If you're familiar with Cat Quest, probably all I need to tell you about Cat Quest 3 is that it's pretty much the same thing, only this time with pirates. That is to say, it's a deal withBut if you haven't yet played the super-casual, ultra-simplified open-world action RPG series from pun-obsessed developer TheGentlebros, I feel like I need to do some explaining.
The original Cat Quest came out in 2017 and was immediately hailed as a great thing by people with exceptional and specific tastes. The pitch is pretty simple: what if it was a sprawling open-world action-RPG with all the bells and whistles stripped away? You have your adventures, your exploration, your combat, your quests, your dungeon-crawling, your leveling, plus tons of treasure and infinite gear, just pared down as much as possible without the whole thing collapsing into its own insubstantiality, then buffed to a sheen.
Cat Quest 2 did it all over again in 2019, this time with dogs and two-player co-op, and five years later, we have a third outing that shakes up the familiar formula a bit by covering half the map in water, handing you a boat, and then decking it out in pirates. Take away the tricorn hats, cheery ditties, and other nautical frills and Cat Quest 3 is hardly That a nice change for the series, but honestly, who cares when it's still a pleasure to play?
This time, you’re a young feline pirate who, with the help of his disembodied cat ghost friend, sets out on a quest across the sun-bleached, palm-tree-strewn Purribean Archipelago to find the mysterious treasure of the North Star, fending off other cat-based pirate crews along the way. It’s the streamlined setup of Cat Quest’s open-world action RPG, reimagined as a classic pirate fantasy, full of buried treasure, high-seas adventures, and cutlass combat. And like its predecessors, it’s a game that favors joyful immediacy over fussiness. Battles are over in seconds and dungeons rarely take more than a few minutes to complete, making it a perfect game for those who are always short on time and an excellent candidate if you’re looking for something simple but not patronizing to play with a youngster.
None of this deliberate simplification would work, of course, if Cat Quest 3 didn't have the foundation to support its easily accessible action, but like its predecessors, its fundamentals are an endless joy. At the heart of its success is a wonderfully lively combat system, which infuses proceedings with, of all things, the same kind of rhythmic, dodge-focused satisfaction as a Souls game. Enemies bounce into the air, ready to slam back down, or unleash cascades of icy stalagmites beneath your hairy backside, whereupon you respond by quickly rolling away and then sliding back in for a swift one-two punch of the sword. Even with the combat's few added wrinkles (a secondary pistol for ranged attacks, crowd-control-focused magic, and elemental weaknesses to consider), it never feels particularly deepbut its fast arcade fluidity remains satisfying throughout. Plus, there's enough variety in enemy encounters that its simplicity never feels like a flaw.
That's what makes Cat Quest so effective. Its constituent parts may be lightheartedly light, but they're also beautifully, precisely honed, meaning there's never a moment when it's not a pleasure.
And this kind of carefully considered rationalization is everywhere in Cat Quest 3. Sure, you could argue that its puzzles never get more complicated than flipping a couple of switches in the right order, that its dungeons (which now come in both 3D and side-scrolling variations) are little more than simple branching corridors with a couple of furtive secrets thrown in, and that its story is just a flimsy excuse for a cavalcade of cat puns, but that would be ignoring the myriad of creative ways that TheGentlebros manages to reconfigure these basic building blocks throughout its adventure, or the lighthearted compulsiveness born of its no-frills, no-bloat action.
And it's an approach that, I think, works better than ever in Cat Quest 3. In part (and I realize this might be my pirate bias speaking), its new, reckless structure lends a little more focus to the actions: somehow, for example, blowing up an enemy feels a little more intentional if there's a bounty on their head at the Milky Barrel tavern, and the introduction of open-sea sailing adds another welcome rhythm to the series' usual beats.
Realistically, all this latest entry does is break up the series' usual open-world map into smaller landmasses, then insists that you sail (or float on an inflatable ring, if you prefer a more languid traversal) between them. And the world is so densely packed that you rarely need to be in the water for more than a few seconds. But its boats do seem Great at sea, with their super-tight turns and physics-defying speed boosts, and the arcade-style ship-to-ship combat (aim, shoot, dodge) is equally satisfying in its simplicity. Throw in a few inventive and zany quests—chasing a legendary catfish across the map for an extremely grumpy fisherman, for example, or wandering through a choose-your-own-adventure romance-novel-style dungeon—and it’s hard not to be hooked.
And that’s what makes Cat Quest, both the series and this latest entry, work so well. Its constituent parts may be cheerfully lightweight, but they’re also wonderfully, precisely honed, meaning there’s never a moment when it’s not a joy to play. Mix all these joyfully appetizing pieces together and scatter them across a dense map, and you have a cozy (sometimes challenging) game of quick missions, satisfying fleet combat, and compulsive gear acquisition that never languishes on anything long enough for it to grow stale. Third time around, I was skeptical that the formula could still feel new, but Cat Quest 3 is as deliciously successful as ever: generous, accessible, engrossing, and with just a hint of charm.
A copy of Cat Quest 3 was provided by Kepler Interactive.