Cassette Beasts

I love it. Great charm, art, music, and gameplay. It's not really co-op online like you might want; I bought it for my brother and I thinking we could play through it together and *technically* you can, but it's more of a "play it alongside one another in online co-op." You can do the raids together which is fun, but since every battle is a double battle, I was hoping to play through the whole game with him as my duo. Which is true, you CAN do that- but only local co-op only. The second player controls your "partner" in the story. I wish you could do that online as well instead of local only. But, Steam Share Play does allow that which is nice. But I do wish it was more clear on the store page before I bought 2 copies.

I have around 40 hrs played on Switch. Double dipped on Steam to try some mods for a new playthrough. I just have to say this game is near perfect. One of the best (if not THE best) Mon tamers out Art=10 Story/writing =10 Monsters= 10 Gameplay = 10 It has create-a-character, evolution, fusion, shiny mons(their own version that actually effects how the mon is played) Relationships the list goes on. Truly one of the greats in the genre. My only gripe is that you can not co-op through the game. There is multiplayer though You can run around battle each other and take on "raid" bosses together and do the post game hard battles but that's it. Would have loved to co-op the story with the Gf but I understand why you can't from a story perspective and MP was added later so probably some issues there. But yea if you're a Monster tamer fan even a little get this game. Super excited for their next game just hope it's not a rogue-like or they change the style too much like some other Mon Tamer devs have done and are doing -_-

So, I'm a bit conflicted about this game. I do recommend a lot of it, but I found certain core aspects of it very frustrating. I'll start with what I liked followed by what I disliked, and you can decide from there if this is helpful. I liked the overall concept of Cassette Beasts. A little retro, a little Pokemon, a little early Nintendo style and Playstation graphics. The world was interesting, the plot kept me motivated, and I felt that it was pretty open-ended. I also loved how the music changed when you use a core mechanic in the game called Fusion. Shelby Harvey is an amazing vocalist, and the soundtrack was one of my favorite components of the game. I enjoyed the core story all the way through to the end. I disliked... well, just about everything else in the game. The type interactions are so damn confusing. This could be because I'm only well versed up to about Gen 3 of Pokemon, so perhaps this kind of type variety is normal for younger gamers, but I felt like I needed a PhD to understand how all the different types interacted. As best I could figure out, Astral basically beats everything but Plastic, Air has strong attacks but is weak against almost everything, and you should use Glass, Glitter, Fire, and Plant types if you want to lose to literally anything in the game. While I enjoyed the open world aspect, I was often frustrated by the gatekeeping abilities that prevent you from going too far in certain areas. Sort of like the HM mechanics of Pokemon, I guess, but delivered in the most awkward way possible. It might help more if you had some kind of level warning for each zone, because you can easily wander from a level 5-10 area into a level 25-30 area with literally no warning and no requisite ability. So this wasn't done that well. I also disliked the arbitrary nature of several encounters in the game. Typically, in a Pokemon game, you hear about a gym leader's abilities at least a few times leading up to them because they are challenges you are meant to prepare for. In this game, you usually don't know what you're encountering in a ranger captain or Archangel fight until you're literally in the fight getting owned by their gimmick. Unless you're lucky or overleveled, this means you usually have to eat a loss and lose some resources or Alt-F4 before the fight is over so you can reload your last save. Finally, we come to my biggest gripe about the game: The post game and DLC content. This may be an ironic complaint, considering placement, but I found the challenges in the post game way, way, way, way, way too hard. There's no warning behind it, you're just trying to help an NPC with a seemingly easy quest where suddenly bosses are taking away 1/2 your HP with each attack. And there's a gauntlet mode that apparently consists of 150 possible encounters, with a boss at the end that is built around giving you the middle finger. I didn't even attempt that one. The DLC is also a huge waste of time. There's maybe an hour of content, a handful of new beasts, and four boss fights that are all designed to annoy you instead of present a decent challenge. And to get to those fights, you have to negotiate some of the worst dungeon-building physics I have ever seen in a game, to the point where I would fall into a pit and warp into the middle of rotating objects in the same room, then fall repeatedly until I got lucky and could glide to safety. Lastly, the dev team can't be bothered to support their own game anymore. Other than an occasional "promotional" beast you can unlock with the mailbox in town with a temporary code, there's literally nothing else being done with this game, either in new content, balances, or bug fixes. The promotional beasts all suck, anyway, so I don't know why they bother making them temporarily available. I know I spent a lot more time talking about the negatives than the positives, but I just wanted to make it clear what I disliked about the game so others can consider if that's a dealbreaker. If those things don't sound so bad, feel free to pick this up, as there was a lot to enjoy in this game. But if any of those things annoy you as deeply as they did me, consider a different imitation Pokemon game to scratch your itch. I'm opening up this review for comments, so feel free to say if you agree/disagree with my review. I may not reply, and I definitely won't if it's just something like, "You suck at games", but who knows? Maybe I can be swayed by a player of this game with more skill than me.

VERDICT: My new favorite monster collector game. THE GOOD - Pokemon without all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grind, breeding or stupid mechanism like IV/EV - The game is super detailed, despite being 3d-esque, resembles gen 5 Pokemon but with its own twist - Gameplay loop feels freshed - Freedom of movement, many parts of the overworld are intentionally made to be skippable - So many customization for monsters, moves can be swapped on and off with the stickers system - Element system actually has some depth rather than just providing bonus damage - Monsters are actually cool design, based on humanity thoughts and concepts - The story are meaningful, not watered down crap like Pokemon - Many movement tech intentionally left in game for speedrunners. This is perfect - YOU CAN PLAY IN CO-OP or explore the world with up to 8 players (actually insane) THE BAD - Not really a bad thing, but in some cases battles can feel too easy. THE UGLY - The game is so good that I couldn't think of one. Playtime & Performance - Time to beat/enjoy: 25-35 hours for main storyline, potentially 200+ hours to 100% the game. - Performance: Game either locks at 30 or 60 fps, graphics aren't that insane so any potato should be able to run it - Family Friendly: This game is meant for everyone Final Thoughts Imagine Pokemon, but it was actually made with pure love. With the studio having only 3 people, it delivers beyond what Pokemon fans have been yearning for almost three decades at this point. The vibe is cozy, soundtracks are peak, the storyline is absolute cinema, and gameplay actually has depth. Monster designs are unheard off, and the fusion system gives you a combination of more than 10,000 options. In fact, I'd recommend this game for those who are still hesitant to try this genre of RPG. There are so many things that I would love to talk about this game, but it would simply take too long to finish this review. All I can say is try it for yourself. 👍 RECOMMENDED. Buy now, don't wait for sales. There's also a sequel coming on March 2027.

Cassette Beasts is the most family-casual-friendly collect-them-all type of game I have ever played. It's super easy to get into; anyone can hop in with minimal issue, even if you're a single father of 2, a person with a horrible Wi-Fi connection, or someone who has never touched a video game in their life. This game has your back. Losing battles is really forgiving (you only lose some items and get a slap on the wrist). Unless the levels of most of the enemies you're facing are much higher than yours, you can easily win a lot of fights without too much draw-back. Mechanically speaking, this game is easy to understand. Being a mostly 2v2 where each character takes one main action per turn, that seems straightforward enough; well, it's a lot deeper than that. As each Cassette Beast has their own elemental type, such as fire, glass, and plastic, for example. Each one has their own strengths and weaknesses on which status effects are applied to them depending on the type of elemental attacks they are attacked by. And it isn't as simple as, for example, plant types taking more damage from fire types like in some other games; instead, they are easily ignited by fire attacks, taking burn damage for several turns. A lot of those are pretty self-explanatory if you know your science, like a metal type gains melee and range defense debuffs from being attacked by a water-type attack or a wind type have their accuracy decrease from ice attacks. There are 12 elemental types in total, so you can imagine the amount of complexity there is to the battle system, which is something I greatly appreciate about this game, where it encourages players to hold multiple Cassette Beasts of different types (6 in total) so you have the flexibility to switch between them so you don't accidentally help your opponent if you've gone into battle with the wrong one. Thankfully, each status effect has its own symbol, and the game alerts you to which one you would apply to your opponent before taking action so you don't make a mistake during combat without not knowing. If you are still worried about the number of status effects there are and the elemental strengths and weaknesses you need to keep track of, don't worry; the game slowly introduces them over time in combat when you first accidentally apply them to the enemies (or purposely for experimentation). It doesn't overwhelm you with all this information all at once, which is much preferable. If you are even interested in playing this game, know, right off the bat, after the bossfight tutorial, it releases you off the leash, allowing you to unveil a lot of hidden map locations where you would not only explore the world of New Wirral, an unknown island where many visitors from many points in time (past, present, and future) are randomly teleported into. There you will be recording and collecting as many Cassette Beasts as you can, fighting those dirty landlords, putting weirdos unconscious, and using the power of friendship to defeat a literal god. There's a whole load of content you can discover in this game without even trying. I think the reason this game is so beloved is not only for the combat challenges, the beast collecting, the characters bonding moments, the representation, the many secret surprise factors, the awesome soundtrack with great timing during battles, and the wonderful community that surrounds it. In the end, I'm happy I played this game. Was it easy? Yes. Was it memorable? Absolutely. Sometimes, it is nice to just chill and play some games that aren't the least punishing so you can entirely focus and enjoy them for what they are.

I really wish there was star rating on here, because I think a simple yes or no doesn't quite give the idea how I feel about this game, but that is one of the good reasons why this is a thumbs down. I think the overwhelmingly positive is a bit of a mislead on this one for many reasons, and it lead me to realize if I didn't pay $7 for this game I would've probably been kind of pissed because refunds are out of the question by the time you realize whether you like this game or not, and no one is saying anything bad about this at all which doesn't make any sense to me. Biggest thing to me about cassette beasts is coromon just straight up did a better job in almost every single regard in my opinion. I was absolutely shocked with how much I found myself wanting to play that game again the entire time going through cassette beasts. Really my only detractor to coromon in comparison to this was the big boss battles kinda sucked (the archangels definitely were way better in that regard, genuinely some really unique fights with some fall off towards endgame). Holy moly is this bad boy antiquated in terms of QOL features. I feel like they understand what makes a good pokemon game, but have a very fringe understanding of what makes them frustrating. Coromon did this perfectly, QOL in that game is incredible, in this game I find myself constantly asking for more. Why do I have to constantly teleport back to heal without cost in early game, why does it cost me anything to heal at a campfire when it becomes negligible in cost very quickly, why do I have to put a party member into the storage box, and then pull out who I want on my team instead of having all of that doable from one screen, why cant I just have a swap or reorganize button for stickers instead of unequipping multiple and then hopefully remembering which ones I used to get them in the right order, why do I have to go through 8 lines of dialogue to just heal my dang team (borderline every single time too, highly recommend using the dog as a partner to avoid this), and a good amount more that feels like its been solved by every other pokemon clone. This game feels like there's 14 button presses where there should be 2 with way too many things that I could notice immediately. I just constantly found myself going "are they really going to make me go through this every time I need to *do this routine task*". The best way I could describe QOL is gen3 pokemon but with some slightly better things and some things that are honestly genuinely worse. The biggest thing I have against this game is the completely dogwater story, never have I skipped through dialogue so early into a game. Now to be fair, first and foremost I care about gameplay not story; but jesus christ every character has some of the most cliche, unoriginal one liners that are incredibly annoying. There have also been games that draw me in for the combat and then blow my mind with an incredible story, did I expect that here, absolutely not but it was also so much worse than I was expecting. One thing I did personally find annoying is the very "happy go lucky" feel it has in a setting that feels very juxtaposed by this in a way that doesn't work and I think the dialogue really shows that well. My partner will say something stupid, and my two choices of response are something along the lines of "that's great" and "I love that". Give me one that insults them, give me one that is more neutral, give me more engaging dialogue options that aren't just two ways of saying the same thing. I honestly don't think those dialogue options changing any outcomes would be a good idea, even in terms of the relationship system; but I just find myself slamming the A button as fast as I can through most of it because I just could not care less about what I say in response when the choices are all the same thing anyway. One note in terms of characters/story that I did really like is how they made the captain gay without making it her personality, hats off to the devs for making a character that is gay and not a gay character. Apparently that's a hard thing to do now. Now the combat in this game is genuinely awesome. I really like the amount of build variety not just in terms of different mons, but also for the sheer fact that I can run a team of the same exact mons and have every single one be a completely different build. It makes the combat and team choice incredibly fun and engaging but also brings out something unique compared to most games of this kind. Endgame feels pretty good too, especially with all the movement options, you can just go in a straight line to most places. Combat in endgame starts getting a little stale because it becomes pretty easy to steamroll almost everything you encounter, but I do like how it makes me really start engaging with the side quests to find really strong opponents when I generally tend to start forgetting about those at the endgame point of most of what I play. When I found that steamrolling problem the most apparent was late game archangels. At the beginning you are getting by through the skin of your teeth, late game feels like a slightly harder fight than usual that has no impact other than the fact that you progressed the main story. Where combat feels the weakest is the player character health system, I've knocked out probably 14 or so trainers before they could get another one out (which I wish they made more apparent because it feels badass), but that has happened to me what feels like a lot more. It feels worthless to have a team of six when you can get maybe four out before your trainer gets their head kicked in. Again to be fair, 99% of the time it doesn't matter because you can just finish the fight off with the other character, but the cases where it does feels extremely frustrating when you get hit 3 times in a row by a 10% accuracy move that one shots you and all the leftover damage goes into both trainers so they get knocked out before you can actually do something about the situation. That just makes it feel like resetting is genuinely more fair than what you just put up with when straight luck is what put you out of the fight in just a few turns. You could absolutely chalk this up to a "git gud" situation, but at the same time that's not what I play a turn based rpg for, I want multiple strategies to problem, not just one solution that if you don't have in your kit you are just SOL. This is honestly pretty rare but pretty frustrating when it does happen, and it does happen enough for me to put it in here. Now why would I keep playing and write this ridiculous review, because all in all I love this game so much, and I keep finding myself coming back to it knowing all of this; but I just don't think I could really recommend this to someone else unless they've played everything else. If you want a good monster collection game, two that really stood out as something special to me were coromon and monster sanctuary (really left an impression on me with the super unique, "all out" combat).

[b]Cassette Beasts[/b] is honestly one of my favorite games of all time now. One of my really close friends gifted me this game, and I was so damn happy to finally play it. After putting time into it, I can easily say it was 100% worth it. The story is amazing, the adventure is fun, and the RPG mechanics kept me hooked the whole way through. This game just felt [i]fresh[/i]. Exploring the world, finding weird enemies, solving puzzles, figuring out how to reach certain places, and constantly wondering what was waiting around the next corner made the whole experience hard to put down. It always gave me that feeling of wanting to keep going just a little more... and then a little more after that. That is exactly how games should feel. The monster designs were awesome too. My personal favorite was that Power Ranger moth-looking guy — I named him [b]Kamen Rider Mothman[/b]. I beat the game with him and even kicked my friend’s ass with him too, until one day he looked up some crazy build and found something that basically one-shotted my whole team. I was like, what the ♥♥♥♥ happened? Later on though, I ran into a passive ability sticker that completely shut that down by sending the one-hit kill right back at him. That kind of stuff made the sticker system really fun to mess with. The music is also incredible. I love it so much I still play it in my car now. Boogie down baby. The pixel art may be simple, but it is still really nice to look at, and the whole game has a charm to it that sticks with you. My only real downside is that once you finish the game, there is not a whole lot left unless you really want to keep pushing builds, making crazy sticker combos, and going for the most broken effects possible. I honestly wish there was more story content or another update because I would absolutely keep playing for more adventure. Still, this game gave me such a fun ride from start to finish, and I loved the world, the gameplay, the music, and the feeling of discovery the whole time. This game is freaking amazing. "[spoiler]I’m giving this game a score of 9.5 out of 10[/spoiler]." -BitAngel91 [b][Pros][/b] [list] [*]Amazing story [*]Super fun RPG mechanics [*]Fresh and unique feeling adventure [*]Great monster designs [*]Sticker system is fun and lets you make crazy builds [*]Open world exploration feels rewarding [*]Puzzles and discovery keep the game exciting [*]Music is absolutely amazing [*]A game that keeps making you want more [/list] [b][Cons][/b] [list] [*]After finishing the game, there is not a lot left outside of build experimentation [*]Really could have used more story updates or endgame content [/list]

Too many frustrating jumping puzzles and too hard to catch stuff. PC controls aren't very intuitive, have to constantly look up what to do and the glider fails to deploy half the time. I expected this game to be cozy and fun and I didn't get that.

This game recaptures what it was like to open up a Pokémon title for the first time. It'd be dishonest to call it a clone, but the spirit of what originally caused me to fall in love with the subgenre is all there. It expands upon the typical mechanics of creature collectors by foregoing the rock-paper-scissors formula of elemental systems for elemental reactions that add depth to battles. Fusions add spectacle on top of all of it. Beyond battles, I enjoyed interactions with companions. Meredith in particular resonated with me as I relate to how she reacted to the situation she was put in. I'm glad I played this for the soundtrack, I was shocked by the impression it left on me for an indie title of this scale that I wouldn't expect to have such impactful themes. I was obsessed with it when I first played on Xbox Game Pass and I still am. I'd recommend this to any Pokémon fan — it represents everything I've been looking for in the subgenre. The open world traversal can be irritating and the storytelling is simple if thoughtful, but neither gets in the way of a genuinely wonderful game. If Pokémon allowed me to date my rival/10