Cat Quest (PS4)

Cat Quest is a game with an incredible commitment to a very simple idea to the point that it completely influences every part of it, and that idea is the deceptively simple but fairly obvious direction of being a game about a cat going on quests.

 

Cat Quest didn’t just arbitrarily make a cat its lead protagonist though. Every single aspect of the game’s world is catered to the idea that this is a game well and truly about felines. Nearly every character who can speak is a cat, many locations have some sort of cat pun as part of its name, and even the dialogue of the game is peppered with the kind of words you’d usually expect to find in a cat joke. When a cat is surprised they exclaim “Meowzah”, rather than saying something is “very good” they would say it’s “furry good”, and they’ll find any chance they can to add words like “paws”, “pounce”, or “purr” to what they’re saying, sometimes even adding it in where the puns don’t really make sense if you stop to think about them. As you travel to places like The Catpital, The Deep Furrest, and the Furbidden Fields, you can inevitably expect to meet a lot of cat characters, but there is some variation within these felines to prevent it from being just unimaginative retreads. The king of the lands is a lion who speaks like the LOLcat internet memes, the mayor of Pawt City (which is a pun on “port city” and hardly the most strained pun you’ll find) is an oddly buff kitty, and even smaller quests that use the same few cat villager models will try to give their characters a bit of personality to set them apart. Initially, it can seem like Cat Quest might be the kind of game that might make you groan with its constant cat jokes and puns, and in other games this can very well be the case. However, in those titles it is often a single character or moment that indulges in the pun making, things like the cat puns of Minette from Bravely Second: End Layer coming to mind with how at odds they seem with other elements of the game. However, by completely embracing the concept and baking it in as a key component of the experience, Cat Quest makes it so that it’s almost disappointing to see moments where a pun isn’t being made, the world serving as a goofy playground for all the cat-related wordplay to flourish in.

 

The full embrace of feline humor is only just the style of the world, as the quests are what make up the tasks that carry you through it. Felingard’s cast of cat people aren’t alone on the continent, as monsters cut from fantasy cloth roam about it freely causing trouble. Dragons, magical creatures, and angry wildlife make for a hostile world and evil magics have been causing problems all across it, so the player is given many quests over the course of the game to help solve the problems of the populace. Major settlements will often contain quest boards where the player can pick up a new job, these usually involving a conflict either with overworld enemies or a dive down into one of the world’s many dungeons. While not all dungeons in the game are a part of the quests, many of them will make up the fighting portion of a job, the player plunging into some surprisingly small caves or ruins to wipe out all the monsters.

Admittedly, the quests don’t often have too much to them from a gameplay standpoint. Sometimes the game may have you search around for things or fight waves of enemies in a confined space, but mostly it will be going from place to place and fighting some set foes in a cave. There are quite a few things at play to alleviate the potential monotony this design could feed into though. One of the big decisions that allows quest completion continue at a quick pace is that the world map of Cat Quest is well spaced and there is no separation between areas save the dungeons. You do not enter towns, you just approach them and can seamlessly talk to anyone you need to talk with, access the area where you can save and heal, and select quests from the board. You can traverse most of the world map pretty quickly if you don’t count the enemies who are meant to block your way, and later on you get new skills that can make navigation even quicker and easier. If a quest is easy, it can be completed at a brisk pace, and if it is challenging, then it puts up a good enough fight that it won’t feel too bland, with some of the caves and ruins even including hidden areas, treasures, and navigation challenges that help them be more than their deceptively simple layouts. Little storylines help to set these apart too even when they feel very similar, with things like a plot about two different cat Santas fighting over Kitmas, a clearly possessed villager who asks for help with extremely suspicious rituals, and two odd towns that seem to be exactly the same right down to their quests and their people. Nothing ever achieves great heights since the underlying structure remains pretty basic, but it also doesn’t ever drag because the game contextualizes things well and keeps things concise. Even when, as the game admits at times, some tasks are pretty much fetch quests where you just go grab one thing to take it somewhere else, although these items are at least usually kept behind a combat or cave challenge to avoid being full-on busywork.

 

Oddly enough though, Cat Quest feels a little incomplete. Despite having an open world with many secret areas and extra quests to complete outside the main story as well as a “Mew Game” mode where you can make things deliberately harder for a more challenging experience, the main plot doesn’t really wrap up well. Your adventure begins when the protagonist’s sister is stolen away by the warlock Drakoth, but before he is willing to face you, he wants you to become a more formidable opponent, thus leading to your need to complete many side quests to be strong enough for the main quest. At certain points along the way you’ll learn more about the world’s history and Drakoth’s motives, but since you can’t talk, your companion Spirry instead provides your voice, the cat spirit adding a bit of attitude and commentary to your quests. However, when things look like they’re about to hit a huge climax, it seems like it tosses some of it off to a potential sequel, the game even acknowledging some ideas will have to wait for a follow-up game provided this one does well enough. It does deny the player some closure, but it’s not like Cat Quest’s plot demanded a satisfying conclusion to remain enjoyable.

Cat Quest’s combat is much like the quests in that its structure is too simple to be impressive but has just enough to it to be effective. You have three main ways of handling the dangers of battle, those being your basic attack that is fast but requires being in close, a dodge roll that can get you away from trouble quickly, and magic that comes in a few different forms. Across Felingard you can find mages to teach you arcane arts, your abilities focused mostly on how they are fired. Fire magic comes out in a radius around you, lightning shoots out to your sides, and ice shoots out above and below you. The tilted top down perspective and free movement range means your positioning is important for using these spells effectively, but you have a few other spells to help out too like a mild heal, trap magic, and a spell that makes you big so your attacks deal more damage. You can have four spells set at a time and they all pull from the same magic pool that must be built up through attacking enemies regularly, so although magic is more useful than your basic attacks, it can’t just be spammed to win a battle, a good mix of attacking and spell casting needed for tougher foes. Leveling up is incredibly important to your success too, killing monsters, completing quests, and collecting orbs in the dungeons leading to those vital stat gains you’ll need to beat harder enemies. Oddly enough, after leaving a dungeon you can reenter it and finds all the enemies alive again and all experience and gold pickups back in place, but outside late game farming, completing quests will always be faster and more enjoyable than trying to farm these for level ups.

 

Speaking of the gold, the game is packed with loot to find and buy. Your armor, headgear, and weapon will change constantly as you find more useful gear, and while you can win a fight with good dodging and magic use even when you’re lower than the recommended level or poorly equipped, having the right armor can make battles much easier. Some equipment focuses on evenly spread stats while others allow you to specialize in things like health, attack damage, or spell power. There are only so many pieces of equipment in the game though, but luckily, whenever you find a duplicate, it upgrades your version of that item to make it more effective. You can even spend cash to upgrade your magic, and while you can be outmatched by enemies even when you’re as strong as you can be at the time, the areas you are meant to be will allow you to feel powerful and can still put up decent fights when they throw a lot of foes at you at once. Every enemy telegraphs their attacks so you do have a chance to survive even the toughest foes unscathed, red rings filling around them to show their attack timing or arrows showing how they aim to use magic similar to your own. Again we find though that even across the many enemies there aren’t too many different styles of attack, stronger foes usually able to strike faster or use multiple attacks at once, but like many things in Cat Quest, it shows that simplicity can be enjoyable when done well thanks to just enough diversity in how enemies are grouped together or presented.

THE VERDICT: Cat Quest happily revels in the simple idea of a cat going on a bunch of fantasy quests. The game’s open world is littered with cat puns to the point it’s hard not to get swept up in the silliness, and the many quests, be they optional or vital, are all important parts of the gameplay and the concept of the story. The game is admittedly not too complex, its quests and combat being a lot of recontextualization of similar structures and styles, but by keeping things fast and fluid, Cat Quest can get away with it, although the stories behind the quests and new ideas like puzzles and new enemy groupings certainly add in fresh ideas where needed. With loot and leveling to pursue on top of things, Cat Quest is always providing something to focus on so you always feel that satisfying sense of progression even if you recognize that a lot of what you’re doing is pretty much the same.

 

And so, I give Cat Quest for PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. Cat Quest’s biggest limitation is its simplicity, but that is also part of what makes it work so well. Even with a lot to do in the game, your skills remain easy to use and your enemies are pretty consistent in design even when they have new attacks or traits to make the battles slightly different. When you go in a cave you know what to do, and an arrow pointing to objectives makes sure you’re always on track when doing a quest. Nothing lingers long enough to get stale, so battles remain interactive fun and quests provide the bits of fun story to make them more than just excuses to fight things. The full embrace of cat humor definitely plays into this, as it gives the game a delightful air to it, one that makes it a game both kids and adults can enjoy, kids perhaps finding the jokes generally funny and adults still having the room to get swept up in the silliness. Even when its teasing its own genre or asking you to swap around armors and level up to stay strong enough to face your enemies, there is a sort of innocence to everything that shows just a general love for what has been created here. Cat Quest does feel incomplete because it didn’t fit everything it wanted to in and some parts are fairly basic, but when it decides it wants to do something, it has fun doing it, meaning its not hard for the player to get lost in the fun too.

 

Cat Quest never loses focus on the idea that its just a game about a cat going on some quests. Rather than overcomplicating things, Cat Quest tries to make that concept as enjoyable as it can, its systems playing well with each other so that the player can never settle into anything for too long and end up complacent or bored. There’s definitely room for growth, but Cat Quest made sure to embrace its simplicity to ensure its a consistently enjoyable experience.