Tag: in game references

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

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

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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
  • Great Fur­ri­er Reed — 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

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