Look, there are a lot of Pokémon clones out there to pick from, and I’m sure there’s an absolute wealth of them on sale right now. Cassette Beasts is, crucially, the only one that I’ve played, so it’s the one I’m going with—and there’s a lot to love about it. Cassette Beasts adapts the tried-and-true formula into an open world where you encounter the titular monsters in the wild, record them, and then use them in battle. Through a mixtape mechanic, you can even combine creatures into a whole new evolved set of monsters that blend types and have unique traits and skills.
The open world is filled with threads to pull on, encompassing a few different major arcs, like having to face off against elite Rangers, but then there’s also a storyline where you have to track down these nightmarish things called Archangels. It’s all in service of an isekai plot that drops you, as well as everyone else in the game, onto the island of New Whirral, where Cassette Beasts takes place.
You’re allowed to use your beasts’ traversal abilities pretty freely in the overworld, you can befriend and romance characters, and there’s even multiplayer in this game. Unlike its main inspiration these days, it looks good and runs reliably well too, meaning Cassette Beasts is everything you could really want out of a monster-collecting RPG, and it’s yours for $12 on Steam.
