Cassette Beasts (2023)

Cassette Beasts has a lot of features and ideas, that when examined in isolation come off as half-baked or under developed, but when it all comes together it's a fun experience that felt worthwhile.

Yeah the overworld has loading stutters, and yeah you only have a couple traversal upgrades that only add a step to simple switch puzzles or let you traverse a little easier. Yeah, sure there's a partner friendship/romance system that just gives a small buff in battles along with a trickling of new dialogue.

All these mechanics feel a little rough or basic, but they combine in a fun way with a unique backdrop where you get to collect and do battle as a monster via cassette tapes. This is all to say it just kind of works, and while there are certainly times the rough edges were visible, I appreciated the unique setting and creature ideas, especially the two characters/monsters at a time combat system, and how open the game generally was about letting you tackle anything you wanted when you wanted to.

I'd also add that it didn't hurt that I found a good mix of monster designs I loved, a bunch I hated, and a large chunk of somewhere-in-betweens.

=Note that this game has had several revisions to its end game. I am playing the PC, 1.8 version which launched just a day or so before I picked the game up. I also did not play with the DLC and have no intention to. From what I can tell, some of the end game changes were made to improve some of the things I complain about below, but that somehow makes things worse in my mind to know that others before me suffered through even more.=

I had a really great initial experience with Cassette Beasts (CB) that wasn't built on a really solid foundation. What occurred is that, as this game dragged on into its 20th, 30th, and 40th hour, it never knew when to properly cut itself free. I was prepared to write about a slew of relatively minor fixes that could be corrected in a follow-up, wrapped up with a tight recommendation at the end. Solid 3/5 for me, happy to have bought it.

My final experience was radically different, as I found this game transformed itself into the platonic ideal (what the game might call an Archangel funnily enough) of the concept of 'Creators Not Knowing When To Stop'. I experienced something similar with Disc Creatures and now I'm left wondering if games that attempt to emulate Pokemon first look toward their disastification with those games 'having no End Game' and inevitably over correct.

To start out, the game is pleasant, especially in the first half of the story where you have plenty of fast travel hubs to center your open world exploration of. The fact that your monsters are 'recorded' not 'captured' is played with, and the sort of kiddy, bright designs eventually grow on you. The highlights are the boss encounters, of which there are plenty that both challenge you in team composition and raw force. The downsides at this time are just that Fusing your creatures just seems to add nothing strategically while being ugly to look out, the default 'Scaling' difficulty sort of rubs me the wrong way for non boss fights (where they should scale based on order not your level), and I feel the open world design should have been arranged where you're not running up on the blind spots behind hills so much due to the classic Zelda style camera.

In particular, I think CB totally fixes the chunky, slow experience with classic Pokemon dungeon design. A lot of games just avoid this, but in CB you can feel that these layouts are Pokemon reminiscent but the fast movement and roaming monsters fix literally everything with that format.

Here's the problem though, the main story, save some scaling and lack of good fast travel points in the second half/left side of the world, is a really thorough, paced experience. There's only two parts where you're stopped flat (needing particular moves for the Theater Archangel and the Ghost Mall miniboss), but that's just half of the time left in your playthrough.

The game has multiple post game systems that simply ask to much. There's a train gauntlet that contains hidden bosses, but you soon realize the encounters there are designed to nullify your advantages and require, at high difficulties, you to build a new team for every single fight. This requires you go through the game's clunky, but till now mostly ignorable, shopping and move customization systems. The step up between the final boss and basically any challenge here is a mile high vertical wall unless you were already using customizations to invalidate the story challenges.

On the more casual side you have the Ranger Notice boards, which to complete (and unlock the last three or four post game story quests) require you to collect hundreds of a resource that you may have collected 40 of during the course of the first 20 hours. You can certainly burn through this faster as the train gauntlet gives them out, but you can't collect them from the train gauntlet quickly without setting the difficulty to minimum, meaning you can't 'progress' through the actual hard parts of the train at the same time, leaving you with just... grinding that train for an additional 8 to 10 hours mindlessly wiping enemies you've already encountered and your team already built to invalidate them.

And then, for the bare minimum of a Pokemon-like, completing your 'Beastiary'/Pokedex, you have a fairly easy time of grinding a few creatures to their higher forms, and some typical grinding of encounters to get a few rare ones, you can even skip some by capturing the unevolved and evolved forms separately, fine...

Except the game has a diary system, and one of the worst ones I've ever seen by the way, there's a creature that references Monty Python and the diary instead explains to the player what chess is for the fourth time rather than explaining the context behind the Holy Hand Grenade, that requires you to get max level all of the creatures in the game. This process, once again with the train as this is the fastest experience, is about 12 hours. You can overlap some of this with unlocking the post game story quests, but not all.

This is a lot of words to explain that sometimes... games are better if they have very small amounts of epilogue content. Designers, and players too, need to understand that generating endless chores for 'those who want just a little more game' is not a good way to handle your property, because if you, who have just built up a lot of trust with players during the main game, ask something of your players, there is a chance they'll do it and the amount of fun they have at that point is still on you. CB is particularly bad because the cruddy post game feels somewhat paced, so you're always about 2 hours from another pointless checklist accomplishment or post game story scene... so you might as well keep going, right?

I've had a lot of games that went from good or recommendable to horrible shockingly quickly, Cassette Beasts' sin is that it does it so slowly, that I can't tell you where you should stop.

I recently beat this game as part of a playthrough for my RPG Video Game Podcast "Grinding with the Bois" check us out!

I love Pokemon and friends kept recommending it to me.

I think a lot of what this game does works exceptionally well. Combat always being 2v2 gives some really unique combinations, the blend of monsters is intriguing, and exploring is fun.

The game is more puzzle-heavy than I was expecting, which will work for some people and not work for others.

The game oozes ambiance, from retro designs, amazing OST, and great artwork, it all feels phenomenal.

It's not a perfect game. I think the way moves are learned is interesting, but doesn't quite work. I found myself using a LOT of the same moves over and over across monsters, which made later game fights feel repetitive.

The game also isn't very challenging, so I didn't feel the need to explore team compositions, or strategies deeply.

I don't think this is quite a replacement for Pokemon, but it compliments Pokemon well.

Going to start this by prefacing that I've never played a Pokemon game, except briefly GO and didn't get far.

I love the concept of finding monsters and recording them on retro style cassette tapes and some of the combinations of types made for some really cute visual represntations. I was eventually able to begin remembering what type would be good against which, allowing me to keep to my casual playstyle without having to look things up etc.

Some great themes of thoughts on loss and hope, will have to go back for the DLC at some point.

I ended up having a really great time with this overall. I was around 50 hours when I hit credits the other night, but there are still things to do. I'm not super interested in completing the bestiary any further, or doing random quests for post-game, but this is probably a game I'll enjoy another playthrough with in a couple of years.

This is a bit long, because I broke the review down into overall mechanics and features, and then into my thoughts on various aspects.

I first played on launch day, but the game was crashing and lagging constantly, so I ended up putting it down for a few months until an update went out.

There are a lot of things to love about this game, from the more status effect-focused battles, to the field abilities your character can use, to the flexibility of the teams you build.

Overview/Mechanics:

The basic premise is that people have been transported from all different worlds (or at least different points in time from Earth) and ended up on this one, New Wirral. People use cassette tapes to record the wild monsters on the island, and then transform into those beasts to battle. There are 12 Ranger Captains around the island (think Gym Leaders) who you must defeat in order to become a Ranger yourself. That is one of two main quest lines that span the entire game, the other being defeating some really powerful monsters in order to find a way back home (if there is one).

You are in double battles for 99% of the game, where you and a partner can both transform and fight. Your human characters have a separate HP bar from your beasts as well, and if your humans get KOd, they cannot be revived in battle. (Humans get hit while recording or if a multi-hit attack KOs the beast and then hits the human before they transform again.) There is also a fusion mechanic, in which your two beasts merge into one and get the typing of both beasts. There are nearly 130 total beasts, and fusions of the same two beasts are also a thing, which means there are a crazy number of fusions to see.

There are fourteen types that your beasts can have: Beast, Air, Earth, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Plant, Water, Astral, Poison, Metal, Plastic, Glass, and Glitter. Every beast has a base type, and then there are "bootlegs" of them for every other type. Think of bootlegs like shinies that change the beast's type as well as its coloration. Some attacks can also place temporary "coatings" on a beast, which will change their type for the duration of the status effect.

The moves of a beast are determined by which stickers you place on their tape. While each beast has a different number of available sticker slots, all stickers are removable and reusable. Most stickers have a "blank" type, so the type changes based on the type of the tape they're placed on. ("Smack" placed on a Plant beast will do Plant damage, or Fire if placed on a Fire beast, etc.) The only real limitation is whether a sticker is compatible with a specific beast, and the number of sticker slots that your beast has. Otherwise, you can pull them off and rearrange them to your heart's content. It is encouraged to catch multiples of beasts so you can scavenge the stickers they start with. (Edit to add: Moves use AP. Your beasts get 2 AP at the start of every turn, unless a status effect is boosting/lowering that. Every beast starts with either Spit or Smack, which costs 0 AP, so you can still attack if you're out.)

Beasts can be remastered (evolved) once they hit 5 stars. Essentially, your human characters are the ones with an actual level. Beasts gain experience as well, but it raises their star level instead and nets them new stickers and sometimes more sticker slots. Once they hit 5 stars, they can be remastered the next time you rest (if they have other forms). There are some beasts that don't remaster, but most have two or three forms. There are also some that have branching remaster paths, like the two starter beasts. They each have two different second and third stage forms. Some are just a matter of picking the one you want during the remaster process, while others require specific stickers. Also, beasts continue to level even after they hit five stars. They don't earn more stars, but they do continue to get more and more powerful stickers. Your humans' levels are what determine your overall "strength" though, so you can basically swap your team around as often as you like without it really being detrimental to your team's strength, even though the beasts do have their own stats.

For recording new beasts, one partner comes out of beast transformation to record, while the other continues attacking. The recording takes one turn, and anything that does damage or causes new status effects on the target raises the chance of recording. If that beast does damage to your recording character, it will drop the percentage.

There are field abilities that your character gains upon recording some specific beasts throughout the map. This is one way that you're limited from going absolutely anywhere at any time, so even though you're free to explore in any direction, you're generally not just stumbling into an area where you're gonna get wrecked.

Thoughts:

I enjoyed the combat. While the battles were sometimes frustrating, they did present a usually-welcome challenge that isn't found in Pokémon or other Pokémon-like games. I really like the transformation aspect, as well as the focus on causing status effects based on how certain elements interact. Sometimes it's simple, and sometimes it can bury you in the strategies. As someone who doesn't like when battles drag out forever, this can be a negative point. Selecting an attack shows the effect it will have on the opponent beasts, which is helpful, but a single turn could go as follows: You use a Fire attack on a Plastic beast, which turns it into a Poison type. Poison attacks fuel Fire types and boost their AP, so you've given yourself an advantage. Say your other beast is a Lightning type, which will cause a conductive effect on the Poison enemy, which can then hurt it every turn, as well as the burn it likely has. But maybe the other opponent beast is Astral, which would get boosted by attacks from your Fire beast, and will take a lot of hits to go down if you don't use "pollution" types against it. Essentially, you can build up a shitton of negative effects on an opponent, but it's just as easy for them to slam you with contact damage, a burn, poison, lowered accuracy (while they boost their own evasion, and you basically NEVER EVER land hits when either is in effect, which is super annoying especially if they're cycling between lowering your accuracy and then boosting their evasion), and leech your HP, all in one turn. In short, a simple wild encounter can drag out for a long time depending on the status effects in place.

Exploring the map was a good bit of fun, especially with all of the field abilities unlocked. Beasts are visible on the map, so there aren't any random encounters.

I liked the story. There's not a tonnnn of depth, but it's interesting and was implemented well. I also liked all of the partners. They're all romanceable (except the dog, at least I think). Venturing out and gaining more relationship stars boosts your Fusion parameters with them. I mostly just stuck with Felix once I unlocked Fusion with him. Eugene kind of gets ripped off because the only way to unlock Fusion with him is to complete his quest, which requires visiting locations all over the map, even though you meet him early. I didn't get it until later in my playthrough, so I barely partnered with him.

THE MUSIC IS GREAT.

I didn't get into them, but there are lots of other things to do, like battle rogue fusions around the map, puzzles, and various quests for the townsfolk. After you beat the main Ranger quest, you unlock the notice board, but the second set of quests on that requires you to finish the other mainline quest. So basically all of the quests available there are post-game.

The team I spent the most time with/took into the final battle:

So many spooky bois. First one is the final form of my starter. Far right ended up being my absolutely favorite tape line in the game. (I had a Lightning bootleg version of Southpaw--the second beast here--from a promotion code, so mine actually had yellow instead of the maroon.) Types from left to right are Astral, Lightning, Fire, Poison, Ice, Plant. There were some insanely cool fusions from combinations with Apocrowlypse (Poison) and Hedgeherne (Plant).

There are a lot of fun references to the real world, punny names for beasts, and thought-provoking dialogue about life, goals, and acceptance. I definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a good monster collector.

Pokemon-like is now a genre. Mostly made up of lazy copies that feel like a bootleg pokemon. Cassette Beasts is it's own thing that is only pokemon in that you collect beasts and you set them with each other in turn based battles. in every way that matters, it sets itself apart.

First, you do not capture the poke-erm..beast. You copy it onto a tape and then you shapeshift yourself into it. Your character levels instead of the beast. In this way, every new beast is viable in battle right away without grinding. you do however unlock moves through experience to your beast. they level up quickly and when they reach their max level, they can evolve (if they do). Here's the fun twist, moves are "Stickers". you can take them from one beast an give them to another (if it's compatible) freely. So the moves your beasts learn enter your move pool and can benefit you in the future while using a different beasts. It's a unique mechanic I haven't seen done before and it adds depth that is sorely needed by this formula.

You get companions to double battle alongside you and most battles are double battles. the companions progress in affinity with you and you can date them, regardless of your character's gender (everybody is bi as the lord intended)

The gameplay progression is not linear as in (most) pokemon games. after a initial tutorial you will be cut loose in the world to do quests at your direction. New quests will constantly be coming up and being given to you as you pass through the main town. The game doesn't tell you what to do, beyond labeling some as part of the main quest. This is novel in a way but it's also largely a flaw. with zero guidance you are set adrift with no idea what to do. the map is full of obstacles you need special abilities (gained by capturing certain beasts) to pass, but a quest won't warn you that you need to have it first. you're left just aimlessly starting and stopping quests, constantly wondering if you are missing a needed element or just can't figure out how to solve the way forward. There are few fast travel spots and few places to heal so you will often be backtracking and retreating the same ground. it's easy to be taken out of the immersion with this.

When you can get on the right track, there is plenty to do and quests are varied and interesting. the world is one big puzzle to explore shortcuts and ways to navigate. the times it's working, it's fun. The story is well written (for a pokemon game it's amazing). it often tries harder to make references and in jokes or be silly than it does to be serious, but the writing is solid.

There is a fair bit of difficulty adjustment possible. the default game is more challenging than a pokemon game usually is, but you can adjust to a rather exact variable, how inteligently enemy trainers (they're not called this but that's what they are) choose moves or scale to your level. Make the game exactly as you want it.

Despite being a pokemon-like, cassette beasts stands on it's own merits as a novel take on the formula.

This game is good but the fundamental draws of pokemon type game are not met.

• Evolution

Progressing the strength of your Cassettes does not feel satisfying.

• Realism

The world just isn't grounded in any type of reality. In pokemon, fire burns grass, Cut removes a tree. Here we get an "Oh yeah, we can fuse" "Oh yeah you can fly." There is a lack of cause and effect that ground a games systems in a logic that makes them enjoyable.

• Collecting

Making the game about no permanent fusion means that the primary mechanics of the game is not used to construct a team, but as a temporary power up. There are no unique moves that come from fusions, only the animation.

I feel like over the next few games this developer could build something great, but it didn't hit the power growth fantasy or collection fantasy you would want from a pokemon inspired game.

• Speed

A minor point but the game felt sluggish in combat. OG pokemon turn speed with a permanent 2 pokemon battle system makes for a slow time.

• Innovations

there are some great innovations, the point meter has been a great improvement in turn based combat of recent years.