“Cat Quest 3 is a light but charming pirate adventure that’ll make you feel like a kid again.”
Pros
- Charming cartoon art
- Freeing ocean exploration
- Deep RPG customization
- Clever New Game+ options
Cons
- Flat pirate story
- Overused puns
- Dungeons lack creativity
I’m sailing on the open seas in my pirate ship, my furry hands on the wheel. It’s smooth sailing until I spot something in the distance. An unfamiliar shape appears on the horizon. As it inches closer, I see a splash of bright yellow and a round, hulking ship frame. I gasp as it comes clearly into focus: It’s a giant rubber duck. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment, as I begin firing my cannons at it and circling it to avoid its fire. I’m no match. It guns me down, my ship going down with a big splash.
At that moment, I’m no longer a 35-year-old playing an RPG on my Steam Deck. I’m a kid in a bathtub again.
That’s the mindset that players really need to embrace in Cat Quest 3. The RPG threequel is a light-hearted adventure that captures the imaginative spirit of childhood playtime in a swashbuckling adventure. Though its flat story and eye-rolling puns may not cross a generational divide, Cat Quest 3 makes up for those flaws with a concise, but surprisingly deep RPG that let me loose in a pleasant cartoon playground for a while.
Pun purr-gatory
Cat Quest 3 continues the story of the quietly popular action-RPG series, a tale that developer The Gentlebros clearly have more plans for. I take on the role of a feline pirate who sets out on a quest across the Purribean to track down a nefarious pirate king and the treasured North Star. Now three games into the saga, The Gentlebros still seem like they’re having fun imagining a world inhabited by warring cats and rats. It’s like watching an episode of a classic cartoon.
You could skip most dialogue in the game and have more or less the exact same experience with it.
I can’t say that any of its narrative hooks are terribly engaging, though. Even with plenty of dialogue and a handful of eccentric NPCs, it’s a boilerplate pirate tale that doesn’t do anything particularly special with its animal cast. I’m a pirate. There are other pirates. There’s a treasure. Only one narrative thread teases a more fun mystery that’s more there for sequel-building.
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