Cassette Beasts – a true Pokémon rival (pic: Raw Fury)



A new Pokémon challenger offers retro graphics and 120 unique critters, with plenty of unique ideas and no bugs.



It’s very difficult to say what the current state of Pokémon is. Scarlet and Violet was very unpopular with certain sections of fandom, becoming the final straw for many in terms of the series’ lack of technical prowess. On the other hand, it was the second-fastest selling entry ever , with more DLC to come this year and no indication that The Pokémon Company considers it to be a misstep.



Some fans have become so frustrated that they’ve ended up making their own games, with a stream of increasingly more component indie titles, such as Temtem and Coromon . So far, none of them have been breakout hits but Cassette Beasts may prove different, because not only is it the best of the bunch but it’s a genuinely great game in its own right.



Cassette Beasts is still obviously a clone, visually similar to late era DS games such as Pokémon Black and White, where the backgrounds are 3D but the characters and pokémon are still 2D sprites. However, it’s a vastly more attractive looking game than the recent Pokémon Diamond and Pearl remakes and for many it will count as the best Pokémon game for years.



The story set-up diverges only slightly from the Pokémon norm, while at the same time indulging in plenty of traditional Japanese role-playing clichés (although developer Bytten Studio is based in Brighton). You wake up with amnesia on a mysterious island, filled with other castaways and lots of potentially dangerous, pokémon-esque monsters. Your fellow islanders have already worked out that by recording the beasts onto cassette tapes they gain the ability to transform into them at any time. Which clearly makes no sense at all, but it is a ton of turn-based fun.



As with Temtem, the standard battle set-up is two-on-two, since you always have an ally with you, but while the turn-based combat works in a very familiar way the tactics are subtly different. You can win a fight by battling each of a trainer’s beasts in turn but when you defeat one a human opponent is briefly returned to normal human form, creating an opening for you to achieve an early win.



The beasts have all the sort of environmental resistances and vulnerabilities, but they’re portrayed in a more realistic manner than Pokémon. So, for example, fire attacks will melt metal types, but they’ll turn ground types to glass and plastic to poison. Nothing is as simple as just increasing the attack power, with other combinations lowering defence stats or causing contact damage.



There are other unique wrinkles such as the ability to fuse with your ally to make a completely different super-beast. These are not only more powerful but have completely unique designs no matter which of the 100 or so different beasts you combine together. Some look purposefully silly but others are very impressive, as the art design throughout is wonderfully imaginative.



Other elements are pretty much identical to Pokémon, such as witling down a beast’s health until they’re injured enough for you to record them or using their abilities outside of battle to do things like swim or glide for short distances.



Moves work in a similar way to the more modern games, in that they’re not all set in stone, but the way Cassette Beasts lets you swap them around simply by adding and removing stickers to the cassette is not only easy but a lot more visually interesting than just fiddling about with a menu.



Cassette Beasts – record and play (pic: Raw Fury)



It’s when the game strays the furthest from Pokémon that it seems most interesting, especially the dungeon-like underground stations that offer a more puzzle-based challenge than normal Pokémon games. These usually end with an enemy boss called an archangel, which unlike beasts are rendered in 3D and have strange reality-warping powers that become a key plot element for the story.



The archangel encounters are so good they do tend to undermine some of the less inspired normal quests. The attempts to create a version of Pokémon gym leaders offers disappointingly little challenge and while allies do have specific missions associated with them, they’re often not all that interesting and your ability to interact with other islanders seems undercooked in general.







At times there is a sense that Cassette Beasts is something of a rough draft, not just in terms of the variable nature of the missions but an uneven difficulty curve for both story battles and dungeon puzzles. If the Pokémon franchise is about anything though it’s slow refinement and we can only hope that Cassette Beasts will be successful enough to ensure a sequel that sands off these rough edges.



Even as it is now though this is one of the best Pokémon style games of recent years. It’s definitely the best clone and arguably superior to the last few mainline games. Plus, not only is it free on Game Pass but it’s temptingly cheap anyway, for a game that seems to understand the appeal and magic of Pokémon better than its own creators.






Cassette Beasts review summary In Short: The best Pokémon clone by a significant margin and arguably a more enjoyable experience than the more recent 3D games, with some clever new ideas and fantastic visuals.
Pros: Excellent quasi-retro graphics and great monster designs. Interesting and nuanced battle system that has the perfect mix of new and borrowed ideas. Archangel battles are particularly good.
Cons: Some elements borrowed from Pokémon, especially the pseudo-gym leaders, don’t work so well and the mission quality and difficulty level can be quite uneven.
Score: 8/10





Formats: PC (reviewed), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch , and Xbox Series X/S Price: £15.07* Publisher: Raw Fury Developer: Bytten Studio Release Date: 26th April 2023 (25/5 on consoles) Age Rating: 7



*currently on Game Pass









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