Cassette Beasts review: a Pokémon-like that totally satisfies

I fell off Pokémon after 2016’s Pokémon Solar. It was enjoyable! However someplace alongside the road, even essentially the most die-hard monster collector experiences ’mon fatigue, unable to recollect what occurs while you put a fairy-type up in opposition to a bug-type with out Googling, or what in Arceus’ title is the distinction between the ground-types and the rock-types. The handfuls of hours required to climb from that second of choosing a starter Pokémon to beating the Elite 4 could make one surprise: Do I’ve this in me anymore? In brief, one begins to age.

Cassette Beasts is an indie Pokémon-like with lapsed Pokémaniacs in thoughts. As a substitute of capturing monsters with two-toned balls, right here you report them on cassette tapes by a course of the sport winkingly tells you to not suppose too arduous about. Visually, the sport seems to be like an Octopath-ed Pokémon Black/White, with colourful and splendidly animated sprites battling throughout three-dimensional backgrounds. The monster designs are inventive and different, like Traffikrab, a hermit crab with a visitors cone for a shell, and Bulletino, who’s a really severe little bullet dude. The beasts are available in certainly one of 14 sorts, every with strengths and weaknesses. At first look, it’s Pokémon all the best way down.

Effectively… besides that the sport opens with a quote from Sir Gawain and the Inexperienced Knight and a sequence wherein you fall by a wormhole of types right into a world of cassette tapes and monsters, the place a strong Ranger duties you with discovering and preventing 12 Ranger Captains (suppose Gymnasium Leaders, however often with no constructing to their title), alongside a separate quest given to you by your beginning companion Kayleigh to defeat eight Archangels — mysterious enemies that trigger the display screen to warp like a rewinding VHS tape, every rendered in several artwork kinds from the sport itself — to be able to get again to your private home dimension.

Make sense? I can’t communicate to no matter is occurring with the unintentionally eldritch visuals of Scarlet and Violet, however you don’t combat an evil claymation angel in these video games. Which is all to say that Cassette Beasts is weirder than it lets on, in one of the simplest ways.

Picture: Bytten Studio

I used to be initially enamored with the methods Cassette Beasts remixed the Pokémon system, beginning with how the designers at Bytten Studio rework easy strengths and weaknesses into a posh set of chain reactions. For instance, for those who assault a plastic-type with a fire-type assault, the plastic melts, altering the enemy’s sort to poison, which is then flammable for those who assault it once more with a fire-type. If, nevertheless, the plastic-type attacked a lightning-type, it might insulate them, inflicting any assaults that will usually hit a number of enemies to solely hit one. At first the mechanic is simplistic, however quickly you’ll attempt to keep in mind issues like “what shatters glass now that I’ve hit a mountain with lightning?” and “will poison make my astral creature go grr once I need it to go purr?”

These problems are sophisticated additional by the truth that the sport is basically fought two-on-two. At practically all instances, you might be flanked by a companion who may also rework into any of the beasts in your celebration. Additionally, you and your companion have well being bars distinct out of your monsters’ well being bars. On prime of that, you may fuse together with your companion, creating hybrid beasts out of any two of the sport’s 120 monsters. Fairly rapidly, you end up feeling the identical complexity creep of Pokémon, however with philosophy jokes and a little bit creepypasta on the facet.

Nonetheless, Cassette Beasts’ allure is simple. It is a sport aimed squarely at gamers who had been youngsters when Crimson and Blue got here out, who will giggle at Staff Rocket being changed with a bunch of evil landlords who seem like vampires and speak about preying on the poor. Gamers who can respect ’90s mall aesthetics and the superbly named “ElectroShack.” Gamers who know what a cassette even is within the first place, for whom the joke that the therapeutic merchandise on this sport is a pencil that rewinds cassette tapes truly makes any sense.

Photos: Bytten Studio

Because the hours piled on, the sense that Cassette Beasts was a contemporary begin for the Pokémon-like style waned. Along with the complexity creep, repetition units in, and the battles start to pull — simply as they will in Pokémon. Different issues are distinctive to Cassette Beasts: Since monsters are at all times on the identical degree because the participant character and may swap their “stickers” (the sport’s time period for talents, permitting you to place all the very best fire-type strikes you want on no matter beast you select), there are fewer and fewer incentives to report ’em all after you’ve put collectively a group that works for you. If you happen to ever discovered your self tapering off within the endgame of Pokémon, I think you’ll really feel the identical right here, too.

With a few of the identical issues that plague its supply of inspiration, Cassette Beasts doesn’t a lot evolve the system because it does swap it out for a unique sort. It’s enjoyable, it seems to be and sounds nice, and it runs superbly on Steam Deck, for what it’s price. However its shininess is simply surface-level, with the underlying mechanics, chain reactions and all, matching however not surpassing Sport Freak’s finest adventures. After all, given the two-person improvement group right here, that’s an achievement unto itself.

On the finish of the day, Cassette Beasts is a remix of a tune you want. Simply don’t count on a remaster.

Cassette Beasts was launched April 26 on Linux and Home windows PC; will probably be accessible Could 25 on Nintendo Swap, Xbox One, and Xbox Collection X. The sport was reviewed on PC. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You’ll find extra details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.