Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest Review

Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest brings the beloved feral cat clans to a semi-open-world RPG, but repetitive quests, shallow combat, weak storytelling, and uneven performance make it hard to recommend beyond its dedicated fanbase.

Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest is the kind of game that makes perfect sense if you've been reading the Warrior Cats books your whole life. The idea of taking those well-known feral cat clans and turning them into a playable RPG is extremely appealing. You create your own cat, pick a clan, explore the Lake Territories, fight enemies, collect resources, do quests, and slowly but surely work your way from apprentice to warrior.

For fans of the books, the premise is exciting in itself. There's something so very endearing about seeing ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan in a video game where you can actually become one of the cats and live in the clan. Rather than just watching the cats from the outside, you can create your own cat and be part of the clan.

Unfortunately, that initial excitement doesn't always carry through when you start playing. Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest has a lot of charm, but it feels like a game that never became the full-fledged experience it aspired to be. The base is there, and fans who have been with it for years will probably like it more than newbies, but the repetitive gameplay and basic systems start to show.

The game's biggest strength is undoubtedly its premise. If you've never read the books, some of the appeal may be harder to grasp, but creating your own cat and choosing from the four well-known clans is absolutely cool. You can join any of the Clans (ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, or ShadowClan) and start as an apprentice. That's the start of your journey through the Clan, and the ultimate goal is, of course, to become a warrior.

Each clan also offers a different campaign path and starting area (adding variety between playthroughs). There's something very good about experiencing the world from different clans' perspectives, as it gives fans a reason to take a different route each time. The issue is that the differences between the campaigns don't necessarily create a different experience.

Although you'll start in different areas depending on your clan, the general structure is largely the same, with many activities revolving around exploration, resource gathering, and fetch quests.

The procedurally generated nature of some of these tasks can, of course, make the world feel a bit repetitive. This is especially apparent if you spend any time digging into it. The Lake Territories serve as the game's main overworld, but the environments don't always feel utilized.

You can move around, gather resources, do objectives, and travel from point to point. Still, there's not always enough going on to make exploration particularly compelling. A game about living as a clan cat should have loads of opportunities to make the world feel alive.

You'd expect meaningful interactions, interesting characters, clan conflicts, discoveries, and all the other things that make you feel like you're actually part of that society. Instead, you end up with one basic thing after another. The fight is all based on the same principle. Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest is turn-based, but it's very simple.

The system is often described as pretty much rock-paper-scissors, and it's actually simpler than the equivalent you'd find in something like Pokémon. That simplicity isn't really the issue. A simple combat system can be a lot of fun if it's quick, satisfying, and backed up by some good abilities or tactical options.

The issue is that the combat doesn't evolve in any way that makes it interesting over a longer playthrough.

Right at the outset, the system is pretty straightforward. You can pick up the basics fairly quickly and use them to level up your character. But once the novelty wears off, the battles lack enough depth to feel particularly exciting. Another problem is the pacing. You can't fast-forward combat animations; soon they start to drag when you're fighting younfightgain.

If the underlying mechanics are already fairly simple, being forced to sit through lengthy animations can make the repetition stand out. This is particularly unfortunate as the Warrior Cats universe could have supported a far more interesting combat system.

Different clan identities, abilities, hunting techniques, special moves, and progression systems could have given the battles much more character. Instead, the combat is pretty much the same throughout. Exploration and combat are far from the only areas in which the game feels restrictive. Character customization has also drawn its fair share of criticism.

Creating your own cat should be one of the most fun parts of a Warrior Cats game. After all, that's the whole point, isn't it? To be able to envisage yourself as part of one of those clans. However, the customization options and name choices don't seem to offer the level of freedom some fans would have hoped for.

That can be rather disappointing for a game which is all about creating your own character.

You're already stepping into a world fans have imagined for years, so restrictions on how you can design and name your cat can make it feel impersonal. The story is another huge weakness. The premise gives the game loads of potential for a great Warrior Cats story, but the story itself doesn't always use it.

One of the most frustrating examples is how quickly your character can rise through the ranks. Becoming a warrior should be a major achievement, yet the progression through the ranks can feel utterly unearned. Becoming a warrior right after fighting a giant bunny illustrates the problem perfectly.

Fighting a giant bunny can be fun. The problem is that major achievements should be significant. If the narrative doesn't give your character time to grow, train, build up their squad, and prove themselves, then reaching the next rank doesn't carry the weight it should. The game also reportedly lacks meaningful clan warfare or character interaction, which could have strengthened the story. 

This is probably the biggest missed opportunity. Warrior Cats is a series about relationships, loyalty, rivalry, clan politics, personal issues, and the difficult decisions you have to make. There's absolutely loads of material to work with for a video game. Yet Clans of the Forest seems more interested in giving you things to do than in integrating those activities into a compelling story. That creates a rather odd dissonance.

You're technically living as a member of a clan, but the world doesn't always make you feel like your relationships or your decisions actually matter.

You can quite easily end up thinking about the next quest objective rather than the people you're with. For long-time fans, nostalgia goes a long way toward filling that gap. It's the sheer pleasure of seeing your familiar clan names, environments, and concepts brought to life in an interactive game. If you grew up with the books, there's a certain fun in creating your own cat and watching it go through the world. That nostalgia is doing the heavy lifting here.

Without it, the game's fairly repetitive systems are a lot harder to miss. The visual presentation is one area where the game has some character. The watercolor-inspired art style gives the world a softer, more storybook feel, which suits the source material. On Switch 2, the game looks very appealing when it runs smoothly. However, performance becomes an issue again depending on which version you're playing.

In docked mode on the Switch 2, the game can stutter and dip below its 30fps target while you're exploring. That can make moving around the world feel a bit less fluid than it should. Interestingly, the stuttering seems to be much less of a problem in handheld mode, where the experience is apparently far more stable.

The original Nintendo Switch has a far more serious problem. The game runs at a fixed 720p and can regularly drop into the mid-20s. Heavy aliasing makes it look rougher than the Switch 2 version. That difference matters because Clans of the Forest isn't a very visually demanding game to begin with.

The stylized art helps it look quite charming, but technical issues can still pull you out of the experience.

The Switch 2 version offers better performance, though you're still limited to 30fps and stuttering still occurs, so it's not quite a fully polished experience. Then there's the question of price. Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest is priced at around $24.99 / £24.99, so it isn't particularly expensive, but it's being sold as a full-price game rather than an early access title. That changes the expectations. 

If this were an early access game, then many of the limitations would be far more understandable. You could see the potential, give feedback, and wait for the developers to flesh out the systems. But as a full release, it needs to stand on its own. And that's where the shallow quest design, basic combat, limited customization, and weak story become hard to justify. 

The game does have enough content to keep the committed fanbase busy, especially if you're after the different clan paths. Repeating the same activities over and over in those campaigns can make it feel like it takes much longer than it actually does. For younger players, that simplicity may be the attraction.

The uncomplicated, familiar Cats setting could make Clans of the Forest a fairly accessible entry point into RPG systems. Someone who's already read the books may be more than happy to overlook the rather shallow systems, since the world itself gives them a strong reason to keep playing. For everyone else, the value proposition is a lot harder to justify.

That's why waiting for a sale makes sense.

At a lower price, the game's shortcomings are much more tolerable. You can have the nostalgia, the different clans, your own cat, and a world to explore without really expecting the depth of a proper RPG. At full price, though, those expectations are much harder to ignore.

Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest isn't a disaster. In fact, that might be the most frustrating aspect of the whole thing. There's a genuinely fun game in there. The four-clan structure works well. The watercolor art is lovely. The setting feels very much like an RPG. You create your own cat and go from apprentice to warrior in a very straightforward way. The combat is easy to grasp, and old-school fans will be touched to see their world in an interactive form.

But almost every one of those strengths has a corresponding limitation. The four campaigns are all pretty much the same. The combat is thin. Exploration is all fetch quests and resource gathering. Character progression can feel completely unearned. There's not enough real clan conflict, and there are no real relationships. Customization is more limited than it should be. Performance is a major issue, especially on the original Switch.

That combination makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn't already a Warrior Cats fan. If you grew up with the books, then the answer is quite different. You might find it charming enough to be worth the experience, especially if you want to create your own cat and spend some time in the Warrior Cats world.

For everyone else, plenty of other, much better RPGs are out there to spend your time on. 

Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest doesn't quite feel like the video game adaptation the books warrant. It's more a very good first pass than the definitive product. The foundation is there, and the nostalgia is real, but the mechanics need more depth, and the presentation needs to be much more polished.

The best move is likely to wait for a sale. At a discount, the game's faults are much easier to ignore, and the setting's merit can finally come to the fore. At full price, it's a very hard sell, with frankly pedestrian combat, rather dull quests, a lack of story, and technical issues. The watercolor style is probably the game's most appealing visual choice.  It gives the world a lovely storybook feel that fits the Warrior Cats setting.

The Switch 2 looks much cleaner than the original Switch, which is pretty badly aliased and has very low visual quality. The reviews don't give us enough to go on for the soundtrack/sound design, so it's best to leave that as is rather than overstate it. Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest achieves one thing perfectly, in my opinion: it finally lets book fans create their own cat and journey through the world of the four clans via an RPG.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite dig deep enough around that very attractive premise. Combat is functional but bland, exploration is repetitive, the story has no real clan wars, customization is minimal, and both Switch versions suffer from performance issues (especially the original). For the fans, that's still more than enough. For everybody else, waiting for a sale is the way to go.