Cat Quest

After completing Cat Quest 1, I've become an ardent fan of this series! There are numerous reasons why: the engaging storyline, the sheer enjoyment of gameplay, and its ability to be a delightful experience even when shared with a family member. Oh, and let's not forget the highlight – those cat jokes! The developers truly hit the mark with their humor, making the game thoroughly entertaining.
However, there are some downsides. In Cat Quest 1, the magic system was far more impressive. I had the freedom to precisely choose which magic I wanted to use with a simple right mouse click. Unfortunately, in Cat Quest 2, they've shifted to a button system, and I must say, it's quite disappointing. The lack of flexibility compared to the previous game diminishes the overall experience.
I sincerely hope the developers consider reinstating the previous magic selection method, as it was much more intuitive and user-friendly.

play cat quest 1 first then cat quest 2
very important

Very wholesome game, my 7 year old daughter loves playing it with me and it's been a great time

Just as with the original "Cat Quest", I'm definitely recommending "Cat Quest II". If you played the 1st game (and you should), you pretty much know what to expect here. So, I won't rehash that.
There are a couple of changes to the game mechanics, though. First, this game has a second character that either follows you and fights for you as a bot (in solo mode) or can be used by another player in co-op mode (local co-op in the game or via Steam's Remote Play Together). On one hand, that's really nice (my spousal unit and I played via Remote Play Together and it was great). On the other hand, we had a devil of a time telling the two characters apart. Part of the problem there is that even though one character is a cat and the other a dog, they look almost the same (one's lighter than the other and the ears are different). Giving those characters much more pronounced differences would have gone a long way towards fixing that.
Second, this game's map includes an ability to scroll (which the first game's map did not). That's great. Unfortunately, there's still no way to zoom in or out, but I'll take what I can get.
The only other significant issue I had with this game is that some of the stated difficulty levels for locations/tasks don't match reality: some places that should have been a breeze turned out to be really difficult. But, overall, I'm very happy with the game. It took us 24.6 hours to finish the game with 100% Achievements. The list price is about $15, so it's definitely worth the price. And, as I write this, the game (and the whole series) is on sale. So, definitely buy it now.

I wish there were more local co-op games like this. A fun game to play with my daughter. This was maybe a bit difficult for her still, especially later in the game, and she mostly just tagged along, but she loved the world and the characters and was really excited to play this with me. And at the same time it's just challenging and interesting enough to not be too boring for me.

Plays well on the Steam Deck and is a short game so it did feel right to play it on the Steam Deck.

The game itself is basically more of Cat Quest II and while I don't believe you really need to play the first one, I don't see why not.

It has a bunch of new enemies, mechanics (traps in dungeons), and spells which I'm honestly not really that thrilled about, but again it only took 8 hours to beat and I was doing all dungeons around my level before getting tired and breezing through the last few missions so I'm not really going to recommend against it.

The traps honestly just got obnoxious (or I just got tired of them) especially as they got "tougher". First you meet things like a square of spikes or crystals that shoot magic orbs that do a ton of damage to you (and can't be disabled). Now, you can use them against enemies (though flying ones can just go over the spike traps) and there is one enemy (a coffin looking thing) that could only be hurt/killed by the traps, but I just found later dungeons tedious where you had magic orbs flying over that you had to dodge while avoiding spike traps (some of which are always active, some turn off and on, and some only appear when standing on them and may or may not turn off) and swarms of enemies (many with their own various attacks).

I loved the magic in the first game (particularly flame paw or whatever the AoE fire attack was) and I suppose it was a little strong as you could go into groups and then just back away a bit while fire damage hurt them for a bit. It's probably why magic got nerfed or felt like it. Even upgraded, most of the magic just felt weak. I think I just ended up with Excalipur (or whatever the pun name of Excalibur was) because it had a fast attack and Bardic gear (slight mana regen) with Healing Paw as being in melee just felt quicker (except against a few magic weak enemies) with healing honestly feeling like the least underwhelming attack to me (and the gravity thing to bunch enemies together).

The most annoying change to me was the addition of co-op which IDK just felt like a lot of things were designed around that. When you play solo, like I did, the computer controls the other character and it honestly wasn't the greatest. It casts spells, but never really chose the best and it wouldn't attack unless you attacked first or swapped to control it (but then the ai just had the issues with the other character you were just controlling). I actually died a few times because I was low on health and while the enemy was too, the stupid ai would start following me instead of attacking because I was low on health and trying to avoid getting hit. It's a big part of why I ended up with heal paw - I just couldn't rely on the AI (which tbf was on me because I've played games long enough to know not to really rely on AI partners). The stupid thing is that only the character you control takes damage so it isn't like the AI had anything to fear by continuing to attack. I know I could just swap characters, but that just got tedious. At least, if your character gets beaten, you just swap to the other one and you just need to wait for the first character to revive. Unfortunately, the times I usually got knocked out was usually when the other character would quickly get knocked out too.

Still, for 8ish hours (and not even doing most of the level 80+ stuff because I was 90ish when I got bored and just wanted to breeze through the game) it's worth trying the game (provided you can handle puns like the "Doge Knight" (Dark Night/Batman) and such (though if you played Cat Quest I, you should know what to expect).

Game is pawntastic, full of clawsome puns. I highly recommend this to coupawls looking for a purrfect small RPG game.
Bring your controllers tho, since I think you can only pawlay online via remote-play.
Seriously, it's a meowgnificent little adventure. + You and your partner will feel pretty overpowered early in the game.