The Battle Cats Unite! [Switch] Review – A Purrfect Port? – Gamezebo

The Battle Cats have been a massive deal on mobile, being an established part of the tower defense genre on the format for nearly ten years now.

Revolving around you controlling a range of bizarre felines, the series surprisingly hasn’t actually seen much action outside mobile. It pawed its way onto 3DS and Windows in 2016 and 2017 respectively, but that’s about it.

Until this Switch port, which has actually been available in Japan and SEA for several years already. Now we’re getting it in the West, and it’s been worth the wait.

Now, The Battle Cats Unite! might seem a complex title when you first start it up. There’s a dizzying range of options and in your first few stages you get quite a lot of information thrown your way.

You basically have to direct your army of cats to the left of the screen, destroying your opponent’s castle and defending your own. But there are a few attacks to figure out, levelling up options during stages, and a choice of which cats to use and when.

But here’s the thing – this game is not that complicated, and that is actually a very good thing. There’s depth here for those looking for it, but ultimately you can have a great time whether you’ve never played tower defense games or been playing them for years.

Because the real appeal to The Battle Cats is, and always has been, the cats themselves. There’s a massive range to unlock and use, and vary from standard little critters to massive ones with tank like bodies.

Some are cute, others are quite frankly terrifying. But it’s always a joy to see which one you’ll unlock and be able to use next. I won’t reveal any more here for fear of ruining things. The game is always adding in new ones constantly too, stopping battles from getting repetitive.

That said, this definitely isn’t a title I’d want to play for hours at once. The gameplay can sometimes become a little one note, even with the large range of cats to pick from.

The port is solid enough too, even if the sprites could have done with a little optimisation on the game’s journey onto Switch. It does run flawlessly docked or handheld however.

This is a game we’d ultimately recommend playing in short bursts – this way it offers a perfectly judged experience for both experienced and novice fans of the tower defense genre.