The story gets you, the game gets at you
This game tells a fantastic story, poetic and touching. The main characters have depth and real substance but it's not just them, every person that the narrative decides to bring into focus, even in passing, has its own dignity and a little something to leave with you.
The setting is colourful, vibrant and complemented by an absolutely delightful art style.
The soundtrack is a thoughtful companion that knows when to be a gentle and unobtrusive frame and when to take centre place to drive home a scene's punchline, which it does with flying colours.
Petting as many cats as you can is a plot point and game mechanic. Unfortunately that's also kind of the only good game mechanic...
The main mechanic is point-and-click-style puzzles but, except for maybe one or two, they're trivially easy. Most of the time they amount to little more than short fetch quests and when they don't it's more often than not that the game pretty much tells you what you need to do anyways. This is a very accessible solution but it also took away any sense of accomplishment for me.
Then there are minigames and those are fine, although they're very simple and they did get a bit repetitive for me. There is a sort of boss fight at the end where they get a bit of spice.
Overall it largely feels like busywork that doesn't really add much to the experience. In fact, as time went on and I got more and more engrossed in the story, I found myself groaning out loud whenever the story had to stop at the next arbitrary obstacle. It's good that the game is interactive; that you get to move around and talk to people and actively help them. But I don't think it's executed terribly well, unfortunately.
Maybe this could have been better served as a visual novel. But that would have likely doomed it to obscurity, which it definitely doesn't deserve.
Play the game. The jank is worth it.