Cassette Beasts Reviews
Cassette Beasts has a lot of promise, but bugs and stuttering drain the fun from the Switch version at the time of this review.
Fun take on the monster-catching genre that suffers from performance issues
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.
Cassette Beasts is a fresh take on the monster collecting genre, featuring both whimsical creatures and actual floating nightmares in its surreal world. A double battle system with dozens of different buffs and debuffs creates a need to be more strategic and its story goes far beyond a desire to become champion or to just catch'em all, but you can still do that too if you want to. A few shortcomings in the quest systems and platforming hold it back, but only slightly. Cassette Beasts proves itself as far more than just a knockoff, and is instead a brilliant game in its own right.
Granted, in many ways it’s another variation on the “creature collector” RPG subgenre, but it is able to differentiate itself nonetheless
Cassette Beasts is an addictive and fun videogame that pleasantly engages and excites. It offers a fascinating story and context, as well-implemented sensitive themes. A must have especially for the play structure.
Review in Italian | Read full review
We still have a lot of adventuring left to do in New Wirral, and we're in no way upset about it. More monsters to record and remaster, a few more mysteries to uncover, characters to grow fond of, and about 13,970 more fusions to see. Some (hopefully pre-launch-only) performance issues, wonky balance, and overly complex battle mechanics did little to affect how much we enjoyed Cassette Beasts. In fact, it's one of the better monster-battling games not starring a little electric rodent that you can enjoy on your Nintendo Switch.
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 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 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 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.
Finally, the music in Cassette Beasts is excellent. A large portion of the soundtrack is made up of catchy synth rock, that brings to mind 80s soundtracks like the original animated Transformers movie. There are also lots of background songs that feature full vocals, which was a real treat. The issue with this was that some of the music transitions were quite jarring. Background music is sharply reset by opening menus, talking to NPCs, and entering new areas, and this is very obvious when vocals are cut off. But I still commend Cassette Beasts for trying out vocals on their soundtrack. The music itself is truly memorable.
At the end of the day, Cassette Beasts is a remix of a song you like. Just don’t expect a remaster.
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.
The best Pokémon clone by a significant margin and arguably a more enjoyable experience than the more recent 3D games, with some clever new ideas and fantastic visuals.
Introducing interesting and original mechanics, Cassette Beasts revamps the monster collector genre with a much-needed fresh coat of paint.