Cat Quest III review for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox

I’ve always felt like pirate games are a lot more fun in theory than in practice. As amazing as it sounds to sail the high seas, get into sword fights, and plunder treasure, when you play a game like Skull and Bones – which I’d completely forgotten existed, let alone that I played it – or Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the reality doesn’t quite measure up.

Turns out, those games just needed some cats.

Admittedly, Cat Quest III isn’t a great game just because it stars cat pirates – but it certainly doesn’t hurt that the game is so committed to its theme. There are more cat-related puns than you can possibly imagine: you’re sailing in the Purribean, your enemies are Pi-rats, you press a button to fast furward through dialogues, you even purr and meow to punctuate dialogue. It adds up to give the game its own distinctive identity.

Mind you, it helps even more that the action is a whole lot of fun, too. And, thankfully, that’s true whether you’re at sea or on land. On your pirate ship, you can sail around a fairly large map, searching for treasures and mysteries and getting into naval battles. Your shop manoeuvres extremely well, which is a huge bonus when you find yourself battling ships that can be a few times larger.

On land, it’s just as fun. You can hop off your boat and start exploring islands whenever you want, and you can take on whatever enemies you come across while also gathering treasure. On top of that, there are plenty of dungeons to explore, each of them full of enemies and even more booty to be plundered.

What makes Cat Quest III’s combat really enjoyable, though, is the extent the game allows you to customize your character. Cat Quest III is very generous in the way new blueprints and weapons and abilities are available all over the map, so the more you play, the more options you have for how you take on enemies. You can grab a machine gun, fire bolts of lightning at enemies, and make yourself impervious to ice damage, among other things – all skills that come in useful depending on what enemies you’re trying to take down, and all skills that can be equipped and swapped out whenever you want.

All in all, Cat Quest III is simply fantastic. It’s got a vibrant world, fun action, a solid story, and, of course, pirate cats, all wrapped together in a package that should entice anyone.

Kepler Interactive provided us with a Cat Quest III PC code for review purposes.