You know what – I saw Cat Quest at EGX before moving to Canada, and even then, I knew I’d love the game before I’d even started playing it. Given it’s now been 2 years since I laid my eyes upon it, why do I bring that up? Cause the game is just that damn good.
Yes, I waited far too long to play Cat Quest, but considering it was only £3 on the Nintendo eShop recently, I thought why the hell not buy it – a whole day later, I had completed the game and couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into the second game in the series.
Yeah, it’s an old game, but the gameplay of Cat Quest really holds up well. The controls are simple, move your cat around a top down map and attack with either physical weapons, or magic, and dodge roll occasionally, but it’s the gameplay loop that you can do with these controls that truly holds up.
Just like any other RPG, you defeat some enemies, get some XP, and level up, completing side quests and main campaign quests to level up even more until you reach the end of the game. But, the core of Cat Quest is so compelling, and it’s simple yet great controls so fun to play with, that you’ll get hooked and play the game to it’s conslusion in not many sittings.
You see, with simple controls that every enemy also adheres too, you can cheese higher level opponets with relative ease. Towards the start of the game there’s a forbidden woods, that, should you enter, you’ll find you get killed rather quickly by the overpowered enemies lurching there. But, should you have enough patience, you can whittle them down, dodging at the right times and in turn, once defeated, managing to level up multiple times just from one enoucnter.
Whilst that may sound dodgy, I for one love games that give you an inherent advantage through learning the controls and then taking advantage of them. There’s nothing wrong with killing most enemies on the main campaign path with one hit should you have earnt that in the first place. Cheesing stronger enemies isn’t neccessarily cheating, if anything a single mistake can be the difference between life and death, so you earned the ability to be over powered.
I got a bit ahead of myself there though didn’t I? To begin with, what is Cat Quest?
Cat Quest is a top-down RPG that has you take control of a cat who’s sister has been kidnapped by a powerful cat sorcerer. Surprisingly, you cat soon finds out that it is able to weild magic, and so your charming adventure begins on trying to save your sister, whilst exploring the cat-punning world of Felingard.
You can choose to *almost* go anywhere you like from the offset, allowing you to take part in side-quests, new caves with random loot or even just explore and defeat enemies to level up faster. I say almost, as some parts of the land are locked off until certain campaign abilities are unlocked, which isn’t too much of a hassle, and helps the player level up beforehand.
On paper this doesn’t sound like too much, but as I explained before, the simplicity, when combined with the cute and charming visuals, and extremely responsive controls, makes for an extremely enjoyable time within the game, and one I seriously couldn’t take my eyes off for a day.
I’ll have to admit, I didn’t think much of the story, and didn’t really pay too much attention to the side quests and text about the world which helped to flesh it out, as they were somewhat boring, but if anything that speaks volumes to how much I loved the game even if it had a terrible story (which is usually one of my favourite aspects of a game).
As aforementioned, the graphics are cute and charming, with the animations tying flawlessly to the combat system, with you never feeling that you died due to the game at all, it was always your fault for not dodging soon enough.
Sound wise, there’s not much here, and CAt Quest is fairly basic, but not that it matters too much – if anything I’d gladly recommend playing the game whilst listening to a podcast you’ve been meaning to, or even an audiobook – the games enjoyable enough without having to take up all your concentration.
So overall, hopefully you can ascertain from the tone of this overall review, I thoroughly enjoyed Cat Quest, and even went on to recommend it to 3 other switch owners, who then purchased it instantly given it’s cheap and reasonable price.
If you have a switch (or any other platform the game is on for that matter), I’d hugely recommend Cat Quest. It’s cute, enjoyable, and a bloody charming game. God only knows how much I’m looking forward to playing Cat Quest 2, which was purchased instantly as a result of Cat Quest 1.
4/5
