Thank you Turquoise Revival Games for sending us a review code!

After playing many girly games where I had to take care of horses or cure animals as a vet, I thought it would be a fun change of pace to play an action RPG that revolves around saving wildlife. Animal Rescuer begins with the main character’s sickly wife in bed. She is very ill and you have done everything in your power to try and heal her with no success. Your character finally decides to visit a witch who gives him a medallion with all of the animals he must save in order to heal his wife. The medallion will keep him safe from animals, but will make him an enemy to many humans who want it for themselves.

In order to help the animals, you’ll have to collect various plants and flowers to make medicine in alchemy labs. There are two levels of sickness and you’ll get two Steam achievements per animal if you cure them of both ailments. In total, there are eighty-eight Steam achievements. Smaller animals require one healing to get credit on the medallion while the larger animals require the more severe remedy to get credit. Once a larger animal is cured, you’ll have to pay fifty gold to get them transported to safety.

Curing animals is one way to earn experience and level up your character. While aiming for Steam achievements is great, you’ll level up faster if you cure any animal indiscriminately. Along with various cat and canine breeds, you’ll also have to tend to chickens, sheep, lizards, turtles, fish, birds, and even spiders. You’ll have to travel to many strangely named islands to find and cure them all. Thankfully, traveling does not cost you any money!

You can earn gold by completing quests, selling unwanted food or jewels you’ve found in crates/treasure chests, or by killing bad guys. Anytime you venture out of town, prepare to get jumped by random swordsmen. By default, there is a lot of blood shown, but it can be completely disabled in the game menu options. Offing the occasional swordsman isn’t that tough, especially if you have an upgraded sword. However, there are many boss battles where the bosses have thousands of hit points so you’ll have to master evasive maneuvers to succeed. Think of this as a Dark Souls game with bunnies and kittens to save.

Oftentimes these bosses are protecting rare animals or quest items that you’ll need to complete the game so you’ll have to get strong and get good to succeed. Unfortunately, the quest management system isn’t as polished as other popular RPGs out there. The interface will tell you which islands the various animals or quest NPCs are on, but you won’t have a compass giving you their exact location or distance. It’s also annoying that you can’t see the whole world map to plan an island-hopping route ahead of time.

The visuals are good, but not cutting edge. The fighting choreography is a little weird at times, but serviceable. The animal noises and movements are believable though. There are many invisible walls to prevent your character from jumping off of high areas or getting stuck in strange spots. I’ve noticed that the main character doesn’t jump as high in combat mode so if you get stuck you’ll have to sheathe your sword in order to jump out of your predicament.

Aside from the blood and violence, some moral issues worth noting include witchcraft, drinking, and gambling. The game begins with your character visiting a witch to cure his wife. In some of the towns you can make bets at a tavern or gamble on which turtle will win a race. Given that you can't manually save, you may want to think twice before betting on a race!

I enjoyed the background music as it is extremely well done. The voice acting on the other hand is abysmal. I seriously think the developers used a text-to-speech program to do the voice acting. I noticed many slow and incorrectly pronounced words.

Better voice acting would improve the overall quality of this game immensely. Another cool idea would be to recruit the animals you rescue to fight alongside you in the boss battles. That would be epic! I found this game fun while exploring the various islands and curing newly discovered animals. However, the boss battles and fetch quests require a lot of grinding and time commitment that lower the fun factor significantly. I recommend holding out for a sale.