Cat Quest II brought to you by the award winning studio Gentlebros. Cat Quest II is the sequel to the popular Cat Quest & Slashy Hero.
This Cutesy fast paced open world action RPG catventure allows the player to delve deep into dungeons, complete quests, & forever put aside the rivalry between cats & dogs as you play solo or couch co-op to bring peace to your kingdoms during a time of war.
Will this game be purrfect & the cats whiskers, or will it leave you feeling dog ruff? read on to see.
Cat Quest II is a simple & straight forward RPG that harks back to retro gaming, Gentlebros take their inspirations from Legend of Zelda, & Final Fantasy. Elements of the game clearly reflect the early games in these series.
The graphics are crisp & cutesy, with the vivid colours making the game very easy on the eye.
The world is based over 2 continents Felingard, & The Lupus Empire. Both lands have their differing terrains and unique challenges. The map is pretty expansive, but you never feel too overwhelmed, I genuinely enjoyed spending my time exploring it.
One of the charms of the game is the speed at which you achieve success, quests are generally short, & side quests broken down into manageable chunks. The dungeons have elements of difficulties without really making you feel challenged, & when you do fail you have an overwhelming urge to reenter and succeed on the second attempt.
The ability to play the game how you want really impressed me. I chose a murderous wizard cat who was accompanied by an axe wielding pooch, but many combinations are available. How you wish to play the game is entirely up to you.
Controls are easy to pick up, you have the freedom to map your spells how you wish, so you truly feel in control of how you play the game. I really enjoyed dodging & evading he enemies attacks. The smooth movement and dodge system made this a walk in the park.
Two main issues I had with the control system are as follows:
1- The lack of a zoom function on the world map, when ever I wished to identify a dungeon or an area of interest I had to manually zoom by leaving my chair and approaching my T.V.
2- No rotate function on the map, or during open play, this frustrated me as it always felt that the game was a little more rigid.
The music does a great job at driving the story along, it builds a nice atmosphere to enjoy your jaunt across the map,or to build suspense in a fight with a dungeon boss. As with a number of Retro RPG games the upbeat music was saved exclusively for the hero of the hour, and this helped to reinforce who truly is Top Dog & ummmmmm Top Cat.
An audio glitch that I noticed regularly was the music sticking on a short loop, this was annoying, but it did not impact the game play. It just took the polish off of the game for me.
Narrative for the game follows a charmingly enjoyable pun based commentary all based around our furry little friends, the pun fun is even extended to the names of several locations on the map: Purrmaha Beach, The Pawcific Divide, and the dangerous but enticing The Barkara Desert.
The main story & side quests flowed nicely, & were easy to pick up and put down. You can choose to explore all the dungeons freely, and prioritise quests in whichever order works for you. Leveling of both protagonists and equipment was enjoyable and never felt like a grind. I loved rolling through the XP coins after hacking or blasting enemies with my deadly animal duo.
A few minor issues to highlight around quests:
1- You can only take one quest at a time, this means walking and lots of it, but hey they are a cats and dogs so they certainly enjoy this sort of thing.
2- If you die whilst completing a quest you will respawn at the quest giver & all you progress and XP gain will be lost. So remember to save it regularly.
Developers Gentlebros clearly have a great sense of humour. This extends from their fun use of narrative puns to a number of Easter eggs found through out the game.
[spoiler]
Founder Island II meet the cat development team where they will dare you to wipe your data to carry on playing, do you dare to be brave? go ahead, they wouldn't wipe your data. [spoiler]
For achievement hunters Cat Quest II is fairly simple, 1000 gamerscore can be achieved in 10 tasks. I completed the achievements on my first run through with no guidance, and this was easily achievable within 8 to 10 hours of game play.
To conclude; A fun & easy to pick up action RPG that makes you want to get your paws on your controller & play some more. the overwhelming positives throughout this game absolutely outweigh the negatives.
Would I say that it's purrfect? unfortunately not, but you would be barking mad not to try it.
My score 8 out of 10