Otome Game Review: Puss in Combat Boots

Primula decided it wanted to do its own rendition of Nier Replicant but with cat people instead of robots. Unfortunately it went as “great” as Miqo’te players dancing the Bees Knees in 2Butt bottoms in Limsa Lominsa. Warning spoilers ahead because I cannot rant about the ridiculous “final ending” without spoiling out the wazoo.

I don’t have many screenshots and most of my screenshots are of Ibuki being an idiot isekai otaku so that’s what you’re gonna get.

Yuzu – Yuzu is the sweet childhood friend who, as template has it, has literally been in love with Tama for 17 years cause apparently they nursed from the same cat mom lol. He’s generally got that whole “Oh no I am not good enough to be with hime-sama because I am a commoner” but then gets over it. It was pretty predictable but I do wish they had a bit more cut scenes together. The only WTF for me was how they made him a yandere o/c in the bad end like bruh that’s so inconsistent do better next time. ಠ_ಠ

Kunyan – Kunyan is the template tsundere and because I’m just not a fan of his voice actor I just couldn’t get into this route. The only funny parts were when Ibuki was making fun of him for being a tsundere but all the other political stuff was so boring I was falling asleep most of the route. 😴 I also find it weird how she saw him as a friend until he tsunkissed her and then she’s like aaactually…I think I like him too 🤣😅.

Kotaro – Kotaro is Tama’s cousin, childhood friend and also fiance to unite their “kingdoms”. The entire time though they just feel like friends. It was really obvious that Yuzu and Kunyan both were in love with Tama, but I didn’t get that feeling at all with Kotaro. It didn’t help that he basically told her as kids to only like him as a brother so welp lol. On top of all of this, I actually could physically not get his good ending. That bullshit DDR heart system was too fast for my grandma ass brain and because I couldn’t get all the commands right, I just kept getting shoveled into the normala ending. I eventually had to go back to do this or else I couldn’t unlock the “truth” ending and the only way I was able to do it is by finding a 3rd guide to follow and literally SLAMMING my arrow keys so that the idiotic steam client would actually respond. (This isn’t the first time I have issues with Steam keyboard being an unresponsive POS.) Unfortunately since I was practically about to finish the game, I couldn’t care less by the time I got to his ending. Oh you like her? Okay. 🙄

Shed – Ah Shed, the truth about him revealed in Kunyan’s route so the surprise element was completely gone. Fuck it spoiler time, he’s the one who’s intentionally killed Tama’s dad when the empire arrived so that there would be a war between east and west cat armies. He’s doing this because a certain cat asked him and that cat saved his life so he’s indebted to him. So this entire route he’s basically taken Tama hostage but he’s still treating her “nicely” despite chaining her down to tickle the fancy of those who love the “bad boy who’s nice to me uwu” stereotype lol. (Or for those who just wanna hear Ishikawa Kaito’s smexy voice  (́◉◞౪◟◉)). Also lmao the writers clearly felt bias with him too cause he got more action with Tama than anyone else. 😂😂 But then in return he actually gets no good ends, only bad ends so I guess it evens out. The whole thing was honestly so stupid???

Shed: Tigger-sama  I failed you.
Tigger: Yea you suck, why don’t you go kill yourself.
Shed: You’re right lemme go do that.
Tama: Noo you must live to atone for your sins!
Shed:
*Hangs himself in the good end ~ the end*

Weirdly enough in the “bad end” they end up running away together so he wouldn’t be killed by the empire for murder/kidnapping and it feels like a “good” end ?? Whatever. ಠ_ಠ

Kitty – Umm yea there’s some 13 year old cat shota named KITTY who I jokingly called Hello Kitty…but then the game made it canon when Ibuki called him that too. 😂😂 It’s also really awkward because even though he’s technically a shota they picked some ikebo voice for him and he sounded like 15 years older than he really was lol. Unfortunately his route was boring AF because basically Tama offered to go with him on his empire ship and stay there to improve relations between the 2 factions. She had basically nothing to do except random chores and take cooking lessons with Ink. Eventually though idk why she awakens her inner shotacon and is suddenly in love with him but the whole time he basically treats her diplomatically  lol. So when Willow becomes cupid for the two of them it actually became interesting and funny. I wish they had just focused on that from the start instead of wasting HOURS about ship chores and cooking.  I did kinda like the story about his background but again he basically acted diplomatic to her until the very very very end where he was finally like “actually I like you too”. It didn’t help though that it was like WELP he’s 13 and this oneeshota route is too weird for me. (ヽ´ω`) If they just actually focused on building the relationship and made him at least 7 years older this would have been decent but well I can pretty much say that about every route in the game.

Ink – Ink had a side ending that branched off of Kitty’s route but they just fall off the boat and end up on a deserted island…the end. I mean thanks for the fanservice of them nekkid in a cave but I wanted to see an actual romance ending. The potential here hello!? Sigh.

Truth End – Once again they spent 80% of the route on repetitive boring shit until they finally got to the good part revealing that Tama has powers to see a bit into the future  but LMAO of course none of these powers ever existed ANYWHERE ELSE in the game until now! Not only that but they finally decided to touch on the entire isekai/Nier Replicant ripoff  and well it turns out it really was a Nier Replicant ripoff where basically freaking IBUKI, an otaku, became a mad scientist and was the one who created a mutant cat clone named Tigger who would have eternal life and would never die. Somehow all of this led to calamities happening that destroyed humanity (floods/dust storms etc) and the only one left alive was Tigger and his lover cat Shiro. They had mutant cat babies and Tigger watched them grow old and die. So basically every cat who is alive is some long distant relative of Tigger making the entire game like one of those weird inbred cat islands they have in Japan. So then this magical mascot “Army Cat” magically shows up and gives Ibuki a chance to not do what he did in the past and not create a mutant cat clone by going back in time,  or allows him to not change things and keep everything as is. The dumbest part is if you keep the mutant post apocalyptic cat world as is, SOMEHOW MAGICALLY Tigger is able to obtain his wish to die just because Ibuki remembers that he was  his former cat dad.

No seriously what the fuck is any of this. Nothing makes any sense here! Who the fuck is the Gunneko mascot??? Also in one of the bad ends in this route all the cats basically die of FIP but even though it was a bada end, it’s probably the most realistic ending. These cats are just living mimicking humans. I also find it fucking hilarious that the game marks the “East”  as Japan and  the “West” as England….but  ALL OF THE CATS ARE JAPANESE CATS CAUSE THEY WERE ALL BORN FROM THE SAME JAPANESE CAT DAD LMAO. Anyways if you thought Virche was ridiculous with their science BS this  is even more stupid. It feels like they shoved this plot last second. They could have just kept the whole cat politics in a fairy tale style game but the whole “post apocalyptic isekai” loomed in the background the WHOLE game until you get to this truth route and then they vomit all of this scientific info dump and it’s like why not just make the WHOLE game lead into this? It would have been way more interesting than talking about freaking potatoes for 2 hours on a boat from Japan to England. (ノ# ﾟдﾟ)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:．┻┻:･’．:∵ 　　Honestly all the parts where Ibuki was ranting on about being an isekai protagonist were way more interesting than any of the political East vs West bullshit to me. They should have focused more on that but it didn’t help that 80% of the game was the same copy paste route and many of the individual “branches” were indistinguishable. It’s like the entire game was just “Let’s make a cat isekai game” and filling in the rest was just some afterthought. Ugh.

This was so insanely bad, I am putting my foot down. 🦶First of all there’s this stupid system where you have to press the arrow key to align with the “hearts” on screen. The problem is in some of the routes you have like 3 seconds to press 4 hearts at once?? Wtf? The steam client is as responsive as roadkill so in order to get the truth end and complete Kotaro’s route, I had to SMASH my keyboard’s arrow keys to get the game to read them in time.

This game also suffers from the “OLD OTOME GAME” problem of 90% of the game being an overlapping common route with individual scenes tucked in here & there and a branching off individual ending. That means that once you play it once, you’ve basically played the whole game with slight differences here and there. It’s what Japan calls 金太郎飴 which is not as common in newer games, but was a big lazy way of releasing otome games back in the day. Unfortunately it’s been a really long time since I’ve played these types of games so I found it to be very uninteresting the 2nd time around. Hell even the first time it felt so draggy with too much “common scenes” and not enough time spent with the love interests. Let’s not even go into the “OLD GAME” problem of having like 30 choices per route. The switch port had a skip to next choice option but there was no such thing in the steam version so I had to painfully skip through 80% of the game multiple times like it was 2008.

I ranted in my spoiler section but the non spoiler version of it – the game just feels unfinished. They had several different plots and focuses on the story (politics but also post apocalyptic isekai) and they had no idea how to combine them. They focused on the East vs West politics for 90% of the game and then in the final route, the last 10% the game does a complete 180 and decides to focus on the post apocalyptic world and  explain why  there’s no humans left in it. Unfortunately the 10% is what I was actually interested in while I couldn’t give 2 fucks about them spending 2 hours of the game talking about making potato soup on a ship from Japan to England. 😔 I would play the game in bed and it would be a really good sleep aid to help me fall asleep because that’s how bored I was of all the political scenario. Even the truth ending felt UNFINISHED to me in fact the entire thing gave me flashbacks to Edel Blume.

Overall, unless you enjoy east vs west politics rambling on and on, I do not recommend this game. The romance felt very weak and forced last second pretty much in all routes except for Yuzu. If you liked Taisho Alice and want to play this game because of the same company, just don’t. It’s not even remotely as quality of a game. In fact it’s extremely sub par and feels incomplete. The steam version is also in Japanese and Chinese only so if you can only play it in English you’re out of luck. Still, even though I got this game on sale, I wish I never bothered. Initially when it came out in Japan it had really bad reviews so I decided not to bother. Buuuuut as usual “Ooh steam sale!” and welp I deserve this for my own stupidity.