Cat Quest 3

Game Title: Cat Quest 3
Released: August 8, 2024
Game Length: 8 Hours
Grade: B

Gameplay

Weapons: The developers have tried their best to make combat interesting by establishing some ground rules when it comes to what items you use in your arsenal. This time around, you will have to choose one melee weapon and one ranged weapon. Let's take each type one at a time. You can choose to equip a shield that you "plant" into the ground in front of you instead of swinging it. If you don't move, the shield will remain stationary for a few seconds and use a special ability whenever an enemy hits it. The shield also keeps you from using any special dodge abilities. The claws enable you to make multiple hits in quick succession with some quirks that have you moving around the field. The standard sword can be equipped to provide you special dodge maneuvers and sometimes add elemental properties. A pistol is a weapon that does increased damage and can fire a number of times before it burns out. It will naturally reload when you aren't firing a bullet or restrict you from firing a single shot at a decreased rate if you use all the bullets available. A wand can continuously fire but does half the damage of a pistol. You can also phase dodge that prevents you from receiving damage from any projectiles along the way. 

Abilities: Each boss in the game has a certain style with strengths and weaknesses such as how fire will slowly burn enemies and ice will slow them down. You can check the tooltips in your inventory to see all the modifiers. Depending on the circumstances, you can choose a certain style of gameplay when you accumulate the proper gear sets from each boss dungeon. There are quite a number of them with a few optional side quests that will provide you additional perks. Perhaps the most lethal was the gold armor that increases your damage proportioned to the amount of gold you have. An usual choice for the developers is having only your equipment be upgraded with gold while your magic increases after contributing a number of crystals. They can be upgraded a maximum of three ranks.You can slot four magic abilities to the bumpers and triggers of the controller. Up to four accessories can be equipped as you level.

Environment

Ship: A new addition to the game is the ship you control. There doesn't seem to be any way to manually swivel your cannon around as you move, but there is quite a bit of leeway to how much the game automatically targets your enemy. You can slot a total of eight upgrades, including what type of special weapon you want to fire. Your vessel can be difficult to maintain as there is no real way to prevent damage or slowly repair other than increasing your health. You can abandon ship at any time or automatically bail when it gets destroyed. To repair the wreckage, you must keep within a certain distance for a few seconds. Be careful as enemies will target your ship with or without you on board. You can recall your ship to any dock if you don't feel like tracking it down. The game provides you the freedom to explore anywhere on the map almost immediately when you start, but you will want to watch those differences in level when they are displayed over enemies.

2D: Perhaps another odd choice in this edition is how dungeons are designed in a two-dimensional space. There are only a few isometric areas outside the occasional cave side quest and the overhead map. In these areas, you will not be able to jump over obstacles. Amusingly, you can move to the side enough that a ladder prompt won't appear but not enough to effectively dodge anything. These environments will force you to learn how to use wand phasing and shield blocking to proceed.

Summary

Review: The game has a lot less content compared to its predecessor. There are no longer two characters on the screen unless you have a second player join in. You can choose to play around in the space or head straight to the final boss. The story is presented in each section you explore instead of a linear path. For a pirate game, there is oddly less treasure chests to find. While the story was compelling and the artwork improved, Cat Quest 2 was perhaps a better game overall. I don't recommend this game.