Cat Girl without a Salad LadiesGamers.com

Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse Bouche Review (Switch)

Game: Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche
Genre: Action, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch
Developers|Publishers: Way Forward
Price: UK £6.24|EU €7,10|US $7.99| CA $11.53|AU $12.99
Age Rating: EU 3+, US E
Release Date: 1st April 2020

Review Code provided by Way Forward

A Super Cute Fast Action Arcade Game

I’ve always been kind of put off by shoot ’em up style games because they tend to revolve around very serious themes in both art style and story. Cat Girl takes the addictive and fun gameplay of these types of games and refreshes it in a very fun, lighthearted manner. The style of the game is very ‘pop’ and ‘kawaii’, but it never takes itself too seriously. The art style and story work together to make a game that is addictive fun and quite amusing.

Ice Cream, Hamburgers, French Fries, Oh My!

Okay, here’s the premise of the game: you play as an inter-galactic bounty hunter named Kebako who, alongside her partner Squiddy, must battle evil floating anime eyes and flaming skeletons in order to make her way to her bounties. Along the way she eats top quality junk food cuisine (and avoids salad like the plague) in order to retain health and ingests video game cartridges to gain arcade powers in order to fight of these evils of the galaxy. All the while, she and Squiddy, her octopus alien partner, are investigating the mysterious ties between her bounties who are wreaking havoc across various worlds.

Yes, that’s the story! Crazy, isn’t it? From the title alone I had no idea what to expect. When I started the game I noticed that there were three worlds, each unlocking in progression from the last one. The first world you start off in is the Radical world. Each world has a certain theme with catchy music and wacky enemies. My favorite world was Kawaii world, where I fought off a bunch of winged anime eyes. If you haven’t already guessed, this game is just about having fun and laughing at certain tropes. So, I jumped right into Radical world and a dialogue between Kebako and Squiddy played over the catchy, but not overly distracting, pop music in the background. As they were talking, monsters began appearing on screen and I just moved my left joystick to fly Kebako around screen and jammed the ‘B’ button to unleash an attack, just like you would any shoot ’em up game.

Dance Dance Attack!

What I liked about this game from the start is that you don’t have to be skilled with these types of games. To be honest, I’m pretty inexperienced with games like this, and I was nervous when I saw the footage of this game beforehand. Immediately I was like, “Dang, I’m gonna suck”. However, Cat Girl has a pretty good learning curve. It starts off reasonably slow before ever increasing in difficulty (I’m measuring difficulty by the amount of attacks and monsters on screen). The real learning curve comes in the form of Kebako’s various attacks. As I mentioned earlier, she runs into cartridges to attain certain attacks. All of these attacks are based off classic arcade games and do more damage than her regular pea gun. There’s a Pac-Man attack, a Puyo Puyo one, and my favorite, as well as the most difficult, the Dance Dance Revolution. This last attack is so hard yet addicting fun. You literally have to move Kebako around to aim her attack while simultaneously playing a rhythm game with everything else, like enemies appearing or attacking, going on screen. It is crazy tough, but surprisingly fun.

Here’s another positive about the battle mechanic: this game is pretty forgiving. Cat Girl is a pretty large sprite on screen. However, it doesn’t necessarily matter if she herself gets hit. As the mini-tutorial in the beginning of the game states, her hit box is the bow on her outfit. Essentially, this is the very center of Kebako. That means enemy attacks can pass through her face or feet. This doesn’t make the game any easier; rather, it makes it more fair. The beautiful anime artwork still gets center stage, but you don’t have to worry about the slightest attack grazing the top of Kebako’s ears. Like I said though, this game is tough.

A Bounty Hunter’s Galactic Tale

In each of the three levels (more on that in a bit) there is one save point. If you make it past the level of crazy monsters you then enter the boss fight. There were times when it took me a few tries to beat a level only to reach the boss fight with like two hearts remaining. I would think there’s no way I can beat this. But the boss fight starts off with monsters that are basically cats in capsules that, when blown up, turn into ice cream or hamburgers or even game cartridges (These items also appear throughout the levels. The one thing to look out for is salad. Eat that, and you end up losing strength! I feel ya Kebako, I hate salad too). This lets you heal up slightly and even get a more powerful specialized attack from the start. If that’s not enough, it’s fine if you lose. You pay up a bit of your bounty earnings and can retry the boss again with a lovely set of full hearts.

Okay, I do need to mention the repetitiveness of the dialogue. When I first died in a level my initial thought was, “Wait, am I going to have to hear this whole dialogue again?” From the very get-go of the level you are hit with a chattering dialogue between Kebako and Squiddy. And yes, it repeats when you play a level over. I was skeptical of this at first, but I really needn’t have been. The voice acting in this game is excellent. I found all of the character’s dialogue to not only be humorous, but extremely well-acted. No point of dialogue felt like basic back and forth talking. There was a lot of nuance in the character’s voices that allowed me to easily track and pinpoint the very stage of the level I was in. I actually found a lot of the conversations to be really enjoyable because of the excellence in performance. I think, at times, the funny story being told even distracted from some of the frustrating battles. From the art style to the voice acting to the game play, this game is super fun and super cute. I do have one flaw to point out however…

Give Me More!

This game is too stinkin’ short! After playing one level I told myself I would try out the next but quit after a while. I beat the game in a single one and half hour sitting. The game is so beautifully made and is really quite cheap, but it’s a game that lasts no more than a couple hours. There is a good side to this though! Once I beat the last battle, the villain mentioned that Kebako will have six more trials to face. This, I assume, means there will be updates to the game that add in more levels.

Whether these updates are free or require payment is still up in the air. But honestly, I wouldn’t mind shelling out a few more dollars to play the extra levels. Even if you don’t want to, this game is a gem in and of itself. I don’t think you’d have a problem replaying this game a few times. Ah yes, there’s nothing like kicking inter-galactic butt while slurping some space ice cream. Cat Girl, you are my new favorite superhero.

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *