Shooty and the Catfish: Fully Reloaded

Shooty and the Catfish: Fully Reloaded is the full version of the retro-style RPG of the same name. Although I played and reviewed the first two episodes separately, I won't be skipping any details since this is the complete edition. It isn't too different from its prior releases, but there are some noteworthy changes.

Let's Talk About Graphics!

This is one of the game's strong points, and even stronger since its past incarnations. Not only does it sport entirely custom visuals, they are an upgrade to the game's original style without changing it too drastically. It's going for a Game Boy aesthetic and it used to feature a limited pallet, but now a wider variety of colors are used to help bring the world to life. Even so, each area sort of has its own color scheme, and there's a GB-green pallet used for flashbacks that encapsulates the feel of those old games perfectly. With its own set of locations, enemies, and characters (+cameos), there's no shortage of interesting things to see.

Let's Talk About Audio!

Like the graphics, it has all custom music and sound effects, and these go with the retro aesthetic as well. The music adds to the surreal feeling of the whole thing, and it wears its weirdness badge proudly. Nothing feels out of place, so the unique resources help give the game its own identity.

Let's Talk About Writing!

The game doesn't have a very complicated story. It almost feels like the plot of a cartoon show, although it's hardly kid-friendly with all the swearing. Shooty and his catfish friend Zaat are a pair of mercenaries that take on odd jobs for pay. They are employed through their agent of sorts, Slim Grim, who is a disembodied floating three-eyed skull. He gets them work, they go do the work, and they get bamboozled out of their payment one way or another. That's the general loop of the game, which covers 5 chapters. There's also an overarching plot about a parasitic fungal outbreak that's causing people to be taken over by mushrooms. When they're not trying to makes ends meet, they're getting to the bottom of the shroom problem.

Initially, Shooty and Zaat feel pretty generic as protagonists. Zaat is snarky and Shooty likes to goof around, but not too much. They get a little development as they go along, but I wouldn't say they become very memorable. Some of the NPCs they encounter stand out a bit more, like the slimy politician who's running for prime minister, or their quirky gun supplier, Gerkinman. Slim Grim has the most personality out of anyone, so it's fun to get assignments from him and report back later. Apart from the main cast, there are plenty of silly NPCs to talk to, and they vary in degrees of interest. While it's not the most engaging narrative, it's still entertaining to play through. This is fitting, as raw enjoyment is the game's goal. However, its amusement factor will depend on your sense of humor. Some of the jokes are pretty crass or vulgar, but the majority of them are dad-worthy puns. I found a couple of them to be clever, but if groaners aren't your thing, you may be better off not checking all the bookshelves.

Unfortunately, the writing is let down in its execution. The game has a lot of typos and text errors, most of which are due to complete misuse of apostrophes. Most of the words that should have them don't, and there are some words with them that never need them. When I first played the original episode, I wasn't sure the font even had an apostrophe character, until I was proven wrong in the second episode when they happened to include one. There are other misspellings and such besides, but the game really needed a proofread and a lesson in contractions.

Let's Talk About Gameplay!

Although the gameplay has gotten a face lift since the previous episodes, it's still let down in a few ways. It's mostly normal RPG Maker stuff; exploration, key hunting, and combat. The battles used to be too straightforward with very little depth, but that has been corrected in the full version. Now, it's important to pay attention to statuses and make good use of your resources...until you get powerful enough to crush everything anyway. The game uses touch encounters and it's possible to fully clear areas, but this is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means you can only grind so much and you'll eventually run out of things to earn money off of. On the other, if you actually do seek out every fight, you're going to get over-leveled and circumvent the difficulty (but only to a point).

It's hard to say how well it balances out. I'm the type of player to leave no stone unturned, so I was able to breeze through the encounters after a while. However, it's designed with the intention that you don't need to clear every fight. It was most difficult at the start where resources were the tightest, income was low, ammo was pricey, and the boss was an actual challenge. In a way, the design is at war with itself in the beginning, since clearing out all monsters isn't intended, but you need all the help you can get to make headway. It becomes substantially more doable beyond the first boss, if only because Zaat learns a skill from them that makes the rest much easier to deal with. What it amounts to is that status problems are pretty real concerns in this game. Getting your stats debuffed or being inflicted with poison can turn the tide of battle. Luckily, it goes both ways, and you can use poison to mop the floor with most high-HP enemies.

A lot of the trouble I had was due to the limited party size and the weird restrictions on item usage. Out of stubbornness, Shooty and Zaat will not use items to heal each other in combat. Only the user can heal themselves, which is really problematic at times. While this is an annoying limitation, it's not impossible to work around, but it is made more annoying by the existence of some healing items that they CAN use on each other. These pertain to statuses that would prevent the user from moving, as the partner can only heal their ally in those circumstances. However, this begs the obvious question of "why can't they do this with all items" and its exacerbated by the lack of an indicator for which party member is selected. It defaults to Shooty, and you'll hear a noise when you move to select Zaat, but there is no visual to indicate who you're using the status item on. It's a necessary piece of clarity when it counts, which isn't that often, but that's no excuse for it to be a thing.

While most encounters can be wiped out with ease, the bosses are a different story; especially the secret cameo bosses. These are the ones poison is best for, since it works by percentage and takes huge chunks off the tankier guys. Combat is always two-on-one, even when there are two opponents, so it doesn't get too complex apart from healing management. It might have been a little more compelling if there were enemy groups with two monsters, but like the story, it was never meant to be that involved.

Let's Wrap This Up...

This game is far from perfect, but I think it accomplishes its goal of providing an odd experience. It could've been more solid with a few tweaks and different implementation, but it's not let down too much by the drawbacks. I suppose it's just a little disappointing to see something good fall short of being great when it didn't have to. It's a unique game regardless; it has its moments and there are things worth seeing in it. I'd say it's a step up from the earlier releases, but it doesn't quite exceed what they provided. For that, it gets the same rating as the demos.

3.5/5


That title isn't to suggest the game's not fun; just that these mushrooms aren't. And no, Toad isn't actually in it.