Pillars of Eternity has some of the best worldbuilding I have seen in a videogame, coupled with strong character writing for the recruitable party members. Learning about the world both through experiencing its major events and the perspectives of the various characters drew me into the game from the start. What did not pull me in at first was the combat. Combat plays in real time with you being able to pause at any point in order to issue commands to you party members. I found this system incredibly clunky at first, but as I grew to understand it, it became much more enjoyable.

The elevator pitch for this game is "Monster Taming Metroidvania", a pitch that the game for the most part it lives up to. What one might not expect from this game, however is the very complex combat system, with every monster having an extensive skill tree to pick from, and a combo system that rewards well thought out team compositions. This complexity, however, is a double edged-sword; the system is very engaging if you find fun in creating highly synergistic team compositions, but if you're looking for a more casual experience a la pokemon, it may become a hindrance since even fights against wild monsters can be difficult without a strong team. Aside from the combat, the game largely is what one would expect — the metroidvania and monster taming genres work naturally well together, since the desire to find and capture new monsters encourages the exploration metroidvanias are known for.

As a game about collecting and battling various monsters, Cassette beasts will inevitably be compared to Pokemon, a comparison that I believe ends up favorably for Cassette Beasts. Whereas pokemon games have traditionally been linear, Cassette beasts is fully open world, with objectives being able to be taken on in any order. Additionally, Cassette beasts contains a surprisingly large amount of complexity within its battle system than one might expect. Fights being 2v2 allows for beasts to effectively specialize in more roles than just "hit hard", thanks in part to a variety of interesting moves including passives.

As far as story goes, Cassette Beasts is rather light, but I found it enjoyable, especially the companion characters who each have their own sidequests and backstories explorable through light social sim elements.

If I were to rate my personal experience with this game, I would rate it 5 stars but I believe that that the game isn't for everyone. The gameplay loop revolves around obtaining new abnormalities, discovering what they do and then creating a strategy to contain them, which is engaging but it also can lead to frustration since you can be punished for mismanaging an abnormality before you even know anything about it. This isn't bad per se, but it does lead to a trial and error play pattern full of resets, which can be frustrating to players who don't wish to reset until they understand how something works. I believe that the prevalence of trial and error and resetting is intentional, since it fits nicely with the events and themes shared through the games story. Said story is in my opinion, the biggest draw of the game, although I will avoid talking about it in depth in order to avoid spoilers. I will, however, say that the story works great both as a standalone piece and as a companion to it's sequel, Library of Ruina.