Okay, let me say this, Cassette Beasts is not a bad game. It does a lot of things pretty fine. In fact, it's pretty impressive that only about 5-7 people total made the game. It's a monster-taming RPG very similar to Pokemon. You go around the open world and platform around to access new locations, which I do find the visuals very charming, and engage in battle with beasts and trainers. You catch these beasts with cassettes by recording them and I really love the idea of having music integral to the game. It just helps give it its own identity.
Cassette Beasts share a lot of the same mechanics as Pokemon such as remasting, which is evolving your beasts into new powerful forms. As well as each beast falls into multiple types of elements; including more unique ones such as glitter, plastic, glass, and toxic. Plus I really like how you can customize movesets and abilities with stickers, even if the sticker doesn't match the element type of the beast. However, my favorite aspect has to be fusion. When you and your partner's beast combine into a new, bigger, more powerful beast that shares the same moveset. Plus I just think it's aesthetically super cool that no two beasts look exactly the same when you fuse them together.
Gameplay-wise...while personally I'm not a huge fan of monster taming in RPGs, I still found it severable and fairly fun. However, it's very barebones in terms of story. I felt like I spent 80% of the game on just going to new areas and fighting.
Cassette Beasts' plot is basically you're a complete stranger who landed on New Wirral, a strange land full of monsters, and you want to get back home. To do that, you need to defeat archangels to search for clues. And in the meanwhile, you can fight against ranger captains to get stamps (much like how you defeat Pokemon trainers for badges) and deal with vampires that may or may not be real estate scammers. That is essentially the plot within a paragraph. Granted there is a few cool moments I don't want to spoil but I found it to be very sparse for the most part.
If anything, the characters that serve as your partners add a lot of spice to the game's writing. They may not be super in-depth that get tons of development but they're still very likable characters that come from different time periods and places. Each partner has a bond system and you are able to learn more about the character's life before they came to New Wirral and even have the option to romance almost any of your partners once you max out thier bond. Plus a lot of the side characters such as the ranger trainers are colorful. They are pretty one-noted and only have a single trope for thier personality but alas they add to the game's vibrant atmosphere.
Other complaints I have is I personally found it super annoying for random people to pop up and challenge me to a fight all of the time, when sometimes I just can't be bothered at all. Plus the game does become very grindy in the post-game, especially since by then most of the content is either randomly generated quests or filling out the bestiary but as far as story content, there isn't much left to do after the final boss. And this is more of a Switch-specific issue but even with the stable patch update, I wasn't particularly a fan of the long load time. It's especially jarring when a loading screen pops up in the middle of walking from one area to another.
Cassette Beasts is a cutesy, fun 20-25+ hour game with some neat vivid ideas to break away from the monster-taming formula Pokemon have dominated for over 25 years. It doesn't truly do anything wrong or awfully. However, there's just much more to be desired with the story writing and there are certain mechanics and tropes I wish Cassette Beasts didn't copy from Pokemon. Maybe because I'm not in love with this subgenre of RPGs but decent gameplay alone can only keep my attention for so long before I would eventually get tired of the game. I don't think Cassette Beasts is bad, I'm just not sure if monster-taming games are for me
Cassette Beasts share a lot of the same mechanics as Pokemon such as remasting, which is evolving your beasts into new powerful forms. As well as each beast falls into multiple types of elements; including more unique ones such as glitter, plastic, glass, and toxic. Plus I really like how you can customize movesets and abilities with stickers, even if the sticker doesn't match the element type of the beast. However, my favorite aspect has to be fusion. When you and your partner's beast combine into a new, bigger, more powerful beast that shares the same moveset. Plus I just think it's aesthetically super cool that no two beasts look exactly the same when you fuse them together.
Gameplay-wise...while personally I'm not a huge fan of monster taming in RPGs, I still found it severable and fairly fun. However, it's very barebones in terms of story. I felt like I spent 80% of the game on just going to new areas and fighting.
Cassette Beasts' plot is basically you're a complete stranger who landed on New Wirral, a strange land full of monsters, and you want to get back home. To do that, you need to defeat archangels to search for clues. And in the meanwhile, you can fight against ranger captains to get stamps (much like how you defeat Pokemon trainers for badges) and deal with vampires that may or may not be real estate scammers. That is essentially the plot within a paragraph. Granted there is a few cool moments I don't want to spoil but I found it to be very sparse for the most part.
If anything, the characters that serve as your partners add a lot of spice to the game's writing. They may not be super in-depth that get tons of development but they're still very likable characters that come from different time periods and places. Each partner has a bond system and you are able to learn more about the character's life before they came to New Wirral and even have the option to romance almost any of your partners once you max out thier bond. Plus a lot of the side characters such as the ranger trainers are colorful. They are pretty one-noted and only have a single trope for thier personality but alas they add to the game's vibrant atmosphere.
Other complaints I have is I personally found it super annoying for random people to pop up and challenge me to a fight all of the time, when sometimes I just can't be bothered at all. Plus the game does become very grindy in the post-game, especially since by then most of the content is either randomly generated quests or filling out the bestiary but as far as story content, there isn't much left to do after the final boss. And this is more of a Switch-specific issue but even with the stable patch update, I wasn't particularly a fan of the long load time. It's especially jarring when a loading screen pops up in the middle of walking from one area to another.
Cassette Beasts is a cutesy, fun 20-25+ hour game with some neat vivid ideas to break away from the monster-taming formula Pokemon have dominated for over 25 years. It doesn't truly do anything wrong or awfully. However, there's just much more to be desired with the story writing and there are certain mechanics and tropes I wish Cassette Beasts didn't copy from Pokemon. Maybe because I'm not in love with this subgenre of RPGs but decent gameplay alone can only keep my attention for so long before I would eventually get tired of the game. I don't think Cassette Beasts is bad, I'm just not sure if monster-taming games are for me