Cat Fantasy is a pretty average Gacha game. It provides a plethora of things to do, taking up exponentially more time than any other Gacha game I play currently.
You, the player, are thrust into a role of authority, tasked with amassing an armada of cute neko guys and girls, who would often rather spend time sipping milk at the local cafe or chilling in the dorm as opposed to saving mankind. And why would they want to? Have you seen the state of the world?
Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop you from forcefully enlisting them, thrusting them into combat and commanding them like you would a Pokemon. And some of them could even pass as one, honestly.
Hey, my name is Stix and welcome back to The Worst Gacha Ever. A series where I discuss a Gacha – and tell you guys what I thought, in explicit detail, as we attempt to find the Worst Gacha Ever.
Now let’s talk Cat Fantasy.
Cat Fantasy is an interesting title, in so that it possesses idle mechanics – with regards to the mass quantities of resources you accumulate while not actively playing, and a fully manual turn-based game. At least manual for certain scenarios.
You have your home screen – where the bulk of the game takes place. You get to stare at your characters – respectfully of course.
You access the story, resource grinding, cafe, clan and pretty much every feature seamlessly.
The story consists of dozens of Chapters, with each Chapter possessing several combat and non-combat missions. Surprisingly – and I was taken a little aback by this, you tend to spend more time doing non-combat activities than you do engaging in combat.
There are a few filler battles – where you can use auto-combat to easily power through what is essentially monster-fodder. Then you get to the main battle – a boss fight, with a little story, and no auto-feature, requiring you actively put your knowledge to use.
Unless you’ve been skipping everything and have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. In which case, just overlevel content and you’ll be fine. If you’re like me – too mechanically challenged to comprehend what is necessary, just brute force it. Easy. Well, most the time. I’ve heard it gets progressively more difficult as time goes on.
The story isn’t anything special. Granted I only watched some of it. I skipped the rest, partly because I felt like it was far too convoluted for my liking. I want a cohesive story to be told without the need for unnecessary fluff. This is unfortunately a rarity in Gacha games – something the majority of titles just cannot escape.
There’s a Challenge Mode that unlocks… after clearing Chapter 17. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment. 17 whole chapters. And in 6 days, I managed to clear up through 8, playing about 1 to 2 hours per day and 3 hours per stream.
One thing that will become immediately apparent while playing the game is that it does not value or reward your time. On the contrary, you are overwhelmed by so many different features that often you’ll take several more times than is necessary to merely complete dailies.
I can clear my Blue Archive or Arknights dailies in 5 minutes. Cat Fantasy? 15, Maybe 20. To continue with the story, you’re tasked with completing menial tasks that you might not want to even focus on – like cooking.
I hated this feature. I didn’t want to cook. I didn’t want to fish. Yet I am forced to participate in both activities, level various different dishes, farm materials – meat, fish. All of this takes time, all of this takes stamina. Which detract from the gameplay overall.
I think these would work as a side-activity, with the option of engaging in it if you like. But making it a requirement, barring further progression behind it is just bad design.
Unfortunately, most of the time I felt like I was merely clicking through menus, letting the game farm for me just so I could continue the story missions for a few minutes before being forced back into side-activities for another 20.
You should never be bored when playing the bulk of a game.
I’m all for having the option of numerous types of content, but when you’re forced into engaging in it repeatedly.. especially when you dislike it, that dislike begins to spread to the game overall. And it’s many little things like that that made me log in less and less over the week I played it.
Let’s take Catto City as an example.
You’ll see the Ivorus Expanse to the left – this is a self-contained game mode that allows you to freely navigate and explore a small zone, collecting resources and solving puzzles. Honestly a fun little activity on the side.
Then there’s the SimuBattle Center, which functions more or less like an endless tower – where every level gets progressively more difficult and you’re rewarded for every level you pass.
Nightmare’s Call is locked behind Chapter 11.
There are several different regions – I’ve unlocked Southport and Quince.
Each district has their own purpose – Southport let’s you fish, farm gear, and upgrade materials for higher-tier characters.
Quince allows you to farm elemental upgrade chips, general materials, XP items to level your characters.
Both districts have different types of foods you can farm, which ties into cooking, something I wish didn’t exist in-game.
The Air Express is yet another feature, which has you fulfill a set number of orders – related to cooking.
There’s the Master Duel, locked behind Chapter 8, Arena, locked behind Chapter 10, World Bosses, locked behind Chapter 11, and Phantom Clash, locked behind Chapter 15.
It’s great there are so many options to select from when it comes to how you want to play the game, but again, it’s absolutely overwhelming and finding the time to do all of this takes away from other games or things you might want to do.
And that’s just Catto City.
Let’s make our way over to the Cafe.
You’ll notice a lot of options – Treasure, allowing you to deploy little cats you obtain that accumulate resources slowly over time. Essentially an idle resource gathering feature. These cats also come in various rarities.
Billing Report, which is yet another resource you accumulate slowly over time – by selling the various different dishes you cook.
You have individual Managers, who provide a variety of different benefits that you assign. They also need an exorbitant amount of rest – these numbers really do need to be altered.
Your Cafe has its own level, and increasing levels allows for additional managers and items to be sold.
Settings, which is where you select a Drink, Main Dish, and Desserts to be sold. These earn you resources the longer time passes.
You can openly customize your Cafe with a variety of different aesthetic options. Kind of like you would a Dorm room in other Gacha’s.
There’s a Lounge, where you send your neko girls to rest, allowing you to restore their stamina, and re-deploy them.
And then you can freely walk around the Cafe, interacting with some of the customers, fulfilling requests.
These are all things you need to micromanage each day, coupled with all of the resource farming you’ll be doing in Catto City.
There is a functional clan system present, allowing you to essentially walk around and share a public space with other neko commanders. I’d wager a guess this is where the bulk of the roleplay in RPG is going to come into play.
I’m not gonna say I’ve seen some weird stuff goin on but I may have seen some weird stuff goin on.
Your Neko girls can be upgraded in a variety of different ways. I managed to ascend a few of them to UR, but typically you level them, increasing their power. This is via the XP items you grind in the City.
You Ascend them, increasing their overall power using materials you grind in the city as well. This raises their level cap, allowing you to continue to clear content.
Character dupes are used to Star them up, increasing their power.
They have individual equipment, which can be leveled and increased in power as well, much like the Neko girls themselves. You farm gear in the City.
Then there are Outfits, which are also levelable, increasing in stats with each level attained.
And then the primary focus of the game: Its combat. Sure, you could argue story is a primary focus, but after a certain point you’re going to find yourself lacking in story, but still engaging in combat every day.
Combat is turn-based, meaning you’ll select abilities, enemies will select abilities, and then you’ll go back and forth, beating each other off – er up, until a single side remains victorious.
Characters look good, abilities look good, animations look good. Honestly, the combat overall is pretty polished. It utilizes an elemental affinity system, where fire beats grass, grass beats water, and water beats fire in essence.
There really isn’t much complexity to it, which isn’t a negative. With how much is going on in this game, that’s a positive. You want something nice and easy to understand.
Most side-content is doable completely auto – idle – where main content – the story, requires full attention and understanding of game mechanics.
The Gacha element itself isn’t horrible: You’re guaranteed a max rarity unit after 80 pulls, with a 50/50 split, meaning if at 80 pulls you don’t get the limited banner character, you’ll obtain them with a 100% certainty after 80 additional pulls.
Right now you also receive a ton of free premium currency to pull with so if you were thinking of starting, this might be a good time to. They won’t be there forever.
I think Cat Fantasy can be a lotta fun. That fun admittedly, slowly decreased the more I played, as I was required – forced, rather, to continue to engage in activities I didn’t want to do, just to get to the point of the game where I could play.
And while they’re very generous in terms of pulls, the game also gets progressively less free to play friendly the further you progress through it.
Now let’s break down my rating.
Combat – 6/10. It’s similar to Reverse 1999, featuring cards with varying skills. It’s turn-based. And each character looks and feels good in combat.
Story – 3/10. I got bored pretty quickly, and it felt far too cluttered to really enjoy. Which seems to be a recurring theme in most Gacha games.
World – 2/10. There is no world to explore, limiting the control you have over your characters.
Graphics – 6/10. The characters looked good, not great, but better than a lot of releases in the last year. Abilities looked good, skins looked good.
Sound – 5/10. There were a few solid songs present, and voice acting was pretty good. But nothing really memorable, that stood out.
Overall – I’d give this 22 neko girls out of 50 neko girl litters – or 4.5 out of 10. Honestly not a bad game, but also not a game I’d play full-time.
