Tag: Impressions

Cat Quest I, II, and III — Impressions and References

writ­ten 7/12/2026, updat­ed 7/12/2026

Back to Video Game Impres­sions

My first time ever play­ing this series was a demo of the 2nd game. I did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly buy it, but the game was intrigu­ing, so when the tril­o­gy went on sale this year (2026), I decid­ed to buy and play it. After com­plet­ing all 3 games, I was over­all dis­sat­is­fied with the 3rd. What fol­lows is my hon­est opin­ion about this tril­o­gy and an explo­ration of some ref­er­ences.

SPOILER WARNING: I will be divulging sto­ry details in this writ­ing

Impressions

Cat Quest I (2017)

Dev: Gen­tle­bros

Publ: PQube

Syn­op­sis: You, a Drag­onblood, start off in a small boat where your sis­ter has been kid­napped by Drakoth, the main vil­lain of the game. You explore Felin­gard along­side Spir­ry (who is hint­ed at orig­i­nal­ly being Mauth, the first cat taught by Aelius to speak), ful­fill­ing quests, explor­ing dun­geons, killing mon­sters, defeat­ing drag­ons, learn­ing spells, gain­ing pow­ers (water walk­ing and fly­ing), and lis­ten­ing to ani­mal puns, all the while pow­er­ing up to res­cue your sis­ter. Drakoth pesters you along the way, goad­ing you into gain­ing strength. As you adven­ture, the real sto­ry unfolds, and you learn about Aelius, one of the “Old Mas­ters” depict­ed as a shad­owy humanoid body shape, cre­at­ed the Drag­onblood to fight back against the drag­ons in the Drag­on Wars. They suc­ceed­ed, but the oth­er Old Mas­ters real­ized the dan­ger that Aelius had cre­at­ed, so they trapped Aelius in the Zero Dimen­sion. Drakoth goads you into becom­ing pow­er­ful in the hopes of open­ing a por­tal to free Aelius. In a twist, you lat­er find out that your sis­ter was nev­er real, just a con­struct cre­at­ed by Drakoth to force you into pow­er­ing up, AND that Spir­ry, your lov­able cat­pan­ion spir­it, was work­ing for Drakoth all along! The game ends with a bit of a cliffhang­er, as Aelius does, indeed, escape the Zero Dimen­sion.

Impres­sions: Aside from some lit­tle gripes, I very much loved this game! It was cute, cre­ative, and the sto­ry was mov­ing. The fight­ing dynam­ics were fun, each powerup offered a wel­come improve­ment, the side quests ample and fun­ny. The map was just large and var­ied enough, and, sim­i­lar­ly, the mon­sters were amply dif­fi­cult and inter­est­ing. And the east­er eggs! There were only two gripes I had about the game: the side quests were basi­cal­ly all fetch quests… which in and of itself not a big deal. The prob­lem I had was the con­stant run­ning back and forth across the entire map. It got bet­ter after the powerups, but still… In the game’s defense, they also built in the exact gripe to the dia­logue. The 2nd gripe was orig­i­nal­ly a boon for the game: All 3 games are chock-full of puns in the ani­mal vein (e.g. paw­tas­tic, pawt­ner, etc.). While at first it’s cute, I even­tu­al­ly got annoyed with it across the entire tril­o­gy. It’s a minor gripe but added some degree of annoy­ing­ness. While you can’t active­ly upgrade any of your equip­ment at the black­smith (it’s all ran­dom), you don’t real­ly need to as the game takes care of it for you, and this is there­fore not a true gripe.

Con­clu­sion: High­ly rec­om­mend­ed (play #1 before #2), cute, cre­ative, sol­id game!!

Cat Quest II (2019)

Dev: Gen­tle­bros

Publ: PQube

Syn­op­sis: In Cat Quest I, Felin­gard is inhab­it­ed by all cats, though the exis­tence of dogs and rats are dis­cussed (there was even a dog mas­querad­ing as a cat to try and cause chaos). Cat Quest II intro­duces dogs into the mix right away as you play a cat and dog duo of roy­al blood, called into the world across time­lines to try and fix the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Togeth­er with Kir­ry, your new spir­it guide, you work with return­ing NPC Kit Cat the Black­smith (hint­ed at being real­ly old as she knows all kind of old stuff), and her rival Hot­to Dog­go the Japan­ese Weapon­smith to fight and explore your way through Felin­gard and the Lupus Empire. The goal is to defeat tyran­ni­cal Lion­er and Wolfen and end the war sap­ping the inhab­i­tants of their ener­gy and liveli­hoods. The 2nd game offers many option­al boss­es, more east­er eggs, even more side quests and dun­geons, mild­ly dif­fer­ing fight­ing dynam­ics (with the 2 char­ac­ters swap­pable on the fly), larg­er, more var­ied map, and over­all, a larg­er scale game. In the end, you find out that Lion­er and Wolfen are YOU because you were sum­moned from a par­al­lel time­line to fix this one with your cama­raderie ver­sus their nev­er-end­ing strife. Along the way, you find out that Aelius is yet again the real vil­lain, and this time he is the active main bad guy you have to defeat to beat the game. He is depict­ed not just as a shad­owy sil­hou­ette of a human, but a more defined humanoid with a large, evil eye on his fore­head. At the end of the game, you both are able to sum­mon the true Kings­blade with your friend­ship, defeat evil Aelius eye­ball, then get sent back to your time with no mem­o­ry of any of the events that tran­spired… though there was an omi­nous reap­pear­ance of Aelius after you had sup­pos­ed­ly defeat­ed him, hint­ing towards a con­tin­u­a­tion of the sto­ry.

Impres­sions: This game was VERY enjoy­able! Would I say more than the last? Eh… it has improve­ments upon the 1st game, but I don’t know if I enjoyed it more. I’m going to say I enjoyed it about the same as Cat Quest I ‚and am sat­is­fied with the improve­ments and dif­fer­ences of the game. They improved upon the far-flung fetch quests, the map is sim­i­lar, yet dif­fer­ent, the intro­duc­tion of tem­ples made the game more fight­ing-focused than the 1st game, and the scope of the map was larg­er with the addi­tion of the Lupus Empire and there­fore plen­ty of new and old mon­sters. Minor puz­zles (mazes) were added. There were less side quests, but the ones there were bet­ter thought out. Giv­en the nature of the on-the-fly-swapout of the main char­ac­ters, there exist­ed a lay­er of strat­e­gy not found in the 1st game. The devel­op­ers added lit­tle interesting/funny ele­ments like a rabid fan club for Hot­to Dog­go that you have to beat up. With the pros, come the cons which I have more of this time around sim­ply because it’s more com­plex. First, my orig­i­nal pun­ny gripe remains. Sec­ond, Kit Cat. Not only was her “South­ern Accent” extra annoy­ing this time (too forced), but they added a small lay­er of sex­u­al­i­ty non-exis­tent before. Your cat char­ac­ter along with oth­er NPCs are enam­ored with her the entire game. Con­sid­er­ing all oth­er char­ac­ters except for Hot­to Dog­go are your gener­ic NPCs, her new­ly sexy vis­age (she was mere­ly cute before, and now sexy in her old age?) I guess is attrac­tive to oth­ers? Third, Hot­to Dog­go. Aside from Kit Cat with her “south­ern accent,” every­one else is pret­ty gener­ic. Then Hot­to Dog­go shows up and is… Japan­ese? When no one else in the entire Lupus Empire is…? It’s ran­dom and rather annoy­ing. Fourth, while I may have missed some­thing dur­ing the game, Kir­ry him­self isn’t real­ly ever explained. Who is he, exact­ly? Gripes as they are, these are very minor and had no real impact to the game.

Con­clu­sion: Also high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Makes improve­ments and expan­sions upon the first game. Great sequel.

Cat Quest III (2024)

Dev: Gen­tle­bros

Publ: Kepler Inter­ac­tive

Syn­op­sis: As a baby, the Pi-Rat King destroyed your ship and fam­i­ly, and you are the only one to sur­vive. You even­tu­al­ly wash up on a shore and tak­en in by Cap­tain Cappey who rais­es you into a young cat. Turns out the unique sym­bol on your head marks you as a Seek­er. Your pirate spir­it friend is on the search for the North Star Trea­sure which is sup­posed to grant any wish. As a young pirate, claw/slash/magic your way across islands on your pirate ship to secure all trea­sure as a good pirate would. Aelius pops up once again, trapped in the Zero Realm with… sev­er­al oth­ers like him? There’s a benev­o­lence along­side the omi­nous, there. In the end, it turns out that Cap­tain Cappey is actu­al­ly your father and is search­ing for the North Star Trea­sure to regain his life to be with you. How­ev­er, the North Star Trea­sure is actu­al­ly a per­vert­ed arti­fact made mali­cious by the greed of those who seek it. Aelius ends up reviv­ing Cappey who gave up his life to save you from the North Star, and suc­ceeds in acquir­ing the 3 arti­facts he has sought across the 3 games. The Zero Dimen­sion peo­ples allude to the “Apaw­ca­lypse” and the game ends.

Impres­sions: If the syn­op­sis was notice­ably short­er, that’s because it is, and basi­cal­ly sums this whole game up. While the first 2 games had many great ele­ments, there aren’t as many this time around. I did like the char­ac­ter vari­ety where the orig­i­nal games had gener­ic NPCs, this game’s char­ac­ters are all unique (apart from the mon­sters) and there­fore have added depth. There are some inter­est­ing and very dif­fer­ent ele­ments in the game such as local­ized retro graph­ics, more world puz­zles, and chal­leng­ing mon­sters with rewards. The ship con­trols are very smooth and well-done, and in gen­er­al there’s a quick­ness to the fight­ing that’s sim­i­lar to the oth­er games. And that’s about all I liked about it. GRIPE TIME!! Right off the bat dur­ing the intro, I already had a fore­bod­ing, sink­ing feel­ing when I heard… Voice Act­ing... unless it’s a large stu­dio the inclu­sion of voice act­ing usu­al­ly sig­nals BAD because resources for the game had to be used for that. To be fair, there’s not too much and they could eas­i­ly have just used some of the devel­op­ers, but I gen­er­al­ly dis­like voice act­ing as a whole (the only excep­tion is when it’s amaz­ing or nec­es­sary for a game). Then came the game per­spec­tive: where the oth­er games were a top-down map, this was both 3⁄4 and 2D side scroll when you get into some dun­geons. I guess it was to accom­mo­date the sail­ing por­tions, but it com­plete­ly changed the feel of the game. Minor, but still a gripe. Bat­tles! What I enjoyed most about the oth­er games end­ed being quite bor­ing in this 3rd install­ment! The bat­tles were bor­ing, repet­i­tive, and offered no real chal­lenges. All you had to do was spam the but­tons for fight­ing and mag­ic, and that’s it! Whether it’s melee, range, or ship. The inclu­sion of guns in here was inter­est­ing but did­n’t end up adding too much val­ue apart from being use­ful in some por­tions. Even boss­es 20 lev­els high­er than my own were beat­able so long as you spammed stuff enough (me play­ing on easy). Strat­e­gy was­n’t a huge part of the equa­tion. Then there’s the Weird Innu­en­do. Chalk it up to my slight­ly dirty adult brain, but I swear there’s a bunch of weird sex­u­al stuff slid into the game. What am I talk­ing about? Infin­i­ty Tow­er and there­fore Dog­gy Jones both seemed so very… phal­lic. Cathu­lu has ten­ta­cles which makes sense, but some of those ten­ta­cles looked… kind of slimy and pink… Then there’s Mama Mil­ka whom every­one loves, and gives… Mama’s Milk? She lit­er­al­ly gives milk as rewards. I know she runs a tav­ern for cats and the asso­ci­a­tion between cats and milk (which you real­ly should­n’t feed your cat, btw), but… yeah. I’m hon­est­ly sur­prised that she’s not some giant-boobed sexy cat (but then again, maybe there’s some orig­i­nal ver­sion of her that is…) and is instead a gigan­tic mus­cu­lar one. Final­ly, the Sto­ry which is the biggest gripe of all. It’s short. It’s con­fus­ing. It does­n’t seem to fit the rest of the tril­o­gy? Cap­tain Cappey is sup­posed to be your dad. He escaped Purrga­to­ry to get to you. This means that between the time he died and you washed up ashore, he defied death. He nev­er real­ly acts like a father at all dur­ing the game, more like a mere com­pan­ion. Aelius was sup­posed to have escaped the Zero Dimen­sion, so why is he back in it, and who are those oth­er peo­ple? I thought it was only him in there, trapped by the oth­er humans. He’s sup­posed to be a bad guy… or is he, because he was kind of a good guy here? It’s not clear in this game at all. Per­haps there’s sup­posed to be anoth­er game? Regard­less, I’m con­fused. Aren’t we not sup­posed to allow him to get the 3 arti­facts? The main sto­ry is very short and shal­low, while the sto­ries for the side char­ac­ters Pi-Rat King, Meow­tal­li­ca, Takome­ow­ki, etc. are well-fleshed.

It can’t be a coin­ci­dence that these seem so very phal­lic… Espe­cial­ly Dog­gy Jones! They could have designed them so many oth­er ways!!

Con­clu­sion: While it’s anoth­er game in the series, I only played it for the Aelius sto­ry (as con­fus­ing as that was). Despite the obvi­ous­ly high­er bud­get, the game itself fell short of the charm of the pri­or games. I’m not sure I’d rec­om­mend it, though it’s not bad if you for­get the oth­er games and think of it on its own. If you do that, though, you’ll see how woe­ful­ly short and shal­low the game is as a whole.

References

Cat Quest I

  • Box Hel­met, Armor, Slashy Sword — Gen­tle­bros 1st game Slashy Hero
  • Kit­mas — Christ­mas

Cat Quest II

  • Cathul­hu - Chthul­hu
  • Hot­to Dog­go - He has a pen­chant for hot dogs, he’s sup­posed to be very attrac­tive, and “hot­to dog­go” is a nod to his Japan­ese­ness as that’s how Japan­ese peo­ple say “hot dog”
  • Doge Knight — Bat man also known as “the Dark Knight”
  • Excalipurr — Excal­ibur
  • Cat­nip Bra­vo — cameo from Cat­nip Bra­vo the web­com­ic
  • Pun­do­ra — Pan­do­ra’s Box, but with puns refer­ring to all the puns in the world
  • Dr. Jekyll - Jekyll and Hyde
  • Kei-Nein Unit — K9 unit

Cat Quest III

  • Pi-Rat — Rat that’s a pirate
  • Meow­tal­li­ca — Metal­li­ca (the crew has con­certs and are light­ning ele­ment)
  • Takome­ow­ki — Takoy­a­ki is octo­pus-filled balls of wheat and he is a cat octo­pus
  • Dratcu­la — Drac­u­la Rat
  • Purrevor Belme­ownt — Trevor Bel­mont, a nod to the Castl­e­va­nia games
  • Dog­gy Jones — Davy Jones
  • Kidd Kat — Cap­tain Kidd, and Kit Kat from the oth­er games. Kidd Cat is her younger broth­er
  • Mage Bon­ney — Anne Bon­ny the famous female pirate and “bone”
  • Macho Dog — Macho Doge meme
  • Cathul­hu — Chthul­hu
  • 8‑Bit Cas­tle — retro themed tow­er (the joke is that the vam­pire rat bites his vic­tims 8 times and there­fore 8‑bit) with 8‑bit graph­ics and sound
  • Pur­van­na — Havan­na
  • Purribean Sea — Car­ribean Sea
  • Fur­tigua — Antigua, Tor­tu­ga
  • Great Fur­ri­er Reef — Great Bar­ri­er Reef
  • Paw­man Isles — Cay­man Islands
  • Twin Islands — Island ver­sion of the Twin Towns from Cat Quest I and II
  • Antares, Ori­on, Cen­tau­ri, Polaris — Stars. Antares, Ori­on, and Polaris are some of the bright­est stars with Polaris being the North Star. Cen­tau­ri is the odd one out.
  • Gold Tow­er — Midas’s curse in mythol­o­gy, and a nod to Pirates of the Caribbean Aztec coins

Back to Video Game Impres­sions

Mass Effect — The Book

After enjoy­ing the Res­i­dent Evil book series, I was real­ly excit­ed to try read­ing Mass Effect. Upon shop­ping, I noticed that reviews were not so stel­lar. That does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly both­er me as I pre­fer com­ing to my own opin­ions, so I bought them any­ways — Androm­e­da includ­ed. Here, I explore my impres­sions about the first book in the series.

Rec­om­mend­ed: NO

Rat­ing: 2 out of 5

Mass Effect — Revelation (2007)

Pre­quel to the Mass Effect games, writ­ten by Drew Karpyshyn

323 pages

Sum­ma­ry

This book is a pre­quel to the events set with­in the game series. It cov­ers Cap­tain David Ander­son from his N7 train­ing to his Lieu­tenant rank, and also includes Saren the Spec­tre. The pro­logue explains how Rear Admi­ral Gris­som, Hero of Earth, chose Ander­son specif­i­cal­ly out of all the can­di­dates of the N7 pro­gram to help lead troops dur­ing the First Con­tact War with the Turi­ans. Then fast-for­ward to a mis­sion where Lt. Ander­son and his patrol team inves­ti­gate a may­day sig­nal. He is paint­ed a capa­ble leader and hero before return­ing to the Citadel. He bit­ter­ly deals with divorce from his wife back on Earth and is then giv­en his next mission–one that’s on the down-low. He’s to go after Kahlee Sanders, the child of Admi­ral Gris­som (now retired and grumpy) who is in trou­ble as the lone sur­vivor after a ques­tion­able lab was destroyed (the one Ander­son respond­ed to). They must con­tend with Skarr the mer­ce­nary Kro­gan, the Blue Suns mer­ce­nary group, and Saren the Turi­an Spec­tre. The secrets of the destroyed lab are uncov­ered, paint­ing humans in a bad light. Human Ambas­sador Goyle must play the Coun­cil (or be played?) to help defend the human race and for­ward their agen­da. Along the way, Ander­son grows feel­ings for his ward, and then feels betrayed when she does­n’t ful­ly trust him. Even­tu­al­ly, Sanders gets cap­tured by the Blue Suns’ rich Batar­i­an employ­er. Although Saren must help Ander­son by order of the Coun­cil, he and Ander­son split up any­ways. Saren blows up the ele­ment zero facil­i­ty to com­plete his mis­sion, but not before learn­ing about Sov­er­eign and want­i­ng it for him­self, while Ander­son strug­gles to kill Skarr and save Sanders. The book ends with Ander­son upset that Sanders does not wish to get into a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with him, and she leaves.

Pros — The sto­ry helps to uncov­er more about Ander­son who isn’t touched upon too much in the game. It brings togeth­er some his­to­ry that can become con­fus­ing­ly lost in the lore-rich games. Human­i­ty is quite new to every­thing, so this high­lights some of the thoughts and strug­gles of humans as they attempt to inte­grate and gain respect from the oth­er aliens. Uneth­i­cal and tor­ture-lov­ing Saren is very well described, and his role segues neat­ly into the first Mass Effect game where he had already found Sov­er­eign and was being slow­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed. Most of the alien species were explored in this book, even the Batar­i­ans who don’t get a lot of love in the game.

Cons - The author spends an inor­di­nate amount of time describ­ing — so much so, that I skipped through most of it. His por­tray­al of females in the book is not par­tic­u­lar­ly favor­able, paint­ing most, if not all, the females as inept in some fash­ion or form. Even though Ander­son is the main focus of the book, I found him to be an absolute idiot much of the time. In fact, of all the char­ac­ters, Saren and Skarr are prob­a­bly the only ones who weren’t irri­tat­ing. Apart from Saren’s tor­ture scenes, the book felt quite bor­ing as a whole. The bare bones of the book flows, but the nar­ra­tive (espe­cial­ly towards the end) bor­ders on illog­i­cal or unnec­es­sary.

Impres­sions

As men­tioned pri­or, I was real­ly excit­ed to read this. As a pre­quel, and there­fore an orig­i­nal work, it had the poten­tial to be great, as it would not be con­fined to the sto­ry­line of the game. Sad­ly, I do NOT rec­om­mend this book even if you’re a fan of the Mass Effect series. The pro­logue start­ed out poor­ly for me, where after the first few para­graphs I already had to reread the words a few times out of bore­dom. As a whole, I end­ed up read­ing prob­a­bly half of the book, skip­ping much of it for lack of inter­est. While it did a good job of even­tu­al­ly tying into the first Mass Effect game, I just want­ed the book to be done and over. None of the char­ac­ters res­onat­ed with me aside from Saren and Skarr because every­one else was an idiot. The book left a sour taste in my mouth that made me not want to read the rest of the series, pre­fer­ring to just play the real Mass Effect game.

As a spoil­er, Kahlee Sanders appears to be one of the main char­ac­ters in the sec­ond book which is set right after Saren and Sov­er­eign attack the Citadel. UGH. I read as far as see­ing her there, and imme­di­ate­ly quit read­ing. If I felt her to be unlike­able in the first book, then I doubt I’ll like her in the sec­ond one. Per­haps I will return to the series in the future when I have noth­ing else to read.

Gripes

Descrip­tion: My first prob­lem with this was in the pro­logue where the author describes the ship car­ry­ing Admi­ral Gris­som. The worst case was of the Pre­sid­i­um. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this would be a recur­ring prob­lem: entire­ly too much descrip­tion and not enough action. I found myself skip­ping large sec­tions of text just to get to next part, it felt so exces­sive. And bor­ing. I get that the book was writ­ten in such a way that if peo­ple were to read it with­out play­ing the game, then they could under­stand, but I felt it to be too much. I wish the author had spent as much time nar­rat­ing the action scenes as describ­ing places.

Intro­spec­tion: Gen­er­al­ly, I enjoy get­ting into the minds of char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly after play­ing the game, but I did not enjoy the intro­spec­tion in this book. There was just not much going on their heads and the things they did think about were incon­se­quen­tial to char­ac­ter build­ing. The only thought process­es I found myself inter­est­ed in were from Saren, who, by the way, was well written…perhaps because of all the char­ac­ters in this book, he was the only one with a ded­i­cat­ed per­son­al­i­ty in the game…hmm. Lack of cre­ativ­i­ty on the author’s part?

Char­ac­ters: The char­ac­ters are not enjoy­able. They did not res­onate with me. Most of them were por­trayed as morons or were irri­tat­ing. I found myself not car­ing about the two main char­ac­ters, Ander­son and Sanders, though I want­ed to care about Ander­son because I liked him a lot in the game. He’d get upset over tiny insignif­i­cant things that a sol­dier as expe­ri­enced and sup­pos­ed­ly fan­tas­tic as a leader as he was should­n’t have got­ten in a tizzy about. Even Goyle, whom I ini­tial­ly liked as com­pared to Udi­na in the game, even­tu­al­ly grew…unhinged? I’m not sure what the author was try­ing to do to her.

Females: That brings me to the next gripe: the por­tray­al of women. Is it because the author is male? I’m not sure, but all the main females were obnox­ious in some fash­ion or form. Goyle as men­tioned above, start­ed out as a strong leader, but then her sub­se­quent intro­spec­tion paint­ed her…as not (per­haps the exces­sive explo­ration into her mind did her in here)? The book starts out with Ander­son lead­ing his small group respond­ing to a dis­tress call. In the group is one woman, Gun­nery Chief Dah, who is described as larg­er than most of the males, mus­cu­lar, and basi­cal­ly an uncouth brute with a mouth, yet supreme­ly skill­ful. Any­ways, she ends up get­ting shot in the leg, and instead of get­ting up to try and limp out of the col­laps­ing facil­i­ty like the tough marine she was sup­posed to be, she just lay there, and Ander­son had to car­ry her huge frame on his back. Even­tu­al­ly, she passed out alto­geth­er and all the males had to car­ry her. So much for tough sol­dier. Then there’s Ander­son­’s ex-wife on Earth who divorced him because he nev­er came home for many, many years. He’s bit­ter about the divorce for the entire­ty book, and I sim­ply can­not com­mis­er­ate with him. She’s por­trayed as a bad per­son for the divorce when she’d been wait­ing for him for about a decade, trapped inside of a rela­tion­ship with entire galax­ies in between and no accu­rate time­line of his return. Talk about a long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship! At least she end­ed it offi­cial­ly before try­ing to move on with the rest of her life. Then there’s the female Batar­i­an that betrays her facil­i­ty and then gets killed mer­ci­less­ly by Saren.

Ander­son: For the sup­posed main pro­tag­o­nist, he is not a like­able guy, and eas­i­ly offend­ed. He was good in the begin­ning dur­ing the N7 pro­logue, and clear­ly an excep­tion­al sol­dier in his lead­ing of the botched dis­tress call response. The whole divorce thing? Dumb, as stat­ed above. He’s a jerk, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with the Salari­an infor­ma­tion deal­er. Yeah, he has high ideals, so what? Instead of being grate­ful for the black-mar­ket infor­ma­tion, he berates her about hav­ing access to top secret infor­ma­tion. He does that again lat­er in the book, too. Dude. They have info. Who cares if they hacked in. They’re hack­ers. He’s extreme­ly emo­tion­al, and not over­ly smart…something that his N7 badge and gold­en ser­vice records are in direct oppo­si­tion to. Hard­ened sol­dier: emo­tion­al? When he’s deal­ing with Saren who is a noto­ri­ous and accom­plished Spec­tre, he tries to fist fight him. Then he devel­ops this stu­pid idea of feel­ings for Kahlee Sanders, his ward. OKAY, maybe there’s some slack to be cut because he was recent­ly divorced…or maybe not because it’s not like he ever saw his wife any­ways? If he’s as ded­i­cat­ed to his career as a sol­dier as he’s claimed to be, he would be see­ing her as a mis­sion objec­tive, not a poten­tial part­ner. The end­ing is the worst. Ander­son and Sanders exchange some words before he tries to kiss her and she stops him, explain­ing that their lives are about to be split apart again with their next mis­sions. It’s rea­son­able to not start some­thing as they would hard­ly ever see each oth­er. He gets real­ly upset, like mad, as if his last rela­tion­ship had­n’t just failed for the same rea­son. Per­haps he thinks he deserves a reward for pro­tect­ing and sav­ing her? That’s what it felt like to me, at least. Also, it’s nev­er clear exact­ly how old he is. She’s clear­ly young.

Sanders: Then that brings me to my biggest gripe of all: Kahlee Sanders, the lone sur­viv­ing sci­en­tist from the mys­te­ri­ous lab that explod­ed. In Mass Effect, any­one who is in space for the Alliance will be trained as a sol­dier. The book iter­ates over and over that she’s intel­li­gent — more intel­li­gent than your aver­age sci­en­tist. It also paints her ear­ly on as an extreme­ly capa­ble sol­dier when she defends her­self with bru­tal effi­cien­cy against a Blue Suns mer­ce­nary who tries to abduct her in Ely­si­um. She is Jon Gris­som’s daugh­ter after all! Well. Once Ander­son shows up, she’s sud­den­ly an annoy­ing damsel in dis­tress. What hap­pened to that capa­ble sol­dier? Even­tu­al­ly, she gets cap­tured where she is fear­ful of the tor­ture meth­ods they’re plan­ning on sub­ject­ing her to even though no one said any­thing about it (that is just bad sto­ry­telling, hon­est­ly). In the con­fine­ment, she con­sid­ered bash­ing her head repeat­ed­ly against the wall (what???) and then decides against it. When the door is loose, she man­ages to dis­lo­cate her shoul­der knock­ing it off (real­ly…?) which forces her sav­ior, Ander­son, to pop it back into place. Then, as they run from the quick­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing, explod­ing ele­ment zero fac­to­ry, she sud­den­ly, out of the blue falls to the ground, and is sim­ply so dis­tressed about every­thing (dur­ing an actu­al, life threat­en­ing, cri­sis sit­u­a­tion, mind you), that she refus­es to get up and move because she’s not a sol­dier, she’s just a sci­en­tist! She’s weak! Then Ander­son says, “…get up off your ass and get your feet mov­ing! That’s an order!” The text then goes, “Like a good sol­dier, she respond­ed to his com­mands.” So…wait…she’s a sol­dier now, not just a sci­en­tist? What exact­ly is she? A bur­den. Her only sav­ing grace is that she’s able to block Ander­son­’s moves at the end with a rea­son­able bit of log­ic.

In Con­clu­sion

It appears the book reviews are spot on. I’d rate it 2 stars out of 5. There were good parts, but most­ly I did not enjoy it. When you’re skip­ping half of the text in an effort to just fin­ish the darn thing, it’s not a good sign. Try­ing to read the sec­ond book and find­ing that it also has noth­ing to do with Com­man­der Shep­ard was also extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing. I guess I was hop­ing it would be like Res­i­dent Evil where I get to vis­it the same sto­ry but in book form. There’s artis­tic license avail­able to an author (with agree­ment from the pub­lish­er, of course) that would allow them to explore what would be “canon” in a game or not. I want­ed a sto­ry about Shep­ard’s adven­ture. He/she would not have to involve them­selves in any rela­tion­ships what­so­ev­er apart from cama­raderie and occa­sion­al, non-seri­ous flings. Shep­ard is a sol­dier after all, with a mis­sion. I get that there could be fall­out from fans, but man­ga and ani­me reg­u­lar­ly con­flict, and that’s because you under­stand that one is a book and the oth­er is not. As a pre­quel, though, this sto­ry would have been fine because it’s an orig­i­nal piece. What a let­down.