Umbraclaw
The game's whole premise is that you start out as a regular cat with the baseline abilities of basic movement, a walljump, a dash that doubles as a dodge, and for bosses, a FATAL SKILL that you charge up by dodging through attacks and completely empties one of a boss' healthbars. Very basic kit, you don't even start out with any way to deal damage, and for a while a single (1) touch from any hostile force will kill you and take one of your nine (9) lives, which will in turn give you some offensive, defensive, or mobility skill to make your trek easier. Honestly a cool experiment on paper. Certain skills are also more likely to appear based on what enemy or hazard killed you. If you're really going through it and die enough times, you turn into the humanoid Kittyman-Zero, turning the game into a classic Inti Creates joint. People have said that this game is more fun the worse you are at it. I get it, you get to play with more of the game's systems, there are plenty of skills to play with, there's an upgrade system for some reason, but it really highlights the main issue: the game is balanced around the base cat form, assuming you have no special abilities available.
The goal in your cat form is to avoid everything, and not in a sense of observing enemy movement patterns to find a way through. There's an enemy in your way, and even though they aren't really placed in a way that would make trying to dodge through them risky, you could also just... look for the hidden crawlspace nearby that just sends you past them. This will happen all game. There's no secret to finding these spots, just get close enough to a wall and maybe one is there, maybe you have to be brave enough to bait an enemy's attack that you can dodge through, maybe they'll shoot a projectile at you that, if you were like me and got the Elephant skill by chance, can be completely nullified from a very generous distance with no resources held hostage (in fact, it builds your Spirit Gauge for you). You're never really swarmed by enemies, either. They're just... placed in open spaces to take up space, not to threaten you in clever, scary formations. Sometimes two enemies will chuck ranged attacks at you from both sides. Just slurp up the bullets and be on your way.
Bosses are a waiting game. Stand around until they throw a straightforward, heavily telegraphed attack for you to dodge through so you can build your Spirit Gauge for a Fatal Skill and remove a health bar. If an attack seems a little scary, it's probably also a projectile, and your defensive skill just ignores it with little to no cost. If you happened to go into a boss with a full bar you can just skip the first phase. If that was a miniboss you get to skip the boss entirely. "Does this game even want me to interact with it" was on my mind the whole time. It's dodgeslop, I'm afraid, my vocabulary is too limited. You don't have to learn how an attack works, you just need to know it's coming your direction and press L1 in reaction. Only one boss fight did anything interesting and threatening, and it sure wasn't that boring ass long ass stale ass final boss.
Thought it'd be unfair to judge the game just based on the cat form gameplay, so after a clear (the "best" ending, apparently), I did another playthrough where I kept falling to humanoid mode then resetting back to cat mode after a stage to see what all variety of skills you get... yep, the game truly is balanced around the base cat form. You're exceedingly powerful otherwise and can just burst down anything, face-tanking bosses if you want, getting cheap access to defensive shields or even healing, depending on how luck graces you. A'ight. The game is very pretty with a nice artstyle, at least. I could never own an outdoor cat, man. Way too stressful thinking about what all they're getting up to.
