You can date a skeleton. 10/10

TLDR: This game made me remember what a good monster taming game is and isn't. What it isn't is forced tutorials, piss easy battles and an empty world with compulsion loops instead of substance. What it is is trekking through a varied world map with dungeons to explore, overworld puzzles to solve, well rounded characters, and defeating bosses by the skin of your teeth.

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Cassette Beasts is easily my favorite game of 2023. If you're a Pokemon fan like me and was disappointed with the overwhelming majority of Pokemon games released in the past several years, you'll love this game. If you don't care about Pokemon, it's still a fun RPG in its own right. The turn-based combat is a bit more advanced than Pokemon, but not so much that you'll feel overwhelmed. The quest lines are emotionally engaging and the characters are decently written, especially the companions. It has some good boss fights with the Archangels, which pose an actual challenge on top of being aesthetically experimental. If you are a hardcore Pokemon fan who enjoys things like randomizer and Nuzlocke runs, then you'll be pleased to know that Cassette Beasts has those modes built right into the game. All of this backed by an enjoyable soundtrack with dynamic mixing for the battle themes.

It's not perfect, of course. The world map only has two towns in it with the rest being mostly ruins. And even then, one of the towns is only relevant for one side quest involving one of your party members and is never brought up again. Some of the post game is also not great. The quests you get are an infinite drip of the same kinds of tasks; deliver supplies to W, battle a guy with Cassette Beasts X, fight Y number of Z beasts, etc. There are a couple characters you find in the post game that have their own storyline, but that's it. It also gets very grindy with rogue fusions. An update that increases the amount of fused material you get once you beat the main story would certainly be appreciated.

Thankfully, the developers actually released a new update that addresses those shortcomings with a new feature called The Gauntlet. It's a standard endless battle mode where you fight wild beasts and NPCs. It's very handy for grinding EXP and even finding rarer beasts to record that you haven't got around to yet. What's more, the higher your win streak, the more Fused Material you can obtain. This makes going through the postgame ranger board MUCH more tolerable, especially when you get higher win streaks. They also added a sticker fusion system that lets you put multiple bonus effects onto a single sticker, which gives you even more options for customizing your builds.

And because this is a PC game, there are mods a plenty. The modding community for this game is fairly active with new stuff being added regularly. There are quality of life improvements, accessibility options, more outfits for your character, post-game battle facilities, a procedural dungeon, and even whole new cassette beasts. Some mad lad made a mod that makes the NPCs far more dynamically active in the game world and added its whole in-universe card game mod because why not? The developers recently added Steam Workshop support, which makes adding many of these mods significantly easier.

If you're looking for multiplayer options, there are two modes available. The first is a local co-op mode that lets another player take control of one of your companions, which is great if you want to experience the story with a friend. This title has Remote Play Together support, so you can play this mode online too. There's also an online multiplayer mode that lets you play with other people online similar to what you'd expect from Pokemon and other similar monster taming games; battle each other, join up for raids, trade cassettes, etc.

Admittedly, I haven't had a chance to try out the multiplayer yet because I don't really play multiplayer much. Most of my friends who do have Cassette Beasts play single player anyway. That's more of a me thing and not a knock against the game. That said, make sure you and the other players you're playing with either have the same mods as you or have all mods removed, or you're going to have problems.

The bottom line is that this is one of the best monster taming games made in a long time. Between this and Beastieball, which is still in Early Access as of this writing, I'd say the future of monster taming games is looking bright.