Instead, it's just you, your human avatar, who levels up, providing a foundation of base stats which your monsters then sit on top of. When a monster's health bar hits zero, you revert back to your human form, and when your health bar hits zero, it's back to Harbourtown for a hasty heal.Ĭassette Beasts' masterstroke, though, is the way it uncouples levelling up from your individual monsters. You have two health bars to watch out for in Cassette Beasts - your monster's green bar, and your own underlying red bar. It's very Persona, albeit without the constant worry of only having limited time to earn best pal status. It not only sands off a lot of Pokémon's rougher, niggling edges, but it also goes much deeper on its RPG elements, giving you multiple storylines to pursue at once, a party of companions to pick from (each of whom have their own story quests to explore), as well as gradually evolving relationship bonuses based on the depth of your friendship with them. Just ask Ash Ketchum, who recently retired at the grand old age of ten after being in the business for 26 years.Ĭassette Beasts, on the other hand, feels like more of a thinking person's Pokémon - the kind that caters to those lifelong Poké peeps who are now in their 30s (and have been wishing Pokémon would grow up alongside them ever since they first encountered it) much more effectively. That was the age I fell in love with it, and it has stuck steadfast to serving those ever-present ten-year-olds ever since. Pokémon is, and always will be, a fantastic game for ten-year-olds. The same old Pokémon we've been playing for the last two and a bit decades, with the same elemental combos, the same old schtick of catch, evolve and stick in a box, and the same 'this game is great if you're ten-years-old' energy. But even putting their technical woes aside for one minute, my biggest problem with Scarlet and Violet - and this is why I'm a reformed Poké person rather than a current one - is that, fundamentally, it's still Pokémon. The chance to explore a world full of cool, magical creatures you could see in plain sight roaming out in the wild, not hidden by chuffing long grass, and the freedom to pursue exactly the kind of Poké career you saw being celebrated in the Pokémon anime, stepping back from being an all-time master champion to try your hand at being a breeder, a professor or a photographer.Īnd yes, Scarlet and Violet certainly tapped into a lot of these fantasies when they came out last year, or at least they did when they weren't running at ten frames a second, or wigging out under a mountain of bugs and hiccups. Not that the concept of open world games was as fully formed as it today back in 1999, but you know what I mean. The kind of people who, and this is based solely on personal experience, have probably been wondering what an open world Pokémon game might look like ever since they first clapped eyes on the wonky backsides of their Game Boy Charmanders. Admittedly, the idea of an open world Pokémon-like might have lost some of its shine now that the actual Pokémon games have finally gone and done it themselves with last year's Scarlet and Violet releases, but Cassette Beasts, the debut game from UK micro team Bytten Studio, is banging a different kind of drum to Nintendo's primo monster catcher.įor starters, its gorgeous pixel art feels laser targeted at folks like me who grew up on the likes of Red and Blue back in the late 90s and early 00s. I thought I'd get that out there right at the start, because you can't really talk about Cassette Beasts without talking a bit about Pokémon. My name is Katharine and I'm a reformed Pokéaddict. Reviewed on: Intel Core i9-11900K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 10 + Steam Deck.A modern monster catcher RPG that brings lots of smart evolutions to almost every Poké-like system you can imagine.
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