Cat Quest III

The Cat Quest series has steadily become a more and more complete and complex adventure-RPG experience. What started as a very basic Diablo with cats concept has grown into a truly charismatic and stylised offering, and that's ever more apparent in the third instalment, Cat Quest III. Previously known with the additional tagline of Pirates of the Purribean, as you will be able to imply the theme of this game is pirates and that means heading to a cartoon, feline and rodent-infested version of the tropical sea to freely explore in a 2.5D open world.

As is the case in other Cat Quest titles, there's a core story at the heart of Cat Quest III that drives your exploration and serves as a guiding arrow to the direction in the open world you take, but this is by no means enforced. One of the brilliant elements of Cat Quest III is that you can just venture off in any direction you see fit and explore however you want. From very early on in the game you're presented with the core tools for movement, like a ship to easily traverse the waves, and then it's up to you to decide how to use them. The world is populated by enemies and dangers of varying strength and lethality, meaning you will soon run into threats that will destroy you without breaking a sweat, but that doesn't mean you can't at least attempt to take them on after five minutes of booting up the game.

The freedom to explore is without a doubt Cat Quest III's biggest strength. I've played AAA RPGs that are more rigid in their exploration than this game. The fact that you can complete pretty much every side quest and find all the collectibles before getting close to wrapping the core story means that you can truly put your own stamp on Cat Quest III. Although, I will say that this is perhaps a highlight for the simple reason that the core story doesn't feel weighty and important. This is a game without any dialogue and utilising antagonists that don't share much importance with the player's nameless character, meaning there's never that driving force to tick the campaign off before turning your attention to additional tasks.

It should also be noted that Cat Quest III is a very rudimentary game. There's not much depth in the gameplay nor the buildcrafting, and that's a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's incredibly easy to pick up and understand and to make some truly diabolical builds that make short work of even the toughest bosses. On the other hand, there's a feeling of seeing it once, seeing it all with the puzzles and the way they're offered up, and with the combat encounters.

On the former point, a lot of the puzzles are about simply solving tasks involving blue magical stones, where it's always about hitting them in the right order. The challenge comes in determining which order. This is then matched up with lootable chests to find that are more often than not protected by enemies, or hidden in bushes or underneath suspicious environment elements like strangely coloured starfish. Hunting chests get to the point of simply hitting anything that looks unnatural to find the last one that's alluding to you.

As for the combat, while there are a lot of different enemy types (both land enemies and sea-faring vessels) each with their own ability set and attack chains, they're all quite straightforward and to the point where you don't really need to do much to overcome them. The same can be said for bosses, which are most of the time just regular enemies with much bigger health bars. There are a few that actually bring new mechanics, but they're often rarities. Is it engaging to dive into a battle, slash and gun down enemies without breaking a sweat to pick up dropped experience and gold to improve your character? Yes, it's a fun loop. But it's also essentially the entire premise of Cat Quest III.

Talking about the buildcrafting and progression, experience basically only applies to how many equippable slots your character and ship has to play around with for perk combinations. Otherwise, the buildcrafting is centred around finding items, armour, weapons, and so forth around the world, determine how their various unique effects and traits combine with one another, developing a build that suits your playstyle, and then using acquired gold to frequently improve the level of said items to ensure they don't fall behind your rapidly increasing experience level. Again, as far as RPG elements go, it's pretty straightforward, but considering Cat Quest III is a very fast-paced and short game, I think the simplicity of the buildcrafting is also one of its strongest elements.

Another area where Cat Quest III shines is in the theme and aesthetic. This game not only looks fantastic with adorable and fun cartoon visuals, but it's also effortlessly funny with nods to pop culture. You'll find quests where you need to take down a vampire boss in a Castlevania-styled 8-bit dungeon. There are boss fights against the Cathulhu, mini-visual novel quests, and so many other feline related puns that you frankly will lose track of them. The Gentlebros surely must be running low on their cat jokes with three Cat Quest games under their belts.

So, all in all, Cat Quest III is another entertaining action-adventure-RPG from The Gentlebros. It's easy to pick up and play, has a great sense of humour, a truly free world design, fantastic art and overall aesthetic, and even has drop-in co-op. It's not the most mechanically complex game, has a middling and quite forgettable core storyline, and it's over in a flash, but otherwise this is a delightful and charming title that will effortlessly entertain for a few evenings.