Cat Quest III feels like a game laser-targeted at someone like me – a cat enthusiast and aging gamer whose love for the action RPGs they used to sink dozens of hours into far outweighs the actual time and patience they have for them in the present. It’s a game that understands that players, like cats, often have incredibly short attention spans and just want to explore dank crevices and smash shit up. It kinda rules.
In case you missed the first couple of games in the series, and the previous paragraph didn’t paint a clear enough picture, Cat Quest III presents players with what is essentially an abridged take on an open-world action RPG, distilling what would normally be a weeks or months-long dedication into something that could comfortably be knocked over in a weekend. It’s got all the trimmings – gaining experience and levelling up, finding and equipping new gear and abilities, free exploration of a world full of dungeons, caves, castles and towns and a high-stakes tale of world-ending proportions – neatly nestled into a compact and comfy 8-10 hours.
This time around, your adventure takes you to the Purribean, a collection of islands where reside a number of folk from seafaring cats to “Pi-rats” and the tentacular Spicy Squids, all amid a chase for a legendary artifact known as the North Star Treasure. Accompanied by the ghostly, floating cat head Captain Cappey, you find yourself destined to play a role in all of this, and so starts your journey across land and sea to defeat the Pi-rat King, the metal rocking Meowtallika Crew and more.
In keeping with the abridged RPG feel, Cat Quest III keeps all of this as simple as possible by quickly giving you the keys to a seaworthy vessel (do ships have keys?) and letting you sail the waters of the Purribean at your leisure. There’s a loose thread to follow through the journey, but for the most part you’re welcome to land wherever you wish, see if you’re equipped to tackle the enemies and dungeons in the area, and slowly uncover more quests and mysteries across the map. Like the previous games, it’s really not a huge area in terms of actual play space, but it feels big in scale and is rife with opportunities to explore for hidden goodies.
When it comes time to protect yourself, a very simple system of melee strikes, ranged weapons and magic form the game’s combat – again, you may be pretty familiar from the earlier games – but manages to remain fun and interesting all the way through thanks to constant drops of new gear that greatly augment your options and playstyle in battle. There are some especially fun categories, like shields which deal out huge damage ahead of blocking an enemy advance, or claws which are super fast in attack and increase your overall movement speed while wearing them. With limited capacity to equip buffs and other added abilities, you’ll find yourself constantly tinkering with your build and throwing your quickly-accumulating loot down on upgrades.
One thing this third entry really has going for it over the first two is a heap of variety. Aside from the odd cave, dungeons rarely feel the same and boss fights are always interesting and engaging, but more than that there’s always some kind of new gimmick or throwaway mechanic to contend with. One section takes place in a castle with an entirely different visual style, for example, while another quest has you engaging with a romance novel, choose-your-own-adventure style. Add to that your ship with its own abilities and upgrades for naval combat, and you’ll rarely feel any sense of repetition despite the relative mechanical simplicity of it all.
There’s a lot more visual variety, too, with the islands themselves offering all kinds of sights and a much stronger art direction that includes more camera angles and intimate spaces than we’ve seen in the past. Visiting interior areas is always a treat with the pulled-in, side-scrolling camera angle that really shows off some strong environmental design and great character art.
Above all, there’s just a great sense of fun and discovery here, including plenty of really neat hidden secrets to puzzle out – one especially entertaining map discovery may even lead you to new narrative implications… And the best part? The puns. Oh Lord, the puns. Whoever it is at developer The Gentlebros that’s responsible for the writing in this game, hit me up by email if you need an apprentice because, as something of a punnoisseur, rarely is it that I come across game of this calibre. Every time you think, “There can’t possibly exist more cat puns than this,” you’re hit with more cat puns.
Once the credits roll, there’s still plenty of game as well, with a robust New Game+ system that offers a golden path right to the end game encounter, a challenging tower mode, potential new secrets and an increased challenge with a new level cap to boot. There’s also a great two-player couch co-op option that really suits introducing someone new to RPGs or gaming to an adventure that’s more accessible and digestible than most.
