Battle Cats is an original and interesting spin on the Tower Defense genre, though even calling it a td game is patronizing to the uniqueness of this game. The basic concept of this game is simple, you spawn cats to beat enemies and destroy the enemy tower, progressing through stages, campaigns, and events. I'm gonna try to explain most of the major pros and cons of this beloved mobile game, before rebutting some of the common critiques of this game. To start off, there is an insane amount of content. If you want a good comparison on a typical full run from start to finish (stories of legends to zero legends), it'd be like maxing out a terraria world, or having speedrunners beat Minecraft 2,800 times in a row. There are main story campaigns, those being Empire of Cats, Into the Future, and Cats of the Cosmos. Each of these campaigns contain 3 chapters of varying difficulty, and each chapter contains 48 different stages. Then there's the legend stages, which have even MORE stages. Stories of Legends, Uncanny Legends, and the recent Zero Legends have all made battle cats a game that never really ends when it comes to content. I'm not even mentioning all the collaborations (street fighter, evangelion, madoka, etc), advent stages, labyrinth, heavenly & infernal towers, legend quest, monthly gauntlets and barons to complete! Then there's the topic of the cats themselves. The sheer quantity of usable cats in this game is simply ludicrous. There are around 700 cats as of current 13.6 EN version, and each of them have their separate niches & uses. You will find great diversity in each load out, especially in early to late game. One thing to note, however, is that most units are locked behind gacha (japanese 'lottery' system) pools, where you will need to spend either rare tickets (or platinum/legend), or the in-game currency, cat food. This does mean that you will have to save up to get these units, but that is absolutely by choice of the game, as it keeps the gameplay loop fresh and exciting. You never know what new unit you'll get to use to beat the next hardest stage. Even with all that said, Battle Cats is still a flawed game. There are many unresolved issues that plague the game, the first of which being the save system. Whenever you lose an account, whether that be by losing your phone or deleting the app, you have to go through a long and tedious process to recover your account. The system is very dated, requiring you to save an inquiry code, email the ponos team, give them key information about your account, then gain the transfer ID, before finally being able to recover your account on a new phone. As someone who's lost two accounts and has had to use the inquiry code several times, its a fatal flaw in the game. There's also the early game, which starts off being tedious and lackluster compared to the rest of the game. The game tries to teach the player how to grind stages with the use of Treasures, but it only makes most players quit before they make it past chapter 3 moon of EoC. Lastly, there are big difficulty spikes throughout the game, and some of the early ones are key factors into why players end up leaving the game. These include (but are not limited to): Ch3 EoC Moon, Ururun, Crazed cat, Wanwan, and Ch1 ItF The Great Abyss. Aside from these three flaws, however, Battle Cats brings itself to be a candidate for one of the best mobile games in 2024. Now that we've gone through all the nitty gritty info on the game, why don't we deconstruct some of the critiques on this game, shall we? First, being pay-to-win. Nope, not at all. There are plenty of ways to get cat food, rare tickets, and even platinum tickets. You can get 30 cat food per sub-chapter (about 6 stages), you can get rare tickets from normal ticket grinding and event stages, and platinum tickets are available via platinum shards and anniversary events. Saying that Battle Cats is P2W when paying for cat food is incredibly overpriced is absolutely astounding, especially when there's other games (*cough* CoC *cough*) which are wayy more P2W. Then there's the game being too difficult. While I understand that it is an issue with the early game design, battle cats is NOT a hard game. If you're struggling on a stage, go grind for higher normal cat levels, upgrade rare and super rares, and maybe unlock a new Uber to carry you through the stage. It's when players do not look for any other ways to beat a stage that a stage becomes hard/impossible. Lastly, the gacha system. It's core to the game, so if you don't like it, uhh, I guess its not a game for you. But you have plenty of ways to roll for free and get the best Ubers (as I have for 4+ years), so it should never become an issue.
Battle Cats is an original and interesting spin on the Tower Defense genre, though even calling it a td game is patronizing to the uniqueness of this game. The basic concept of this game is simple, you spawn cats to beat enemies and destroy the enemy tower, progressing through stages, campaigns, and events. I'm gonna try to explain most of the major pros and cons of this beloved mobile game, before rebutting some of the common critiques of this game. To start off, there is an insane amount of content. If you want a good comparison on a typical full run from start to finish (stories of legends to zero legends), it'd be like maxing out a terraria world, or having speedrunners beat Minecraft 2,800 times in a row. There are main story campaigns, those being Empire of Cats, Into the Future, and Cats of the Cosmos. Each of these campaigns contain 3 chapters of varying difficulty, and each chapter contains 48 different stages. Then there's the legend stages, which have even MORE stages. Stories of Legends, Uncanny Legends, and the recent Zero Legends have all made battle cats a game that never really ends when it comes to content. I'm not even mentioning all the collaborations (street fighter, evangelion, madoka, etc), advent stages, labyrinth, heavenly & infernal towers, legend quest, monthly gauntlets and barons to complete! Then there's the topic of the cats themselves. The sheer quantity of usable cats in this game is simply ludicrous. There are around 700 cats as of current 13.6 EN version, and each of them have their separate niches & uses. You will find great diversity in each load out, especially in early to late game. One thing to note, however, is that most units are locked behind gacha (japanese 'lottery' system) pools, where you will need to spend either rare tickets (or platinum/legend), or the in-game currency, cat food. This does mean that you will have to save up to get these units, but that is absolutely by choice of the game, as it keeps the gameplay loop fresh and exciting. You never know what new unit you'll get to use to beat the next hardest stage. Even with all that said, Battle Cats is still a flawed game. There are many unresolved issues that plague the game, the first of which being the save system. Whenever you lose an account, whether that be by losing your phone or deleting the app, you have to go through a long and tedious process to recover your account. The system is very dated, requiring you to save an inquiry code, email the ponos team, give them key information about your account, then gain the transfer ID, before finally being able to recover your account on a new phone. As someone who's lost two accounts and has had to use the inquiry code several times, its a fatal flaw in the game. There's also the early game, which starts off being tedious and lackluster compared to the rest of the game. The game tries to teach the player how to grind stages with the use of Treasures, but it only makes most players quit before they make it past chapter 3 moon of EoC. Lastly, there are big difficulty spikes throughout the game, and some of the early ones are key factors into why players end up leaving the game. These include (but are not limited to): Ch3 EoC Moon, Ururun, Crazed cat, Wanwan, and Ch1 ItF The Great Abyss. Aside from these three flaws, however, Battle Cats brings itself to be a candidate for one of the best mobile games in 2024. Now that we've gone through all the nitty gritty info on the game, why don't we deconstruct some of the critiques on this game, shall we? First, being pay-to-win. Nope, not at all. There are plenty of ways to get cat food, rare tickets, and even platinum tickets. You can get 30 cat food per sub-chapter (about 6 stages), you can get rare tickets from normal ticket grinding and event stages, and platinum tickets are available via platinum shards and anniversary events. Saying that Battle Cats is P2W when paying for cat food is incredibly overpriced is absolutely astounding, especially when there's other games (*cough* CoC *cough*) which are wayy more P2W. Then there's the game being too difficult. While I understand that it is an issue with the early game design, battle cats is NOT a hard game. If you're struggling on a stage, go grind for higher normal cat levels, upgrade rare and super rares, and maybe unlock a new Uber to carry you through the stage. It's when players do not look for any other ways to beat a stage that a stage becomes hard/impossible. Lastly, the gacha system. It's core to the game, so if you don't like it, uhh, I guess its not a game for you. But you have plenty of ways to roll for free and get the best Ubers (as I have for 4+ years), so it should never become an issue.
No way☠️
Too short