Mainlined through the game in less than a week. Questioned my gender. Got a girlfriend. My friends tormented me by making me fight level 200 monsters at level 10. I love the Beasts they're all I can think about now

So when it comes to creature collector games, I’ve only really focused on Pokemon and SMT/Persona. For some reason, I’ve convinced myself that any other creature collector game that aren’t these must be garbage somehow. I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong. This is definitely one of the best games I’ve played this year by far.

It’s like Pokemon but you transform into the monster rather than summon it. The difference is that if your monster form goes down, your player character is exposed to attacks. If your character goes down, you’re done, even if you have more monsters in reserve. Another key difference is the fact that you can equip up to 8 or 10 attacks on a monster. That must seem like a lot to Pokemon players, but there are no “abilities”, instead you use those slots to equip passive abilities, thus, giving you greater control over the build of your monster. And yes, you can have multiple passives, unlike Pokemon’s one passive ability per monster. Then there's the battle gimmick, which is fusion. Two of your monsters can become one to unlock a new super attack, and combine move/passives pools into one huge monster with much higher stats. It's fun, and it's impressive what they've done to make all fusions look like the monsters they're fused from.

The story is also more mature than your typical Pokemon story. You and around 6 other characters are basically “castaways” into this world where ideas from the real world materialize into monsters and things. I really enjoyed the individual character side quests and getting to see their reasons for staying or wanting to leave New Wirral, the island.

The music is absolutely god-tier. Nothing else to say on this. I wish more games had soundtracks this incredible.

Now the negatives, the post game, if you want all achievements, is a terrible horrific grind. You do randomly generated quests in order to get “fusion material” which you need a lot of to get the last achievement (around 450 or so, if I’m not mistaken). I think your most recent Pokemon games handled the post-game content much better. Sword/Shield’s Dynamax Adventures are tons of fun, Legend’s Arceus various post-game side quests, and even Scarlet/Violet’s meager post-game (I haven’t played the DLCs for this one yet…) far outshine the disgusting mindless grind this game has. Which is unfortunate as every other part of Cassette Beasts is better than most Pokemon games, in my opinion.

I do hope I get to play a “Cassette Beasts 2” one day. This was far too fantastic to just end like this. There’s DLC to this game, but I haven’t played it. It’s not required for 100% achievement completion, and I heard that the new music in that DLC doesn’t have vocals, which is a huge deal-breaker for me.

Fun co-op game