No one will deny the fact that Pokémon has been absolutely revolutionary in gaming and entertainment. Embark on a grand adventure in a wondrous world full of powerful and unique creatures you can capture, train, and befriend, and we’ve seen that explored in many different ways since. While Pokémon remains, for the most part, the gold standard for this style of play, the Pokemon series has struggled to innovate in really meaningful ways over the past few years, and now alternate lenses are starting to catch up and even surpass Game Something that Freak put out there. That’s exactly what happened with Bytten Studios’ Cassette Beasts.
At first glance, Cassette Beasts come across as Pokémon clones. A metaworld with sprite characters, a collection of unusual creatures with elemental types, capture mechanics, RPG capabilities and leveling kits, and even a UI that looks like one of Game Freak’s games. From a personality standpoint, Cassette Beasts falls into the same category as Coromon and other monster-catching games that can be attributed to Pokémon. However, when you start peeking under the hood, Cassette Beasts come into play and show that Bytten Studios understands the necessary steps required to continually iterate and evolve the Pokémon formula in ways that Game Freak seems to have misunderstood.
While the world of Cassette Beasts’ New Wirral isn’t the same size as in the Pokémon universe, the open-world nature does mean that you can explore and hunt down creatures and secrets on your own, without being bound by the corridors between major cities. Yes, Pokémon Scarlet/Violet also rightly moves away from this linear nature, but Cassette Beasts approaches it in a more compelling way, as the quest structure, environmental puzzle solving, and exploration are all presented in a way that requires the player to solve problems . Unlike in the Paldea region, where on the map you’re shown the exact point to find the next stage of your quest, in Cassette Beasts you’re given a general area and then told to figure out the details when you get there. Do you have to solve a small puzzle to unlock a hidden secret to move forward? Do you need to find NPCs? Handshaking is very limited in this game, which really does wonders for doubling down on the immersive quality.
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Quests are designed in such a way that you need to talk to NPCs, enter buildings, find secrets, listen to rumors, etc., to be able to piece together and figure out the next major story beat, rather than in a predictable and almost looping fashion mode around the world. In doing so, it provides a great deal of depth to the world, since you never know if you’ve explored everything a region has to offer, or if an extra quest will take you somewhere you didn’t expect.
Then there are creatures. While the variety and designs are cool, there’s no denying that the designs take a lot of inspiration from the way Pokémon matches the quality and aesthetics of their environments with real animals. But it’s not the actual creatures that Cassette Beasts flexes its muscles on again, but the combat mechanics. Elemental types still need to be considered and how one type is more or less effective than another, but now you also have to manage ability points to determine which actions you can complete in a turn. It brings extra strategy to an already very familiar and similar strategy system, and then hopefully builds it up further with a range of buff and debuff abilities and moves, and even a Fuse mechanic that lets you literally combine any two beasts into A more powerful special beast. Fusion works because Cassette Beasts are always played with companions, whom you can bond and grow with while fusing to create stronger connections. You might already be wondering that combat in Cassette Beasts is always at least 2v2, and this even works in local co-op.
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The more complex nature of Cassette Beasts is largely its greatest strength, but I won’t deny that sometimes it could benefit from better explanation. A lot of the new info, like how capture and capture rates work, are only really explained in short summary messages in the early tutorial stages of the game, so if you don’t absorb it right away after reading that part of the text, basically expect to pass Trial and error to find out. The same goes for quest design, healing, different types, and more. Something similar to Trainer’s School in Pokémon would be a great addition for new players looking to learn the ropes and perfect them.
I haven’t had a chance to play Cassette Beasts on PC or Xbox so far, but I will say that the Switch version of the game has some demons right now. The performance is very choppy, the frame rate is very smooth, it often freezes, and it’s frustrating to handle. I haven’t encountered any notable bugs, but actual raw performance is an issue in its current shape.
Still, aside from the Switch performance issues and lack of detailed explanations, Cassette Beasts is an example of a more mature, difficult Pokémon. New additions to combat, exploration, and quest design all make the world exciting, and the sprite/pixel combo shows that the art style still has plenty of monster-catching potential. Game Freak has done a lot of good things with Pokémon over the years, but they can learn a thing or two by checking out Bytten Studios’ latest creation.
