cat quest

Since I enjoyed the first game, and also had a free copy of the second, of course I was going to play that too. It isn’t actually vastly different to the first one, although you now have two characters you can swap between (you’ll never guess that the other one is a dog), and as well as a largely-similar map to Cat Quest OG there’s a whole dog-populated area north of it.

Gameplay is mostly as before, although upgrades to your equipment are now more like a traditional RPG with an actual upgrade shop rather than a lootbox-y gambling mechanic. The graphics are noticeably more polished too. Other than that, it’s pretty much more of the same, which it turns out, is Just Fine: a pretty laid back Zelda sort of game with silly characters lots of dungeons.

My daughter picked this up on the Switch some time ago and loved it (and the sequel) so much she actually preordered Cat Quest III the day it was announced. She had never preordered a game before! I’ve always liked the look of it – 2D sprites on a map in a way that sort of feels a bit like Paper Mario but the game is more like Zelda and the camera angle is like those 2D-HD remakes of old 8-bit RPGs.

Anyway, after getting it for free on about twelftynine different platforms via PS+++ and Epic giveaways and stuff I finally got round to playing it on my Steam Deck (Lord bless the Steam Deck and its infinite supply of free games) and you know what – it’s really good. She was right.

It’s much more simple than Zelda, but it’s cute and mostly laid back. You, as a cat, travel the world and sword up baddies and enter dungeons and find better weapons and armour and level up your various magics like fire and ice and healing, and there’s nothing especially new or difficult here, but it’s all done in a polished way with great humour and silly events and characters. And I love the art style.

Cat Quest II (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Cat Quest (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!