Cattails: Wildwood Story is the sequel to Cattails, the cat RPG/life sim. While the first game was very charming, it clearly had its limitations and rough edges. The sequel, though, is an improvement on all aspects.

Whereas the first game put your cat character into an existing wildcat colony and offered the option to create your own after clearing the main story, the sequel straight up puts you as the leader of your own domain. This is a change that works very well in establishing a better sense of progression. For your colony, you get to select its biome, name and emblem as well as your honorific. In my playthrough, I was Maukunen, the emperor of Meow Meow Dynasty of the forest region. After getting your colony, you are free to rearrange, terraform and decorate it, and your own home den is customisable too. Oh yeah, and the cat editor is also miles better than before. You can even select the pitch of your meow sound (and, importantly, now there is a meow button).

A lot of the gameplay loop of the original is retained in Wildwood Story. The basics are the same: you wander around the wilderness, gather herbs, hunt for food, fight hostile creatures and chat with some cool cats. Power ups, buffs and skills make a return too. Combat system has been given a dodge button and a charge attack, which make the combat a lot more involved if still a bit minimal and clumsy. And, lo and behold, this time you are not fighting other wildcats! Now some of the prey you hunt can also fight back. The mines also have received a notable shot in the arm. Previously they were the same thing from level 1 to 100. Now, there's more enemy variety, themed levels, different mechanics for clearing a level, items to help in clearing the mines and a lot more challenge. The mines are still a bit of a chore at times but still, lot nicer than before.

As for new additions, there's now a Animal Crossing inspired museum, squad mechanics for handling territories as well as companions. The musem is the most straightforward one: you find 'unidentified curios', identify them at the museum and donate them to the museum keeper. You are then rewarded with the museum keeper's silly and questionably accurate analysis of what the item you donated is (these are all pretty much household items and trash but artifacts of human civilisation to the cats). As for the squad mechanics, these give more utility to your territories. Each day, you can send a squad to either conquer new areas or gather resources from already conquered places. The resources then can be used to unlock more squads to use, open shortcuts or give permanent buffs. Lastly, the companion mechanic makes it easier to wander around and go into battle. Once you level up the social rank of a cat enough, you can ask them to tag along. Each cat has two passive skills and boosts your actions in different ways. Companions also have levels, so rack up enough XP and your buddies will get more HP and strength.

Speaking of social ranks and relationships, marrying and family life are again present but I still haven't checked how these work. Thus, I can't really comment on these. I did read, however, that your colony's other cats can also pair up and I think I've already seen some cutscenes that sow the seeds for these. A nice detail for sure if it indeed works as I presume.

To progress in the game, the aim is again to gather specific items and take them to a temple... but that's just the part of it. The whole progression has been made more rewarding and sensible. In Wildwood Story, you need to gather offerings to invite new cats to your colony (some of these even open up new facilities and services). Whilst the cats were fun and cute in the first game, the cats in this one are just much more memorable and all-around better written. Each of your colony's cats also have really expressive and well-drawn character portraits. The charm is off the roof just listening to the everyday ramblings of the cats and seeing their silly expressions.

Once your colony's power (i.e. population), increases to a certain point, the entrances to story dungeons unlock. These are short but kinda nice distractions where you first solve a couple of puzzles and then take on a boss. The bosses themselves are pretty simple but imposing and well-made enough. After clearing all the story dungeons, you have completed the main story. All in all, the main story is a bit more involved and intriguing than in the first Cattails but still not a particularly strong narrative.

Unlike in the first Cattails, there is no big game-changing completion reward. However, as main story can be beaten quite fast (less than 10 hours for me but I was efficient) but the game is a lot more complex otherwise, I didn't see this as a problem. After beating the story, it felt like I can just kick back and work on customising my colony and improving the social relations with the cats. So in this sense, the rather simple, short story doesn't really detract from the experience. At least it didn't for me.

One of the clearest shortcomings of the first Cattails game was in its visuals. Wildwood Story is, again, a lot better in this regard. It's still not a flashy game but now the style is better, more uniform and more pleasing to the eye. There's also some nice creative effects here and there, most notably reflections in the water. The menus are also less clumsy and UI more helpful this time around, although there's still some complexities here and there. In general, though, there's lots of quality-of-life updates brought to the table.

Music was already a highlight in the original game and luckily, the sequel also delivers. At first, I was a bit taken a back since the really sparse feel of the original had given way to slightly more livelier and lush arrangements. Pretty quickly, though, I just started to like what I was hearing. The game has a lot of calming jazzy tunes that really fit the cozy nature of the game. Of course, the boss battles and dungeons have some darker tunes to suit the mood, but most of the time playing you'll be hearing some really chill, breezy stuff.

It's awesome to see a sequel that was mindfully created after a long, critical look at the original. There's still some slight wrinkles here and there but overall, Cattails: Wildwood Story is lovingly made and I really enjoyed my time with the game. It will be nice to see what the dev cooks up next. Maybe multiplayer?