If you know your Cat Quest, probably all I need to tell you about Cat Quest 3 is that it’s more of the same, only this time with pirates. Which is to say, it’s a treat. But if you’ve not yet played developer TheGentlebros’ pun-obsessed series of super-casual, ultra-streamlined open-world action RPGs, I guess I have some explaining to do.
The original Cat Quest released back in 2017 and was immediately heralded as a very good thing by people with exceptional and accurate taste. The pitch is pretty simple: what if an expansive open-world action-RPG but with all the faff taken out? You’ve got your adventuring, your exploration, your combat, your questing, your dungeon-crawling, your leveling, plus heaps of treasure and endless gear – only wall right back as far as is possible without the whole thing collapsing in on its own insubstantiality, then polished to a sheen.
Cat Quest 2 did the whole thing all over again in 2019 – this time with dogs and two-player co-op – and five years on from that, we’ve got a third outing that shakes up the familiar formula a little by covering half the map in water, handing you a boat, and then festooning everything with pirates. Strip away the tricornes, jaunty shanties, and other nautical flourishes, and Cat Quest 3 admittedly isn’t that much of a departure for the series, but, honestly, who cares when it remains such a delight to play?
This time around, you’re cast as a young feline pirate who, with the aid of their disembodied ghost-cat friend, sets off on a quest around the sun-bleached, palm-strewn Purribean archipelago to locate the mysterious North Star Treasure – fending off other cat-based pirate crews along the way. It’s Cat Quest’s streamlined open-world action-RPG set-up reimagined as a classic pirate fantasy, full of hidden treasure, high seas adventure, and cutlass-clanking combat. And just like its predecessors, it’s a game that prioritizes joyful immediacy over fussiness. Battles are over in seconds, and dungeons rarely take more than a few minutes to complete, making it perfect fodder for the perpetually time-strapped, and an excellent candidate if you’re looking for something uncomplicated but unpatronizing to play with a young ‘un .
None of this wilful simplification would work, of course, if Cat Quest 3 didn’t have the foundations to support its breezily approachable action, but, like its predecessors, its fundamentals are an endless joy. Core to its success is a wonderfully spritely combat system, which imbues proceedings with, of all things, the same kind of rhythmic, dodge-focused satisfaction of a Souls game. Enemies bounce into the air, ready to slam back down, or unleash cascades of icy stalagmites beneath your fuzzy derriere – where upon you respond by swiftly rolling out the way then slip back in for a quick sword-jab one-two. Even with combat’s few additional wrinkles – a secondary pistol for ranged attacks, magic with a focus on crowd control, and elemental weaknesses to consider – it’s never particularly deep, but its fast-paced arcade fluidity remains satisfying throughout. Plus, there’s enough variety in enemy encounters that its simplicity never feels like a flaw.
This is what makes Cat Quest work so well. Its constituent parts might be breezily lightweight, but they’re also wonderfully, exactly honed, meaning there’s never a moment it isn’t a pleasure.
And this kind of carefully considered streamlining is everywhere in Cat Quest 3. Sure, you could argue its puzzles never get more complicated than hitting a couple of switches in the right order, that its dungeons (which now come in both 3D and side-scrolling variants) are little more than basic branching corridors with a couple of sneaky secrets thrown in, and that its story is just a flimsy excuse for a cavalcade of cat puns – but you’d be ignoring the myriad inventive ways The Gentlebros manages to reconfigure these basics building blocks throughout its adventure, or the breezy compulsiveness borne of its fuss-free, bloat-free action.
And it’s an approach that, I think, works better than ever in Cat Quest 3. In part (and I realize this might be my pirate bias talking), its new swashbuckling framework lends proceedings a bit more focus – somehow, for instance, blowing up an enemy feels a little more purposeful if there’s a bounty on their head back at the Milky Barrel tavern – and the introduction of high seas sailing adds another welcome beat to the series’ usual rhythms.
Realistically, all this latest entry does is break the series’ familiar open-world map into smaller landmasses then insists you sail (or float on an inflatable ring, if you prefer more languid traversal) between them. And the world is so densely packed there’s rarely any need to be on the water for more than a few seconds. But its boats feel great at sea, with their super-tight turning and physics-defying speed boosts, and the arcade-y ship-to-ship combat (aim, fire, evade) is similarly satisfying in its simplicity. Throw in some inventively daft quest – chasing legendary catfish around the map on behalf of an extremely grumpy fisherman, for instance, or strolling through a dungeon structured like a choose-your-own-adventure romance novel – and it’s hard not to be won over .
And this, really, is what makes Cat Quest – both the series and this latest outing – work so well. Its constituent parts might be breezily lightweight, but they’re also wonderfully, exactly honed, meaning there’s never a moment it isn’t a pleasure to play. Shake all these joyfully moreish bits together and scatter them across a dense map, and you’ve got a welcoming (sometimes challenging) game of brisk questing, satisfyingly fleet combat, and compulsive gear acquisition that never languishes on anything long enough to let it grow old. Third time around, I was skeptical the formula could still feel fresh, but Cat Quest 3 is as delightfully winning as ever – generous, approachable, compelling, and with just oddles of charm.
A copy of Cat Quest 3 was provided by Kepler Interactive.
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