All success stories inspire imitators, and there are few success stories in gaming like Pokémon. Spanning multiple decades, between films, games, books, and anime, Pokémon is arguably the most iconic franchise gaming has to offer. You’d struggle to find anyone under 35 who wouldn’t recognize a Pikachu or a Charizard when they saw one.
So of course we’ve seen countless games borrow ideas from Nintendo’s flagship monster-catching series. Until recently, however, we haven’t seen that many truly worthwhile Pokémon-likes (though our own Matt Schomer does like the look of Palworld, and even found a cool PS1 Pokemon predecessor). There have been plenty of games that have taken inspiration from Pokémon, like Ni No Kuni and Shin Megami Tensei, but only a handful that put the monster-collecting front and centre, really scratching that old-school pocket monsters itch.
That’s until I found Cassette Beasts, which has massively raised the bar.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts, a brief overview. Cassette Beasts is an old-school JRPG heavily reminiscent of the old Pokémon games. You travel the world catching and training new monsters, conquering whatever the local equivalent of a “gym” is, and strive to become the best in all the land (the very best there ever was, if you will).
The first big way Cassette Beasts sets itself apart however is in its aesthetic. As the name suggests, the game is very much a love letter to the music of the 1980s. That means the soundtrack is full of dreamy synth-pop, the hairstyles are big and bold, and all the quests have names like “Take Me On” or “Acting on Your Best Behaviour”. There are all kinds of nice little touches too, like the battle UI taking the form of a giant tape player, complete with play pause and record (this game’s monster capture function).
More importantly, the monster designs are fantastic. This might sound a little shallow, but for games like this, unless the monsters look cool, I’ll probably lose interest pretty quickly. Fortunately, the creatures in Cassette Beasts look great and ooze personality. From the lowliest Traffikrab (basically a traffic cone with legs) to the mighty Archangels, you’ll want to keep playing just to see what kind of critter is lurking around the next corner.
It’s the elements system where things get really interesting though. Unlike in similar games, where the various “types” all exist in a rock-paper-scissors style network, with fire being weak to water, water being weak to electricity, and so on, Cassette Beasts focus on bespoke interactions between types. For instance, if an earth type is struck by an electric attack, it will become a glass type. Glass types can deal big damage, but they can also shatter if exposed to air attacks, and be destroyed instantly, breaking into shards that cover the battlefield and can deal damage to other beasts.
That’s one of the more elaborate interactions, but there are many others like it that massively enhance the strategic nature of the combat. Air types afflicted by fire create an “updraft,” a wall of swirling wind that protects them from incoming attacks, and plant earth and plastic types can inflict ‘unitarget’ on lightning types, preventing them from striking multiple enemies, which many of their most devastating attacks can.
You could get really sneaky with this stuff. You could, for example, use a metal-type attack on a lightning-based enemy, inflicting multitarget, which would force them to hit your plastic-type (battles in Cassette beasts can be 2-on-2 or even 3-on-3), which would in turn grant that plastic-type contact lightning damage. You never need to go that far, but it is an option, and who knows? It could win you the fight.
Does the enemy team have an astral type that’s doing a lot of healing? Well, astral types are enraged by metal and poison attacks, so hit it with one of them, and it will only be able to use offensive moves. The combat is so much deeper than simply pulling out whatever monster counters your enemy’s monster.
Furthermore, there are a lot of moves that allow for changing of type, and a lot of creatures can use moves of multiple elements, which can lead to all kinds of interesting and unexpected moments.
It’s actually quite instructive to see how much new life can be injected into a decades-old system with a few relatively minor changes. It’s the same basic skeleton, but by questioning some of the genre’s most basic assumptions Cassette Beasts feels like a total reinvention.
A couple of other quick things to note, Cassette Beasts allows for same-sex relationships, which is nice given Nintendo has long been dragging its heels in that regard. We still see people pipe up about the “woke agenda” in video games a fair bit, but, well, they can shut up really. Good work Bytten Studio.
The story can get surprisingly dark at times too. You wake up on a mysterious island where all the inhabitants are in the same boat, apparently abducted from other timelines or possibly even other worlds. Things start in fairly jovial fashion, but it’s not long before you start to encounter strange cults, God-like beings, and uncover a sinister secret. I won’t spoil anything, just don’t go in expecting non-stop sunshine and rainbows.
Cassette Beasts has reignited my love for monster-collecting games. Confident presentation and a lot of smart ideas make it the new standard by which other games will be judged, in my eyes anyway. I thought the rumors about a new Black & White game were the most exciting Pokemon-adjacent thing going on right now, but turns out I was wrong.
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