Petrian Odyssey - Episode 1: Well, Dog My Cat Quest!
0Originally recorded: September 11, 2022
---
This game actually won the eighth bonus poll this year, but given the subject matter of the seventh winner, I decided to switch them around. No one really seems to mind... and since the number 7 game fits with the theming I tend to lean into around late-September and the entirety of October, it just felt like the right move to get one more game done before shifting over to "spooky month".
I played the original Cat Quest all the way back in 2020... and it was a good action-RPG. Maybe not the best I'd ever played, but definitely well-above the bar of being merely "competent". But you know what it really needed? Dogs. I've had dogs and cats as pets in my time and personally, I prefer the former. It doesn't hurt that I seem to only be allergic to a few breeds of dogs, while pretty much every cat I've ever encountered leaves me leaking from every single hole in my head. I guess I also prefer how predictable dogs are compared to their feline counterparts. Dogs tend to always want love and attention, while in my experience, cats only seem to want it when you're too busy to give it to them. Still, I never really hated either of the cats we owned: truth be told, I preferred both of them to some of the dogs we've had.
I like how you can effectively switch between the cat and dog character at will. Honestly, having two characters means that it's a lot easier to explore both of the primary attack classes: melee and long-range projectiles. I decided to make the cat the mage and leave the dog as a close-range fighter... and that's been working out for me. Honestly, that line-up along with the ability to switch between them at will is kind of reminding me of a game I played on my own earlier in the year: Falcom's Zwei!! -- released as "Zwei: The Arges Adventure" by XSEED in the West a few years back. As much as I've been joking that adding a dog improved Car Quest significantly, I really do think that the party mechanic is an absolute game-changer. I'm already anticipating my second stream for this game.