The Cat Quest series has become an increasingly immersive and complex adventure RPG experience. What started as a very simple Diablo with Cats concept has evolved into a truly charismatic and stylized offering, and that’s even more evident in the third installment, Cat Quest III. Previously known by the additional tagline “Caribbean Cat Pirates” as the theme of this game is pirates and that means heading out to a cartoonish, feline, rodent-infested version of the tropical sea to freely explore in a 2.5D open world.
Like other Cat Quest titles, Cat Quest III has a central story that drives your exploration and acts as a guiding arrow for the direction you take in the open world, but it’s by no means mandatory. One of the brilliant elements of Cat Quest III is that you can venture in any direction you see fit and explore the area as you wish. Very early in the game, you’re presented with the basic tools for getting around, such as a boat that lets you cross waves with ease, and then it’s up to you to decide how to use them. The world is populated with enemies and hazards of varying strength and lethality, meaning you’ll soon come across threats that will destroy you without breaking a sweat. But that doesn’t mean you can’t at least try to face them within five minutes of starting the game.
The freedom of exploration is undoubtedly Cat Quest III’s greatest strength. I’ve played big budget RPGs that had more rigorous exploration than this game. The fact that you can complete almost all of the side quests and find all of the collectibles before getting into the main story means that you can really put your own stamp on Cat Quest III. Although I will say that this is perhaps a strength for the simple reason that the main story doesn’t feel heavy or important. It’s a dialogue-free game that uses antagonists that don’t have much significance with the player’s nameless character, meaning there’s never that driving force pushing you through the campaign before you focus on additional tasks.
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It should also be noted that Cat Quest III is a very rudimentary game. There isn’t much depth to the gameplay and structure, and that’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s incredibly easy to pick up and understand, and you can create truly devilish builds that will defeat the toughest bosses. On the other hand, you feel like you’ve seen it all before, with the puzzles and the way they’re presented, and with the combat encounters.
As for the first point, many of the puzzles simply consist of solving tasks with blue magic stones, always trying to hit them in the right order. The challenge is to determine the order. This goes hand in hand with chests to find, which are usually guarded by enemies or hidden in bushes or under suspicious elements in the environment, such as oddly colored starfish. The chest hunt goes as far as simply hitting anything that doesn’t look natural to find the last one that alludes to you.
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When it comes to combat, while there are many different types of enemies (both land and sea), each with their own skills and attack chains, they’re all pretty easy to defeat, to the point that you don’t have to do anything great to defeat them. The same goes for bosses, which are mostly regular enemies with much larger health bars. There are a few that bring genuinely new mechanics, but often they’re rarities. Is there anything appealing about jumping into a battle, knocking down and shooting enemies without breaking a sweat, to gain experience and gold to level up your character? Yes, it’s a fun loop. But it’s also essentially all you’ll find in Cat Quest III.
As far as building and progression goes, experience basically just refers to how many equippable slots your character and ship have to play with skill combinations. Otherwise, building focuses on finding items, armor, weapons, etc. throughout the world, determining how their various effects and unique properties combine with each other, developing a build that suits your playstyle, and then using the gold you acquire to upgrade the level of those items regularly to ensure they don’t fall behind your rapidly increasing experience level. As far as the RPG elements go, it’s pretty basic, but considering Cat Quest III is a very fast and short game, I think the simplicity of building is also one of its strongest elements.
Another aspect where Cat Quest III shines is the theme and its aesthetics. Not only does this game look amazing with its adorable and fun cartoon graphics, it’s also effortlessly fun with pop culture references. You’ll find missions where you have to defeat a vampire boss in an 8-bit Castlevania-style dungeon. There are Cathulhu boss battles, mini visual novel missions, and so many other cat-related puns that you’ll lose track. The Gentlebros must surely run out of cat jokes after three Cat Quest games.
In short, Cat Quest III is another fun action-adventure RPG from The Gentlebros. It’s easy to get into and play, it has a great sense of humor, a really free world design, fantastic art and overall aesthetic, and even features co-op. Mechanically, it’s not the most complex game, it has a mediocre and fairly forgettable storyline, and it’s over in a jiffy, but otherwise it’s a delightful and charming title that will effortlessly keep you entertained for a few afternoons.
