Cassette Beasts Review - A Whole Lotta Love
Cassette Beasts is a delightful little monster-catching RPG with deep, satisfying combat and tons of heart.
Developed by Bytten Studio
Published by Raw Fury
Like many folks my age, Pokemon Red and Blue are responsible for some of my most cherished gaming memories. I will never forget what it was like to climb the ranks, defeating one gym leader after another, perfecting my squad of Pocket Monsters in order to challenge the Elite Four and my longtime rival. Those first two Pokemon games probably cost a small fortune in AAA batteries, trading cards, stuffed animals, and various multimedia, so in retrospect, it's surprising that I didn't continue with the series in any meaningful capacity.
The same goes for the entire monster-catching genre. Sure, I've put a decent amount of time into a few Shin Megami Tensei games and a couple hours into Monster Sanctuary, but I never got around to finishing any of them despite enjoying myself (I wasn’t even close to the reaching the end of SMTV when I fell off around the 70 hour mark). At some point, I’d lose interest or get distracted. It wasn’t until Cassette Beasts that I was not only able to finish a monster-catching RPG, but remain consistently engaged throughout.
For those who have played any of the aforementioned series, Cassette Beasts starts off in a familiar fashion. Players are whisked away to a mysterious new world where they encounter creatures that can be fought or caught and then added to the player's collection. Said creatures often possess elemental abilities as well as appropriately punny names. NPC trainers with their own teams of monsters will routinely challenge the player to skirmishes as well as larger boss battles. Sound about right so far?
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| Luckily, I find this behavior–and the game's sense of humor–charming |
Rest assured, there are plenty of twists along the way that make Cassette Beasts a fresh and engaging entry into the genre. In keeping with the title, monsters are recorded onto tapes that earn stars (essentially simplified “levels”) and earn new abilities in the form of stickers, which can then be peeled off and transferred to any compatible tapes. Then, when most monsters reach a rank of five stars, they can be “remastered” into a more advanced form, often with branching paths. The game can be a bit too coy when offering these choices, though–one monster had the option to “ascend to the afterlife” or “return to the earth”. This minor quibble aside, the process of catching and leveling monsters is wonderfully simple. Because the player character listens to the creature’s tape and transforms into the beast in question rather than simply deploying them on the field, monsters inherit their host's level, which eliminates the need to meticulously level up every member of one's roster. Team-building is less about having an identically leveled squad and more about balancing different types, move sets, offensive/defensive stats, etc.
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| The basic battle interface |
The battles themselves are also quite different thanks to the 2-on-2 format, which requires players to delicately balance risk and reward as they choose their NPC companion and leverage those sidekicks' unique monsters and abilities. Partners can be given any tape in a pinch, but they receive bonuses when using their favorite monster; nonetheless, the friendship and romance options encourage players to pick their favorite traveling companion and deepen the bond between them. The higher the relationship level, the quicker that the fusion meter will fill. This in turn grants the ability to temporarily fuse both monsters on the field into a more powerful hybrid creature that includes both base monsters' movesets and, for better or worse, their elemental affinities and current status effects. Thus, while fusions can be a powerful tool in certain situations, there are enough potential drawbacks that one most use this ability wisely.
There’s also the AP system, which eliminates the common PP/MP/Stamina stat found in many JRPGs and instead opts for good old fashioned action points, with each move costing a certain number of points and each monster gaining two points (by default) at the start of each new turn. It is often worth using weaker moves in order to bank AP for the heavy hitters later on. This is further complicated by Cassette Beasts' "chemistry" system, which largely disposes with the classic RPG mechanic of elemental strengths and weaknesses in favor of (mostly) intuitive reactions between elements that manifest as buffs and debuffs. Some examples of the mayhem that will occur:
Water extinguishes fire, lowering attack damage, but fire vaporizes water into steam that soothes and heals. Ice yields no reactions when attacking a fire type, but if an ice-type is attacked with fire, it will then melt into a water-type.
Astral creatures gain additional action points when struck with any of the four basic elements (air, fire, water, earth) but suffer from slower AP gain or restricted move lists at the hands of “impure” compounds like plastic and metal, respectively.
Here's my favorite: Earth types can “ground” electric types, reducing the scope and accuracy of their attacks, but lightning will turn them into glass that can be chipped, littering the ground with shards that damage any creature that uses a melee ability, or completely shattered and destroyed by the “resonance” built up by certain metal or air attacks.
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| There's nothing like getting buffed by an enemy and giving it a taste of its own medicine |
Thus, rather than battles being swayed by huge “super-effective” moves, they instead play out as strategic dances of applying and managing various status effects. There is definitely a learning curve at the start of the game, when one must interpret the broad array of symbols that pop up in combat, but the game has an in-game chart as well as tutorial tooltips that display the first time that an effect is applied. There's even an option to always show tutorial messages, which I actually left on for the first few hours.
All of these mechanics make for an utterly captivating monster-catching and battling experience. I was emotionally invested in my collection of creatures and my traveling companions. I loved discovering new tactics and builds, even in the aftermath of the occasional crushing defeat. I was proud of my whole squad when I became a ranger captain and uncovered the truth about this new world (did I forget to mention that this game is an isekai?). I even enjoyed the game's sense of humor, which included some real zingers among its myriad musical references.
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| I think this technically counts as a Spinal Tap reference |
Cassette Beasts isn't perfect, though, so here are my fairly minor complaints to balance out the otherwise effusive praise:
- The overworld, which the player can navigate using powers "recorded" from certain monsters, runs the usual gamut of grass/desert/ice/ocean areas, with some obstacles and puzzles that need to be solved with various monster abilities. However, the movement and platforming can feel clunky due to the camera angle and art style. There were many times that I ran out of stamina and was teleported to a nearby safe spot due to the game's wonky physics (the silver lining is that you can't die by falling into water, lava, etc.).
- While the customization options for each monster are fantastic, there's also no way to sort or filter stickers by type–an option that is available when browsing your library of monster tapes–making it kind of a slog to transfer moves between creatures after amassing a large collection of stickers.
- Finally, I encountered occasional framerate dips and hitches on my PC and Steam Deck despite the game's relatively simple graphics. Rumer also has it that the Nintendo Switch port is in somewhat dire shape, so anyone considering that version of the game is advised to wait for future patches.