Review: Cattle Country (Nintendo Switch)
Cattle Country is described as a “Cozy Cowboy Adventure Life Sim.” While “cozy” has become quite a common gaming term in recent years, especially on Nintendo Switch, the cowboy angle is something unique. Ignore the buzzword, as we take a closer look at this Wild West title.
The life sim (not to be confused with simulation) takes place in the late 1800s. Your character (that you can name) starts with a plot of land in a mining settlement (that you also can name). You’ll meet a few key NPCs and then get left to your own devices, introducing yourself to others and getting familiar with the lay of the land. Despite seeing horses hitched to posts, and buzzards flying and attacking from overhead, the period isn’t overly evident. It often looks like a life sim of an indistinct time. Even close-up character art, when engaging in conversations, often lacks a distinct Wild West look.
It’s thematically more apparent when you encounter bandits. Sometimes, walking along the road, a bush or tree will rattle and a baddie or two will pop up. You’ll want to be quick and accurate to take them out. If you prefer not to have enemies in the overworld, you can disable them entirely. It might rob the game of some personality, but it’s a thoughtful touch all the same.
Despite the conservative approach to embracing the time period, the retro pixel look works well. Transitions from day to night, seasons changing, and little animations bring welcomed diversity, although there is some stutter, at least on the original Switch model. It’s a cute-looking game. The music sounds more Wild West, but tends to be subdued, if not silent. I thought it was just because it defaults lower, giving more emphasis to sound effects of birds or whatnot. But even cranking it to 100%, it still was a letdown.
The game offers plenty of expected tasks to keep you busy, besides the initial clearing of the land, cutting trees, and busting rocks. Crafting will have you making sprinklers to water crops, furniture to decorate your house… and a hard-boiled egg? Farming will have you digging, planting seasonally appropriate seeds, picking them, and selling them. As you expand, you’ll get more animals, too. Fishing is just what it sounds like, but the speed and a small margin for error (similar to the bandit fights) might make you less into it than expected, in which case, use “water traps”.
Mining might be the most unique and intriguing part. You collect treasure in the depths of the earth, all while getting attacked by bats, snakes, and so forth (you can also disable enemies here if you prefer). It’s a favorite, but the best stuff is down low, and your headlamp has limited range. So, make sure you have torches to fight some of the darkness. Also, make sure you’ve cooked some meals, as this is where your green stamina bar can really deplete. You don’t want to find yourself waking up in the doctor’s office, as it’s not free.
For all those things, it’s building relationships with the townsfolk that will let you expand your settlement into a full town. You need to interact with them and become friends. Get friendly with the banker, for instance, and he’ll expand the bank to hold more money. Make friends with the woman at the saloon, and she’ll eventually build a restaurant. There’s a board in town with a calendar of different events for residents, but making friends basically means giving them what they want (reminding me of something like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp). It’s not the most exciting approach.
Worse, it’s also not that intuitive. While making friends seems like it would be straightforward enough, we found ourselves wondering why hearts were so slow to increase. Giving them things they like, they’ll say something such as “you’ve made my week,” or a little heart will pop up, but the overall friendship levels stay low. That’s presuming you can even find them. They wander, often saying the same thing depending on where they are, which is also hard to get excited about. Maybe I’m missing something, but that leads me to another point…
The game doesn’t make it obvious what you need to do next to really get going. This approach isn’t inherently wrong, but here the lack of certain information proves frustrating. Even 25 hours in, progress felt minimal. I’m far from a life sim expert, but my wife, who is a fan, concurred. One big failing here, compared to other life sims, is pacing. While Cattle Country is likable and has kept us busy, it’ll also be easy to move on once this review is published and the next thing comes along.
It’ll also be easy to move along since this game has issues. Some are subjective. I feel the user interface could be better optimized, and I miss touchscreen support. Not that the top-down control (or side-scrolling in mines) is bad. Even with a learning curve, it’s fairly forgiving, but there are a lot of tiny icons. Also, not being able to capture a screenshot or video is weak. Larger are the glitches. Seeing a “Software closed because of an error” message is never fun, especially when you see it multiple times. At least the glass-crafting bug was patched.
While the Wild West theme is unique to this type of game, Cattle Country offers little you haven’t seen elsewhere. A lack of originality isn’t surprising for this genre, but it’s still disappointing. The non-innovative approach would be less of an issue were this game refined, but multiple quirks and outright bugs show that’s not the case. The game could use more polish, so genre fans might be best waiting for a sale.
