▼ Not recommended
1 hrs
Another day, another month and here comes another Chinese romance FMV game to enter into the fray. "Be Your Cat" (Another rare instance of an accurate Chinese-to-English translation alongside "Director Simulator) features Lee Liheng, a young working professional who after an accident, is forced to transform into a cat for 1 hour every night and goes on a series of misadventures with classmates, friends and colleagues. How does it compare to others in the romance FMV genre?
Warning: There may be some story spoilers ahead!!!!
Pros:
-There is a nice variety to the physical appearances of the female cast, compared to other romance FMV games where sometimes the female love interests could look similar to each other or fit a physical archetype (like cutesy-wootsy and wide doe-eyed 小妹妹 or "Youthful Girl" appearance). I did feel that each female character looked physically distinct from each other.
-Some characters like ex-girlfriend Li Ke feel like real individuals as they make decisions outside of the protagonist Lee Liheng's control or influence such as Li Ke's manipulative scheme of a fake pregnancy to force Liheng to get back together with her. Her dialogue and reactions that tend to start off as polite and then descend into fiery hot temper are some of the more believable aspects of this game.
-Some women like Weng Fei Fei have intriguing stories like her being blackmailed over sexually provocative photos.
-I do like that Lee Liheng's male best friend, Jin Rui En is more involved in the story along the lines of "Love Is All Around's" Lao Liu and makes the male protagonist a bit more believable rather than his only friends being women who are all romantically interested in him.
-The premise of the protagonist being forced to turn into a cat is a novel and interesting idea explored in gameplay.
Cons:
-The various women like Xia Ling and Jin Rui An are all hastily introduced without players experiencing or getting a sense of who they are to protagonist Liheng. Instead of conversations that gradually introduce or develop the women's relationships with Liheng, we get verbal or written expositions from Liheng's actor like Xia Ling being Liheng's university classmate. It's truly a case of going the opposite of "Show, Don't Tell".
-There is no positive nor negative points system, so you have no clue on your standing with the various women are and this can affect whether you can achieve good endings or not (WHICH ARE NOT EASY TO ACHIEVE!).
-While you can make some dialogue choices, I felt that these did not matter most of the time and you were just watching Liheng react and make arguably bad decisions to his romantic misadventures.
-The individual scenes between Liheng and the various women feel disjointed from each other because there's no strong narrative thread tying it. For example, Liheng's supervisor Shuang Ru can disappear completely from the story after a flirtatious home-cooked dinner and no one else brings up where did Shuang Ru go to. (However I must state that Li Ke's and Weng Fei Fei's scenes at least have a narrative tying them together such as Li Ke's schemes to get her ex-boyfriend back).
-Unlike other romance FMV games like "Tomorrow's Love Puzzle" or "Director Simulator" where your choices to go somewhere physically with a particular love interest mattered and excluded other choices, "Be Your Cat" allows you to just bounce around to interact with the various women and it felt like you were just watching Liheng make decisions, rather than seeing your choices play out.
-The audio quality is not great as you can hear in many instances, the actors' lines would echo around the room and sometimes be not easy to hear.
-There is a regular amount of lag, particularly when the choices are loading and this creates hilariously awkward moments when characters would stare at Liheng or do something very unnaturally for uncomfortable periods of time.
-The English translation was evidently done through a translation software without further editing to improve the grammar, nuances and consistency of the translation. This can be seen in Shuang Ru being called "Double Ru" (as Shuang means "double" in Chinese), weird choice of words ("Ahoy" being used for a simple "Yes") or usage of Internet slang ("idk" being used for "I don't know" by Xia Ling). Unintentionally, this became a source of amusement for me, but it can be distracting for people who are genuinely trying to understand the story.
-The whole mystery of Liheng turning into a cat is unexplored and I think a waste, because it would make for an interesting central narrative to tie things together.
-You cannot pause, rewind nor fast-forward to explore other choices. This means you would be forced to do a whole new playthrough to explore the other choices!
Verdict:
I frankly do not recommend this game because of the lack of meaningful impact from the player's decisions, lack of logic on how the endings are achieved and disjointed story and scenes that do not make for a believable nor enjoyable romantic relationship developments. The positive score reviews from Chinese language reviews are a bit misleading, because the content tends to critique on the technical problems, illogical story and some of the other issues I've brought up.
If you are still interested to try "Be My Cat", I suggest checking out scenes on Bilibili to see whether the scenes with the various women interest you before making a purchase. Otherwise, I would suggest others like "Director Simulator" or "Knowledge or Know Lady" which are able to balance absurdity with enjoyable or nice romances.
Warning: There may be some story spoilers ahead!!!!
Pros:
-There is a nice variety to the physical appearances of the female cast, compared to other romance FMV games where sometimes the female love interests could look similar to each other or fit a physical archetype (like cutesy-wootsy and wide doe-eyed 小妹妹 or "Youthful Girl" appearance). I did feel that each female character looked physically distinct from each other.
-Some characters like ex-girlfriend Li Ke feel like real individuals as they make decisions outside of the protagonist Lee Liheng's control or influence such as Li Ke's manipulative scheme of a fake pregnancy to force Liheng to get back together with her. Her dialogue and reactions that tend to start off as polite and then descend into fiery hot temper are some of the more believable aspects of this game.
-Some women like Weng Fei Fei have intriguing stories like her being blackmailed over sexually provocative photos.
-I do like that Lee Liheng's male best friend, Jin Rui En is more involved in the story along the lines of "Love Is All Around's" Lao Liu and makes the male protagonist a bit more believable rather than his only friends being women who are all romantically interested in him.
-The premise of the protagonist being forced to turn into a cat is a novel and interesting idea explored in gameplay.
Cons:
-The various women like Xia Ling and Jin Rui An are all hastily introduced without players experiencing or getting a sense of who they are to protagonist Liheng. Instead of conversations that gradually introduce or develop the women's relationships with Liheng, we get verbal or written expositions from Liheng's actor like Xia Ling being Liheng's university classmate. It's truly a case of going the opposite of "Show, Don't Tell".
-There is no positive nor negative points system, so you have no clue on your standing with the various women are and this can affect whether you can achieve good endings or not (WHICH ARE NOT EASY TO ACHIEVE!).
-While you can make some dialogue choices, I felt that these did not matter most of the time and you were just watching Liheng react and make arguably bad decisions to his romantic misadventures.
-The individual scenes between Liheng and the various women feel disjointed from each other because there's no strong narrative thread tying it. For example, Liheng's supervisor Shuang Ru can disappear completely from the story after a flirtatious home-cooked dinner and no one else brings up where did Shuang Ru go to. (However I must state that Li Ke's and Weng Fei Fei's scenes at least have a narrative tying them together such as Li Ke's schemes to get her ex-boyfriend back).
-Unlike other romance FMV games like "Tomorrow's Love Puzzle" or "Director Simulator" where your choices to go somewhere physically with a particular love interest mattered and excluded other choices, "Be Your Cat" allows you to just bounce around to interact with the various women and it felt like you were just watching Liheng make decisions, rather than seeing your choices play out.
-The audio quality is not great as you can hear in many instances, the actors' lines would echo around the room and sometimes be not easy to hear.
-There is a regular amount of lag, particularly when the choices are loading and this creates hilariously awkward moments when characters would stare at Liheng or do something very unnaturally for uncomfortable periods of time.
-The English translation was evidently done through a translation software without further editing to improve the grammar, nuances and consistency of the translation. This can be seen in Shuang Ru being called "Double Ru" (as Shuang means "double" in Chinese), weird choice of words ("Ahoy" being used for a simple "Yes") or usage of Internet slang ("idk" being used for "I don't know" by Xia Ling). Unintentionally, this became a source of amusement for me, but it can be distracting for people who are genuinely trying to understand the story.
-The whole mystery of Liheng turning into a cat is unexplored and I think a waste, because it would make for an interesting central narrative to tie things together.
-You cannot pause, rewind nor fast-forward to explore other choices. This means you would be forced to do a whole new playthrough to explore the other choices!
Verdict:
I frankly do not recommend this game because of the lack of meaningful impact from the player's decisions, lack of logic on how the endings are achieved and disjointed story and scenes that do not make for a believable nor enjoyable romantic relationship developments. The positive score reviews from Chinese language reviews are a bit misleading, because the content tends to critique on the technical problems, illogical story and some of the other issues I've brought up.
If you are still interested to try "Be My Cat", I suggest checking out scenes on Bilibili to see whether the scenes with the various women interest you before making a purchase. Otherwise, I would suggest others like "Director Simulator" or "Knowledge or Know Lady" which are able to balance absurdity with enjoyable or nice romances.
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