Cat Quest Review (PS4)

It's the penultimate in cuteness, a game where you play as a cat.  Not just any cat, though.  You're a cat on a quest.  It's Cat Quest.

You take the role of a nameless cat who's capable of killing dragons.  In other words, you play as a cute and cuddly badass.  You're goal is to rescue his sister, who was kidnapped in the intro video.  You can arm your cat with weapons, armor, and magic to help him along.  Naturally, he's the silent type, letting a ball of fluff that resembles a cat do all the talking.

You can find a number of cute, little weapons for kitty.

If you ever want kitty to use magic, find an Arcane Temple and get ready to pay up.

Whatever the heck this thing is, it does the talking for the protagonist.

Speaking of talking, there are a lot of cat puns that get flung around.  NPCs and the ball of fluff just can't get enough of spitting them out like chewing tobacco.  Heck, even the otherwise silent protagonist let's out a deep "meow" when he gets hit.

It's not just limited to the dialog either.  The locations you go to have usually have some kind of cat reference attached to them.  Have you ever been to your nation's "Catpital?"  Have you ever sailed across the "Pawcific Ocean?"  Perhaps you been to "Bermewda's Triangle."  Stuff like this is all over the place and is kind of cute.

When you have time, scamper over to "The Catpital"...

...and have a look at the "Paws" menu.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, this game tries its hardest to be as cute as it can be.  You play as a cute little protagonist armed with cute, little weapons traveling around a cute, little world killing cute, little monsters.  This game has a severe case of what I like to call Atelier Syndrome.

Explore a cute, little overworld filled with cute, little monsters...

...then go into cute, little caves filled with even more cute, little monsters.

Not to be underestimated, though, things ratchet up the further north you go.  The monsters are still cute and little, but the ass whuppin' you'll receive for fighting them isn't.  When an enemy is too strong, a cute skull appears next to their life bar when before you fight them.  Fortunately, you can roam freely, so you're not stuck fighting any enemy you don't want to fight.  Of course you can challenge them, but you'll want to level your kitty up a little.  This is where the second part of the title comes into play; Quests.

Quest make it so you don't have to grind, like most RPGs when you get to a point you get past.  You can opt to grind by fighting weak enemies.  Taking quests makes things faster, though, and tell you more about the citizens of the world.  Much like powerful enemies, quests that are too tough will be marked with a skull.  Most of these quests are interesting, so give them a try.

Take care when taking missions with the red skull.

On to the other stuff.  The graphics do the job.  Things are cute and colorful.  If there is one complaint that could be made, it's that they seem a little too small.  Maybe it's just me.

The music is what you'd expect of an adventure game.  The world map theme has an epic, spirited feel without being too epic or too spirited.  The music in the caves sounds dark and mysterious without being too dark and mysterious.  You get the point.

When you get right down to it, Cat Quest feels like a well-done Indie game.  It's better than most of the stuff you'll find on Kongregate.com or websites like that, but it doesn't really feel like it belongs a current-gen console like the PS4.  It's not a bad game, though.  It's pretty fun, as a matter of fact.  Check it out.