The Battle Cats

The Battle Cats
"Do you hear it? There's a Cat in everyone's hearts!"
Genre(s): linear tower defense Release Date: 2012 Japan 2014 Worldwide Country: Japan

The Battle Cats (known as "にゃんこ大戦争" ("Nyanko Daisensou", "Nyanko Great War") in Japan and previously as "Battle Cats") is a free linear Tower Defense developed by Ponos and released in 2012 for the Japanese version and in 2014 for the worldwide one.

Why It Deserves All the Catfood

1. Bizarre but interesting concept focused about cats invading Earth and even the universe, which fits well for an early 2010' game.
2. Art style that goes from being cute and gummy to being stunning and very detailed (honorable mention to the anime-like characters and the backgrounds, which look like something came from a professional mangaka as Akira Toriyama (who made the beloved Dragon Ball) or Junji Ito). Animations also alternate from frame-to-frame to more fluid in the more detailed characters.
   • Speaking of the cats, their design is simple and memorable at the same time. Also the enemies have interesting ones.
3. Very addictive gameplay for a simple game. You probably last in this for years and it will never get old. Controls are easy to learn and many features make it challenging.
   • Speaking of being a 2D Tower Defense, it does something brand new compared to other games of his genre. While side-scrolling TDs have the units starts from left to come to right, here is the opposite, in which the units starts from right. Despite this, it's not annoying or awkward.
   • Cat Base's cannon is one of the principal game's gimmicks. It could help to make battles easier in various situations and his attack style can be changed after unlocking Ototo Development Team.
4. Hundreds of units, everyone with his particular abilities, gimmicks and designs, that make them perfect against a type of enemy. This will probably give you an embarrassment of choice.
   • First of all, we got six types of rarity tiers:
     • Normal: there are nine principal cats of this rank, and they require to beat some stages in EoC ch.1 for being playable. These will help during future battles if you haven't any other rarity. There is another normal cat, but this one can be unlocked from Cat Capsules+ after clearing the last level of CotC ch.3.
     • Special: this tier probably has the most units and, unlike other tiers, its units can be unlocked in many different ways, such as completing levels, clearing missions or even as a day reward.
     • Rare: this units can be unlocked from rare capsules as highest rarity in these ones, despite having other unlock methods, yet less than special ones. Rare cats feature more abilities than normals at a cheap cost (most of the times) and can be spammed.
     • Super Rare: super rares are more powerful than rares but cannot be spammable as the last ones due to their higher costs and recharge times. Can be found also in rare capsules (obviously rarer) and have more refined designs.
     • Uber Rare: ladies and gentlemen, we had arrive to the ultimate rank: these units can be only found in rare capsules, and despite their incredible rarity, expensive costs and recharge times, they will never blight you. Most of times are area attackers with astounding designs, tons of hp and damages, and very useful abilities that make battles a completely joke.
     • Legend Rares: Uber rares which feature rainbow-like crystals and filters in their design and they're completely broken, but are generally more specialized than regular units. It's more probably you will find a diamond in real life than they.
   • The units divide themselves into more classifications based on their stats, abilities, and availability(cost and cooldown) and while unofficial, they are recognized by most of the community:
     • Meatshields: cheap units with low statistics and a fast TBA. Their use is to be spammed and so to block enemies. The first ever two cats, Cat and Tank Cat, are notably examples of a meatshield.
     • Rushers: Fast units great for map-wide immediate damage.
     • Nuker: their attack animation is quite slow but it's balanced with a high damage and decent range. Sometimes they've Strong or Massive/Insane Damage buffs vs a particular trait.
     • Tankers: Accompanied by very high hps and low range, these units are just catified walls for the enemies. Sometimes they've Strong or Though/Insanely Though buffs vs a particular trait.
     • Snipers: their use is to kill backline enemies. This group has always a really high range yet sometimes a high blindspot where they can't kill enemies if they are in.
     • Crowd-Controllers: use the five principal debuffs (Slow, Freeze, Knockback, Weaken, Curse) to the enemies to facilitate the battle.
5. Some cats (and sometimes enemies) use several abilities to counter and debuff traited enemies/cats:
   • Freeze, as the name says, makes enemies or units unable to proceed with attacking or movement for a limited time.
   • Slow sets units' speed to 1, halting their advance.
   • Knockback pushes backwards whoever gets hit and the attack animation gets restored if that unit isn't able to deal the damage. For certain units with more range, this could be a good thing.
   • Weaken weakens attack's damage to its 50%, even sometimes is more in some units.
   • Curse nullifies the unit's special abilities vs traits.
   • Though allows units to take 1/4 of the damage from a traited enemy. Has a stronger variant, Insanely Tough, which takes 1/6 of an enemy's damage.
   • Massive Damage makes units deal 3x damage to a traited enemy. Such like Though, has a stronger variant, Insane Damage, which deals 5x damage.
   • Strong is a weaker mix of Though and Massive Damage, with it, units will deal 1.5x damage and will get 0.5x damage from traited enemies.
   • Dodge Attack has a chance to allow units to become invincible to a traited enemy for a small time.
   • Attacks Only permits units to attack only their trait and the base, no else, allowing to save an attack that can be lost on other enemies.
   • There even neutral abilities for cats/enemies that cannot be taken off by curse, such as:
     • Strengthen will increase the unit's attack damage if its healt drops below a percentage and persists until death.
     • Survive helps units to, well, survive an attack that could take their live and will restore the HPs to 1 point.
     • Wave Attack triggers a crescent line of waves that goes through units and every wave deals area damage.
     • Surge Attack summons a temporary giant energy geyser that inflicts damage over time.
     • If a cat successfully kills an enemy with Extra Money, the money portion taken from the enemy will be double.
6. Despite being a sort of loot boxes, Cat Capsules are necessary for the player to progress throughout the game as they reserve lots of units who help during battles and have special abilities that normal cats don't, with the Rare Cat Capsules give units from Rare to Legendary rank.
   • Even if you would get a duplicate of somebody you have already, in that case you would have 3 different options: sell the duplicate for Xps, sell it for Nps, or add it to the original unit for a plus level.
   • There are two ways to get rare calls: using rare tickets taken from events/missions or spending 150 Cat Foods for a x1 summon or 1500 for a x11 one.
7. One big campaign with 432 total levels (48 for each chapter), which subdivides itself into three different stories set in different timelines. Each chapter reserves a reward as you can guess.
   • "Empire of Cats": is the first campaign ever with a total of 3 chapters, features for the first time Traitless, Red and Floating enemies which the player may encounter. Each chapter shares the same enemy formation for every level (except the last one) as the player can get familiar with them. It envolves cats invading the world of nowadays.
   • "Into the Future" comes after defeating the boss of chapter 1 of the previous campaign. The main gimmick revolves at Alien enemies, which are heavily boosted than others, so players have to find treasure to weaken them. It features even for the first time Black, Angel and Metal enemies. It's set later in a future invaded by alien creatures.
   • "Cat of the Cosmos" is the last one. Has the Starred Alien enemies, a more powerful variants of normal Alien ones, which deal higher damage to the units and are highly boosted too, as well as featuring never seen before abilities. The main boss for each chapter is the Cat God.
8. There are a lot of types of enemies that players can encounter during the game. Some of them involve around their stats, other are focused on their speed, or they rely on their abilities. There are 10 main traits for the enemies in the game, being:
   • Traitless: distinct by their white-grey palette, are the first enemies to be met in the game, and their stats are usually low without any buff.
   • Red: distinct by their predominant dark-orange skin , these are only slightly stronger than traitless, and they're used at the start as an example of how some cats can working better on different traits. Some of them use abilities.
   • Floating: recognized by the fact they're flying, sometimes mix with other trait (however, white floating enemies are not Traitless as well as flying Angel/Aku enemies are not mixed with Floating trait).
   • Black: pitch black enemies with stronger stats. They usually have high speed, attack rate and quantity of knockbacks (especially for the peons), yet lower hp at most.
   • Angel: similar to Trailess ones, but with small details like wings, halos or wigs. Some of them work similar to Black enemies, other have insane stats and all share a lot of hp.
   • Metal: enemies that resemble robots/cyborgs, have low hp, yet compensate it with the unique ability of reduce damages to 1 atk point. It's necessary use units with critical ability against them.
   • Alien: the 2-3 chapters' main focus. They divide themselves in two subgroups:
     • Normal Aliens appear to be blue animals with tentacles/antennas, are similar to Red ones in terms of stats, however with a larger use of abilities and they're heavy buffed in the next chapters without treasures.
     • Starred Aliens have always a yellow star in their design and they're stronger than their normal counterparts. They can have two unique abilities: the ability to teleport units behind (rarely they do it forward) and the barrier, where a unit must do a higher damage than the barrier's hp to break it, otherwise makes the enemy invincible.
   • Zombie: purple living corpses that can be encountered in Outbreak stages for the first time. Are extremely annoying enemies due to their digging ability (where they hide themselves underground when come near a unit and then rise up) and their revive one (after being killed the first time, become a bone pile and then resurrect). Have also a low money drop.
   • Aku: black and blue demonic creatures that feature devastating stats, some have shield abilities that add more health and immunity to debuffs which restore after every knockback, and other, when killed, summon a surge attack from an evil spirit.
   • Relic: white with dark green bumps and lime flashes in their design, are extremely dangerous end game enemies, with really insane stats (specially their health). Involve for the first time the infamous Curse ability.
9. The music is very catchy and memorable.

Catfood-Starved Qualities

1. While the levels as a whole are designed well, some levels just aren't good, whether it's because of certain enemies being annoying, taking too long, just having a bad gimmick, being rehashes or a combination of any of those qualities. An example is Tear-Soaked Puppy, which requires you to one-shot the enemy base or you basically insta-lose, while you are being spammed with weak enemies. One of those weak enemies has a chance to negate all damage for a few seconds. It's a rehash of an earlier level, Cubist Crimes, just with a horrible RNG element.
2. Certain artifacts called Treasures are all but required to get far in the game. While the game now is charitable with their ease of access, grinding for them can still feel unbearable.
3. Units obtained from Gacha have a chance of going away for a while based what banner you get them from.

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