After 20 hours with Cassette Beasts, I’ll never touch Pokémon again

As a child of the 90s who was practically raised by Pokémon, Cassette Beasts was made for people like me. I bought the game when it launched back in April, but with 2023 being so stacked with gargantuan AAA releases, it sadly fell to the wayside and started gathering dust like the hundreds of other unplayed games in my collection.

Cassette Beasts recently surpassed 350,000 players across all platforms, and its first DLC, Pier of the Unknown, launched in October to a glowing reception. So I decided now was the perfect time to finally give the game a try, and I’m so glad I did, because I was instantly hooked.

Its striking retro aesthetic, Metroidvania-style open world, and refreshing take on the monster-battling formula combine to form an engaging, vibrant, and unexpectedly heartwarming adventure that puts newer Pokémon titles to shame. After 20 hours with Cassette Beasts, I’ll never look back, and if you’re a retro Pokémon fan like me, you owe it to yourself to play this game.

Not just a carbon copy

At its core, Cassette Beasts is all about collecting and battling monsters, but there’s far more to it than meets the eye. Using a 90s-style cassette player and headphones, you transform into one of 140 titular Cassette Beasts—quirky monsters stored on cassette tapes—to battle wild creatures, other characters, and the terrifying VHS era-inspired Archangels that serve as the main villains in Cassette Beasts’ surprisingly adult story.

While it looks like an old-school Pokémon game on the surface, Cassette Beasts plays very differently. You can move in all directions, jump, and after grabbing your first Metroidvania-style power-up, you can glide. This is a welcome twist that makes exploring Cassette Beasts’ island of New Wirral feel modern, engaging, and fun from the get-go.

New Wirral is fairly small, but the whole map is a puzzle in and of itself. There’s a single major settlement, Harbourtown, that serves as the staging point for your adventures. Higher-level areas are gated behind natural barriers you need new abilities to overcome, like dashing and swimming. You unlock traversal abilities by copying (capturing) the monsters that use them, incentivizing you to revisit older areas after you get stronger, like a true Metroidvania.

Combat is a blast, too—there are hundreds of moves to unlock, and since you’re the one transforming and battling, it’s you that levels up rather than your beasts. This means every beast you collect is instantly viable, and gone are the tedious days of grinding with an XP share. These features all solve problems with the Pokémon games that I never realized needed fixing, and the result is a thoroughly engaging experience that will feel fresh and familiar for fans of the genre.

Satisfying RPG systems with engaging combat

That’s far from everything Cassette Beasts does to shake up the formula. Battles have remarkable depth and make Pokémon feel basic and underbaked by comparison. You always fight with a companion at your side, so you’re free to experiment with synergies from the get-go. Combos feel worthwhile to discover and pull off: You get up to 16 ability slots instead of only four, and monster types cleverly interact with each other in a way that Pokémon simply can’t hold a candle to.

If your Lightning ability hits an Earth-type enemy, you change its type to Glass. Hitting the now-Glass-type with an Air ability inflicts Resonance, and doing this three times shatters the glass and instantly knocks out your target. There are lots more fun interactions like this: Fire melts Plastic-types, turning them into Poison-types, and if you hit a Poison-type with a Metal-type, the Metal-type becomes Poison-tipped and deals contact damage.

These mechanics keep combat feeling fresh and interesting into the late game, but what makes Cassette Beasts truly special is its Fusion system. After filling up your Fusion Meter, you can fuse with your partner to create a unique, ultra-powerful beast with your moves and stats combined.

Fusion is essentially your ultimate ability, and it feels awesome every time you use it. The soundtrack’s cheesy vocals kick in, you gain access to devastating fusion attacks, and the whole thing feels like a legendary scene from an anime like Dragon Ball Z. Epic moments like this were always missing from the retro Pokémon games, and Cassette Beasts rightfully puts them center stage.

A grown-up take on a childhood favorite

Despite being so lively and upbeat on the surface, Cassette Beasts’ themes, story, and overall tone are far more mature than Pokémon. Without spoiling anything, characters can and do die. There’s mild profanity in the soundtrack, and all the characters you encounter are adults, with adult issues. Your companions have careers, relationships, and families, and they often take you by surprise with genuinely heartwarming bits of dialogue.

Cassette Beasts’ adult themes are prevalent in every aspect of the game, but they never grow tiresome. The Landkeepers are the best example, Cassette Beasts’ equivalent to Pokémon’s Team Rocket. They’re smug estate agents who, fittingly, also happen to be vampires. The Landkeepers are obsessed with claiming as much of New Wirral’s housing market as possible so they can charge exorbitant rent prices, and their whole storyline is delightfully cynical. This should tell you everything you need to know about Cassette Beasts’ target audience. 

Pokémon’s fresh-faced protagonists are iconic, but Cassette Beasts’ down-to-earth undertones inject a dose of realism that hits close to home and feels just right for a millennial gamer like me.

A blast from the past that’s relevant now

Cassette Beasts is a must-play for every Pokémon fan, especially if you’re nostalgic for the 90s and 2000s. The rich retro vibe pervasive in its soundtrack and visuals will have you longing for years gone by, and this vibe is paired beautifully with a refreshing evolution of the monster-battling formula that cleverly rewards your creativity with crunchy combos and satisfying synergies.

With an interesting overworld, deep combat, relatable characters, and a remarkably mature story and themes, Cassette Beasts is an excellent game from start to finish. It expertly evolves the formula Pokémon established nearly two decades ago, and I’ll never go back. I can only hope Bytten Studio releases more DLC or a sequel, but for now, all I can do is wholeheartedly recommend the game to you, because it’s absolutely worth the $20 price tag.