Cassette Beasts Reviews
Cassette Beasts is a creative and fast-paced RPG that sends players on an adventure to collect monsters, build relationships, and explore a colorful new world.
Cassette Beasts may borrow pretty heavily from Pokémon, but there are enough fun twists on the basic ideas that it manages to carve out an identity that's all its own.
Cassette Beasts has a lot of promise, but bugs and stuttering drain the fun from the Switch version at the time of this review.
Cassette Beasts, in essence, extends the mechanics of Nintendo's IP and gives the player a wide range of customization combined with the open world concept that many games currently offer. While the audio-visual presentation might not appeal to everyone, this RPG captivates with its well-executed story and diverse elements that evoke nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s. It's true that the Switch port deserved more polish in technical aspects, but Cassette Beasts doesn't disappoint when expanding on the mechanics introduced by Pokémon. Certainly, the game is a hit for those who like collecting and lots of fun and cute little creatures.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Cassette Beasts succeeds as a monster fighter designed for those who grew up on Pokémon Red and Blue. While it could benefit from fewer of the mildly irritating puzzles and a story that’s slightly snappier, it’s well worth playing if you have any degree of nostalgia for Pokémon, Shin Megami Tensei, or those long childhood nights you spent playing your Game Boy into the wee hours.
Granted, in many ways it’s another variation on the “creature collector” RPG subgenre, but it is able to differentiate itself nonetheless
They say that if you come for the king, you best not miss. Which is why I’m so amazed to say that Cassette Beasts not only stood tall in its own right, but managed to knock Pokémon down a notch or two in the process. While it’s true it doesn’t do everything right, and I’m still a little annoyed by how open world it is and how vague the type interactions can be, there’s so much to enjoy here. Throw in a lengthy playthrough and postgame content, and you have a game that’s well worth your money. If you’re at all a fan of the monster collector genre, you need to play this. It’s just that simple.
Cassette Beasts is a wonderful time. When it comes to monster capturing and fighting games, I'll take Cassette Beasts over anything else.
Cassette Beasts manages to iterate on Pokemon in a meaningful way. The fantastic music, A+ monsters designs, and fun characters are only slightly held back by the overly-complex combat.
The double-battle nature of the game and the beast customization offers players a great deal of strategy to engage with while listening to an excellent soundtrack.
Cassette Beasts is a captivating monster-collecting adventure that has a clear inspiration, but thrives thanks to its own unique and charming ideas. Combat is strategic and deep, the world offers a satisfying sense of discovery, the narrative is quirky and mysterious, whilst the monster design is top notch… what more could you want? It does have a few little technical bugs that I ran into playing on the Steam Deck, but they didn’t stop me from having a brilliant time as I embarked on Cassette Beasts’ remarkable adventure.
Cassette Beasts is a great monster collector game with a lot of depth to its combat, refreshing mechanics, and a beautiful overarching narrative about finding community, home, and love no matter where you are.
Cassette Beasts is clearly inspired by Pokémon and takes advantage of a popular concept to create something unique. Its combat system combining interactions between types, fusions and point consumption, along with its fun and sinister story, makes it a unique game and much deeper than it initially appears. Its problems can be fixed in the future, especially those related to movement. Therefore, it is impossible not to recommend the title, especially for fans of pocket monsters.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
I had a great time with Cassette Beasts, but it was undeniably frustrating in places. It iterates on the Pokemon formula in nearly every possible way, and exploring the world via companion quests rather than just doing a big circle on your Gym challenge creates a wonderful sense of adventure. Cassette Beasts tries a lot of new things and most of them are successful. The story is compelling, the characters are engaging, and the battle system is one of the best I’ve ever used. It doesn’t pull everything off, but I’d much rather play a game that takes risks, rather than one that rehashes the same old formula time and time again.
In short, Cassette Beasts is a fantastic game with plenty of charm, great gameplay, and a groovy soundtrack. I could highly recommend it to anyone who loves playing a great game. The narrative aspects should keep a playthrough for about 8 – 18 hours, but those who wish to collect all the monsters and complete all side quests could expect to be playing for up to around 50 hours. There is plenty to do in New Wirral, take the leap of discovery and become a Cassette Beast Ranger!
In a world where the latest half-baked Pokémon has taken up most of the bandwidth for a creature-catching game in people’s lives, Cassette Beasts is a feast. Players are bound to spend countless hours in the game as they come to understand what a fresh perspective using current-gen tech is able to accomplish in a genre that has been more or less stagnant for decades.