Battle Cats Review: Meow It's Time for War (iOS)

(Originally created 5-23-17)

            When it comes to the iPhone video game market, I rarely traverse it to find entertainment. Not counting the bootleg games that love to infringe on the copyrights of characters like Elsa from Frozen, it doesn’t seem like there’s much creativity in the selection of games provided. As a rule, if your Bubble Bobble style game has to advertise itself by confirming that is has combos and power-ups, then you probably aren’t going to be a hidden gem in the sea of copycats. Speaking of cats, those are a big part of the iPhone game that I’m reviewing today, The Battle Cats, created by the PONOS Corporation in 2014.

            The story of The Battle Cats involves you leading an army of cats to take over the world. Not through Youtube videos of cats doing silly things, but through actual warfare. To be fair, the plot is the kind of plot that doesn’t really matter in the whole scheme of the game, and is only brought up in a few text scrolls, once for the intro, twice for starting up certain modes for the first time, and two for completing a chapter in certain modes. With a little imagination, you could easily make up your own story as to why a cat dressed as the Japanese folklore character Momotaro, a cat hiding in a giant apple, and a cat dressed as Darth Vader are fighting against a giant floating head.

Just another day fighting a poodle in summer wear, ducks, and a koala wielding some pocky.

            The Battle Cats is a tower defense game at heart, specifically, it falls into the tug-of-war style of tower defense where your base is on the right side of a field with the enemy’s base on the left. Cash builds up over time and you spend that cash to send out cats/cat-themed units or boost up your maximum capacity to carry more money. Meanwhile, the enemy base sends out units depending on the stage, including various animal types, demons, cyborgs, and stick figure people. The units from both sides fight when they meet, and the goal of each stage is to defeat your opponent’s units and get to the other base to destroy it. You also get access to a cannon that, when charged up, can shoot a shockwave that has a variety of effects depending on the upgrades applied to the cannon.

            Outside of battles, you have a variety of other ways to spend time and improve your cats. The stages in the two main chapters, Empire of Cats and Into the Future, drop sets of treasures that grant boosts to various aspects of your cats. You can spend experience gained in battles to upgrade your units and some universal passive abilities, although the passive abilities are maxed out very quickly. There’s also Gamatoto, who can be sent on expeditions to gain cat food, the premium currency for the game, and other items, and the recently added (as of version 6.0.0) Ototo, who can upgrade your base and cannon by using materials earned by playing the Stories of Legend stages.

These cats have been stuck by a Smooth Cat Burgular, and they're feeling Bad.

            In order to gain new units, you can use the two (sometimes three during certain special events) cat capsules to earn units. The regular ones offer upgrades to the normal tier units and the passive upgrades and uses silver tickets that you earn every day as well as with certain events. The rare cat capsule, however, uses either rarer tickets or 150 cat food for the opportunity to earn a rare, super rare, or uber super rare unit. All of the first two tiers are available at all times, but the uber super rare units change every few days depending on the event going on, which can easily be checked on in the cat base.

            Obviously, the use of premium currency in a game implies that there will be a good amount of pay to win, although the random nature of the capsules means some might spend more than other, but not only is the game pretty generous with its offerings of cat food, but the game provides a feature that is very welcome to the more frugal iPhone users. On the menu for buying cat food, the game allows you to watch ads in order to gain one or two cat food per ad. Obviously, this process can take a good while to build up a big amount, but if you have a well-charged battery, a phone with media volume muted, and plenty of time to kill, you can easily rack up a good amount of cat food without having to pay a cent or any real attention to ads!

Dang it, cat! You're not my mom!! (Free hint: Slide the door on the right in the background open and shut a lot)

            Granted, it’s not exactly a new, groundbreaking formula, but I feel that the game does what it does rather competently. The core mechanics are done solidly, the units have quite a bit of charm to them, and the ability to earn cat food via ads is a feature that should be in a lot more mobile games. It seems like a simple game, but it has quite a bit of strategy based on your unit selection and even knowing when to send out your units to avoid the attacks of stronger but slower enemies. I would definitely say it’s worth taking a look. Besides, since it’s a free iPhone game, all you have to lose is time.