Cat Quest (PC) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko is playing a game about a cat! I'm as shocked about it as you are.

My gimmick for this Super Adventures this year is that I'm only playing games that have made it onto a top ten list, but mecha's not restricted by my self-imposed limitations, so he does what he wants. Though I went and found a top ten list with Cat Quest on it anyway! It's on MacRumour's Top 10 iOS Games Released in 2017, along with games like Fez, The Witness and The Binding of Isaac. So if you like those games, maybe it's worth reading about this one.

Developer:

The Gentlebros

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Release Date:

8th August 2017

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, iPhone

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Hello everyone! It is August once again, which means it's time for a cat game! This time, the internet seems to have provided the cattest game of them all, Cat Quest!

We've got cute cats on the title screen, peppy music blasting out the speakers - everything's set for one colourful kitty caper!

Click the images to enlarge!

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"Long ago, dragons ravaged the lands. Only cats known as the Dragonblood could defeat them. But suddenly they vanished, never to be seen again..."

The legend of Cat Quest is so epic, the game needs three separate no-context introductory quote-prologues. First, an unvoiced intro with dramatic, conspicuously high-quality fantasy faux-orchestral music. In scene one, this little spiral-marked cat is about to have his lights smashed out by a mighty punchdragon.

Next the game fades to black and shows this dialogue:

"Will you always be there for me?"
"...Always..."

And finally:

The dramatic music intensifies! An orange big-head cat and his sister are merrily sailing in their ship, when a no-good sorcerer shows up in the middle of the ocean and abducts her. Having spirited her out of sight, he charges up some magic.

Noooooooooooooooo!

What's the world coming to when you can't treat your sister to a pleasant boat ride without some bastard blowing up your boat?

This bit still doesn't have voices, and the cartoon graphics are in that style where individual static pieces of the scene float around all slick-like. This artwork is definitely good enough to pull it off, but the style will always look kind of cheap to me.

Poor cat. Somehow, he survived! (Because he's the protagonist.)

He's washed up on the shores of Felingard, and found himself in the company of a Kirby-like ghost cat named Spirry who's going to teach him all about combat and movement and that kind of thing. First thing's first: he says we've got to go to a town because dragons have returned.

We're fighting on the world map? That's new. Kind of Hydlidey.

The Dragonblood cat bounds, he rolls, he swings his little sword and splats the evil giant hedgehogs into cat coins and experience orbs! It's all very slick and lovely, in that articulated sprite kind of way. This game must be made for 70-inch TVs though because I feel like I'm miles away from the action.

The music is super sprightly and fantasy and all that, like Half-Minute Hero, if you've played that. (It's still like Half-Minute Hero if you haven't, btw.)

"You can catnap in towns to heal your wounds!" says my companion, and... flop!

Our next stop is to find some mages who can puzzle out the Hero's new swirly 'do. The game makes it very clear that I'm not going north until I do.

Outrageous! Unexpected! The terror of his sister's abduction has awoken something in the hero cat, and now he bears the mark of the Dragonblood!

Inside his mystical tower, this magic cat teaches me the art of Flamepurr, free of charge. How convenient that there's a whole bunch of mage towers dotted about the world dedicated to teaching the Dragonblood his magic spells, even though the line was thought to be lost for generations!

Whoosh! With a tap of a bumper button, the Dragonblood instantly calls down a column of energy from the heavens (within a cave?) to blast everything in the vicinity with a circle of flames. You'd think he'd be a little nervous about doing that considering the day he's had so far, but nothing is going to get this cat down.

Hang on a mo - can those mage-cat guys cast magic? I think I saw one of them do it. If that's the case, what makes my guy so special?

My reward for this cave was a cat-eared treasure chest, a note-perfect over the top fanfare, and an adorable little big hat for me to take home.

It's even on my in-game sprite and everything!

Now if only I could bloody see myself. Here's a typical image of combat in Cat Quest. Notice how all the action is clustered together in a tiny region of the screen, and everything is obscured with multiple layers of overlapping spell effects. The only way I can tell whether I'm hitting the enemies or they're hitting me is by the 'Maaaow...!' sample that plays when the player gets hurt.

We finally make it to The Catpital, which is under siege from a giant beefy-armed dragon! It must be stopped!

Let's... fight it on the world map again? Come on, it's a boss fight! Can't we have a change of scenery?

The designers must've realised these almost Earnest Evans-esque articulated sprites don't convey the enemies' intentions very well, so Cat Quest shows coloured markers on the ground to tell you when to dodge out of the way of attacks. It's not a perfect system, but it's okay.

We did it! Spirry the ghost cat is in awe as "King Lionardo! The kindest and most valiant king of all!" comes out to greet us.

Lionardo's an ass. He doesn't want to talk to us (which makes a first for authority figures in fantasy games), so we might as well wander around the town and see what's what. There's no 'in town' map like Final Fantasy - not even a menu with a pretty background like, I dunno, Pirates! or Shining in the Darkness or (shudder) Ar Tonelico. Not that any of the buildings here seem to do anything anyway.

The side-quest noticeboard makes it imperative that we stay away from Cave Grotto at all costs.

MEANWHILE IN CAVE GROTTO, NYAN

The objective of this cave is 'Defeat Monsters', just like the last cave and the one before that. I get the impression that this game is not much one for walls, doors, switches, pits, stairs, that kind of thing.

It turned out to be pretty straightforward, same enemies as before. There wasn't even a boss dragon in here.

It's him! We've found the evil sorcerer! Give me back my sister, you heel!

We challenge him to single combat and defeat him, even! But in the end it was just an illusory clone, oh no.

I don't know whether Spirry is being goofy with his self-aware dialogue or he's deliberately trying to rile up Drakoth.

Drakoth's got the best answer, regardless.

The sinister magecat leads us on a chase through the world map, telling us about how the innocent cats all live in fear (though they seemed pretty chipper whenever I've talked to them). He'll return my sister only if I slay three mighty dragons. The one I already beat up outside The Catpital doesn't count, for some reason. The dragons themselves are evil (or at least really annoying for the peasants), so this guy is Up To Something.

Despite what this objective-giving watchman says, I think I can go anywhere I want in the whole island now. I'm deliberately looking for and completing caves that are marked as being for five levels above me since I can't be bothered crawling up character levels at the pace the game wants me to.

I feel bad for saying this since they each probably took ages to implement and test, but the side-quests in this game are horrible, horrible bland nothingness. They're not even that bad, but every town has the same buildings and the same peasant cat graphics and the same music and the same objective and it feels so unrewarding. Each town's set of quests forms a cute self-contained story and the dialogue really tries its best in its silly way but it's really not enough.

As a map goes, it looks nice, but it's all so... green. Games are like theme parks, and theme parks are exactly that: themed. Everywhere in Cat Quest is 'the pleasant field with a forest nearby'. I can't scroll it or zoom it, so it's useless for trying to actually navigate to a specific place since I can't read any of the names.

Each of those grey exclamation marks is an identical-looking cave of monsters I can choose to crack if I need a break from the thrilling lives of the identical peasant cats. A couple of caves on the left are marked with a golden chest symbol which means I've cleared them of monsters but the game didn't give me a bloody key to open the reward chest so the whole endeavour was pointless. The silver arrow points to the next main quest objective, which at this moment is...

Here I am inside the Twin Cave. Possibly named because it's the identical twin of the last three bloody caves.

I don't know if the layouts are random, but so far they've been bland, monochrome, gentle mazes ending with a treasure chest containing an item. If I'm reading this right, rather than filling your inventory with identical stuff, finding a duplicate weapon or piece of armour levels it up. That's pretty new and clever, I think.

Behold! My Level 4 Crappy Helmet! A healthy decrease in stats across the board, and it's only getting worse.

I helped the blacksmith out with some sidequests and can now access her workshop. Her terrible, terrible workshop.

You know how in other games you go to an armour shop and get a list of things you can buy or perhaps get the option to upgrade something you like? Cat Quest decided a lootbox-style system would be more fun. You put some gold in Kit Cat's chest and out flies a randomised piece of armour. If you don't like what you get, tough, have another go. You just have to sit through the fanfare and animation each and every time. There's only one choice too - no class-themed chests or anything like that.

It's all bloody pointless because you get the exact same experience doing the horrible blue repetitive caves, fanfare and all, except those chests are free.

And you need the money to buy and upgrade the spells from the mages.

Don't get your hopes up about playing a full mage in Cat Quest - your MP gauge only fills up when you hit enemies with a weapon, so magic acts more like a bonus special move than anything else. There's no health or magic potions in the game, so healing magic is the only way to recover during long fights. I'm a little sad that I'm not enjoying the combat. The four top buttons on the controller are dedicated to configurable spells, but you'll either just mash 'em when you get bored of the sword, or save up for the healing spell and never use anything else since the MP gauge capacity is so small.

Honestly I keep forgetting that I have magic since the gauge is barely visible on screen and there's no on-screen hints telling you what spells you've currently got assigned to where.

I'm finally fighting my first real dragon!

Music? Check! Rain? Red ominous sky? Any change in the colour palette or visual mood whatsoever? Not check. Ugh.

Anyway, I beat him and nothing happened, the end.

At last, something that isn't a Cave! It's a ruin! It's like a cave, but green. It also has invisible bridges linking the sections of floor. I think maybe the edges here are supposed to be walls, but to me the place looks like platforms suspended above a void.

I've got myself a new helmet, did you notice? Your equipment's Armour stat in this game acts as a separate recharging health bar, which is neat. I guess I've gotten used to recharging health mechanics in my old age. It beats running around with a bright red screen and a low-health beep in the background for hours.

I've progressed far enough to earn some mysterious exposition! This ghostly silhouette of some unfamiliar, tall, monkey-like creature is describing his efforts to infuse cats with dragon magic. What could it all mean? Definitely not something you ought to try in real life, no matter how much you think your cat loves coffee.

I'd love to know what this is all about, but if the game is going to send me into a dozen identical-looking caves to earn each line of rewarding revelations, the game can keep them.

And I hate how Spirry keeps flying in front of the hero just to ruin my screenshots.

The side quests have no weight to them at all, and they're 90% of the gameplay. Somebody says go to a cave, you go to a cave, there's bats inside, you hit them, that's it. Hundreds upon hundreds of times. Occasionally the fights are on the world map.

Combat's got as good as it's ever going to be. One attack button, one dodge button. All the weapons are swords or axes (or staves), which all work the same way but have different attack stats. When you press attack, your cat leaps towards the nearest enemy, which is annoying when the enemy can instantly manifest giant spike mats on the ground that steadily sap your health on contact.

Melee combat in fantasy games has been and will always be the domain of gravel-brained fools.

The next dragon boss is flying over a lake, which means I can't get to him! I have to do a mandatory sidequest to gain the ability to walk on water, which means searching the map for this guy: The Governor.

He's got his own set of tedious sidequests to do on the world map before I can resume my dragonslaying. I'd show you, but trust me, you've seen what they look like.

FIVE CHARACTER LEVELS LATER

It's the Water-Walking Hero vs. a Big Blue Punchdragon!

This fight was probably my favourite so far: plenty of room to dodge, and I'm not staring at a bright green backdrop.

That fancy arrow under the enemy is the range of the spell he's about to cast. If you find yourself obscured by the dragon, get the heck out of there!

What happens next? You'll have to find out for yourself! Believe it or not, I think I'm half-way through the game already. I think I've had enough for now.

CONCLUSION

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The judgment is in, and it's not a happy one. Cat Quest is dull and frustrating and empty.

I feel like a game named Cat Quest should be more about the cats. Every character was a cat, yet it felt like there were hardly any cats in the game. Unlike Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, you don't even get to choose the fur colour of your cat. An action RPG with cute cats, bright colours and happy music ought to be overflowing with awesome, memorable characters. This game simply isn't. There's maybe six characters in the game, at least if the title screen is anything to go by, and I've met them all already. I get that it's not the style of game where you get a party, but it could've done the Castlevania thing with you crossing paths with other people on quests like yours, having a bit of a chat with them, then moving on. But Orange Cat is the last Dragonblood, so he has to do everything on his boring lonesome, it seems.

According to the achievements page, I've completed half of the main quest and a quarter of all the side quests. It really doesn't feel that way. I feel like the world ought to be changing as I complete the main quest so that I know I'm making progress. As it is, it's just a blank repeating expanse of green. There's no gradually spreading storm clouds, or ominous music when I trespass into forbidden areas. It's all safe and bland.

My favourite part was when I died the first time to that dragon on the water and reappeared at a town on the other side of the world because I couldn't be bothered to flop at any of the towns I'd passed along the way. What'd be a lot more fun would be a system where you 'discover' a town by walking past it (with an XP bonus for doing so), and then when you die you reappear at the nearest town you'd discovered.

All Cat Quest has to offer is the same one tiny, slightly unfair-seeming battle repeated forever. I think I've figured out why I was having so much trouble with combat, especially with large enemies. The dodge move doesn't make you magically temporarily invulnerable; it's only used for moving slightly faster momentarily. This makes sense, but is going to make my Soulsborne-Surge-Remnant-Immortal readers wonder how the heck you're supposed to evade anything. The answer is slowly. Use your single attack button to make a couple of swipes, then sidle the heck away. Knowing this made the ice dragon boss easy, but tedious as hell.

I think Cat Quest is too basic for hardcore gamers and too difficult for younger gamers. In most encounters I was either at no risk whatsoever or dead in seconds due to the lack of post-hit invulnerability.

Cat Quest may look nice, but Minit is simply faster, weirder, more exciting and more interesting. If you want something that focuses more on the action, try one of those collect-stuff, dodge-stuff, lose-it-all-and-cry roguelikes like Enter The Gungeon or Wizard of Legend. Hell, if you're in an experimental mood, slap Evoland on for a bit. I shouldn't be put in the position of even thinking of recommending The Speris Legacy over this game, but that's what it's come to, because somehow I just care more about Cho and his stupid antics than this boring cat.

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Thanks for dropping by and reading more of mecha-neko's words. He picks them very carefully so it's nice to know all that effort's not going to waste. In fact if you've got anything you want to say about Cat Quest or his article you should totally leave a comment! Leave comments on other games too if you want. I'm going on a break until October so the site's all yours until then.

You can also drop by the Super Adventures Discord if you like, and "join the conversation" or whatever while you're waiting.