Kimono Cats is a very bad game.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Oh, you want a reason? Tch. Don’t you trust me? Ridiculous. Fine. Reasoning:
You know those terrible mobile telephone games where you can only progress if you grind the same repetitive tasks over and over again, for no real reward, unless you pay for in-game currency with real-world money? Well, this is one of those games, only without any of the real-world money purchases, because it’s on Apple Arcade. It still has the grind though. And the repetitive tasks. But cats, so it’s great, right? No.
My first issue is with the name of the game. It’s called Kimono Cats because there are two cats on a date at a natsu-matsuri festival wearing kimono because NO WAIT! You wear yukata to a natsu-matsuri festival. Already I’m annoyed.
Then there’s the date itself. You see, you’re the boy cat and you’re trying to impress the girl cat by walking seventy squillion billion miles along the world’s longest row of festival stalls, cramming food in her face and playing stupid games, hoping for a kiss and a cuddle as you build up a Heart Meter and a Money Meter. Let’s just skip over the fact you’re buying affection here and so either your boy cat is is predatory or your girl cat is toxic, and go straight to the WHY THE HELL IS IT SO LONG. There are 15 levels of walking and each takes longer than the last to fill the money meter up with something like 20-odd hours required in total.
And finally (of the things I’m going to mention because I’ve already written too much), it’s so. Damn. Boring. You throw darts up at moving balloons, each one containing something to entertain, feed, or disrespect your girl cat with. You have a limited number of darts, but you can get more by tediously metal detecting or playing daily to get bonus ones, or by visiting the sticker-book-like villages of other players to hopefully get them to send you more darts. You have your own village which you fill with buildings and objects you unlock from the games, shop and other tasks, but the main purpose of the games is to fill the meters. Burst the right balloon and you can play a game where you “throw” balls at a target. Or try to “catch” some goldfish. Or stab apples. Or other things which are no fun to play even once, let along the hundred and hundreds of times you have to in order to progress.
For once, I think I’d have preferred a version of the game WITH in-app purchases. Or, you know, I should have stopped playing?
