Cat Fight Dragon 2 review: Japanese RPG model for indie games

Cat Dragon 2, this title gives me the intuitive feeling of "Angel Hunt Devil Man" and "Swordsman Creed".

It is not that it has a strong copycat flavor, but it will reveal a small workshop independent game temperament, and bring some fans to reflect that the work has ideas, highlights, and roughly delimit the audience in advance. However, due to factors such as funds and manpower of the producer, the works are often small in volume, and some designs have traces of deliberate simplification.

But after playing it for a while, both I and my colleagues who were watching were surprised by the volume and style of Cat Fight Dragon 2. Simply put, the quality of Cat Fight Dragon 2 is enough to support a standalone series, independent IP.

It has a well-developed worldview, with cats and dogs living on two continents at war with the gods, and the main characters, a cat and a dog who have arrived from other timelines, trying to solve the crisis.

In human terms, the cat and dog are mute, just like the protagonists of some Japanese RPGS. But the difference is that this cat and dog express emotions will "meow" or "woof" sound, the top of the head will show a small facial expression, cute and funny.

In the game, all the characters appear in the form of one body, which can reflect the identity and abilities of the animal. For example, a "Hattori Wang Zo" wears a loose dogi, a white belt, a helmet like Naruto decoration, and a hammer, which is very consistent with his identity as a weapons-forging master. Other important NPC shapes in the game are also different and have significant features. Personality and good and evil can be seen at a glance.

In terms of maps, Cat Quest 2 has a unique design. Each of its districts and towns is small in size, mostly consisting of a few buildings and a little landscape. So, the producers put the town or village directly on the map. When the player runs on a large map similar to the JRPG, the scale of the characters does not change, but the surrounding mountains and lakes, the size of the scale is like a sand table. When in a town, with many NPCS to compare, the player's experience can be seamlessly switched from the big map to the scene.

The benefits of this are obvious: the producers don't have the resources to make every town and every scene as polished as a proper JRPG. Cat Quest 2 handles the game in a way that highlights the vastness of the continental map within the game, but does not let the visual sense of separation during scene transitions.

At the same time, the producers did not fiddle with the topography of any of the big maps. Especially the cat land where the player was born, its content distribution is particularly tight.

Basically in the wild, there's a copy every few steps, or a scene worth pausing to relive. For example, an island painted with a smiling cat, a twin town with symmetrical buildings. After the player gains the ability to walk on the surface of the sea, there are many islands and treasure chests waiting for players to explore.

In addition, I once found a full level "demon Cat Sulu" somewhere in the ocean. It squinted eyes, two tentacles constantly shaking, did not give a person to suppress the atmosphere, but "cute" prevailed. Overall, in Cat Quest 2, the game has a fairly solid amount of content to explore, and the repetition rate is extremely low. In my experience, for example, it took me about 8 hours to get through the main line, but more than half of the map was still unexplored.

In terms of copy and mission design, the game has always revealed the concept of reducing the burden on the player. First of all, in "Cat Dragon Fight 2", if your level and skills are not too far behind, less than 5 minutes players can brush through the copy, and clear the monster, get the reward.

In addition, the producers have deliberately placed "experience +1" or "gold +1" pickups on each road. Obviously, these numbers are almost meaningless, but by using them, the player can easily identify the path they have traveled. That is to say, in the case of a small copy, the producer is still trying to help the player not get lost.

Copies fall into two broad categories. One is puzzle-solving, where the player tries to avoid traps or use them to defeat enemies. In addition, the game rarely lets the player explore the use of items or traps on their own, it teaches the player directly. All in all, the work is remarkably intimate.

Another type of copy is more straightforward. A simple field, defeat three consecutive waves of monsters can take the reward away, and the third wave is mostly a combination of the first two waves of monsters.

And then there's the monster from Cat Quest 2. Most of them have a single skill, and players can learn how to play almost instantly. Therefore, a considerable number of copies, players can easily get through as long as they ensure that the operation is not continuous. Even BOSS fights are no exception. Most BOSS battles in Cat Fight Dragon 2 require the player to fight multiple bosses +N miscellaneous soldiers at the same time. As long as the player clears the miscellaneous soldiers one by one, the latter can basically kill the BOSS without damage.

Thanks to the double protagonist setting of a cat and a dog, the battle system of Cat Fight Dragon 2 shows a good degree of freedom. The role in general has two types of melee and long-range options, respectively corresponding to cold weapons and staff, can be switched at any time during wartime. The two characters are controlled by the player and the AI.

It is worth mentioning that the producers of "Cat Fight Dragon 2" deliberately strengthened the control effect of AI. When the player discreetly steps through the trap inside the replica, the AI-controlled character automatically ignores the trap damage. In addition, when the player uses remote, and the AI character is equipped with cold weapons, that is, the AI character's avoidance probability will become extremely high. Therefore, in many cases, players can completely allow AI melee to take damage, attract ridicule, and they are at ease in the rear output, which is very convenient.

In addition, the equipment system of Cat Fight Dragon 2 is also very simple. After completing a mission and beating a copy in the game, the reward you get is often not a new set of equipment, but the system will directly upgrade the existing equipment in your backpack. This "upgrade" setup is quite convenient to experience.

But the downside is that you have to concentrate your resources on upgrading one or two pieces of equipment, and the rest of the equipment is completely behind the main line. For about seven of my eight hours of mainline experience at the time, I was wearing a fixed outfit, and I barely had a chance to experience other types of gear.

Again, in JRPGS in general, if you can't figure out the restraint relationship of your opponent's stats, then you may have to read the file and challenge again. However, Cat Fight Dragon 2 is different, in the battle, players can change their equipment at any time, to switch whether the character is cold weapon flat A or remote casting, so as to restrain the other side. Also, when the player switches between two characters, the position of the character that the player controls does not change.

In other words, suppose the player lets the AI go to melee in the battle, to take the damage, and to output it safely at a distance. So when the player wants to switch control of the melee character, the cat and dog will instantly switch positions, and the player's control of the melee character will still be in a safe area. You really have to admit that the makers of Cat Quest 2 are too friendly to the player in a lot of ways.

This friendship extends beyond combat. When clearing main and side quests, the map will always indicate the specific destination location. Even some of the "looking" theme of the branch, but also basically give the coordinates of the eight or nine.

What's more intimate is that from the beginning of the game, the entire world map is fully lit, which is equivalent to the full map exploration that has been completed in other JRPGS. Players can even have a target, to visit every corner of the inconspicuous location.

By this point you can almost see that the selling point of "Cat Fight Dragon 2" is not "brush brush". Throughout the game, I only died once when I was not very familiar with the system at the beginning, and then I went along smoothly, occasionally doing a bit of side to improve the level, and never lost a battle, and I went through the main line very fluently.

However, thanks to this, my story and combat experience remained relatively fresh during the course of the week, which gave the game a linear feel.

The problem is that the combat and equipment systems aren't really deep enough to give the player enough motivation to continue exploring the entire map. Fortunately, Cat Fight Dragon 2 has some funnier feeder designs, such as the aforementioned "Meowsulu" meme. In addition, I have also experienced a "Two-face" and "Batman" play meme side, which impressed me.

Overall, my experience with Cat Quest 2 was excellent, considering it as a linear game. Its style is pleasing, and the equipment, combat, and mission systems are also extremely user-friendly for players, which is enough to support it as a noteworthy IP and continue to develop. But its problems are just as obvious. It lacks the depth of its systems to really allow the player to explore and "brush" like a massive RPG.