Cat Quest 2 Review
Cats are the best pets. They’re certainly not perfect and I’m not saying other pets aren’t good too, but I’m firmly in the “cat person” camp, probably because I had cats growing up. They’re so cute and independent and often times are lazy and have the worst attitudes and that’s both adorable and relatable. Last week, I saw Cat Quest 2 on the calendar of new releases and liked the sound of playing as a sword-wielding cat in a fantasy world, so I dove right in.
In Cat Quest 2, one or two players take the roll of the former kings of the Felingard and Lupus kingdoms, which is a fancy way of saying the cat and dog kingdoms. The two kings, an adorable yellow cat and an adorable white dog, have returned according to an ancient prophecy to combat an insidious evil that has corrupted the land. Having fallen to the villain before, the kings must now travel the land, working together to regain their lost powers, rebuild their strength and reclaim their thrones from the usurpers who stole them in their absence.
Cat Quest 2 is a basic hack-and-slash adventure game, and when I say “basic” I mean it in every sense of the word. There is only one attack button and about five attack animations for each of the two playable characters. Players can equip different weapons to change their stats in a variety of ways, and the weapons are divided into three different categories: large melee weapons, small melee weapons, and magic wands. The category of weapon equipped changes how the player attacks, large melee weapons are slow and do a lot of damage, small melee weapons are fast but do less damage, and magic wands allow the player to attack from a distance, might or might not do damage based on the player’s magic ability score instead of their attack score, and reduce the player’s maximum hit points by 50%. Magic wands were actually the first indication I was going to have a problem with Cat Quest 2 and its apparent unwillingness to explain things. The epitome of this is that equipping magic wands cut the player’s life bar in half, but this is only barely indicated. When any other equipment would change a player’s stats, it’s highlighted in either bright green or red text, depending on if the stats are increasing or decreasing. However, the equipment menu only subtly shows the player’s health being halved with a dotted white outline without any eye-catching text colors or special messages. Reading patch notes, I see that the developers claim the wand tutorial has been improved post-release so it might be better now, but was totally lacking during my time with the game. In addition to that, as of beating the game I still haven’t seen the game explain what exactly the armor score does, how to regain mana, how much mana it takes to cast any of the spells, or what the numbers next to a spell’s name means. Worst of all, there’s no on-screen reminder of which spells players have equipped to which buttons which means any time players want to swap out an equipped spell for a new one, they better develop a whole new mnemonic device to remember what button does what.
Neither a king nor a fantasy game would be complete without quests and Cat Quest 2 has plenty. According to the game’s achievements, there are 67 in total. To give you an idea of how many that is, I’ve played for about 14 hours, beaten the game, and got to level 86 and have only finished 35 side quest, so 67 is undoubtedly plenty to keep gamers busy. Unfortunately, very few of them are any good. Every quest I encountered began with a bit of exposition from a character who needed a problem solved, then I followed either a dotted line or a white arrow to a specific area where I killed some enemies. After that, I would sometimes pick up an object, then return to the original quest giver. Weirdly, about a third of the time the problem the quest giver had wouldn’t actually be solved at that time, saving the second half of the issue for a second quest. Predictably, the second quest would be nearly identical in format as the first. This quest design confuses me. My only guess is that the developers were worried about players taking on a quest they weren’t powerful enough for, but this seems like a bad way to handle it because players can just wander away and kill some monsters to power up. This combined with each quest presenting a one to five skull difficulty rating before players start the quest and the fact that players can save at any point during quests means that players have enough tools to help them get through longer quests.
The last issue I have with Cat Quest 2 is the issue that hurts me the most to criticize, and that’s the cat and dog puns. In the trailer, Cat Quest 2 promised some excellent and adorable puns like “Embark on the Ultimutt Catventure” but once players get into the game, it seems like the developers had about 20 puns ready but it turns out they needed about 100. Don’t get me wrong, there are good puns in the game. “Catpital City?” Great. “The Pawcific Divide?” Excellent. “Excalipurr?” Splendid. But then there are other puns that are more forced than an infant furiously insisting that the square peg does, in fact, go in the round hole, such as “Headpawters,” “Purrmaha Beach,” and the incredibly poorly thought out “Pound Town.” I know this might seem like a weird thing to critique so intensely, but most of the game’s personality and charm is wrapped up in these jokes so when maybe 30% of them work, it’s hard to see them as charming rather than obnoxious.
I get that some people might say that I, a nearly 30-year-old guy who scrutinizes games in his free time, might not be the target audience for Cat Quest 2 but as a counter point: I like cats and cute stuff so yes I am. I know some games need to be less complicated and more approachable for younger, busier, or more relaxed gamers but I think all of my complaints would hinder the enjoyment of those audiences the same as they hindered mine. If you’re really interested in playing a cute game with a partner, look somewhere else. Personally, I recommend Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.
Don’t buy this game
I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending your money on
