Cat Quest I & II

Cat Quest

I’ve been stressed lately. Cat Quest was just what the doctor ordered. It’s an open-world RPG filled with cat puns and cute stuff.

It’s a good example of how to streamline a concept and focus on a very specific player experience. Cat Quest is essentially silly leisure grinding. The player moves about a large overworld map slaying monsters and talking to townsfolk and undertaking quests, which sometimes lead to underground dungeons. Cat Quest doesn’t try to be innovative, it just takes a thing and does it very well.

The equipment system is nice, once you’ve obtained an item any time you find a duplicate it increases the stats of the item in your inventory. It’s a fun autopilot game, but much more active and complex than time-based clickers like Plantera .

The devs are actively working on this game, and at this stage I think the only issue I have is you don’t have access to keys early in the game, so there are chests you have to leave for later, and these are in no way marked on the map or otherwise. Backtracking all the dungeons isn’t a huge deal, honestly, and the way quests are structured (completing a quest unlocks the next quest in the series, which can have a significantly higher difficulty rating) the player will be traversing the map repeatedly anyway.

A+ will cat again.

Cat Quest II

After playing Cat Quest II with my kid nearly every day for about 3 weeks I think it’s safe to say I’m r e a l l y tired of Cat Quest II. My kid is not a completionist, so as soon as we beat the game they’ll be ready to move on, but we have to keep grinding to progress and it’s dragging things out.

One issue we’ve encountered is the difficulty scaling. We’re at level 60 and we’re frankly getting hosed in same-level dungeons now. Melee has become an unfun, sloggy pattern of “hit enemy, dodge away, hit again,” while waiting for MP to replenish so we can heal, even with the dash damage ability, and as a magic user in close quarters I get mobbed so quickly it’s all I can do to dodge and try to stay alive long enough to replenish MP. I actually got a little paranoid about this–like, are we that bad at CQ?–but after a search found the difficulty scaling is a noted complaint. It was totally fine until about level 50 and then we started dying a lot. I’ve looked up some strategies for grinding but… with respect? I didn’t actually expect to have to do that in a game called Cat Quest. I know I’m a shitty casual but come on.

The way weapon/armor upgrades work, finding a chest randomly upgrades a piece. This is the “fast” way to upgrade, since you usually upgrade IDK 7 or 8 levels at once. Alternately, you can upgrade one level at a time at the smith for increasing amounts of gold. Unfortunately, in practice this means the big upgrades are spread out over a lot of equipment, including pieces that appear to be functionally similar, and all of our gold has gone to keeping a few favored pieces relevant.

Another big change this game is spells have to be discovered in the field rather than purchased. Our favorite spell, Cattrap, is hidden in a level 100 dungeon, and at this rate I’m not sure we’ll ever even be able to get to it.

There’s no easy way to keep track of dungeons you’ve completed, you have to run to the entrance and, assuming you’re not currently aggroed, you have to manually check the level. Putting the levels of discovered dungeons on the map would narrow down the search for “cave we can grind in where we won’t die instantly.” As it is, they do use a little diamond marker to mark caves you haven’t unlocked the main treasure in.

The puns have worn thin at this point. My kid (who is 7 BTW) pointed out the Pawple armor should be the Purrple armor. I was equally proud and annoyed in that moment–proud because that was a pretty astute observation for a 7YO and annoyed because it was so obvious I should have thought of it first.

I guess the lesson learned is More of a good thing isn’t necessarily a good thing. I greatly appreciate the coop mode, but other than that I think I prefer the first game overall.

We’ve entered into a fun gaming phase where my kid, who has much better hand-eye coordination and can read far better than I could at that age, is now able to revisit single-player games I played for or with them and beat the games largely on their own. They recently played and beat Pikuniku in like 2 days with only minor help with the bosses (we tried Pikuniku’s coop mode again but it’s still as rage-inducing as ever, my god). Eventually they will be able to play the first Cat Quest on their own, and they might even choose to return to this one for solo. Despite my grievances, the game has been a solid investment for family gaming time and my kid doesn’t begrudge the game as I do, they’re still as eager to play it as they were the first day. I remind myself games are still comparatively new to them and kids generally have the stamina to plow through games a seasoned gamer would find tedious.