Little Kitty, Big City PS5 review — A not so agile kitty

There’s nothing more enticing in a game than exploring a bustling city as a cute kitty cat, collecting novelty hats, and munching on a few tasty fish in order to climb your way back up to your cozy apartment. On that pitch alone, doesn’t Little Kitty, Big City, seem like a dream? GamingTrend first reviewed Little Kitty back when it was released in 2024; check the review out here for David’s impressions on PC. This time around, it’s me visiting the city for the first time on the PS5, so how do our opinions differ?

Even before I booted up the game, it surprised me that the video game medium has taken this long to realize that making the playable main character a cat has so much potential! I think we finally started to realize this when Stray had us explore a neo-apocalyptic city and now as a house cat that’s gotten lost in a Japanese-inspired city. A feline body opens up a whole new perspective to explore. You can nimbly dart across house walls, clamber up pipes, and slide under gaps in the wall. Little Kitty does a good job of making you feel like a cat; you can basically climb on any surface you see, and one of the most satisfying parts of the game is navigating your way to the high rooftop apartments.

However, while navigation as a kitty is to its merit, it’s also its greatest flaw. Immediately in the first five minutes of playing, you can feel the clunkiness of your cat’s movement, as choosing when to jump doesn’t feel precise. The biggest annoyance was trying to pounce my way up air conditioner machines attached to a building’s wall to get to the roof, but sometimes the game wouldn’t register you trying to grip onto the edge of a surface or onto a wall with vines on it. On the other end of the spectrum, you could end up overshooting your jump and end up flinging your cat too far. This meant that the final stage of the game—where you have to climb your way to your top-floor apartment—could be unbearably annoying. Unfortunately, this is a glaring issue in Little Kitty’s adventure.

Flailing cat aside, Little Kitty’s charm lies in the world around you. Whilst it’s not a bustling metropolis—it feels more akin to a neighborhood just outside of the city—it still has a substantial amount of content to explore at your own leisure. 99% of this content is optional, which was surprising, as I felt that interacting with some of the NPCs could have led to main story quests to include a lot more variety and interaction with the world. Instead, Kitty must collect 4 fish in order to build up enough energy—BOTW climbing gauges—to climb back up to their apartment. You earn your first fish through a quest set by an NPC, but after that you basically just steal them from different locations. It’s a bit lackluster considering it could probably take you an hour to get each fish if you weren’t enticed by distractions, meaning that the game can be extremely short - with a completionist run clocking in at about 4 hours.

My biggest recommendation with this type of game is to stop and smell the roses. As soon as you get that first fish from the crow, then forget all about them and go have fun and explore. Little Kitty’s most engaging element is its completionist to-do list encourages exploration. There are a ton of collectibles and NPC quests to engage with, from finding hats and guiding lost ducklings to their dad to unlocking sewage fast travel spots for a Tanuki. It’s all great stuff, and it wouldn’t have hurt if the developers included some of these things in their main quest. The completionist element can get a bit reductive with some tasks simply doing one thing over and over again. I’m all for recycling, but 100 cans! No.

Finally, playing Little Kitty on the big screen is a ton of fun, as the visuals and style are beautiful to look at. I can’t say anything negative about the PS5 port. However, due to personal preference, I would have rather played this game on a portable device such as my Switch 2 or Steam Deck. This game would be an absolute delight to play a bit every night before bed instead of marathoning it and realizing the game only runs for a good 3 hours. However, with the upcoming ‘big’ update planned for this summer, maybe Little Kitty will have a bigger city to explore.