I really only wanted to write a review for Cassette Beasts after finishing the game and getting the full experience. I have a lot to say about its pros, cons, and why I still think it's worth playing despite having struggled to even start it. So, let's get into it.


Cassette Beasts has a lot to offer for a unique monster-catcher that I find different from Pokemon and other games that try to be like it, primarily in its creative typing system. At first, I found types like Plastic, Glass, Astral, and Glitter to be wacky for the sake of being wacky. It was admittedly kind of a turn-off. However, I think they do a lot to make the monster design really inspired by the types they want to portray. You come to love your Plastic and Astral monsters a lot, and embrace that system more as you find out more interactions as the game goes on. It's especially fun to realize what types work best in fusions.

The monster designs are also all-around excellent in general, as are the Archangels. The sheer amount of split evolutions gives you a great motivation to catch multiples of a monster. And unlike in Pokemon, where I'd have a star team I'd carry with me to the end, I was constantly swapping out monsters just to see what they'd turn into. It kept the game super fresh and exciting. Having your level tied to your character rather than your monster was also a huge plus! Gone are the days of swapping party members just to grind; simply peel a great sticker off of a monster you've leveled, slap it on a monster that needs a boost, and go to town while you level it up.

The music for fusions is great, the ending fight feels awesome, the map of New Wirral is fun to explore, and the game's traversal mechanics are especially interesting (who needs double jump when you can magnetize yourself to a pylon?). So... what's there not to like?


Outside of the beast designs, I think Cassette Beast's art is... lackluster. It's not bad, it's just *fine*. Mediocre. My issue isn't with the quality of the animations or the love put into the character portraits, I just think all of the characters look really uninspired. You tire of the pastel palettes pretty quickly. Kayleigh and Eugene especially are forgettable in both their quests and design. You have such limited options for character creation, I bought myself the Fashionista DLC just to walk around with a sprite I *vaguely* liked that didn't resemble me in any way. Don't expect to unlock any cool new outfit options either: what you start with is what you get. Fusions get pretty ugly too, since I think a lot of them are just parts mishmashed together without a lot of additional polish. You'll be looking forward to slapping two cool monsters together, only for the resulting fusion to be the equivalent of a bulky stick figure with a weird head.

It's also abundantly clear there were some parts of the game that received more love than others, especially later on. Where some quests and partners (EUGENE) are so un-fleshed out that you actively dread having to go out of your way to do them, other partner quests have their own attached areas (Merideth) or even unique monsters associated with them (Felix). Small pockets of the world map leave you wanting more than just a ranger fight (Ham and New London come to mind), while others overstay their welcome (Autumn Hill). There desperately needs to be an update for older parts of the game to match newer ones, and I imagine this is a symptom of putting out content as the game developed on Itch.Io.

There's a couple of other misc. problems I had that I'm sure other people have spoken for already: some types are absolutely unbalanced (looking at you, Astral) or have next to no meaningful interactions with other types, sorting through the sticker menu or the fusion gallery is abysmal, and there's no way to take monsters off of partners without swapping partners (this is especially a headache if you just want to put a partner to the side with a junk monster or if you left a great monster on a partner you don't care about). The ending of Cassette Beasts was also really underwhelming. I won't spoil it, but it disappointed me greatly that the ending to the journey went the way it did.


I think Cassette Beasts has a lot of merit and charm that warrants playing it, even if it also has its problems. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. It's the best non-Pokemon monster tamer I've tried, and it has both great bones and great polish. It's just also really hard to overlook its annoyances at times. I hope they fix a lot of the issues I had with it in the next possible installment, and I also hope a lot more people play this game and mod it to be even better than it is. My friends had a lot of fun watching it and commenting on the evolutions, too. It's a fun game to stream, even funner as a game to play to relax. Here's to whatever Bytten Studio does next!

Also Sunny so should've been a partner. We were robbed.

so good I can almost forgive the devs for being british

wen cassette beasts 2?