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Cat Quest Review


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208609044_CatQuestboxart.thumb.jpg.da3d379251389e78e89d57dcc7ac9960.jpgCat Quest from developer The Gentlebros captures the essential ingredients of an RPG adventure in a compact, adorable package. When the evil Drakoth kidnaps his sister, our feline fighter must unlock his potential as a Dragonblood cat and grow powerful enough to stop the mysterious figure. What follows is an enjoyable journey across a wide open continent rife with caves to explore and treasures to find—just don't expect too much depth from this lighthearted adventure.
 
The developers have described Cat Quest as an effort to streamline the kind of open world experience found in games like The Legend of Zelda and Skyrim, and in that respect they've certainly succeeded. Cat Quest feels like every action-RPG you've ever played simplified down to its most basic roots: fighting monsters, exploring caves, and earning EXP. Your stats are kept to an easy to understand handful of numbers (HP, physical attack power, magical attack power), equipment management is streamlined so you aren't constantly juggling your inventory (for example, if you have a wizard's hat and pick up a second one it will simply improve the one you already have rather than giving you a duplicate), and the game world is large enough to encourage exploration but not so large that you're ever in danger of getting lost. Everything in Cat Quest has the feel of an epic RPG adventure but on a much smaller, more manageable scale, one that would be perfect for novice players.
 
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Of course, part of the appeal of open world games is their complexity, which allows two players to have significantly different experiences within the same game. By removing that depth, Cat Quest ends up feeling rather shallow. There is very little variety in the caves and dungeons you explore (all of them are short and simply require you to kill every enemy found within), your combat options are limited to choosing which spells you prefer to use which, despite some minor differences in their area of effect or status ailments, are all equally effective on any enemy, and equipping different weapons changes nothing about how you attack. There are also only a handful of enemy types in the whole game, and even then there's very little variety in their attack patterns or weaknesses. Occasionally you might see a jump in difficulty, but raising a few levels evens things out quickly. Cat Quest's gameplay formula is in no way bad but it'll likely leave some players wishing for more.
 
If the game does click for you though you'll be treated to more cat puns than you can handle. Your main quest to rescue your sister leads you on numerous side quests as well, and it's clear the developers were having a blast thinking up every possible feline, fur, and purr related pun. It can make the dialogue feel incessantly goofy, but thankfully it's never obnoxious. Cat Quest stays squarely in charming, silly territory that will keep you smirking even if it doesn't make you laugh out loud.
 
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Perhaps it helps that the game isn't terribly long either. The main storyline only takes on a handful of quests, but you kind of have to spend time on side quests to level up enough to tackle the main challenges (oddly, side quests give you a recommended level but the main story never offers a similar helpful hint). But even working through the majority of side quests as well as the big baddie only takes six or seven hours, while the post-game side quests will extend the game's length a little further. One of the more valuable features in Cat Quest though is the Mew Game mode, available after completing the story once, which is essentially a challenge mode that lets you select difficulty mods like disabling EXP gains or limiting the number of times you can die/revive. More than most games these challenges add a decent incentive to replay the whole adventure, especially if you thought it was too easy the first time anyway.
 
With bright, colorful, and cartoonish graphics Cat Quest only reinforces its appeal to the younger crowd. Anyone is likely to appreciate the overwhelmingly cute style of the game though—our hero's running animation is particularly adorable. As mentioned the game doesn't do much to make the different caves and environments feel unique but the game's look is undeniably fun. It shouldn't be any surprise that the music is much the same: not the most original score you'll hear in a video game, but it's bubbly and chipper and a nice aural backdrop for the experience.
 
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Cat Quest is a perfectly enjoyable little RPG adventure, whose only real fault is simply the fact that it doesn't try to be anything more than that. In an effort to streamline the open-world RPG formula, the developers might have gone a bit overboard, simplifying Cat Quest down to such a basic action-RPG that there's little depth to explore, outside of a repetitive cycle of taking on side quests and exploring identical caves. Still, even if the game lacks bite, the adorable feline world makes for a cute setting, purrfect for a young player's first action-RPG adventure or a relaxing, undemanding afternoon of gameplay.
 
Rating: 7 out of 10 Cats
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