Cat Quest Role Playing Game Review
Cat Quest is an action packed overworld fantasy game for us humans to play. Think Zelda on the original Nintendo.
Now you’re probably asking yourself what we’re doing reviewing a cat video game for humans. A fair question indeed. I’m bringing it to your attention for two reasons:
- This game is targeted toward cat owners (you), though non cat owners will enjoy it too
- Cat Quest provided tons of entertainment for both of my cats as I played
Cat Quest was created by the Gentle Bros and it’s available on numerous platforms: Steam, Playstation, iOS, Android and even more recently on the Nintendo Switch. Sorry Xbox players, you’ll have to find it on another platform.
So let’s dig into Cat Quest like my cat Lexi digs in her litter box. We’ll kick litter all over the place, bang on the doors and walls and then walk away like nothing happened. To say the least I can start you off by promising the game isn’t a stinker!
The General Story Line
The story line is rather typical for a role playing game. The main character discovers he’s the long lost ancestor of some magical beings (Dragonbloods) and is thus destined to save the world from an evil doer.
In this case the evil doer is the cat sorcerer Drakoth and he’s catnapped your sister! You’ve got to get to saving her right meow!
The main story line focuses on saving your sister while destroying Drakoth, but there are a bunch of side quests too. They are mostly simple fetch quests, but they have fun stories to follow. Key examples are things like go off and kill 5 enemies that stole a shipment of catnip and get an XP bump. Or help the meat starved catizens of a small town by fighting off cat bandits.
True to RPGs you can learn magic and upgrade your equipment to ensure you’re all the cat you can be. For a quick rundown of the story and to see some live gameplay check out the launch video here:
How Do You Bare Your Kitty Claws?
Combat is live action. There’s no turn based battle like many older style RPGs. This means you’re always active and the enemies can always attack. None of that one whack from your hero and one whack from the enemy, you’ll have to pounce on every opportunity!
This makes you get a little creative when battling multiple enemies as you’re often forced to dodge a bunch before getting in a well-timed spell or a hit with your sword.
You can get up to 8 spells total and you can upgrade them for more pawtency as you progress. Make your fire burn hotter and your ice freeze colder. Each spell has a specific pattern/shape that it deploys in. For example, ice and lighting can only be used in horizontal and vertical lines.
The spells bring a bunch of fun options to battle, but you’ll need to think strategically to use them effectively because of the pattern designs. You can mix and match and have up to 4 spells available at any time!
The controls are very easy to learn and execute. Even as an admittedly terrible PlayStation 4 player I didn’t run into many situations where I had to scamper off and lick my wounds.
Cat Quest keeps you on a good progression path so you can handle what comes your way. Just be sure you do the quests in each town as you visit.
It is also worth calling out that each enemy has only a small selection of attack patterns and all of them are highlighted on screen so you can dodge in advance. Simply learn the patterns and it makes it straightforward to plan your strategy with a quick dodge then an attack.
All in all I found battling to be quite a lot of fun!
What Were the High Points?
I enjoyed Cat Quest for a host of reasons:
- It delivered on fun and easy gameplay. You won’t be banging your head trying to solve complex puzzles or work out difficult boss patterns for hours. In fact you’ve even got your own personal assistant to guide you through. Note that if you like a challenge and like figuring things out on your own you may find this overkill.
- The dialogue throughout the game is loaded with cat references and the world itself has a bunch of cat related terminology. Towns are named with Cat or Paw in them, the word purr is inserted all over the place. You get the idea.
- You get to learn to walk on water and you get to learn to fly. The dream of every cat ever, no restrictions on where they can go.
- The main storyline is a bunch of fun, but there are a host of other hidden gems in the game that will keep you entertained for lots of extra hours.
- The soundtrack and the cat related noises in the game constantly had my cats looking at the TV and staying alert wondering what I was doing. Not only was I entertained, my cats stayed awake and engaged too!
- The dirt cheap price I picked it up at helped too. I got it on sale in the PlayStation store for $4.99 and that’s quite a deal for a game that provided hours and hours of entertainment.
Was About the Low Points?
- The world map could be rather frustrating to navigate from time to time, especially as it forced you to trek back and forth (on foot in early game) between a lot of places. There’s no auto/fast travel option.
- You could only take on a single quest at a time. You’d have to cancel one quest to pursue another. The frustration was multiplied here by the inability to fast travel to locations.
- Recent video games don’t like to allow you to block attacks to take less damage, instead you need to dodge them completely. I would have appreciated the ability to equip a shield and block as my fingers aren’t the nimblest.
- I would have appreciated the ability to modify the patterns my spells activated in, although this probably would have made several of the dungeons way too easy.
- If you despise grinding but also have a desire to level up then you may find late game boring. There are only a few efficient ways to earn XP/Gold in late game and they require a lot of going in and out of the same caves over and over to refresh/restore enemies.
- If you’re a completionist you’ll find some things very annoying. Gentle Bros promised updates after I had finished the game, but acquiring certain items was grindy.
Should You Play It?
If you’re into cats and you like video games then you’ll enjoy Cat Quest. I had a fantastic time battling dragons, bandits and all sorts of other creatures! I even played through it a second time without using some of the spells that make the game quite easy to burn through quickly.
The constant cat noises flying out of the TV also ensured both my cats hung out with me on the couch while I played. They even stayed awake through most of the gameplay.