Cassette Beasts took a little while to really grip me, but once it did I could hardly put it down until I finished! This is not uncommon for me in this genre of creature collector/battler, but in particular with Cassette Beasts it was a strong mix of ideas I both liked and didn’t vibe with. That’s the nature of a game which tries to innovate so prolifically a genre so dominated by a singular IP.

I’d like to start this review by speaking about Cassette Beasts as a standalone entity. And then, rather than compare it to Pokémon, which I am largely out of touch with for a long time now, save for spinoffs, I’d like to compare it to Temtem.

Cassette Beasts is very bog-standard in the plot point of taking a character and dropping them into a brand new, at times hostile, world. What is a little unique about Cassette Beasts though is that nearly all of the characters are in the same position. New Wirral is not a world that only you are a stranger to, but everyone. Some characters have been there longer than you, and tutorial you on the way things work and how to survive, but everyone is uncomfortable.

This subtle point drives many story beats throughout the game, and it’s a fresh take! Characters discuss the various differences between their normal realities and the new land they share. They talk about their passions to return home, or why they might not be so eager. It explains their political leanings in a new land with unestablished societal norms, a fresh slate to reinvent oneself with, etc. There’s a lot of themes going on here, and many of them quite adult!

I’ll be honest, not all of them I like and not all of them I think are done particularly well, but I will say very few if any of them felt annoying or frustrating. One thing I’ve remarked upon in RPG reviews in the past is writers’ obsessions with making characters plain annoying for no good reason, sometimes because they think it’s humorous. I tire of that quickly, and Cassette Beasts didn’t rub me the wrong way in this regard.

The various stories, each a little distinct, didn’t overstay their welcome, tied together well enough by the campaign’s end, and they gave justification to some of the interesting Cassette Beasts themselves. And speaking of...

While I am relatively mild on the design of the beasts, some very cool, some not so interesting, one fundamentally unique thing about Cassette Beasts I love is that you, the character, turn into them, rather than command them like a pet. This means that you have a health bar, and it becomes exposed when the Cassette Beast is defeated before your next turn rolls around. This has interesting gameplay implications. Although the nature of the game means that this very seldom has a big effect (most enemies only have two Cassette Beasts, and the character health pools are too big in order to end fights ‘early’), you can strategize around this somewhat. The balancing needed work here, but it’s a unique approach, and it also makes keeping a team of closely leveled Beasts a non-issue since the level is tied to the character, not the tape.

Fusing is something quite unique, too. And even though every single Beast being able to fuse with another means that there are some 1,500 “unique” beasts, in reality there’s nowhere even close to that number. Fusing is cool, but it loses its luster when so many of them are so similar, and it essentially is just a massively overpowered hulk with combined movesets. And I do think fusing is massively overpowered.

The way the in-game music shifts, however, based on battle state (like when you fuse, for example) is really amazing though, and there are some real good tunes in this game, which is fitting with how music-inspired this one is. I’m still on the fence about whether I like singing and lyrics in my game! But I think it’s a memorable point, and I will definitely have several tunes stuck in my head for a while, in a good way.

Something that won’t stick in my head, though is the sheer number of type-effects in this game. Water moves on fire beasts douse them, reducing their strength. Water moves on grass types nourish them, helping them regain hp. Elemental moves on astral types imbue the elemental forces to enhance the kinetic energies within… blah blah blah blah! There’s too many! I’m sorry. You have made a very deep battle system! And you have even done a pretty good job at helping players keep track of them easily! But it’s too much. It’s way too much. And all of these interactions for basically none of them to matter much because the base-game is quite easy.

“Catch” mechanics are innovative, as well as light platforming and puzzle elements, and so-on. I really feel like a Steam review’s size capacity means this review really can’t hit on all the worthwhile talking points here…

Before I conclude I want to just touch on a few final comparisons with Temtem, which I have reviewed already here.

While I think Cassette Beasts does a better job on aspects like writing, world-building, and to some degree character design (shoutouts to the Archangels ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥), I think Temtem smashes Cassette Beasts when it comes to battling.

Fusing is cool conceptually, but practically it’s not that interesting, made the game piss-easy, and sort of makes the ability for buff moves to be placed on allies less interesting. Temtem, on the other hand, has synergy moves, which made double battles incredibly interesting to me for both battle reasons and team building reasons.

Cassette Beasts has AP, and Temtem has Stamina. Is AP good for balancing? Yes, but can I make dynamic trade hp for stamina moves like I can in Temtem? No. And that was one of my favorite battle features.

Is Cassette Beasts art nice? Yes, most of it. Are the move animations that cool? No, I don’t really think so. Temtem does not have the most impressive monster design, but the battle animations? They are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy. Outstanding. Best in the genre.

Both games made innovations on a genre that desperately needed truly fundamental ones, rather than superficial ones. And both games mostly succeeded in these innovations. I respect the hell out of both games for these attempts, and successes. But, unsurprisingly, not all of them land well, and it keeps me from viewing this game as the pinnacle of the genre, but rather hopefully a catalyst that will really bring about the true next generation standard for the creature battler/collector.

I recommend Cassette Beasts for anyone who really wants to lean into the world-building and story elements of these types of RPGs. People who like creative storylines, and truly have that urge to “catch ‘em all” will love this (they already do, look at that review score, damn!). I rate this title slightly lower than Temtem, because I view the battling as more core to my experience, but I think this game could have much greater appeal whose focuses lie elsewhere.

8/10