I spoke about this a few weeks ago with Aarklash Legacy, but there's a tendency with Indie RPGs to narrow down the focus to the barest essentials because there's often simply not enough time and resources to cover every aspect of what is often the most feature-rich genre. With Aarklash, everything outside of the combat took a hit, and Cat Quest instead focuses more on the exploration and side-questing common to open-world RPGs. Developed by the Gentlebros, Cat Quest reworks the Skyrim story for a particularly stalwart kitty who is pressed into heroism after the kitnapping of his sister. Much of the game involves becoming stronger, either through following the main quest objective or - as is more typical of the Elder Scrolls games it homages - by running around, exploring level-appropriate dungeons for useful equipment and experience, and completing the various fetch quests that the local townships have to offer. In fact, some story quests explicitly tell you to go off and level up some more, and the player's continuing progression even ties into the story to an extent.

Cat Quest's combat is simple as a result, though still offers its own share of challenges and isn't entirely mindless slashing. It's real-time, with the player moving to attack enemies with their standard weapon slash or with spells that require a mana stat that regenerates upon hitting enemies normally, the idea being to mix and match your melee and magic. Enemy attacks are telegraphed with red markers to suggest where their next attack will hit, so combat often becomes a game of getting close to enemies to trigger their attack, backing off with a dodge roll to let it harmlessly pass, and then getting in close for some fast combos while the enemy is recovering. The whole game follows this pattern, so the combat's rarely all that involved, but it can still catch you unawares with how fast some enemies can be and how some depend largely on elemental spells with specific zones: a lightning spell will cover a significant distance horizontal to either side of the caster, while an ice spell affects the same distance but vertically.

Cat Quest has clearly demarcated level zones - that is, the "you should be this tall to ride this dungeon" sort of warning - but it won't stop you if you want to leap in and try your luck with your skill alone to counteract the disproportionate stats between you and your foes. Ditto for quests. This can often mean finding better gear sooner, or greatly accelerating your XP gain, but only if you can pull it off. There's also many secrets to find, especially once you have the means to walk across water or fly (abilities you earn during the main story progression) and check the far corners of the map. The game also establishes a few plot mysteries (and some overt plugs) if you're attentive enough to seek it out, some of which hint towards where the story is going while others set the foundations for possible follow-up games. It's not too elaborate, but it's a little value add.

Unfortunately, I found Cat Quest to be very repetitive. Not just in the cycle of plundering ruins and fighting the same half-dozen enemy types over and over, but even in the way side-quests are designed. There's an awful lot of following tracks around and stopping some kind of summoning ritual, and it's clear the developers only had a certain number of tools at their disposal with which to build over 50 side-quests. They are (mostly) optional, so it's not like you have to complete them all, but side-quests are at their best when the designers use them as a way to unwind or try something bizarre that wouldn't fit the story for mechanical or tonal issues: a perfect example of this would be the side-quests in the Yakuza games, which diverge significantly from the serious tales of redemption and honor that the main stories encapsulate and are more frequently silly nonsequitur adventures where Kiryu and co. interact with Japan's more eccentric urbanites.

It might not be fair to review a game from the perspective of someone who has to complete every side-objective, but that's how I roll and that's where my reviews always tend to come from. I find it a valuable service because so few professional reviewers play games this way, or indeed are even able to given their deadlines, and from that perspective Cat Quest is a cute game with a lot of cat puns (and I've no intent to purrsecute them over those) that nonetheless becomes a slog before too long with its huge amount of recurring content borne of a lack of variables to work with. If you're a more casual player that's not usually inclined to see and do everything an open-world game has to offer, Cat Quest might offer an appealing Indie compression of that formula. If there's too much filler though, as there is here, I'm inclined to take the creators to task.

Rating: 3 out of 5.