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Cassette Beasts

Overview
As a turn based monster-catching RPG, Cassette Beasts is yet another take on the Pokemon-like games. However, it does not merely copy Pokemon and provides a fresh perspective with its fusion mechanics, move customization, fun art design, jamming music and zany story. While it has its flaws and a rather weak post-game, it is still a great time and worth playing through at least once for the story and seeing all the monsters. Simply put – it’s a good time.
Story
The game opens up with your character (which you can customize name, appearance, gender, etc.) becoming stranded on a new strange land with monsters. The first human you meet teaches you how to defend yourself by using a cassette player to turn yourself into a monster. She also demonstrates how to obtain new forms (i.e. monster catching) via recording said monsters. The game is very tongue in cheek about how weird this method of obtaining monsters and battling them is and encourages you not to think too much about it.
Eventually, as your new friend shows you around town, exploration opens up and you’re free to take on some quests. You can explore the world and try to become a ranger (like a gym leader in pokemon) by defeating other rangers, etc. Eventually the exploration leads to an encounter with a different kind of monster that the characters dub an archangel. These archangels are essentially elite monster boss encounters and stand out from the rest of the monsters. They cannot be recorded and their appearance is cryptic and rather creepy along with some odd dialog.
There also seems to be a connection with the archangels and a way to escape the stranded world and so the adventure continues in a search for more archangels. Along the way, you meet yet more friendly trainers in your quest and can complete their character-focused side stories. Upon doing so, they want to share your goal of defeating the archangels and escaping the world as they become your trusted battle companion.
Overall, it has a decent enough premise that provides reason to continue battling monsters with a goal to work toward. The characters are all interesting and there is plenty of character-based story telling within the plot as well for players who enjoy that kind of storytelling more than just a general overarching story.
Presentation
I really fell in love with the designs of the monsters and especially the music that played throughout. Harbourtown especially had me humming along as it stirred some nostalgic emotions within me. Sometimes I just sat in town vibing along enjoying the song. Whenever an archangel showed up I really loved anticipating what sort of craziness I was getting myself into next.
There are 128 monsters + 1 bonus monster in the base game (excluding the arch angels) and they are all unique designs. As with many monster taming games, there are evolutions and branching paths but also some standalone monsters. In addition to these monsters, you can fuse any two monsters (including two of the same monster) with yet more unique designs and even names. There is a lot to take in!
The world itself is cleanly designed with elevation, hidden switches, interactable objects, etc. Typically, I was able to explore the world and distinguish the monsters and interactable objects from the environment. There were some exceptions but the switches or monsters were intentionally camouflaged.
My only gripe with the presentation is I did not see a setting to speed up battle animations. They’re enjoyable but get old really fast, needlessly extending the time battles (or even setup time from pre-battle skills).
Gameplay
At its core, this is a game about collecting and battling monsters. There is also a stage in between with customizing the monster’s move sets with stickers. Every time a monster levels up (gains a star) it will earn a new sticker that can be equipped. You can also use the world’s currency to purchase more stickers, find them in chests, or even just grab a sticker from another monster (if compatible). It is very fun to plan out and customize a build to make a monster. There are a mix of passive and action abilities including abilities that trigger at the start of battle. Some combinations are extremely broken and will trivialize the game – but it’s fun to come up with solutions prior to then. Even the broken combination is fun to see at first, but I’d recommend not using it until the post-game as it does take the wind out of the sails of fun.
As for stats and leveling up – the monsters only get more stickers and sticker slots as they progress down their evolution chain and ranking up. Stat growth and actual levels are only tied to the trainer. This makes it a lot more viable to switch out monsters for variety, although it can be annoying to shift the useful stickers around before you’re swimming in surplus.
Battling is enjoyable and can be pretty strategic (outside of the broken sticker combination). I’ve found myself having to mix up strategies and skills rather than using the same build for every encounter. Some trainers or archangels have gimmicks that may make you have to play differently. Such reasons may include status effects or passive skills that hard counter your own, and even type advantage. Like pokemon, there are type advantage/disadvantage but instead of just doing more/less damage, there is always some kind of additional status effect applied. For example, a water type will give a health regen status to their opponent when attacking plant types.
Collecting monsters was fun and for the most part not too difficult. No monster is missable, thankfully! However, obtaining the bonus monster is a bit too RNG dependent for my tastes as it essentially requires a very specific bootleg (this game’s version of shiny pokemon) monster. This was around when I started to really have criticism for the game which would only escalate with the post-game.
Post Game
I enjoyed my trek through the story which lasted perhaps around 30 hours. After that was the post-game where the game started to overstay it’s welcome and frustrate me. The additional story content, monsters, and rematches were welcome. But the “100 side quests” achievement is just an insanely needless grind with no respect for the player’s time. There is no reason to force a player to do 100 fetch quests just to see the end of 100% completion. This number should have been reduced significantly to approximately just 10 and stick to only relevant story content.
These quests consist of “kill X amount of monster”. “record X monster and get it to 5 stars”, “fuse these two monsters together”. Etc. It’s mind numbingly dull and I decided to just drop the game at this point and even passing on the DLC. At this point I had enough, sadly.

Specs
Game runs fine.
Operating System: Windows 10
Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @3.40GHz
Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Memory (RAM) 16 GB
Summary
While the post-game ruined my honeymoon with the game, I do still overall recommend the game. It’s a really nice story and a refreshing take on the monster catching and battling formula. I’d just advise to not bother with 100% completion if you try out the Ranger Sign Board and hate it as much as I did. It doesn’t get any better, in fact it just gets worse. Check out the post-game archangels/monsters/trainers then call it. Overall, despite a weak post-game, the ending itself was fine and it’s a really fun ride through an interesting world. I recommend any monster catching fan to pick this one up, sale or not.