Cat Quest II

Cat Quest II, Two are Better Than One

Action RPGs are a pretty isolated genre. Long after Diablo 2's heyday the genre has shrank down to a pretty small handful of infrequent releases. The genre itself usually revolves around eldritch horrors, the forces of hell, or pretty much any other nightmare fuel that needs a heavy dose of fire to repel. Secondly to doing the appropriate math and leveling your character level of dps that would make a war-criminal giddy, is using said boosted lethality for gibbing enemies into, well...gibs. I's dark, violent and often gratifying. Now this is all well and, but such a small genre lacks lighter toned or kid friendly titles. So it's time for Cat Quest 2 

Double Whammy

The biggest addition to Cat Quest 2 is that of the loyal, tail wagging kind. Mans best friend can be cat's best friend too, either in splitscreen co-op or as an AI companion in single player. The 2nd character changes the gameplay dynamic with the ability to revive a fallen player during combat, this can add a second chance during the action, not that it made the game too easy. Other than bringing a new species to the game there's the addition of an entire new continent, the Lupin empire. This ties into the story also, there's a general theme about cooperation and teamwork that compliments the plot nicely. Each of the two characters are displaced kings that must unite the two warring empires that have been ruled by two mysterious armor clad tyrants. An okay plot that fits the length of the game, about 6 or 7 hours.  

Contents of a Continent

Cat Quest one and two have a skewed character to environment scale. This creative style choice lets the player cover a lot of ground quickly, but I feel this artistic style hurts the immersion of this cartoony world. How can you be "in" a town when you're the size of a house? It doesn't help Felingard looks pretty much the same as before and that the Lupine empire, while novel, is mostly desert. Caves and ancient ruins have some new textures, though with the vast number of spelunking to be done, they all look the same after a while anyways. Water walking returns as an ability to cross the "paw-cific" ocean from Felingard to the Lupine empire, it's a pretty neat mechanic, though I found that it just compounded the fact that scaling of the game was so extreme that I could cross an ocean in a few seconds. Otherwise the environments just like more of the same. 

Characters

Cat Quest features a lot of cats and dogs, no surprise there. Kit Cat returns as the games armor smith, Hotto Doggo handles all the sword smithing  and hotdog puns. The two main characters, two main villains and helpful floating sprite Kirry make up bulk of the dialogue and interactions. There's a lot more characters than the first game, although that doesn't say much considering the first game had a pretty small scope in terms of performing cast. Peripheral fur-balls are simply just dogs and cats, there's an absolute missed opportunity to cash in on the doge meme by making the Hotto Doggo character a shiba dog and turning all his portrait pictures into doge meme poses, but maybe that was for the best. Other characters could have been really creative, like a council of wise owls instead of the mage cats, or a greedy grackle that will exchange loot for shiny things. The cat and dog sprites in Cat Quest look pretty similar too, so it sometimes just feels like re-skinned clones instead of completely different animals. 

Simple Gameplay 

The gameplay, while somewhat enriched by the new features, is still pretty basic. Just doge-roll and  attack over and over. It can get pretty mindless, especially when quests are as complicated as walking to the X and pressing "B". There has to be a happy medium between brain melting puzzles and mindless mashing. I think the games engine is quite limited in environmental interaction, this is a problem. We can't push objects, dig holes, climb ledges, or use keys. There's fps game with more set interaction than Cat Quest 2 and its not a great thing. Even with the Lego series of games there's the platforming element to keep things from being a combat only affair, granted there's a few new moves like the rolling-slash and projectile magic, but that's about it.

Looting

Looting is a huge part of action rpgs. Finishing a quest or dungeon rewards players with new loot or upgrades duplicate items. The inventory management of Cat Quest 2 is pretty easy and clean. No need to make a trip to the shop and sell all the accumulated junk from the inventory. That's probably essential to mobile titles, but on pc I don't mind clicking around a little and micromanaging my inventory. Other loot items are simply coins and xp orbs dropped during combat. Xp orbs are self explanatory, coins are an unimaginative currency that simply does too much. Anything from upgrading armor to enhancing a magical attack just takes some gold coins. Something more creative like scraps of metal to upgrade armor or glowing crystals for magic would have made more sense from a fantasy perspective. Even the coins of the Lupine empire look the same as the ones in Felingard, why not golden dog bones?

Leveling

Progressing and leveling is about the same as Cat Quest 1, just gain health and power over time. There's no skill trees or passive buffs. It's a straight path to a higher level and tougher missions, not much room for player choice, though I think this is by design. Things can get complicated pretty fast with skills and buffs, though there needs to be more than just a simple character level, we need the "9 lives" perk tree or the the "acute hearing" skill to unlock, something to add more flair and variables to the game, not to mention a reason to max the character level other than just seeing the number 99. Character leveling needs to level-up itself. 

What's in Store?

Overall, I think that Cat Quest 2 has decided what it's going to be. There's a lot of Cat Quest 1 left in this game and for some that's going to be a plus. Where I expected a bit of an evolution, I got a refined experience similar to the first game. It's not bad, but it's not overwhelmingly great. So far the two entries in the Cat Quest series have proven to be novel and entertaining, but I for one am ready for a much deeper 30+ hour experience, and yes, that's going to take a cat-load more content to make it work. The laundry list of things I want to see in Cat Quest stems from the golden age of early Nintendo games with their deep cartoony universe that felt like playing a Saturday morning cartoon. If the Gentle Bros can capture and bottle that lighting, then there's no limit to the heights this series can reach. We'll see what Cat Quest 3 has in store. Until next time, peace out, Comrades.