The Battle Cats

The Battle Cats (にゃんこ大冒険, Nyanko Daisensou) is a 2014 tower defense game developed and published by Ponos Corporation for iOS and Android. The Nintendo 3DS version was released in 2016 and the Nintendo Switch version two years later.

Chapter 1-3: Empire of Cats
As financial crises, terrorism and other troubles plague the Earth, cats begin their crusade to overthrow world governments, and create one with them as undisputed rulers. After having invaded and conquered the major cities of the world without mercy, they also manage to conquer the Moon and assert their dominance over humans. However, cats ultimately remain as they always have been, and the world experiences nothing more than an increase in cat sightings everywhere.

Chapter 4-6: Into The Future
900 years into the future, on April 1, 29XX, aliens visit the earth, but are rudely hunted by the population, leading them to sink Japan out of spite, create mind control systems, and build their own Flying Continent. As a result, the cats find themselves having to regain what the aliens took, collecting treasure items to weaken them. They were victorious again and in the conclusion of the chapter, it is revealed that the aliens became allied to them and they let slip that there is cat food in the cosmos, prompting the cats to forge a rocket and explore the depths of space.

Chapter 7-9: Cats of Cosmos
After conquering the earth, in the present and in the future, cats will have to prepare to conquer the entire universe. They will confront starred aliens, collecting even more treasure items to gradually counter them, eventually facing off and beating the Cat God in the ultimate showdown, as well as the invader Filbuster Obstructa.

The Aku Realms
Some time after the events of the previous story chapter, thanks to Empress Cat's research, the cat empire enters the Aku realms, a world dominated by devilish foes and altars that weaken cats. Priest Mamon, their nefarious monarch, worked tirelessly to revive and unseal the Lord of destruction Jagando for ultimate domination. As a result, Cats were forced to demolish them again to restore their power. They failed to prevent Mamon from retrieving the crystal of awakening as well as the resurrection of Jagando. Soon, the cats catch up with Mamon again, defeating both him and Jagando while stealing an egg from the latter before ultimately withdrawing. Despite having his machinations shredded, Mamon is relieved that he can meet up with his mortal family again. He thanks the cats for pulling him out of an endless abyss before cryptically swearing revenge at them.

Gameplay
The gameplay is very similar to Stick War Legacy, in that the enemies will try to get to your base and you will have to defend it by blocking their path and destroying their respective base. The differences are few but clearly visible, in fact instead of being to the left (your base) to the right (the enemy base) like all similar games, it is the other way around.

Once you spawn a cat, it just goes to the other direction and will attack anything that gets in its way. You cannot command them, but you can take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses to time their spawns properly.

The worker cat generates money for you, and by upgrading him you can improve your income rate as well as wallet size. Each defeated enemy will give some cash too.

You can also strategically fire the cat cannon to clear or hamper some weak peons and make way for your cats.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The main idea of conqueror cats seem funny and creative.
 * 2) Like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies, the graphic is colorful and looks like exit outside from a cartoon, also for the 2014 standards.
 * 3) *Speaking of the art style, the game combine more styles, with the cute and gummy looking cat characters and the more detailed anime characters. While this may seem messy and high-contrast, the graphics somehow manage to blend artistic styles very well, capturing movement well and making it more pleasing to the eye.
 * 4) The gameplay is simple, but very enjoying in the same time, and it doesn't ever age up!
 * 5) Tons of tons of unique cats, each giving you 5 cat food when unlocked. Moreover, there are 6 different rarity stages:
 * 6) *Normal: These are the cats acquirable in EoC, mostly with the use of experience. Normal cats aren't particularly strong, but are accessible and upgrades aren't as troublesome either.
 * 7) *Special: Special cats can be obtained during the chapters. Some needs to be paid with Cat Food, while others can be unlocked via other methods, such as Bahamut Cat (clear EOC3 moon) or Tricycle Cat (daily login reward).
 * 8) *Rare: Can be obtained from rare cat capsules. Most rare cats have specialized abilities that can be put to good use, though they value a bit higher.
 * 9) *Super Rare: Super Rares have generally higher stats and also good abilities, though they are more expensive and not as spam-able.
 * 10) *Uber Super Rare: Ubers are very hard to obtain in rare capsules. They often boast massive stats and good abilities in most cases at the cost of extreme recharge times and costs.
 * 11) *Legend Rare: Incredibly rare cats with equally extreme niches and costs.
 * 12) Occasionally the 1500 CF rare capsule 11-draw option can provide the player with a guaranteed uber, gave a 50% discount (resets after a month), or both, giving them an efficient way to get powerful units.
 * 13) Speaking of guaranteed ubers, you can try to earn a platinum ticket. While the few free ones are tough to obtain, they can give you any uber from the entire game avaliable at this point, including those that are currently not obtainable in the rare gacha. This is useful for getting units that hardly even show up, such as the super/epicfest-exclusive Kasli the Bane.
 * 14) The rare gacha banner may shift sometimes, allowing you to access different prize pools, mostly affecting the chances of obtaining specific cats in certain sets or collaboration events.
 * 15) It is possible to create efficient and devastating cat combos. The involved cats don't have to be deployable as the combos will still take effect.
 * 16) After complete the Greece in EOC 1, in addition unlocking Bean Cats, you receive Gamatoto, a cat explorer that can help you searching various abilities. Furthermore, you can recruit assistants by the exploration, that can help Gamatoto finding more things!
 * 17) Near Gamatoto there is Ototo: after searching engineers for Ototo and materials, the Ototo development team can improve your base
 * 18) The XP, the principal value obtainable in various metod like complete levels or from Gamatoto, can be used to upgrade your cats and more, like the defense, the speed of money production and the quantity of XP gained in the levels.
 * 19) In every level there are treasure can be obtained with a various probability. Taking each treasure of different rarity in an area can unlock a gameplay improvement (Energy Drink boosting income rate, Time Machine accelerating energy recovery, etc), in addition, taking all the superior treasures in a chapter can give the player 1~3 million XP as a reward, and once a treasure of higher quality has been seized there's no chance to get a worse one ever again.
 * 20) *One can even take advantage of recurring treasure festivals to seize them more efficiently.
 * 21) Long Campaign with three plots and altogether 9 chapters, Aku realms not withstanding.
 * 22) There are even two gamemodes:
 * 23) *Legend Stages: Very difficult levels where you can win big rewards, there are also event where you can gain XP, Cat Food, even more cats, and catfruit for evolution. Certain stages have boss enemies that are unlockable as usable cats when beaten.
 * 24) *Catclaw Dojo: A practice stage that doesn't cost energy where you race against time to get the highest score.
 * 25) Captivating and memorable soundtrack, likeDefault Theme, Rush Theme, Battle Theme 6, O Fortuna Theme, ITF Theme 1, ITF Theme 2,ITF Moon Theme, Catclaw Dojo Theme, CofC Theme 1,Messier's Assault Theme (probably the best) and the list goes on.
 * 26) Many varieties of enemies, which can be normal, red, zombie, metallic, black, angelic, etc. With or without, each has a unique generalization, as well as specific counters.
 * 27) Many crossovers and references from other franchises like Godzilla, Metal Slug, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Delinquent Cat, etc.
 * 28) The idea of using the experience as a currency was done quite well.
 * 29) * The user rank can be considered the real experience, and you can gain UR by upgrade your units.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The area attack of this game is quite broken, as it does not immediately damage enemies in the area but only in a principle in which the unit hooks an attack to a single enemy which is then repeated only to the closest enemies. For example, if a cat does an area attack but the target dies before it is done, the attack is essentially wasted.
 * 2) Certain enemies and stages can be extremely difficult to tackle, such as the infamous Assassin Bear.
 * 3) Despite the fact that boosting cats increases their HP and attack, the game doesn't actually show you how many HP your cats have, nor their damage. So far, the only reliable source is from community-based platforms.
 * 4) *There may actually be a way to know your cats' damage, which is to see how much damage they do to enemy bases, but it is quite wasteful in terms of cat energy.
 * 5) The archer cat is known to be the worst cat in the game due to its terrible ranged attack and his high price tag. However, as much as there are terrible cats (mostly in the form of collaboration cats), there can also be extremely good ones out there.
 * 6) Some music, while aren't bad, does sound a bit mushy, like Uphill Theme, Moon Boss Theme, Heavenly Tower Floor 50 Theme and few others. However, if there is any music that can be considered really bad is the Hatsune Miku's Default Theme Remix, which is worthy to shudder.
 * 7) There are many stages that can be easily demolished with meat shield spam, though not necessarily in the others (I.E. New York in ITF).

Reception
The Battle Cats has received positive reviews from critics and audiences. On Metacritic, the game received the average user score of 7.7/10.