These are the run notes I made in preparation for my 100% speedrun of Petz Catz/Dogz 2, along with a bunch of useful infomation for anyone interested in trying it for themselves - if there are any such people out there. The game even forces you to return to the house and pay attention to your puppy every few minutes or so, breaking up the flow of card and board gaming halfway through.[Update 30th September 2021: Updated fishing section based on the new info, and made changes to the route to reflect this. The idea of combining elements of Nintendogs, Animal Crossing and Clubhouse games is a weird one, and always goes back to feeling weird once you remember that the reason you're playing all these rounds of Crazy 8's is that there's a virtual house under construction and you're in charge of the remodel. But on the other hand, the nature of the mini-games strikes an odd contrast with the rest of what Dogz 2 offers.
These games are staples, card and board game designs that have never gone out of style – so Dogz 2 capitalizes on that lasting appeal and builds on it. Though you might not really care about whether or not you're earning that seventh style of living room carpet, you'll likely find yourself playing the challenge to win it again and again until you come out on top – it's the kind of experience that makes you say "just one more try" after you get stuck holding the Old Maid for the fourth straight time, frustrated but having fun at the same time. And, interestingly, it's kind of addictive. If you'd like to "buy" a remote-controlled car for your puppy to play with, for example, the game will tell you "OK, you have to come in first place in a four-player game of Black Jack." Or "You have to complete this jigsaw puzzle in under four minutes." Or any of a number of different iterations of the same premise, tasking you to achieve a specific kind of victory in short play sessions of these venerable parlor games. And it's through these games that Dogz 2 presents its structure of progress and reward – successfully completing rounds of the different designs earns you a new piece of furniture, or toy, or wallpaper. The core of Petz: Dogz 2's gameplay ends up being a variety of simple DS adaptations of well known, traditional, analog games in much the same way as Nintendo's own Clubhouse Games title a year ago. Jigsaw puzzles and memory matching, tile-sliding challenges and even a take on Air Hockey. Though+the+direct+interaction+with+your+dog+is+now+in+3D,+most+of+Dogz+2's+visuals+are+two-dimensional.
And the way that's achieved is through, finally, getting down to the true core of what Petz: Dogz 2 presents – a set of simple, traditional card and board games.
You can eventually upgrade your home to include several floors' worth of rooms, with each of them filled with different interactive objects. Starting with this empty living room and blank backyard, you've got to create a more interesting and expanded playspace for your puppy to be able to have any fun.
It's the interactions with different objects, toys and furniture that form the basis of the dogs' activity potential instead, so the goal of the game quickly becomes something more akin to Animal Crossing. The basic care-giving activities you'd expect to see – like feeding the dog, teaching it tricks, taking it for a walk – are nowhere to be found.
You can pet, poke or taunt them with the stylus for a basic bit of interaction, but quickly you'll find that there really isn't much to do beyond that. The visuals are appealingly adorable, as the dogs of Dogz 2 have been rendered in an excessively cute style that gives them comically oversized noses and eyes while diminishing the proportions of the rest of their bodies. Then the dalmatian, beagle, poodle or whichever pooch you've picked appears in a fully 3D home, complete with an empty, furniture-less living room and a similarly sparse backyard. The Nintendogs-esque elements come in first, as you open the adventure by selecting your preferred breed of puppy from an array of 11 options. It's an odd mash-up of Nintendogs, Clubhouse Games and Animal Crossing. Though this sequel to last year's Dogz does have a handful of qualities in common with traditional virtual pet titles, its larger focus is placed on playing card games and upgrading your home with new decorations and furniture. This has been especially true for the virtual pet genre on the DS recently, as several games you'd judge to be Nintendogs clones based on their outward appearances end up being something else entirely – like this game, Petz: Dogz 2. It's a more and more frequent occurrence to find that a game's cover art has little to do with the play experience found inside.