Mewgenics Review (Switch 2)

Finally a game where I can be the crazy cat lady

I’ve been waiting for Mewgenics for years and I still can’t believe that it not only released this year, but I actually played it. I learned about this when I first got into Binding of Isaac, forgot about it, occasionally remembered it, and was so excited when I heard the release date. And then I got sad when I wasn’t able to play it on my computer. However, I did hear that console releases were probably planned and, well, here I am. Finally being able to play Mewgenics on the Switch 2. I even managed to somehow avoid spoilers (aside from the really rare stray cats but I don’t count that as spoilers). So, how is Mewgenics and was the wait worth it?

Before going in, I will say that this review is a bit different. I usually write my reviews after I complete a game as, after all, the end game can save or ruin a game for you. However, since Mewgenics is a very long game, I wrote my review until I felt I could write about it. So, with that out of the way, let’s get into it.

The story starts out pretty simple here. Starting out as thinking you’re playing as yourself until you get hints that you’re playing as an unknown character, you wake up to a man screaming “Scient!” at you. You learn that the man is Dr. Beanies and you know he’s a good guy cause he has a super cute cat (who you’ll later learn is named Stacy) mimicking his expressions. Anyway, it turns out that Dr. Beanies brought you back to life (though he omits that little detail for a while) and he is researching science specifically related to cats. So where do you come in? Well, he heard that you loved cats yourself and he wants to work with you to progress his research. Giving you your first two cats to start you off with, he throws you into Boon County so you can become the local crazy cat lady whose cats go on adventures. I’d like to think your cats are little terrors even though what the cats encounter outside are terrors as well.

Don’t worry you’re not totally alone as you have your…lovely neighbors to help you out! Also, you’re luckily not the only weirdo in the neighborhood. Actually, you might be the most normal one? Anyway, you’ll meet your neighbors who you’ll slowly get to know as you progress and will help you out in their own ways. For a price, of course. And that price is sending them cats so at least it’s something you can do.

So, yeah, the story in Mewgenics does a good job here which I’m not at all surprised about since one of the main developers has experience in the roguelite/roguelike genre. The game does a great job at being simple enough that it’s a good framing device and giving you the basic characterization of all the characters. It’s pretty deceptive in a way that it’s such a good setup that you easily go along with it and you just don’t feel like you need to learn anything more, but then you slowly realize that things are deeper than they appear as you slowly progress. Things slowly build up and while you may have your suspicions, you may not realize it until it happens. Mewgenics is definitely that big puddle you find that looks shallow, and on the edges it is, but it’s deeper in the center than you think it is. Or I guess an iceberg as what you’re seeing in the beginning is just the surface and there is a whole lot more hidden from you.

That said, I also liked the writing style here. I don’t think this is surprising since I liked other Edward McMillen games I’ve played and I did check out his gameplay reveal video back in the beginning of this year. I really like just how punchy and short the dialogue is here, which really pairs well with the roguelite genre. The dialogue does a great job at characterization while also giving you needed information through the way the characters talk (both what they say and their talking quirks), their mannerisms, and what they ask for. Like Butch is definitely the shady guy you stay away from but he is actually quite helpful and open. Or Baby Jack who is a cute kid that seems to be positive despite what happened that got him to sell furniture to you, but has some…misconceptions. Which makes sense since we all believed some crazy things as kids. I did also like the writing for the random events and of course I just liked the humor and darkness of the writing as a whole. This game may have cutesy visuals and first impressions start out all nice, but man does it hit you with the dark humor that is the truth that makes you feel naive for believing the lie. Granted, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that this game is a bit edgy considering the jumping animations haha.

Lastly, I did also want to mention that you don’t have to play Edward McMillen’s previous games to enjoy or understand Mewgenics. This game does have a lot of references to his previous games, especially The Binding of Isaac, but it’s just a bonus if you know where it’s from or what it’s based on. Also serves as a fun little easter egg.

Now onto the gameplay! I was debating on what to talk about next, but since the game starts you out with the combat I’ll start there! Your cats will go on Adventures where they’ll venture out from their home to see the world. This is visualized by a map where you’ll travel through nodes. There are a couple different nodes here and really only one branching path where you choose whether to go to the Hard Path or not. I’ll just say it here, but basically the Hard Path will feature an additional fight, harder fights as Champion versions (aka harder versions) of enemies will appear, and have better rewards. There are treasure nodes where you’ll get something corresponding to that specific type like chests give you an item or coin bags giving you coins; a shop where you can buy items with the coins you get in and from battles; and random event nodes that give you, well. a random event. There are a variety of different events you can get and one cat is randomly chosen to be the one that it’s happening to. It can be an event that just tells you what happened like the weather changing, an event where you just choose between two options and see what you get, or it could be a choice based event where you’ll get 2-4 choices to choose from each having four possible outcomes. How does the game decide this? Well each choice will correspond with one of the stats and that determines how likely you are to get each possible outcome. Being low in the stat means that you’re much more likely to get the negative outcome while it being high makes the positive outcome more likely.

And finally, combat nodes which you’ll know whether it’ll be a regular fight, mini-boss, or a boss fight. If you got new items, you can prep your team before starting the fight as once you’re in, you’re locked in. If you’ve played turn-based tactical games before you’ll already have the combat down pat. Of course, your cats and the enemies take turns doing their moves with you being able to always see initiative. When it’s one of your cats’ turn, you’ll be able to choose where they go and attack if they’re in range. Each cat has their basic attack, which can be melee or ranged, and later on can get active and passive abilities tied to their Class (the downside of talking about combat first is some things fit better talking about later on haha). When its the enemy’s turn, they’ll go do their thing. Simple, right? Well, this was just the basics of combat of course as there are a lot of other things that are going on. Like enemies having their own passives and attacks that you have to take into account, positioning is important as you can end up hurting your own cats if you’re not careful and there are some interactions based around it (like the usual backstabbing causing more damage), there are different tiles with different effects, pick-ups can be on tiles, and the weather will have its own effects.

Don’t worry though, as you can see all the possible tiles the enemy can move to and hit; as well as being able to go into tactical view (which replaces all the elements with simple icons) if an area is particularly dense. However, you can’t stall combat out as cats do get Exhaustion, which disables regen, causes damage based on the stack, and gets another stacked on after each round. You can close the game and open it back up if RNG wrecks you to restart a fight, but that’s not entirely without consequences. If you do, you’ll be visited by Steven or “That Mr. Resetti Guy” (his words not mine). You get one free reset, but after that you’ll get penalized.

After each successful battle, your cats will heal just a little bit and if any cats were downed, but didn’t get a killing blow or their body destroyed upon being downed, they’ll stand back up. One of your cats will also level up where one of their stats will increase and you’ll be able to choose an active or passive ability out of four possible options, a stat bonus, or which ability to upgrade. This is where you’ll hopefully be able to pick abilities that work well and synergize with the abilities you already have. Choosing which ability to pick up can be difficult sometimes if you get two abilities that fit with a build you’re going for or if they’re just both really good. The game does tell you a random cat levels up, but I did notice that the game does keep the cats all evenly leveled so you don’t have to worry with only one of the cats being favored by RNG.

I still can’t believe a cat sharing my name was born so early in my playthrough!

You can only return home at the end of an area, which you’ll get the choice to return home or continue to the adventure into the area if its unlocked, or if all of your cats get downed and you’ll lose not only those cats but whatever items they had on them (oh yeah and if a cat gets killed all the items they had equipped is lost even if the rest of the cats survive). Since we’re going back home, it’s time to get into the other half of Mewgenics’ gameplay. Your House is basically your base of operations and where all of your cats go to relax when not on adventures. First up, returning cats will become Retired (which means they won’t go on another adventure), bring them back inside, and you’ll have to do some storage management if they bring in more items than you can store. There are quite a few things you can do here other than to just look at your cats hanging out and checking out their stats. For one, there’s your neighbors who you can talk to and get help in exchange for giving them cats. You’ll meet your neighbors as you progress in the beginning of the game, but there are two shops you can visit, a general vendor (P Mart) and a furniture vendor (Baby Jack) to spend any coins you brought home. Two other characters, Butch and Tink, will also give you helpful tips when visiting for combat and breeding respectively since they’re tied to those core mechanics.

Being the local crazy cat lady you will end up having too many cats. Shouldn’t cat ladies have as many cats as they can, I hear you ask? Well, that’s because the House itself has stats that affect not only breeding but also night events. You have a soft limit in the form of the Comfort stat. When you end the day, you’ll see what happened at night which can be nothing, but can also mean that you got new kittens, a cat got rejected, or worse yet cats got into fights. If there are too many cats, fights become more common and that can be bad as the loser can gain injuries (which is a stat debuff) or even die. Breeding is also affected by the Stimulation stat. Kittens, whose parents can either have one kitten or twins, will of course inherit their parent’s looks but Stimulation will increase the chance that more things can be inherited like abilities, Class, and/or mutations. You do also have to pick up any poop as low Health is bad, you can increase how likely it is for cats to develop Mutations, and you can raise or lower your house’s Appeal which gives you better Strays every day the higher it is. Breeding is more complicated than you’d think based on my research, but you optimistically want to only breed your best cats and try not to inbreed. Kittens can’t go on adventures, but luckily cats age every day so you don’t have to wait too long before they’re able to go out. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: food. You have to make sure you have enough food before you end the day as your cats will of course need to eat.

Of course, you start out with only the basics but you can upgrade everything through the help of your neighbors! Each neighbor will upgrade something that they’re connected to and all you have to do is give them enough cats that they want. Each of them ask for specific cats. You can get more rooms for your House by sending Retired Cats to Frank, which will allow you to separate cats and you can decorate each room with furniture as each room has their own stats. Need bigger storage? Well Butch will accept cats that ventured out to specific areas (like all the way to the Sewers for example). You can unlock being able to see more information on your cats (like their base stats which is what the game looks at when passing down stats and a family tree) by sending kittens to Tink and even get side quests by sending mutated cats to Dr. Beanies. And finally, you can send old cats or injured cats to Tracy or Baby Jack respectively. Tracy will stock a food storage upgrade or a blank collar; while Baby Jack will have more furniture stocked for you to choose from.

Once you’re ready to go on another adventure, you can set out up to four cats in the Adventure Box to head out together. Before they do though, you’ll be doing some prep. You’ll first give them their Class Collars, assigning them a Class that will also affect some of their stats and what abilities they’ll be able to receive. You’ll want to try to pick the Class that best suits the cats stats and, later on, their inherited abilities. They’ll also receive a random active and passive ability to start out with. You don’t have to wait long to see what you got as once you lock it in you’ll be able to equip items to your cats. Each item can either be a weapon, equipment for one of three slots, or a consumable. Items can be very helpful, synergizing with the build your going for, just being plain helpful by giving you armor or a status effect, giving an extra attack (of course a lot of weapons have limited uses), being able to eat something for say more mana, or have a passive active. Don’t get too attached to your items however, as once they’re worn they have a chance at breaking upon returning home. Plus, if you fail the run all the items you took are lost so a little caution can be beneficial (but not too much).

And, well, you’re back to adventuring and combat! Runs do go long, but you can save and quit in the middle as long as you’re on the map.

I’m quite enjoying the gameplay in Mewgenics. I do feel like I overestimated how much I love tactical turn-based combat, but nonetheless I’m still having fun. I, of course, liked the tactical combat here. This came out on consoles at the perfect time as I was itching for another tactical turn-based game, but not one with a lot of busywork outside of combat, and this scratched that itch! The tactical gameplay is great here and does a great job with weaving in roguelite elements. I like the various classes you can give your cats, I like how each class has different archetypes which gives your teams variety, I like all of the different abilities and synergies, and I liked the enemies and bosses. The enemies are all distinct in the way they act and the bosses (I’m including mini-bosses in here as well) have some pretty great gimmicks to them. It can be quite fun figuring out how to handle them and successfully doing it. It is also quite satisfying when you find good synergies and getting through tough fights. Are some enemies and bosses annoying? Yeah, but they’re still a well designed enemy/boss. I also do think the game is balanced pretty well too, even though the RNG can screw you over.

I also definitely recommend not abandoning a run even though you’re sure you’re going to fail in the middle of it. You can be in the middle of combat or in the middle of an area totally convinced your cats are going to die, but then you somehow pull through and make it back home. Like when I first went to the Boneyard, every combat encounter I was like “I’m totally boned” (pun intended) and was regretting my choice as I did have some great items equipped and in inventory, but my cats somehow survived each encounter, I was able to survive the area boss (with a little…reset), and everyone made it back home victorious. I also recently (yeah I’m playing Mewgenics when I’m not writing this review haha) had a run where all my bad luck striked at once, giving me a horrible team, but most of them somehow made it home. I don’t even know why I had them finish Act 1 rather than having them return, but only one of the cats died and I was able to defeat the Caves area boss. I think the game was punishing me for absolutely bullying the Boneyard boss (which was so funny), but I think the game pitied me as the Caves boss for some reason didn’t do her signature move (trying to be vague here but if you know you know). I was literally like “take me out of my misery already” but hey the sole cat that wouldn’t go down took down the boss.

You also might be ready for the Hard Path earlier than you’d think. The first time I did I was like “what the heck I sent these cats out without items anyway”, thought I’d fail the run every combat encounter, and then the cats made it home safely. It really helped me build my confidence…which was destroyed in Act 2 haha. I definitely recommend sending a team with no items as you do not know what you’re going into. Though, of course RNG can still screw you over in Act 1 either in combat or through the random events. You also still have to make sure you keep all the various aspects in mind in case you proc something or knock back into another of your own cats. This also does play the game of semantics so you have to read carefully just in case you think an ability is specific when it uses the general Units for example. Oh and I did like the weather events here as they do bring in another aspect to worry about and can shake things up.

While I’m on this, I almost forgot to mention that the game does a great job at teaching you its mechanics. The Path (aka the Tutorial) does a great job at teaching you the basics by meshing telling and doing; Act 1 is a great place to learn everything else as you play, gain confidence, and then later on a great place to pick yourself back up after a bad run; and then Act 2 kicks your butt telling you that you need to get your shit together and engage with cat loop. I can also imagine Act 2 gets you prepared for Act 3 which has to feature really difficult areas.

As for the house side of things, I liked it too. You kind of have to figure out how the breeding works (or just look it up) and it does take a while for you to get the upgrades and furniture to help you out, but I did like how it breaks up runs and I do love how you can pass down retired cat’s stats and abilities (and looks) to their kittens which you can then take on future runs. I also think it was quite smart to have the gameplay loop being tied to the cats. Of course you have the breeding and adventure loop, but if you get bad run(s) the daily appearance of stray cats does allow you to keep progressing if you don’t have any or enough cats that can go out on an adventure. Using the cats as a way to get the various upgrades was pretty smart as you will be needing to get rid of cats anyways so why not tie that to something that is helpful. It also is great to have everyone asking for specific cats as it also brings the question of where to send the cat (or whether you should send a kitten when it comes to Tink), helps characterize the other characters more, and it does end up covering a lot of different bases. The only situation that can result in a cat not being able to be sent to anyone is if you’re trying to send a stray cat or if the cat is too young, didn’t have a mutation, or didn’t get injured in a fight overnight.

I also think Mewgenics does a great job with cats being disposable. Does it stink that cats can only go on one adventure? Yeah. Does it end up bringing the game down? Personally, no. I wanted to compare this to Darkest Dungeon which had this aspect in common except a team that had a successful run in the final dungeon will refuse to go back (or have big penalties depending on your difficulty mode) which I remember getting a lot of criticism and even I wasn’t too jazzed about it. However, I do think I know why it works so well with Mewgenics. There’s a good chance that you don’t immediately think the Darkest Dungeon characters are disposable as you go through a lot to get them powerful enough to maybe survive the final dungeon and that’s assuming you don’t lose them before that due to horrible RNG. And then you have to do that grind multiple times and it isn’t that fun to do (though mods do help out with this). With Mewgenics, however, it feels more natural to see the cats as disposable as, after all, they’re retired after their adventure. No matter if they finish one area or a whole Act (or they did an Act you finished and not the Act that’s in progress), they’re a one and done adventurer cats. Some of their build does come from breeding, but the rest comes in when you send them on adventures where they get their Class and Class abilities which have a chance at being passed down when breeding. This gets even more emphasized with your upgrade currency being cats and the house rooms stats and food imposing a soft limit on how many cats you can have. I still find it a bit hard to send away cats as sometimes you can’t help but get attached to some cats, but the game signals that they are disposable. But breeding does encourage you to keep the best cats so they can pass down their genes which also ties into House Bosses. Having too many cats or one of the stats being too low in a room does also have consequences through random night events while having high room stats has benefits. Also, while setbacks are still big in Mewgenics, they’re not as big when comparing it to setbacks you can suffer from in Darkest Dungeon.

I guess a TL;DR for this is that while Darkest Dungeon pushes characters being disposable through how brutal the game can be and the final dungeon (despite how much work you have to put into them almost going against it), Mewgenics succeeds more in this aspect through its various systems that compliments and emphasizes it.

Mewgenics does have some negatives. Of course, you are at the mercy of RNG with this being a roguelite and all. This is a very slowburn game where you make small steps while any setbacks can feel big and discouraging. Act 2 is a big difficulty spike. There are some important (not you-need-this-to-progress important but still has an important use) items that you can lose forever. I wish the items you bring back didn’t push out the items you have in storage (if it’s in my storage odds are I want to keep them over items I just brought home). These next two are exclusive to the Switch 2 version, but you do need to be careful using the touchscreen. You have to make sure your dragging your finger and not tapping if you want to look at additional information/tooltips (like for abilities or enemies) or to preview movement. Unless you’re targeting an attack on an empty tile, it will confirm it and it can screw you over. If you’re using the touchscreen for battle actions, I did notice that movement will switch to basic attack which is pretty annoying. I wished that if a cat dies in battle your other cats picked up the items they had equipped. There is a lot of trial and error here, as well as things that you aren’t told about. Lastly, Mewgenics can use some more quality of life improvements to make the game better. Like being able to choose a cat’s movement path in battle, being able to undo your last action (you have no idea how many times I accidentally did something because of a misclick or mistap), being able to highlight specific item types, a text log so you can look back at what happens during battle or during the night at the house, and better house management to just name a few that came to mind as I was writing.

I unsurprisingly really liked the visuals and sound here. If you liked the art style of Binding of Isaac, you’ll like the art style here as they both share an art style but it being hand-drawn here instead of pixel. I really the artwork here! I like the variety of body parts your cats can have and how they are still cute despite it, I like how all of the items look both in their design and how you can see how they look on the cats themselves, and I really like the enemy design here. I also like the character designs, the artwork for the various abilities and disorders, how the maps look, and the random event artwork. The thick lineart that’s used for most things makes it easy for you to distinguish it from the backgrounds or map elements while leaning well to either the clean or sketchy style. The little animations here are also well done and there are so many small details that you can notice. Like how some character’s shirt symbols change when you visit them, hidden interactions, and a lot of references or inspirations from both to Edmund McMillen’s previous games and to other pieces of media. Like, the very first one you’ll see even before you start the game is the game’s intro is inspired by The Simpsons and there are a lot of items here that come from The Binding of Isaac. I didn’t mention this earlier, but I also thought it was quite fun that your cat team name is randomized every run. Team names can be quite funny, or even match with the cats giving them a different vibe, and I love how a random cat gets selected to say something (which also can be quite funny).

I can’t believe I almost forgot this, but I also loved that you get a cutscene whenever you unlock a new area or when a House Boss is coming for you. They are an absolute delight and perfect in giving you a little preview to what’s to come and getting a little look into the boss’ themselves. They are also pretty horrifying, the Act 1 House Bosses legitimately scared me and the boss’ name 100% fit what you learn about her in the cutscene.

As for the sound, the sound design is great. All the sound effects are really nice, fitting with what they’re a sound effect for, being distinct enough so you know what it’s for, and just the volume balance being perfect so you don’t get sick of it. There are a lot of voice actors here, with the vast majority of them voicing the cats. I definitely have not heard everyone, and even then I have no clue whose voice it is even when I do know some of the featured voice actors, but they all did a good job. The immense variety really helps in you not getting sick of them quickly (especially since Mewgenics is a very long game) and even the voicelines have a couple varieties per type (like purrs or hisses) so you’re not hearing the same meow over and over. So far, there is only one cat voice that I don’t like. I don’t know who it is, but I mainly don’t like it because it’s an actual voice line and not a meow and it is a bit annoying when you have to hear it over and over again. There is some voice acting that is spoken in human, like the radio host, and he does a great job as well. The Radio Host is very believable radio host.

And finally, the music which is absolutely phenomenal. I love how the songs for the various areas are handled here. When you’re making your way through an area you’re hearing the instrumentals and it honestly already sounds like a complete song. Each area has a song that both matches the area and makes for a great song to listen to as you’re in combat. But then you get to the area boss and the lyrics get added in making the song even better. It not only gives more importance to the boss fights, but the lyrics themselves are just so fun and catchy (with the added bonus that it fits with the boss). Not to mention that there are songs exclusive to the radio that plays at the house and boss songs do get added to the list after you defeat the boss a couple times. Everyone involved in the soundtrack did a phenomenal job.

As for performance, I can happily say that Mewgenics played smoothly. Other than a random crash that happened right before getting to the first node in a new adventure, I noticed no problems with the Switch 2 running the game. Granted, I did hear others that transferred their 200+ hour save having problems as they’ll of course have way more stuff going on, but if you’re starting a new save you won’t run into it for a long time.

Verdict

Mewgenics is a great game and I can definitely see how people have 200+ hours in it. It feels like I’m only scratching the surface with about 25 hours under my belt and I for sure will keep chipping away at it. Anyway, yeah, while my enjoyment did fall during times where I had bad RNG and there were some annoyances sprinkled in, I do overall enjoy Mewgenics as it is a very well made game that you can tell a lot of love went into it. The combat is great and enjoyable (having a lot of synergies, hidden/surprising interactions, and feeling balanced for the most part), the whole cat loop was a very smart idea that works really well, I liked the characters and writing, and I love the art style and music here.

If you really like tactical turn-based combat, don’t mind the various aspects that comes with the roguelite genre, and don’t mind this being a slowburn, you can’t go wrong with Mewgenics. And I’d say the Switch 2 version is worth it if you want to play this anywhere.