Cat Quest review
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Cat Quest review

Our Review by Campbell Bird on August 10th, 2017
Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar :: LITTERED WITH CHARM
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This action RPG takes some tried-and-true mechanics and turns them into a cute, cuddly, and very satisfying experience.

Developer: The Gentlebros Pte. Ltd.

Price: $4.99
Version: 1.0.138
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2

Graphics/Sound Rating: starstarstarstarstar
User Interface Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar
Replay Value Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar

Cat Quest is a beautiful and lovingly-crafted action role-playing game (RPG) in a world full of cats and dragons. In a lot of ways, its individual mechanics are very conventional, but Cat Quest has enough heart, charm, and adorable cats to make it feel practically purrfect.

Scratch-n-slash

The easiest way to describe Cat Quest would be to call it a mix between Diablo and Crashlands. Players control a single hero cat with a "tap to move" and "tap on enemies to attack" control scheme. The ultimate goal of the game is to discover what happened to your kidnapped sister, but there are plenty of other quests and dungeons to investigate along the way.

Most of the time while questing, Cat Quest will throw a bunch of enemies at you that you must kill in order to receive experience, gold, and loot rewards. It's all fairly standard-sounding stuff if you've played Diablo before, and the Crashlands comparison only comes into play when examining the game's combat. Enemies in Cat Quest telegraph where their attacks will be using red meters on screen, and success against these enemies requires you to dodge these attacks while laying down plenty of damage yourself.

Cute cat action

Cat Quest primarily stands out as an action RPG because of its presentation. Cat Quest is both gorgeous and hopelessly cute. The world is super colorful and moves at a silky smooth framerate, and the cat characters and cat-themed locations are clever enough to elicit a chuckle or two as you play through the game.

All of Cat Quest's action is also presented in an environment that looks and feels like an overworld map from a more traditional RPG. The neat thing here though is that almost all of the game's action (with the exception of entering shops or dungeons) occurs right on this map view.

Lost kitty

There's very little to complain about with Cat Quest. It looks and feels great, has a solid loot system, tells a decent story, and has satisfyingly challenging combat. That said, there were times when playing that I felt a little directionless and wish there was some more in-game guidance for finding available quests.

Throughout Cat Quest, you will always know exactly where to go to complete the next step of the game's main quest, but this isn't something you'll always want to do. I say this primarily because certain steps of the main quest require that you level up your character significantly before you have a chance at passing them and the best way to earn levels quickly is to complete side quests.

Side quests are available at all the towns in Cat Quest's world, though when certain towns have quests available for you to take is not always clear. There is an icon that appears on a town's quest board to indicate that there are quests available, but this is only something you can see if you travel close enough to the town to check it. As a result, I spent quite a bit of time wandering from town to town trying to see what there was to do, which got a little bothersome. This isn't a huge issue, but it did slightly hamper my enjoyment.

The bottom line

Cat Quest is one of those games that takes a jumble of very conventional mechanics and somehow turns them into something that feels like more than the sum of its parts. It's beautiful, charming, cute, and satisfying in equal measure, which is a rare thing.

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