat Quest is a fantasy RPG designed for mobile that is available on Steam. It’s $10.00, and depending on what you’re looking for a pretty decent buy at that price. It’s mechanically basic, has good art, and a good amount of gear.
Story: The story follows a young cat and his attempt to recover his sister from the evil Drakoth. It’s serviceable, but mostly there to give an excuse for the open world. It serves to push you through the world, but I was certainly never all that invested. Which isn’t a bad thing! Not everything can or should be Gone Home or Witcher 3. Just be aware that you don’t need to pause your TV show for the cut scenes.
Mechanics: It’s Diablo 3 except way more basic. Your press one mouse button for a basic attack, and use the first four number keys to use assignable magic attacks. You regain magic by attacking enemies with your weapon. Magic includes things such as a circle of fire, healing, and lightning. The magic attacks can also be upgraded from special huts scattered around the map using the gold you get from defeating monsters.
Leveling and acquiring gear is nigh on constant- to give you an idea the max level is 99, and it’s not too hard to hit. I was also getting a piece of gear in every dungeon (and then two pieces later), and there are 52 dungeons scattered around. I ended my play at 85 and wasn’t really power leveling. You don’t get any points to assign or anything like that- increased levels just give you extra health, magic, and damage output. This means there is not a whole lot of playing around with your build. Equip the highest level gear you got and the highest level spells and go whack baddies in the face! Repeat until you’re bored or the game ends.
There are quests scattered around the map, all of them puns, usually somehow related to things in pop culture. For instance, one has you retrieving the Necropawticon and you run into Cara Loft. There is nothing particularly special about them, but the writing is decent and the jokes, while groan inducing, are fine if you’re willing to play along. They act as experience boosts and introduce a few new skills.
Dodging is key, as it allows you to evade the directional attacks (helpfully painted on the ground with markers before the attack commences) of various monsters. You’ll spend most of the game hammering away at the space bar to dodge roll around the area of effect.
Finally, in order to save or to regain health you have to visit towns spread across the map and take a cat nap (seriously, that’s what it’s called). You’re never too far away from a town, but it does mean that the spaces between them do have a feeling of danger at the lower levels.
Visuals: Cat Quest looks really good considering it’s a budget title. Each piece of armor has a unique look on your character, and the art itself is borderline gorgeous. It looks like a cartoon in the best way, with plenty of detail and a lot of love clearly given to how it looks. I always enjoyed the creature design and seeing how the various areas of the map looked.
Difficulty: I found the difficulty curve to be all over the place in Cat Quest. It was maddening- I acknowledge though that some people seem to be having a far easier time of it, so I might just not be playing it right. However, I found that bosses seemed set a level that required you to grind for a while before I could seriously engage them. After the bosses though I’d tear through the next set of minions as though I was extremely over leveled. I think the difficulty curve is where it’s most apparent this is a $10.00 game- and if you can live with that is a choice you have to make.
Overall Experience: Cat Quest didn’t engender any strong feelings from me one way or the other. It’s clearly a labor of love and I appreciate how seriously the developers took the scope of the game. They were making a game about cats and leveling up, and that’s what it is. They let the ball drop a bit on the difficulty curve, but I don’t begrudge them that too much. If you need a break from the hellscape that the news these days, Cat Quest will put a silly smile on your face.
In Short: Cat Quest is pretty good for $10.00. You can play it for a few days and have simple, hacky slashy fun. I hope you like cat puns pawtner!
Yes, Pawtner is what your sidekick calls you in the game. Do with that information what you will.
Review playtime: over the course of this review I played Cat Quest for 21 hours on the PC using a mouse and keyboard and completed almost all of the quests and dungeons. I did not beat the final boss, but got to that quest and attempted it multiple times. Ended up watching a youtube video of the ending cinematic.
Originally published at www.thebusygamer.com.
