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Cassette Beasts: yo wanna check out my pokérap mixtape

Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
Long story short: if you ever played classic Pokémon, you owe it to yourself to try Cassette Beasts.


Cassette Beasts is made by Bytten Studios, which is a small indie dev that is probably most notable for Lenna's Inception (which I did an LP of if you're curious its right here). It's a monster collector game where you end up stranded on an island, your main form of defense being a cassette player that can "record" monster forms for you to transform into. There's many ways it sets itself apart from the big name in town, a few of which I'll list now:

  • The standard format is 2v2, with your main character and a partner against one or two foes as needed. This number is a bit flexible, most notably in the ability you get to fuse with your partner to jack up your stats, merge your movelists, and gain AP faster. All 120 monster forms are eligible for fusion with one another.
  • The type chart interactions are not damage multipliers. Instead, you'll apply a buff or a debuff to the target depending on what types are hitting what, with debuffs to the target for type advantage (say, extinguishing a Fire type with a Water attack to drop their offense) and buffs for type advantage (that same Water attack would provide conductivity for a Lightning type, making its moves multitarget). Some rarer interactions even allow you to change the type of the target.
  • There's no STAB to incentivize keeping attacks that match your type on your tape of choice. Instead, typeless moves will inherit the type of the user. Everyone can do a basic Smack, but if you're using a Metal type, that Smack also becomes Metal.
  • The world map and your progression are both fairly open. You can obtain some movement abilities by recording specific monsters, but you don't need to keep them around to use those moves. If you haven't got any real leads to go for, NPCs in the main town tend to give rumors that point you towards Interesting Things that get logged in your journal.
  • This game is aesthetic as hell in a good way. Monster designs lean a little more Digimon than Pokémon, but without the kind of visual clutter the former name tends to invoke. Additionally, without spoiling too much, most of the bosses you encounter in the plot, dubbed Archangels, are like Ultra Beasts but a step beyond. Like, "this is Not From Your World and it is visible, tangible, you can taste their sounds on your eyes and it smells awful".
  • There are also gym leader equivalents, but instead of monotype teams, they instead explore a mechanic of the system and make it the cornerstone of their strategy. For example, the first one you're likely to encounter makes use of walls (similar to Substitute) with all the bells and whistles that such a strategy can use.
  • Oh, and while this isn't a selling point for me but might be for you: you can possibly smooch most of your partners and they are all adorable.

When I finished Lenna's Inception, my ultimate takeaway was "that was an Okay game, unpolished and with some ugly spots, but it had heart, damn it all, and I cannot wait to see what lessons the devs take from this on their next project". And now that project is here (currently available on Steam and Gamepass, soon on Switch) and I have been jazzed about it the entire time.

I'm gonna review monster designs in this thread when I have more time! woooooo!
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I am very excited to try this when it comes to Gamepass (for Xbox, I think it's already available on PC) on the 25th.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
All 120 monster forms are eligible for fusion with one another.

This, I like. There's too many Pokemon these days. Also being able to fuse them all is nice.

Monster designs lean a little more Digimon than Pokémon, but without the kind of visual clutter the former name tends to invoke.

This, I don't. I agree with you that (at least the ones in that trailer) aren't as visually cluttered as Digimon, but there's something about the early, largely simplistic Pokemon designs that I miss.

In any case, the game itself looks potentially pretty fun, so I'll be keeping an eye on it. Thanks for giving us a heads up about it! I'd not heard of it before this thread.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Kalir and I have been talking this game up in the Discord. I'm still not too terribly far into it, but it's a pretty cool game. I am by no means a Pokemon super fan, but this game does such an excellent job iterating on a lot of game design elements from Pokemon. What elevates it higher than that though is its flavor, world design, and character writing. It's not quite Queer-centric in its approach here, insofar that it doesn't make that a large part of its identity, but it is certainly Queer-friendly (I'm pretty sure my town signpost is using pansexual flag colors?).
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I’m as jazzed as a sack of Hep Cats for it to come to consoles, and luckily I do not have long to wait
 

Sprite

(He/Him/His)
The monster designs are definitely a cut above the average PokeClone. It has my attention for sure.

I'm sad that there appears to be no PVP, though I know expecting a $20 to have robust competitive features is a big ask. Pokémon VGC is my favorite competitive game ever, and I'm desperate for someone to make a trimmed-down version. The whole concept of the genre is pretty at odds with any competitive bits so I doubt anyone is going to make that their top priority when making one of these.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
I like the idea but I keep seeing the name and thinking I should be able to generate monsters from my own music library
 

Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
SPRINGHEEL

springheel.png


Curiously, this game doesn't put your starters first in the bestiary. Instead, the first few entries are devoted to some of the common overworld foes and their evolutions remasters. First up is Springheel, a Beast type. Overworld enemies behave in a few different ways: chasing you when you get near, flitting to and fro without paying attention, disappearing when they see you, et cetera. For Springheel, they actually hide behind trees and cliff faces and such (from your perspective, not the player character's) and then jump out to try to ambush you. It's cute, and they take long enough that they're trivial to avoid and only travel by hopping around.

The name lead me to originally think they were supposed to represent a wrestling heel, and the belt and boots definitely make that seem likely, but the actual inspiration is Spring-heeled Jack, a villain/cryptid of British folklore from the 19th century. There were many accounts of attacks by a person with a design that looks very similar to Springheel here, and Springheel's own bestiary entry mentions as much. Monsters in Cassette Beasts actually have two bestiary entries: one about the creature itself (in Springheel's case, it mentions that its tattered wings are homemade and that it ambushes people mostly for fun) and one about its inspirations, cultural or biological or whatever the case may be. Cryptids, in particular, are a very common source of inspiration for Cassette Beasts designs, and we'll be seeing a lot of them before we're done.

Unfortunately, this design is one of the weaker ones to me, which is a shame that we're starting with them. I think it's the face markings: they bleed down into the grinning mouth too much, obscuring both features. It's not bad beyond that, though: just a funny little jumpscaring imp.

As far as gameplay goes, Springheel's stats are straightforward enough: melee offense and speed. The most unique thing going for it is the fact that not only is it a Beast type, but it stays Beast type through its remasters. Beast is the closest the game has to "normal", with only two interactions. The first is that if it hits a Glass type, they break off a bunch of glass shards that cover the field, dealing damage to anyone attempting a melee attack. And the second is to Glitter types, which there are no naturally occuring monsters for. Glitter type attacks turn the target into a Glitter type (because it gets everywhere) while anything attacking a Glitter type overwrites the Glitter type with the type of the attack. Just gonna cover those interactions here.

HOPSKIN

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When remastering Springheel, you're given a choice of what "path of night" you want to walk. Hopskin here represents the "vagabond" path, which is to say it leans into the more serial killer aspects of Spring-heeled Jack. Hopskin covers itself in a filthy trenchcoat and apparently "entices" people to approach with its bright eyes and wide grin, then slashes them with its concealed claws. As the method indicates, it has the same stat spread and gameplan of its predecessor: hit hard and fast, because it can't survive a prolonged fight.

I actually like Hopskin's design a lot more, even without the cleaner face markings. The battle animation is pretty cool, too. While idle, Hopskin occasionally glances back and forth shiftily, and when attacking, they just extrude a single long talon from inside their coat without even opening it all the way. It's a cool way to illustrate that this beast SEEMS human, but really operates on its own internal logic and isn't stuck with your meager understanding of physiology. But it still has to fit in with human "concepts", as evidenced by the single gold earring it sports... or maybe it just likes the style, who knows.

Like Springheel, Hopskin's name is basically a 1:1 concatenation of an existing cryptid, in this case the Hopskinville goblins that beseiged a rural family back in 1955. Most skeptics hold that the goblins, which are probably the most direct inspiration of this entire line from a physical viewpoint, were just misinterpreted great horned owls. And yeah, the glowing eyes and stature definitely line up there.

RIPTERRA

ripterra.png


Remastering Hopskin produces my personal favorite form of the line, Ripterra. If Hopskin played into the "a complete lack of physiology hiding in a trenchcoat" angle, Ripterra takes that even further, no longer even looking humanoid and with its own bestiary entry saying that the coat just covers a messy tangle of clawed-limbs. And while the previous forms were all mostly inspired by prankster cryptids that didn't seriously pose a threat, Ripterra's jaunty top hat and extreme viciousness are a clear callback to Jack the Ripper, a serial killer of the Victorian era. To a degree, this mimics Pokémon's design philosophy with most evolutions: start off with a cute concept and take it to a more powerful and fearsome endpoint.

Ripterra maintains the same gameplan as its earlier forms: go fast, hit hard, destroy them before they destroy you. While some monsters or lines have signature moves, anything Ripterra can access is available to a lot of potential characters. Ripterra just so happens to boast a very extreme stat spread that means if it gets a chance to hit you, it will, and it'll hurt, but it doesn't take much to shut it down. It's not my favorite form, or even probably in my top ten, but I like it all the same.

SNOOPIN

snoopin.png


Should you instead go down the "thief" branch, you end up with Snoopin, clearly inspired by gentleman thieves such as Arsene Lupin. This isn't quite as "debatably-human cryptid" as the vagabond route, but you can't deny that the combination of the ever-present toothy grin and the incredibly debonair fashion choices, Snoopin is a perfectly reasonable alternative to Hopskin.

Statwise, Snoopin leans more into being a mixed attacker. It's equally capable of melee or ranged offense, which for you Pokémaniacs out there is basically the physical/special of the game. And with wider movepools and less explosive type advantage, not to mention some of the more creative interactions with melee/ranged attacks in general, mixed attackers are more than viable, so while Hopskin and Ripterra are definitely more straightforward and boast better defenses and speed (albeit barely so), Snoopin is a lot harder to counter since it can flex to melee or ranged as the situation demands.

SCAMPIRE

scampire.png


Not to say they've left their cryptid origins behind. Snoopin eventually becomes Scampire, which feels weird as a final form for a "thief" but makes a surprising amount of sense for a gentleman thief. Both archetypes are known for their fancy dress, nocturnal habits, flair for the dramatic and extravagant, and hints of sex appeal to their stories. Scampire is a fun fusion of the concepts as well, and I'm a big fan of the wide spectacles combined with the classic toothy grin.

Scampire retains the focus on mixed offense, leaning more into ranged than melee, and now has the speed to keep up with Ripterra. It gets a further niche in being much more able to use status moves to even the odds, including walls, debuffs, and the fearsome Vengeful Curse, which burdens anyone that takes them down with three random status effects. Which honestly is a perfect encapsulation of the design philosophy of Cassette Beasts right here. Yeah, you can just go with Ripterra and be a fast-moving, hard-hitting menace too concerned with victory to spare a thought for defeat. Or you can take a much weirder statline with Scampire and branch out to have an answer to every scenario. In Pokémon, pure stat moves usually take up valuable real estate in your sparse moveslot, and the extreme degree of stat specialization meant that mixed offense was usually a waste of time. But in Cassette Beasts, Scampire is able to champion that playstyle and stand proudly alongside its more straightforward companion as a viable, and even strong, choice.
 
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Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
CARNIVIPER

carniviper.png


Our next common enemy type, usually seen patrolling the overworld leisurely until they see the player and charge them down, is Carniviper. This tiny little poison type monster is pretty much exactly what's written on the box: a tiny little snake in a carnival mask. And that's a really cute inspiration! Pokémon already did this idea justice with Arbok having elaborate patterns on the snake's hood to be a face, but Carniviper takes that a step forward by having the patterns JUST be the face outright in mask form! That's neat! I like that!

There's no outright mythological or folklore inspiration for Carniviper, although its extended bestiary entry talks about the tsuchinoko, a Japanese cryptid known for being just a pudgy snake with extreme variance on what its properties, if any, actually are. I don't quite see that for Carniviper, but that's fine and that's okay.

Statwise, Carniviper has the same general gameplan as Snoopin: high speed and equally capable offense whether ranged or physical. As a Poison type, though, Carniviper has some more matchups to worry about. In particular, Poison does very well against Plant (getting a guaranteed poison effect when hitting them and absorbing their nutrients for an offense boost when hit) and very poorly against Fire (fueling them for an AP boost, and being highly flammable themselves). Poison attacks also coat the tips of any defending Metal or Earth monster, giving them some extra contact damage when connecting with a melee attack either way, but they're great at disrupting Astral enemies with their impurities, forcing them to only use attacking moves.

MASQUERATTLE

masquerattle.png


Masquerattle, as a remaster, is pretty much just the same thing but bigger. And that's totally fine. The mask changes significantly, and the bestiary claims some people believe the mask to be a way to lure prey in, while most simply think the mask is too creepy to really pull that off. There isn't really a lot to Masquerattle beyond that: it just builds off of Carniviper's stats and gameplan, favoring multi-hit and automatic attacks but generally being an all-out speedster.

JORMUNGOLD

jormungold.png


When remastering Masquerattle, you have a choice for which aspect of the serpent you want to embody. Aiming for "ruthlessness" gets you Jormungold, the most straightforward continuation of the line. Obviously inspired by Jörmungandr, the World Serpent of Norse mythology, Jormungold's main attraction are its wings. Apparently, it's too heavy to use them for flight, but they're not vestigial; it uses them to propel it along the ground while slithering for extra bursts of speed. That's neat!

Now might be a good time to discuss coating/camouflage moves. Unlike Pokémon, creatures in Cassette Beasts are monotype exclusively. The only way to get a creature with two types is fusions, which obviously inherit one type from each monster. However, a lot of monsters have other types they could realistically fit into outside of their default. For these, it's not uncommon for them to have access to the proper coating or camouflage move, which allow them to change their type briefly! Coatings can be applied to teammates as well, while camouflage automatically activates whenever the monster enters play. So for Jormungold, while Poison is obviously the main thing it would specialize in, it's able to obtain Air, Metal, or even Lightning coating/camouflage in its moveset! And don't forget, typeless moves (which compose most of Jormungold's moveset) inherit the type of the user!

MARDIUSA

mardiusa.png


Answering with "elegance" as your serpentine aspect of choice ends up with Mardiusa instead, whose influences are obvious. The trick is that it's not just the hair that's made of snakes for Mardiusa. Not unlike Ripterra, the entire creature is a bunch of snakes dressed up like a ballroom dancer. And apparently, that's pretty much the entire goal of the collective that makes up Mardiusa: dress fancy, have a good time. Hell yeah, Mardiusa! You're doing great!

The remaster to Mardiusa sees a shift towards slightly more balanced stats, dropping its ranged power in order to focus on melee combat and gaining just a little more bulk. Mardiusa also sports some very powerful and rare utility options, like Two Heads to start off each fight with the potent Multistrike effect, and Stony Look to petrify its foes. Fittingly, it's also able to take the Earth coating/camouflages if you really want to play into the classical Medusa's petrifying angle.

AEROBOROS

aeroboros.png


By default, you only get those two choices for your Masquerattle remaster. However, a secret third option exists. In Cassette Beasts, moves are applied to your tapes in the form of stickers, which can be peeled off and reapplied more or less at will, provided the tape is compatible. Masquerattle has a pretty wide selection of stickers for type coverage, so it is by no means limited just to Poison moves. If you give it the standard ranged Air attack, Zephyr, it skips the question above on remastering in favor of just becoming Aeroboros, our first Air type! Air has one very strong matchup against Fire (extinguishing its offensive power when hitting them, and getting an updraft in the form of a free air wall when hit) and two poor matchups against Lightning (the natural conductivity gives the defending Lightning type a multitargeting boost, and the defending Air type a chase effect any time a Lightning attack is made) and Astral (which gains some major AP tempo against the four Aristotelian elements). There's a few other minor advantages and disadvantges here or there, with Air doing well against Glass and Plant on offense, and poorly against Ice on defense.

For now, though, let's talk Aeroboros. With its inclusion in Masquerattle's remaster options, we have some representation for most of the major serpents of mythology, obviously inspired by the ouroboros. The circular shape is actually used by Aeroboros as a turbine, allowing it to propel massive, high-powered blasts of wind at its foes! That's really neat! The design looks a little more artificial and toy-like than either Jormungold or Mardiusa, but considering how it attacks, I think that works for it, honestly.

Aeroboros completely drops any and all ability to attack in melee, instead becoming a formidable ranged attacker with plenty of bulk. It combines a wide ranged offensive movepool with a decent amount of support options, including some of the better healing options in the game and the potent weather moves Fog and Avalanche, which can shut down all ranged or melee attacks on the field respectively. Fog has an exception for any Air, Water, or Ice attacks, two of which Aeroboros can comfortably wield. This strategy gets seen a lot more in the battle against one of the ranger captains, Heather, who opens the fight with her signature Aeroboros (which may also be a clue for late-game players as to Aeroboros' existence).
 
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Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
TRAFFIKRAB

traffikrab.png


My biggest complaint with Cassette Beasts monster design is that they introduced the clearly best monster in the entire game so early, making all others pale in comparison. I ask you: is there any possible design more perfect than Traffikrab? I say there is not. Crabs, including hermit crabs EVEN THOUGH they aren't actual crabs, are some of my favorite animals ever, and their video game depictions are a delight each and every time I see one. Traffikrab's cone shell is apparently a recent addition to their lifestyle, and they'd use other objects that washed up on the shore of New Wirral before their appearance. But given their shiny chrome claws and cyclopean traffic-light eye, the traffic cone is clearly a perfect fit for them. Don't you agree?

Traffikrab's a fairly well-rounded monster in gameplay, although it's on the slow side and is lacking in melee defense. It's also our first Plastic-type monster, which is a pretty unique type that sees a lot of creative representation in Cassette Beasts. Obviously, Plastic is incredibly strong against Lightning types, insulating them out of the ability to multitarget and gaining a static charge when hit that lets them deal Lightning damage on contact. It's weak to Earth attacks, which bury it and reduce its mobility, and it's effective against Astral monsters, disrupting their AP flow with their artificial make. The biggest counter in an interesting way is Fire attacks. Attacking a Fire enemy shrouds it in Smoke, granting it evasion, but if a Fire type attacks a Plastic type, it actually melts the Plastic type down into a Poison type, which has an even worse matchup against fire! Traffikrab's main answer to this is its access to Water moves and coatings, which works very well against both Earth and Fire.

Oh, and as if Traffikrab wasn't already perfect, it's our first monster to have a signature move that extends through its line! Traffic Jam is only available to Traffikrab and its remasters, and it lowers the speed of everyone on the field except for Traffikrab, including its partner. There are, naturally, ways to get around this flaw, including giving your partner a way to boost its speed, but one of the strongest ways is to fuse with Traffikrab, so you have no allies to hit with Traffic Jam, AND your fusion gets a cute traffic cone hat.

WEEVILITE

weevilite.png


Sadly, as perfect as Traffikrab's design is, Cassette Beasts does not have many allowances for using forms that aren't fully remastered. Unlike the other branches we've seen so far, when remastering Traffikrab, you're given a choice of stats, rather than aesthetic, to focus on. Weevilite, clearly based on giraffe weevils, is the ranged offense choice, and it's actually the fastest Plastic type in the game. Its described as using alternating flashes from its eyes to disorient and confuse its prey, and while its main focus is on ranged offense, it's more than able to go for control options like Hypnotize or Taunt as the situation demands. I like it, it's neat, but unfortunately, losing the big traffic cone shell in favor of the tiny striped abdomen is a downgrade in my books. It's just moving a bit too far away from what I like about crabs, even though that's not what it's here for. Still a cool design and all, just not my preference.

LOBSTACLE

lobstacle.png


Should you instead lean towards melee defense, you end up with Lobstacle, keeping the same kind of general appearance of Traffikrab but trading the cone for a heavy-duty plastic construction barrel, covered in warning signs for good measure. Despite being billed as a melee defense option, it's actually equally sturdy against melee or ranged attacks. I still think the traffic cone is perfect, but I begrudgingly accept that Lobstacle is a very worthy successor to Traffikrab's perfection, and it was my monster of choice for my first playthrough.

I'm not alone in that, either! Lobstacle is the main monster for Wallace, one of the first captains you fight, and a specialist in using walls. They're extremely similar, at least on a surface level, to the move Substitute in Pokémon. You spend a chunk of your health and set down a barrier that has to be punched through in order to damage you. The devil is in the details, since walls can also carry types, have a duration when placed, and reduce their duration by one turn when hit, rather than having an invisible health total. What's more, a single type-effective attack breaks a wall in one hit. Lobstacle is one of the best monsters in the game for messing with walls, being the only monster to be able to use any type of wall, and having powerful utility options for playing with them, like Crumble to collapse enemy walls on their inhabitants, Revolving Door to steal walls, or Throw to turn its own wall into a chunky projectile!
 
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Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
CANDEVIL

candevil.png


Okay, NOW we can talk starters. At the beginning of the game, you're ambushed by a standard Traffikrab, and the first partner character, Kayleigh, shows up and offers her aid. She asks for your "aesthetic" rather than showing you which monster is which right out, which is a weird choice but inoffensive enough. In any case, answering that you have a "sweet" aesthetic nets you the starter Candevil. And this design is really cute and clever! There are so many ways it ties into the candy theme, none of which feels overwrought or out of place: the candy-corn horns, the soda bottle body, the head shaped like a candy wrapper (and with no eyes, which is always a cool monster design). Absolutely a top-tier choice to start the player off with. The bestiary entry indicates that Candevil can generate sugary sweets from its body and use them as projectiles and/or gifts, and there isn't a clear consensus on whether that's adorable or just gross. Which is, of course, hilarious.

Candevil's stats are fairly well-rounded, slightly leaning towards ranged defense over melee defense, and it comes with two signature moves for the line. The first is the Sugar Rush passive, which boosts its speed as it gets lower in health, and the other is the signature attack Bon Bon Blast, a typeless ranged attack that hits hard and lowers evasion on the target, but isn't perfect accuracy. But wait! Your starter is a Beast type? They're giving you a normal-ass typed starter?

Personally, I think this design choice is genius for at least two reasons. The first is that by being Beast type to start out, Candevil will never run into a fight, especially not a required one, where it's at a major disadvantage due to typing.

MALCHEMY

malchemy.png


The second is that Candevil gains a different type depending on which field of study you elect to go for with it. Malchemy, as the name implies, indicates a Candevil that has gone down the path of potion-making and alchemy, using its own body as the cauldron (and usually with some detrimental effects, according to the lore). I'm not as big of a fan of the design, given that its lost much of the candy theming that made Candevil so fun in the first place, and it had the audacity to gain eyes! That said, Malchemy's not lacking for fun and character, with the face bandage, even goofier grin, and the patterns on its arms looking more like lab gloves than anything.

It definitely helps that I'm a sucker for potioneering in pretty much any game that permits it, and Malchemy's new Poison typing and focus on offense, particularly ranged attacks, makes it a potent combatant. It's one of the few monsters with access to Chemical Imbalance, a passive sticker that can immediately activate the move below it for free if the user hits with type advantage. Malchemy's definitely not hurting for type coverage to abuse this with either, although it'll have to flex to some melee attacks to really make it work.

MIASMODEUS

miasmodeus.png


Malchemy remasters a second time into Miasmodeus, which not only leans further into the alchemy theme by becoming a cool witch, it actually jumps BACK to the candy theme by replacing the usual flying broom of a witch with a lollipop! It's a perfect refinement of what I enjoyed about Malchemy without discarding entirely the fun parts of Candevil. They're reportedly observed to fly around in packs on full moon nights, which is entirely expected but good to have on record.

Miasmodeus builds off of the moveset obtained by Malchemy, while also gaining a strong signature combo with a pair of moves that work well together: Ritual, which revives the user at 25% health when defeated, and Gambit, which drastically boosts all stats of the user for 3 turns, but breaks their tape when the timer runs out, instantly defeating the monster. Miasmodeus can do a LOT of damage, very fast, and is a fearsome contender no matter how you play them.

VENDEMON

vendemon.png


Should you opt to study machinery with Candevil instead, you get Vendemon! They build themselves the strongest armor known to all candy-kind, which is to say: a gumball machine. And that's great and adorable and I love it. The resemblance to a space suit is not lost on most observers, and some people think it might be an attempt to mimic astronauts. And unlike Malchemy, it doesn't gain clearly unnecessary eyes.

The upshot of all this for us is that Vendemon is our first Metal type! Those of you coming from Pokémon might expect Metal to be a defensive juggernaut of a type, meta-defining purely by what things can effectively strike it. And you would be completely wrong! Metal's reactions are actually mostly debuffs, whether it's dealing blows or taking them, making it more akin to what Pokémon might expect of Ice types! Metal attacks can smash down the defenses of Earth or Ice types, and render Astral monsters Berserk, unable to use status moves. Defensively speaking, there's many ways to deal with Metal: Fire can melt it for damage over time, Water can corrode its defenses away. The biggest threat to Metal monsters is Lightning, which makes ample use of its conductivity to boost its range and deal extra hits with static charges.

But, since the type chart is about debuffs rather than multipliers, you can still expect to see Metal types playing defense and doing it well, and Vendemon is no exception. Not only are its stats solid, and not only can you expect it to take a walloping with its high defenses, it's possible to get it some stickers that let it resist Fire and Lightning attacks, halving their damage AND preventing their reactions! And, of course, it has plenty of access to walls that can deal with those types as well.

GUMBAAL

gumbaal.png


Vendemon sees its remaster take the form of Gumbaal, a goofily-towering gumball machine with the coin lever looking like a dapper bowtie and its tail wrapped conveniently around the pole. This monster is awesome. This looks like something Wonka might have devised to punish impudent children with, and I'm absolutely here for it. I still prefer Miasmodeus, but Gumbaal is undeniably charming. Instead of gum, the head of Gumbaal stores and fires "elemental spheres". Which... I think that's a little uninspired, honestly. You could at least go big and say it's elementally charged candy. And nobody's stopping me from saying that's what it does, so that's what I'm going for.

Like Miasmodeus, Gumbaal has the Ritual/Gambit combo, but its focus on hard defense makes that a little harder to leverage. Still, it has some tricks of its own, particularly with a bunch of creative status effects that let it play an attrition game, and if it has to attack, its ranged offense is passable. It's also, as a "mechanical" creature, able to use the passive Automation, which works like Chemical Imbalance in that it can activate the next move in the list conditionally. For Automation, that trigger is just the end of any round.
 
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Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
BANSHEEP

bansheep.png


Should you prefer to take a "spooky" aesthetic over a "sweet" one, you'll find yourself the proud owner of a Bansheep tape instead. As their name indicates, Bansheep spends most of its time dolefully baa-ing at nighttime, which combines with their aesthetic to give them a reputation as restless spirits. The bestiary says that this isn't the case, they're just alive and like to make a fuss every so often. I'm gonna question this, but not necessarily due to the appearance of Bansheep. This is New Wirral, and if a living creature wants to have a body that trails off into mist and eerie disembodied wings, who am I to judge?

Bansheep's stats serve as a melee-focused mirror to Candevil, starting out with well-rounded stats that ever-so-slightly favor melee defense over ranged defense, and with its remasters favoring melee offense. It also starts as Beast type, and gains a different type depending on the remaster. Also like Candevil, it has a few unique abilities: Shear Luck boosts its evasion as its health goes down, and Battering Ram is a typeless melee attack that can lower accuracy if it connects. Best of all, Bansheep can eventually obtain the defensive ability Cotton On, which lets it dodge any attack that is possible to dodge for a turn!

WOOLTERGEIST

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When remastering Bansheep, you aren't asked a question, merely told a truth: a spirit cannot stay in limbo forever. Choosing to ascend to the afterlife ends with Wooltergeist, the offensive branch for the Bansheep line and our very first Astral type! One thing I very much like about Cassette Beasts is that, despite the type chart seeming incredibly complex at a glance, all of the types being tangible things with simple reactions makes it very simple to learn. Pokémon might have you struggling to remember interactions between ill-defined types like Fighting, Bug, Dark, Fairy, or Psychic, but in Cassette Beasts, not only is Astral the only type that comes anywhere close to that kind of vague definition, its interactions remain incredibly intuitive (and there's an NPC in town who explains it)! The short version is that Astral has strong matchups against the four Aristotelian elements (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water), gaining a massive swing in AP generation whether attacking or defending. It also gains that same boost when hitting other Astral types. However, industrial or impure elements (Plastic, Metal, Poison) throw off its cosmic groove, either lowering its AP generation or driving it Berserk, preventing it from doing anything other than attacking. Pretty straightforward, yeah?

As our first Astral type, Wooltergeist really just takes what Bansheep had to begin with and makes it just a little more otherworldly, with a more ghostly visage and color palette on the whole. The bestiary informs us that yes, Wooltergeist is actually an undead spirit now, and its horns mysteriously grow sharper when near a place where a death recently occurred. It's not a huge spin on Bansheep's design, but I do like the little Chao-like orb floating above it. It kind of reminds me of a halo, but the shape makes it a much more nebulous thing, and in the world of ghosts and spirits, nebulous is a good thing.

Wooltergeist is a respectable attacker, leaning towards melee but being able to do ranged if needed, but its also got some powerful healing capabilities, with New Leaf to wipe status effects, and Nurse as the strongest pure healing move in the game. It also is one of the few monsters to possess the Phase Shift passive, allowing it to strike ghostly foes! They're not very common, but ghosts cannot be hit by any moves under ordinary circumstances, so having an answer to them is always nice.

RAMTASM

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Wooltergeist gets the power to attain that same ghostly form when it becomes Ramtasm. The lore indicates that in this form, Ramtasm can manifest in and draw power from both the physical and spiritual realms at will and simultaneously, giving it unmatched power. Unfortunately, I'm not as big a fan of Ramtasm. The orb "halo" flattening out is a little predictable, but I at least appreciate that it doesn't seem to have a hole, and instead just maintains a weird lozenge shape. If anything here bugs me, it's the clear humanoid look. Ramtasm definitely looks appropriately majestic, but they're also going down the same road we've seen so many other starter Pokémon go down, and it just doesn't have much else going for its design.

Anyway, remember how Miasmodeus got the funny combo of Ritual and Gambit? Ramtasm employs a different, but still highly effective, combo. Instead of Gambit, it gets Haunt, which has the same lethal effect when the effect expires, but renders the user completely ghostly, unable to be hit by anything except an opponent sporting Phase Shift. And, of course, it still keeps the potent combo of fierce melee damage and handy support moves, including Mind-Meld, which lets both teammates share one anothers' movesets!

ZOMBLEAT

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If your spirit in limbo elects to return to the earth, you instead get the stubborn Zombleat, which steadfastly refuses to leave the grave it was buried at. According to the bestiary, that deathgrip on its headstone is all that tethers it to this world, which is honestly sick as hell. Zombleat also ditches the wings of Bansheep, encased in grave dirt as it is. Mind you, the name kind of implies a certain aesthetic that Zombleat lacks, what with the lack of rotting flesh and no real hunger for brains, but those are tired old tropes anyway.

Obviously, Zombleat represents our first Earth type. Like Metal, this is a type that mostly has negative reactions, whether taking them or dealing them. Its main prey is Lightning, which it grounds to limit its targeting, and which vitrifies itself when struck to become the equally-effective Glass type. It also can extinguish Fire types or bury Plastic types. When defending, aside from Lightning, the only beneficial attack is Poison, which coats its tips for contact damage. Meanwhile, Metal and Water both have ways to crumble its defenses, Astral can get its usual AP advantage, and Plant types can leech it to drain health over time.

Zombleat's main defensive specialty is outlasting other defenders. Between the multi-hitting Bone Cannon and Crumble, it has plenty of ways to take down walls, and with Bite, Nurse, and assorted self-healing methods, it's VERY hard to take down a Zombleat that's built for a prolonged fight. Only fitting for something with such a stubborn personality as to reject the afterlife! And with Zombleat's branch, you have a choice for any permutation of [ranged|melee] [offense|defense] out of the starter branches! Neato!

CAPRICORPSE

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Zombleat eventually grows (builds?) into a titanic being known as Capricorpse, which effectively has its own spirit haunting its skeletal remains and the grave they were buried in. The bestiary informs us that Capricorpse continues to grow in size as it persists, adding more soil to its earthen body. This gives it a very imposing vibe, of an impossibly ancient being that knows all too well what oblivion awaits it and has fought against it for so long, it has forgotten what death even means. If I have a complaint about the design here, it's that it looks less like a creature of stone and more like a toy with how smooth and shiny the bone parts are. Still, it's a matter of taste, and I respect what Capricorpse is going for too much to be upset.

Capricorpse doesn't pick up many tricks compared to Zombleat, save for the Haunt/Ritual combo that works better on offensive beasts than defensive. But there's a trick I neglected to mention. See, both Bansheep branches can get the New Leaf ability, which wipes all status effects on the target, good or bad. Which means that if you use it on the last turn of a Haunt, you can avoid paying the ultimate price! Cleverly used, this lets Capricorpse stretch out its survivability even longer than before!
 
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Kalir

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SIRENADE

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Next up is this Air type, Sirenade. It's a cute enough design, of a happily singing creature with a mic tail. The bestiary informs us that Sirenade amplifies its singing with its tail and wings, heedless of volume complaints from the neighbors. That's a really neat concept, although that tail's gotta be extremely awkward to move around if it has that thin of a wire for it. The Air type is what represents sound in Cassette Beasts, as opposed to Pokémon where no single type claimed dominion over it, but most sound-based attacks ended up Normal. This makes the interaction between Air and Glass really stand out, since sound attacks like Sirenade specializes in would obviously excel at resonating glass to its breaking point. And that's exactly how Resonance works: if you set up three stacks of it on the target, it undergoes full decoherence and breaks completely, instantly defeating it!

That said, that's not usually Sirenade's gameplan. It's a capable enough ranged attacker, with reliable, well-rounded stats in everything except melee, but its got a lot of strong support and utility moves, including New Leaf and Taunt. It's also capable of using Call For Help, a move that has 50% odds of summoning a monster from the vicinity to join in and help out! Even with added buddies, though, you can't exceed three people on a team at once, and summoned allies won't usually stick around for more than a few turns. Still, if Sirenade has nothing better to do, swinging for a summoned ally can be a big help!

DECIBELLE

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When remastering, Sirenade streamlines its acoustic features and frame to become the impressive Decibelle. Decibelle is apparently a very rare creature, with most sightings attributed to nebulous claims of "white dragons in the skies" from early denizens of New Wirral. Having the wings turn into fully disconnected segments, complete with trailing "sound wave" ribbons, is a really cool look, and I like that Decibelle has swapped out its mic tail for a little headset. About the only thing I'm not fully on-board with is the very feminine body, but eh, it fits well enough and isn't a huge dealbreaker.

Decibelle does pretty much the same stuff as Sirenade before it. It's a potent ranged attacker, including strong area attacks like Metal Riff and the wall-wrecking Hurricane to its repertoire, but it's also a solid supporter with the addition of Nurse and Change The Record to its roster, the latter of which forces any foe (or foes, if it's multitargeted) with multiple tapes to immediately change to another one. It also can easily set up its abilities to be multitargeted with Broadcast, or later, Echolocation, and that trait gets showcased extremely strongly by Cybil, one of the ranger captains that demonstrates just how strong multitargeting ANYTHING can be. But Cybil isn't the first one to really show what Decibelle can do...

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While Sirenade and Decibelle are our first monster line without a branching remaster, they've still got something else to show us. This is Kayleigh, your first partner character and likely who you'll have as your Player 2 for most of Cassette Beasts' early game. Every partner has a signature tape, one they start play with, which isn't accessible until a VERY lategame area, and which that partner enjoys a flat 10% boost to all stats with while using it or its remaster. Kayleigh's signature tape is none other than Sirenade!

Kayleigh is an exemplary early game partner, and not just because Sirenade is a flexible creature that works well on support as well as offense or defense. She's cheerful, supportive, and gregarious from the moment you see her, and she's the one who gives you your starting tape and introduces you to New Wirral proper. While not a full captain, Kayleigh is one of Harbourtown's rangers, responsible for heading out and answering any potential issues that might arise. Your introduction to the game involves coming along with her on one of these missions, only to discover that New Wirral is about to get a lot more busy, very quickly. But I'll save that discussion for much, MUCH later.

Also she has a bi flag rug at her place and that's a power move right there.
 
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Kalir

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DANDYLION

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Lots of critters have an option to branch into more defensive options, but still start from a fairly generalist base. Today's contestant starts defensive and stays defensive, which is a perfect fit for Dandylion's role! Based off of Chinese guardian lions, Dandylion actually has a rather neat gimmick for how you encounter it. It's actually very common across New Wirral, but mostly on the overworld, and mostly in the vicinity of hidden caves. The idea there is obvious: it's standing guard over them, which in turn is a telltale sign that if you encounter one but no caves are in sight, a closer look may be in order. And that's super cool and I love it!

Dandylion's typing is, obviously, Plant, and it's a fine exemplar of the type. Plant attacks excel at drawing out nutrients from Water and Earth foes, leeching them to drain their health over time. Water is an especially good matchup for them, since they also get a healing leaf effect when hit! It's also another insulator for Lightning types, restricting their range. On the other end of things, Plant types can be uprooted by Air attacks to slow their AP gain, and suffer even more than usual against Fire or Poison foes, who can stick their status effects with ease on a Plant target and can use their attacks for stat boosts (evasive smoke for Fire, or delicious ingredients for Poison attack boosts).

Dandylion definitely enjoys hitting with leeching or regen effects, but it doesn't need the help of type matchups to do it. From the statline to the moveset, Dandylion is a defensive bulwark through and through, armed with walls, defensive stat booster moves, and ways to inflict status effects without type matchups, such as leeching or sleep. And with Cassette Beasts being a 2v2 format, this playstyle is a lot more viable than in the singles format Pokémon defaults to. Dandylion can just build an impassable defense for their partner, leaving them free to bust out their strongest moves unchecked!

BLOSSOMAW

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Blossomaw progresses along the biological lifespan of a dandelion as much as it does along Chinese mythology, being clearly inspired by dragons. And while I thought the blocky, toy-like look didn't really do Capricorpse justice, I think it's a great fit for Blossomaw here. It kind of evokes those massive multi-person dragon costumes you see at festivals! The bestiary says that Blossomaw emerges in this form after a long winter hibernation, emerging just as the first flowers begin to bloom, so we also have some bear-like qualities in there. Best of all: it has a breath weapon just like any other dragon, but it elects to go for pollen!

Blossomaw's gameplan is the same as Dandylion's before it. It's a defensive critter through and through, adding to its repertoire not with attacks, but with additional healing, status, and defensive moves. If Cassette Beasts had competitive multiplayer, this would be the face of the stall metagame. Among its additions are Cotton On, New Leaf, Doc Leaf, and even Poison Pollen for that extra bit of attrition! It does pick up one exceptionally fun trick we have yet to cover (although Decibelle had it too): AP Donate lets it shift all of the AP it has to its partner, letting them use their more powerful attacks more often. And Blossomaw won't often be hurting for AP, since most defensive tricks tend to top out at 2 AP, matching your per-turn allotment.
 
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Kalir

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MACABRA

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Today's critter line is Macabra, a real neat take on the South American chupacabra. Macabra is completely blind and eyeless, but it's an adequate hunter nonetheless owing to its superb sense of taste. Not unlike snakes, Macabra is capable of tasting the air to track down potential prey! The skull isn't necessarily a part of the creature, it just likes perching on higher vantage points, like rocks or skulls, for a better look. Macabra's design is overall very simple, especially contrasted to the bovine skull it's parked on, but it's a goodun nonetheless. In particular, the crouched stance and large throat sac make it look more like some kind of frog than anything!

As a critter, Macabra's a Beast type that enjoys relatively well-rounded stats, with the only curiosity being its preference for melee offense but having weak melee defense. Its movelist mostly hinges on fun ways to play with its sizable health total: Bite to restore it, Desperation for a power attack when its low, and Blood Donation to pass off the excess to a buddy in need of healing. It's also got a unique move in the form of Abramacabra, a Beast Wall with an extra feature. The wall costs 1 AP more than usual to deploy, but in exchange, it also is a turret that makes an automatic attack each round! And since Beast type has no weaknesses, you'll need specialized tools, like multihits or wall-destroying moves, to quickly take it down before Macabra recoups the cost with Bite.

FOLKLORD

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Upon remastering, Macabra goes from its small cryptid origins to just be a big cryptid instead! Folklord's inspiration is more focused on North American humanoid cryptids, like Bigfoot and Sasquatch. It's now taken to wearing the skull it used to perch on as a mask, Cubone-style. It's not specified if Folklord has gained eyes or still relies on its strong sense of taste, but either way, it's described as so muscularly dense that it can't support its weight with its legs alone for very long. That, plus the skull mask, really lends Folklord a "humanoid moose" kind of feel, which is terrifying.

Remember how Macabra was susceptible to melee attacks? Yeah Folklord isn't. Almost all of the stats it gained upon remastering went into putting its melee defense on par with its improved offense. Its moveset largely splits between strong melee attacks like Multi Smack and Clobber, and some of the more esoteric self-buffs. Ritual we've already seen, but it also has Copy That which lets Folklord turn into a clone of anything else on the field, or Crossfade to switch to another tape while keeping the typing Folklord has! And while Beast is, as established, a very worthy type to pass on to a tag partner, there's more than one way to put that ability to use.
 
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Kalir

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DOMINOTH

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Another Air type to start this post with, with a few layers to them not immediately apparent. Dominoth's design is all in the name: it's a moth with a domino mask... or rather, a moth-like approximation of a domino mask. The bug eyes are neat on it, but they're just not quite as classic as the usual white shape eyes you get from those masks. Either way, the message gets across, and the bestiary tells us that Dominoth very much behaves like a superhero, defending the peace by patrolling their habitats. They're only possible to distract from their duties with bright lights, like lamps.

You actually have to record a Dominoth as your first monster tape, during the prologue, but there's a good reason for that: Dominoth is actually your introduction to field abilities! Unlike Pokémon, which has you calling forth the Pokémon on a case-by-case basis to use their moves to travel, here you get some powers just by recording specific monsters at all, and don't even need their tape on hand to use them! Dominoth bestows upon people that record it the power to glide through the air on their own moth-like wings! Admittedly, this method loses some charm compared to sailing around the world on your Lapras Diveal, but it more than makes up for it with ease of use. Getting around New Wirral with the full set of abilities is incredibly easy and very satisfying.

As a combatant, Dominoth is almost aggressively average in every way. It stats are uniform, save for trading some speed for ranged defense, and its abilities are equally generic, with some melee, some ranged, Air Wall, Taunt, and some self-boosts. But even with that, it still has one last gameplay element to surprise with. We've seen lots of remaster methods. Some remaster into a single form, some can branch depending on a choice, and some use stickers. In Dominoth's case, it's the first critter that remasters differently depending on the time of day, with the clue about its trajectory hinted at in its bio.

WINGLOOM

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At nighttime, it incorporates the electric glow of lamps into its biology and shifts from superhero to mothman, becoming our first Lightning type, Wingloom! The most obvious factor here is their horns, which are actually lightbulbs that channel an electrical charge through its body. It even uses them to project light out of its eyes, affording perfect night vision. That's a really cool concept! I also kind of like how the wings become even more cloak-like, giving it a Batman sort of vibe that indicates a sort of shift from hero to antihero. That said, the facemask design put me off of the line at first. The shape is just kind of off-putting, I guess.

Lightning is easily the most volatile typing we've encountered yet, with loads of matchups both strong and weak. The good news is that the interactions are all the same and very easy to track. Against anything that conducts electricity (Water, Ice, Air, and Metal), Lightning applies the Conductive status effect, dealing extra damage any time further Lightning moves are used. When hit by those types, Lightning types gain a Multitarget buff, which we covered back in the Sirenade line discussion. On the other hand, lots of types can either ground (Earth, Plant) or insulate (Plastic, Glass) Lightning types, giving them a Unitarget debuff. This rude effect constrains multitarget attacks to a single target, and seriously hurts the accuracy of any attacks that are already single-target (and Lightning has no multitarget moves by default)! Plastic is the clearest counter to Lightning, since it even gets a Static charge when attacked, letting it deal lightning damage on contact.

Unlike most Lightning types, Wingloom's statline is all defensive. It retains a lot of the Air type roster that Dominoth had, including a coating move, and picks up some fun new tricks, like Fog and the new Thunder Blast move. That one is a two-hit attack, with the first hit being Lightning and the second Air. Remember, sound-based moves (like echoing thunder) count as Air type! Wingloom is a pretty creative way to do a dual-type in this setting!

MOTHMANIC

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Wingloom remasters a second time into Mothmanic, which is a really cool design for a lightning type insect putting me more in mind of a firefly than a moth. This kind of stings since the moth's most notable wing trait, its cloaklike shape, is diluted here. The bioluminescent traits of fireflies are already well-known, so it's a natural step to just make that abdomen into a straight up lightbulb, and that's really cool! Also cool, if perhaps already been done by now, are the transformer antennae with electricity arcing between them.

Mothmanic's electrical power gets shunted almost entirely into ranged offense, making it one of the hardest shooters we've seen yet! It's not especially fast or sturdy, so it needs support to get its firepower off the ground, but when it hits, people NOTICE. It's got some very solid options for ranged offense too: Thunder Blast, Hurricane, Energy Wave, Rapid Fire, you name it, it probably has it. To put Mothmanic's firepower into proper scope: it's ranged 5th out of all ranged attackers in the game, tied with Scampire (who trades some of Mothmanic's decent durability for melee offense and speed) and just ahead of Miasmodeus and Decibelle.

TOKUSECT

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Should Dominoth remaster during the day, it avoids the siren call of lamps and stays true to the path of justice, becoming Tokusect! Obviously named for tokusatsu shows and with a design to back it up, Tokusect is a cool take on a humanoid moth, with the naturally buglike face fitting right in with the masks of Kamen Rider and its ilk, and a neat little buckle-like spot on its abdomen (or is that its own transformative talisman?). The bestiary informs us that Tokusect's fighting style revolves around sharp kicks, combined with their aerodynamic bodies to even send powerful currents of air at their foes!

Despite how that might sound, though, Tokusect isn't a mixed attacker (although it has ranged moves, as any proper tokusatsu hero does for special moves). It's a melee rushdown fiend like Ripterra. Like Mothmanic, it has no shortage of options to work with: Superheated Fist, Copper Chop, Quick Smack, Snow Rush, Toy Hammer, just a bunch of coverage options. Ripterra has it beat for impact power, but Tokusect's a little bit tougher and has, as you've seen, much better coverage.

My big issue with this entire line is the weird asymmetry. Not that asymmetry is bad, I just don't really see why Wingloom had to come from Dominoth rather than being its own separate line. And honestly, as a gameplay conceit, it's not a huge problem, it's just a little weird. Fortunately, this isn't Pokémon, which has similar issues with a lot of monsters. Crabrawler and Crabominable should have been separate lines so they could both have viable stats, COWARDS
 
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Kalir

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SQUIREY

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A little guy! This is Squirey, a Beast type that's commonly seen on the overworld. The biological inspiration for this one is the pangolin, which Pokémon has already given a very cool example of in the form of Sandshrew/Sandslash. By far the most distinctive feature of the pangolin are its massive, heavy scales, which Sandslash styles to look like protruding spikes. In Squirey's case, it plays off of their armor-like appearance to lean into a knightly aesthetic, complete with the critter itself being a determined warrior constantly striving for improvement and challenging any it encounters to combat. Obviously, Squirey's still in training as the name indicates, but that just tells players that yeah, you're gonna get to remaster this one into a cool knight (and both remaster branches end up becoming Metal type).

Squirey's stats are pretty much exactly what you'd expect: a well-rounded melee monster that can take hits and deal them out reasonably well, but its stats don't come into their own until it remasters. Still, even Squirey has some tricks up its sleeve, including the powerful Parry Stance move that can reflect melee attacks. It also has access to Heroic Blade, a beefy typeless melee attack that doesn't have any special features to it, but it doesn't need to. In short, it has everything you could want from a knight-in-training.

MANISPEAR

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When remastering Squirey, you are asked which ideal you hold close in combat. For a Squirey that pursues victory above all else, you end up with the dark knight Manispear. Manispear's fighting style is uncontrolled and fearless, supposedly fueled by the "dark impulses" of a Squirey that has strayed from the path of knighthood. I like the bulk of this monster, but honestly? I think it could stand to have more armor. Maybe some extra plates on the shoulders or stomach, I dunno. I do like the armor it already has, especially those heavy gauntlets. This entire line definitely plays into some of the later Digimon aesthetic, but that's just part and parcel of taking a "monster knight" concept, and I think it works okay here.

Despite what you might expect, Manispear isn't an offensive beast. It hits only a little harder than Squirey before it. Manispear's strength lies in its defenses, boasting the third-best melee defense in the game and not being far behind in ranged defense either. What's more, it's able to leverage its defenses offensively! Shield Bash is a powerful attack that scales off of melee defense, making it a favorite of Manispear as well as other bulksters like Lobstacle. It also has Sturdy Armor that can't see its defenses lowered, and its able to grab offensive stat boosts off of Bloodlust whenever it defeats a foe! Truly embodying the constant presence of a black knight, Manispear is a reliable contender.

PALANGOLIN

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Should Squirey stay close to their honour, they are instead rewarded with a remaster to Palangolin. And while Palangolin's design is about as expected for a pangolin furry knight, it's still a good one, and it makes me like Manispear's design more in contrast! Palangolin's leaner frame and heavier armor stand to contrast Manispear's unarmored bulk in a great way. Palangolin's fighting style is rooted in virtuous defense, and it always aims to protect its allies in the heat of battle whenever possible. Predictable? Yeah, but still cool.

And the coolest part of Palangolin's honourable ways are reflected in its unique move, Fair Fight. When Palangolin challenges a foe, no further status effects can be applied for three turns, good or bad. No trickery or cunning, merely a test of might and skill against them! Unlike Manispear's heavy defenses, Palangolin focuses on health and speed, lending it more to a support angle that can quickly set up Metal Walls or keep foes in check with Fair Fight. And as a mirror to Manispear's Bloodlust, Palangolin instead learns Retribution, increasing their offenses when their ally goes down! One way or another, you'll have to deal with Palangolin before you can harm its charge.
 
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Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I just wanted to say that since I haven't started the game yet I haven't looked at this thread in detail much, but I'm really excited to look at it once I'm more familiar with all these creatures.
 

Kalir

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(whatevs)
KITTELLY

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It's a given in any monster collection game that you're going to get some rep for the most popular animals. Cats and dogs are the animals we have the most common positive interactions with, of course we want them as our travel buddies. Kittelly, a Lightning type, is Cassette Beasts' take on your average kitty critter. Now, despite what Pokémon does with its cat-like critters eventually becoming humanoid, I'm not that upset if the base design starts out creative. Replacing the entire head of the creature with an old antenna TV is a great way to take it (and it's a fun callback to Lenna's Inception having a similar Archangel, Catsiel, with the same idea). The bestiary says that Kittelly can only communicate with static patterns from that screen, which makes it hard to understand to other creatures, and that is extremely adorable. Plus, that extra-scruffy tail is worth at least eight style points. Kittelly, you're all right by me!

As a fighter, Kittelly mostly leans offensive, with well-rounded stats for the most part but trading defenses for offenses. It's notable for naturally obtaining Broadcast, a very valuable self-buff for Lightning types up against rude matchups, and for Copycat, a move that copies the last move used by whoever you target, provided you have the AP for it. I haven't personally used Copycat, so I don't know if you keep the targeting of whoever used it, or aim the move at the target you chose to copy, but I have no doubt that it could be used for some cheeky shenanigans. Kittelly has some flexibility with coverage as well, so it's got ways to crack some otherwise-hardy nuts.

CAT-5

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Kittelly obviously remasters into a full-grown Cat-5, upgrading the ol' antennabox into a full plasma screen and taking the scraggly cat goblin frame to that of a sleek panther. The coolest detail are the twin tails, which Cat-5 uses to draw power from the atmosphere. I guess that means that despite having all the look of a predator, it's actually more like a grazing ungulate or what have you... which should in no way be taken as a devaluing of its combat abilities. While Kittelly's extended bestiary explained the mythos and undeserved reputations of black cats, Cat-5 instead discusses the myth of the cat-sìth. I guess that's where the tails drawing static electricity from the air as a concept originated, from the original witch/fairy's concept of stealing souls before they pass on. Souls are basically just static electricity, right?

Cat-5 elects to focus almost purely on melee offense, and picks up some health and speed as it does, making it a pretty decent rushdown attacker. Cat-5's usual build involves three moves: Critical AP gives them more AP whenever they land a critical hit, and Battery is a punchy two-hitting Lightning move that's guaranteed to crit if used after the more standard Lightning move, Charge. These three moves together basically let Cat-5 slowly build AP for an eventual skull-crusher of a move while still outputting reasonable damage with its basic combo. It has a few support options, like Fire Wall (ha!) and the already mentioned Broadcast/Echolocation, but it doesn't like to rely on them. After dropping below 50% health, it can boost its melee power with Berserker, but that same passive effect will also render it unable to use anything except attacks when it triggers!

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Obviously, a monster with so much "normie appeal" is gonna be someone's signature tape. Kittelly and Cat-5 are the monster of choice for Meredith Chen, in many ways a complete opposite of Kayleigh. Meredith is sarcastic, acerbic, and almost undeniably a hipster in terms of tastes. She openly starts out by mocking the game's "professor" character for being one of those people who mistakes liking science for being a personality unto itself, and finds your characters' mission of getting off the island hopelessly naïve. That said, should you find yourself able to keep up with her tastes in, and I quote, "dumb action movies and bands with tragic backstories", she's a fun person to have around. She also has the best reaction to the final boss, hands down, and deserves mention just for that.
 
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Kalir

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PUPPERCUT

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Oh I have been excited to talk about today's line. Puppercut here is another Metal type, who displays that typing by using boxing equipment made out of metal! The outer layer is described as "prone to rust", which to me leans into a kind of literal scrapper aesthetic, of the complete underdog rookie hoping to make it big even if they can't afford shiny competitive gear and only have a washed-up has-been for a coach. Is all of this just an excuse to make dog puns? Yeah, but puns are great. Puppercut is great too, and I love that the headgear doesn't fit that well and covers their eyes. You're also told straight up that the rusty outer layer of their gear sheds as they mature, so you know well in advance that it's not going to keep the rusty bits. Y'know, if having a critter that uses rust as an aesthetic is so important to you. Could be, I won't judge.

Obviously, Puppercut's stats favor melee. It has weak ranged offense and defense, but when it comes to melee, it's a solid contender that can land punches and take them like a champ in the making. It's so into the melee lifestyle that it has access to Sharp Edges as a move, allowing it to deal contact damage after any kind of melee contact with an enemy, whether it's hitting or being hit. It also has Dog Years, a unique status move only available to canine monsters that extends the timers on all statuses currently applied to the target. While a bit expensive AP-wise, Dog Years can facilitate some hilarious strategies: inflating the value of a wall for no HP cost, keeping a Gambit/Haunt going, maintaining a hard-to-land disabling status on the enemy like Sleep or Petrify, it's very versatile if you know how to use it.

SOUTHPAW

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When remastering, Puppercut ends up in the form of Southpaw, obviously named for the left-handed style of boxing. And pretty much as soon as I really looked at this design, I was immediately reminded of another Pokémon, a canine steel/fighting type you all already know as Lucario. And honestly, I think Southpaw does almost everything Lucario sets out to do but better.

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Lucario's design has been heavily marketed since its inception (even ending up in Smash Bros) and been mostly positively received by players, but it's also drawn some critics for a lot of its design elements just not really working. The hair "bulbs", tail, and mouth-not-on-muzzle just all look artificial in a bad way. The paw spikes are cool, but they're never used as actual weapons since Lucario's fighting style is mostly palm thrusts and aura manipulation. Nothing about it really conveys the steel typing, whether in its visual elements or its dex entries. I'm not saying that Lucario's design is bad, just that it's unfocused and slapdash, and therefore missing a lot of its potential.

Meanwhile, Southpaw rolls up like Xu Xiaodong and immediately proves itself a much more cohesive steel/fighting type even though it's not even in the same game. The design similarities are all there, to a degree one might even consider plagiarism, but every complaint I would ever have about Lucario is completely absent for it. Instead of paw spikes that run counter to its fighting style, Southpaw has spikes on its gloves, playing into the Sharp Edges move it already got as Puppercut. The Metal typing is proudly on display with its protective gear, and while the eyes came back (boooo!) it at least had the decency to make them just those blue lights inside the headgear, which even completely vanish when it blinks, giving it a kind of LED look. Even the tail looks better just by having the gradient and the split to give the illusion of actual hair there instead of just a plastic wedge.

Granted, Southpaw's combat plan isn't as flashy as Lucario's, but honestly, that's fine. It remains a melee hard-hitter, having enough stats in anything not ranged to let it keep up with the pack just fine. In its remaster, it picks up some type coverage, like Superheated Fist and Charge, and can even get Magnet to force enemies to target it at the start of the fight, combining with Sharp Edges to make it a potent counter-tank for melee foes. And, of course, it wouldn't be a boxer without the crown jewel of The Old 1-2, a beefy melee move that, naturally, hits twice.
 
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Kalir

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(whatevs)
BULLETINO

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Here we are, now exactly a third of the way through the bestiary, and we still haven't covered a Fire or Water type? Unbelievable. Not to worry, though. Bulletino is on the case! As a fire type, Bulletino is extremely volatile, having loads of matchups good and bad across the type chart. The nice thing is, most of them have already been covered, and even if they aren't, they're all pretty intuitive. Obviously, Fire burns up Poison and Plant types with ease, and can melt Metal for a burn effect or Plastic to convert it to Poison. Plant and Plastic, in turn, give Fire types an evasion boost from smoke, and Poison fuels it for AP! On the bad end of things, Fire gets extinguished by Earth, Water, and Air, curtailing its offenses, and as with any Aristotelian element, it loses to Astral. The buffs enemies get from Fire in that set vary, though: Astral just gets its usual AP boost, but Water types get a Healing Steam effect for regen, and Air types generate an updraft, giving them a free wall! Fire is a potent type, but it suffers against most dedicated defense specialists.

Bulletino don't care, though. As you've already guessed, Bulletino knows of only two strategies: frontal assault, and death by frontal assault. The design communicates as much: this is basically another take on Bullet Bill, albeit with tiny little feets instead of tiny arms. Hell, it even starts with Self-Destruct, a passive move that damages everyone on the field when they go down, including their partner. It's a fine design, but let's be honest: you likely aren't picking up a Bulletino for its design, but for what it can possibly remaster into. Yeah, a little bullet with feet is kinda cute, but what do bullets come from? That's right, arms depots!

Oh, there's another reason to record Bulletino. Remember how Dominoth grants anyone that records it their own wings for gliding around? Well, Bulletino grants another ability: a high speed dash with a lot of force but little control. It has no qualms about using this on the field, and it's even reflected in its stats by being tied for third-highest speed. To put the speed of this dash into perspective: you know the Demoman's shield charge in TF2, and how you can ramp off of obstacles to soar across huge maps in the blink of an eye? Yeah it's like that. Cassette Beasts has trimping. What of it.

VELOCIRIFLE

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Now we're TALKING! Velocirifle not only continues the trend by becoming a gun where a bullet started, it also reveals the hidden truth of the line: it's also Jurassic Park style big-lizard DINOSAURS. It's such a goofy, 90's cartoon kind of idea, and I mean that as the highest of compliments. Look at this thing! Sure, the stumpy little legs don't convey the same kind of killing machine that the fierce talons of a velociraptor would, but A: they're adorable, and B: it has shotgun shells in the back of its head and a gun trigger for a wattle, it doesn't NEED talons. It doesn't even have arms and that's great.

While not as recklessly fast as Bulletino before it, Velocirifle more than makes up for the speed loss with improved stats and self-control, being one of the rare critters to sport the Sure-Fire move. This handy ability ensures that the next attack made by the recipient will always hit, which can have some fun synergy with certain abilities I'll cover with a later monster (and you can use it on allies, so Velocirifle can be a spotter for a buddy). Obviously, Velocirifle has loads of decent ranged attacks and the offense to back it up, even if its other non-speed stats are lacking. Probably the most notable is Rapid Fire, a priority Fire move that hits three times. Costly in AP relative to the damage, but being able to instantly blast down a wall before the enemy can react is great.

ARTILLEREX

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It only stands to reason that Velocirifle would eventually remaster again to become both a bigger dinosaur and a bigger gun. There's a lot to like about Artillerex's design: the shotgun shells becoming dorsal spikes, the rotary turret in its belly (apparently fueled by an internal furnace full of molten metal, fired out as shrapnel), and the fact that none of the things that made Velocirifle unique went away. It still has the unique mouth intended as a firing barrel, it still doesn't have arms. That said, Artillerex's design does have one sore point for me, and that's the orange head texture. It looks too rubbery and shiny, especially contrasted to the dull metal of its legs and turret. But again: it's a T-rex that's also a gatling gun, I can't stay mad at that.

Artillerex slows down even more compared to its prior form, but as before, makes up for it with improved stats across the board. Notably, it's also now packing a serious melee punch to go with its ranged firepower, expanding its already-formidable arsenal of moves even further with stuff like Bite or Incinerate. In fact, it picks up a completely unique attack, Meteor Barrage, which deals plenty of Earth hits to all of its foes. It's a bit weird that this fire type line would end up with an Earth type unique move, especially since Earth doesn't give it good ways to deal with its usual counters, but turning the extinction event of the dinosaurs into their signature weapon is too funny to pass up. No matter what, though, Artillerex is exactly as fierce a battlefield threat as its stature would indicate.

GEARYU

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Velocirifle has a hidden remaster, too. If you give it Gear Shear, a rare sticker that is slow and expensive but packs a hell of a punch, it remaster into the Metal-type Gearyu instead, becoming the MechaGodzilla to Artillerex's NotSoMechaGodzilla. The gears forming its body make for a cool look, especially with how its head has more than enough room for the gear it's on to rotate, and the gears are described as both held together with magnetic force and capable of generating enough kinetic energy to fuel breath weapons. That's all cool and all, but honestly? Not a fan compared to Artillerex. Not only are the gears kind of just awkwardly arranged on Gearyu, but it got arms, AND they look terrible. What are those big ungainly spike things? Come on.

The arms don't even make sense from a stat perspective, since Gearyu is almost identical to Artillerex statwise save for swapping its melee offense and defense. This makes them a pretty good answer to dedicated melee bulksters like Southpaw, able to take its offensive head-on and return fire to their weaker defense, and it keeps grabbing new ranged moves to add to its repertoire, like the fierce Poison type area attack Radiation Breath. If anything Artillerex should be the one with Gearyu's stats and vice versa. Gearyu's even a pretty major creature ingame, being the signature monster of the leader of the rangers, Ianthe. But I just don't think those arms look good!
 
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Kalir

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(whatevs)
DIVEAL

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Right after our first Fire type in the bestiary comes our first Water type, Diveal! And there's a lot to discuss with this almost-pedestrian seal in a helmet here. First off, let's hit the basics of the type's effects. Water types are nearly as volatile as Fire types, having a ton of possible interactions. Unlike Fire, these interactions vary wildly depending on your foe. On offense, Water can extinguish Fire types to lower their offense, or corrode Metal and erode Earth respectively to lower their defenses. These attacks get absorbed by Plant types for regen, conduct Lightning types for a range boost, and energize Astral types as usual. They also bulk up Ice types, improving their defenses. When defending, Water has one advantage against Fire types, getting a burst of healing steam, but conducts Lightning, gets leeched by Plant, and is drained by Astral. It also gets frozen by Ice types, which both causes them to lose a turn and turns the Water type into an Ice type! You definitely need to keep on your toes if running a Water type, there's a lot to keep track of.

Designs for Water monsters in most games kind of run into a snag: we already have lots of "water-element" monsters in real life, that's the entire focus of marine biology as a field. And there's some very creative critters to be found under the surface, whether it's fish, jellies, crabs, anemones, squids, I could spend an entire post listing all manner of sea creatures and probably hit the character limit for a post (if it has one). Unfortunately, that means their monster versions usually top out at "it's here but it looks a little more cartoony and can spit water". Hell, the only pinniped Pokémon anyone even really registers as unique is Spheal, which has the audacity to just be a ball (and which its evolutions then reject the form of, like the fools they are). Diveal at least has the silly diving helmet going for it, which serves as both a breath extender and a flotation device with its air pocket. Is that enough of a twist to make Diveal stand out? Eh... not really, but I can't say I dislike it, at least.

Diveal imparts its swimming prowess on anyone that records it, giving the player the ability to traverse water freely while their stamina holds. Fittingly, while wild Diveals speed around underwater faster than the player, on land (and in fights) they're endearingly slow. Their biggest claim to fame is having both Ice Coating and Ice Resistance easily on demand, letting them easily handle the typing whether using its power or facing it. They prefer ranged attacks but have better melee defenses, and obviously they have loads of access to Ice moves, although the only attack they get is Ice Breaker, which is melee.

SCUBALRUS

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The remaster of Diveal is the entirely-expected Scubalrus, which has more developed hind legs than any pinniped I've ever seen but y'know what it's fine it works. In addition to the air tank on its back, Scubalrus' tusks are actually grown from the helmet itself, and made of brass. That's a really cool concept! I especially like that the hind legs seem to be wearing swimming flippers. Is this a revolutionary change? No, but if you picked up Diveal and liked it on its merits, Scubalrus won't disappoint as just a bigger, stronger Diveal.

And as far as combat goes, that's exactly what you're getting with Scubalrus. Bigger stats across the board, still slow but a ranged heavy hitter that takes melee blows well. It still doesn't get an Ice move beyond Ice Breaker, but it's still just as able to mess around with Ice as a type that it can afford to make it work. The few melee attacks it has access to at least have cool tricks that make them worth using (Bite for self-healing and Beast coverage, Boil to burn enemies, Ice Breaker to lower speed), and it's a very good Fog user, but like... it's Scubalrus. It's a water shooter monster. What you see is what you get, and that's fine.

DIVEBERG

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The Catacombs update added some remasters for a handful of monsters that already existed in the game, as well as some new monsters. Diveal picked up an alternate hidden remaster if you really want to lean full into the Ice type with it, letting it become Diveberg if you apply an Ice Coating sticker to it! I'll save the Ice type breakdown for when we get to the original first Ice type later (not least because people might not come back to this entry after I updated it) but Diveberg gets their breakdown here and now! As a creature, it's actually kind of imposing for what's really just "what if Diveal but bipedal and Ice type". The frosted-over interior of the helmet and the massive crystal of ice erupting from its back are unearthly in a way I'm very much here for. Gives a vibe of something that's learned to survive in the most punishing of climates, but at too high a cost.

As a monster from a major update, Diveberg sports some new moves that play with mechanics we haven't seen before. Final Breath is a passive that works similarly to Pokémon's Sturdy (albeit functioning when the user is at 80% health or higher, and Cassette Beasts is less explosive with damage and Diveberg is already durable enough to not really need it), Deep Freeze inflicts the new Tape Jam status effect that prevents changing tapes (I have literally never seen NPCs do that unless their current tape broke) and Cold Fusion serves to check anyone fusing (you or them) by instantly hitting for 20% of their health and flinching them. Good thing Diveberg comes with Unshakable for flinch immunity, huh? These moves really make me think they're gearing up for a potential head-to-head mode at some point, which would be excellent. Those aside, Diveberg is mostly a melee-focused all-rounder, which is a nice alternative to Scubalrus.
 
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Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I just started this! Apparently getting a screenshot off an Xbox is impossible without downloading the mobile app or something so I gave up, but Clemence who runs the coffee shop seems great. I liked her dialogue about just shushing everyone and fixing the gramophone.
 

Kalir

Do you require aid.
(whatevs)
NEVERMORT

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Sometimes I feel like the iconography of plague doctors, those big beaky masks, kind of got away from the serious situation that was medieval medical science. Anyway here's Nevermort. It's a Poison type that pretty much is the exact creature you would get if you took those plague doctor masks and turned that into the basis for a creature. Better yet, the creature itself is said to be wearing one of those masks, with its true face being "something better left undiscovered". Anyway it's pretty much a perfect video game representation of a corvid, with the hood being as much clothing as the mask is, and fun bone-white highlights on the tips of its feathers. Corvid lovers will definitely be happy with Nevermort.

It leans towards the defensive in its stat spread, sporting high health and speed and a flexible moveset that incorporates plenty of Air moves as well as Poison ones. Despite the plague doctor inspiration, Nevermort doesn't have any kind of healing moves outside of Blood Donation (which is decent if you can get it) and the Vampire passive that copies any extant healing on the field. It's more comfortable with harrying the opponent with status effects or multi-target attacks, with both Pustule Bomb and Sonic Boom on tap. It's not exactly the hardest hitter, but that's some good coverage, and having ready access to Air moves (including Air Wall) serves as a great way for it to deal with Fire types that would otherwise pose a major threat.

APOCROWLYPSE

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What's that? You were expecting the bird monster to just become a bigger bird? Not in Cassette Beasts, that's not how we roll. Apocrowlypse keeps the top part of Nevermort and the bony highlights but instead decides to go for a flesh centaur or something. It's a hell of a divergence, and people who loved Nevermort for its simple birdulous appeal might be put off by Apocrowlypse, but there's a lot to like here. You can still imagine this as Nevermort riding on a ghastly steed of some kind, as a fitting homage to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And it seems Apocrowlypse wants that to be the first impression, as even the head of the "steed" is nothing more than a polished skull belt buckle. Which is hilarious. I can't help but like this design.

Apocrowlypse's gameplan remains the same even as its form drastically changes. With all-around decent stats supplemented by high health and speed, it's mostly expanded its toolkit by branching into Beast moves, including the oh-so-fitting Bone Cannon and Beast Wall (which is also composed of bones, the most beastly material around). It has loads of coverage even outside of its three favored types of Beast, Poison, and Air, and with its all-rounder stats it can do... okay with them. Not great, certainly not up to most opponents, but it's fast, and still has plenty of health and can pull funny moves to disrupt enemies.
 
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Kalir

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(whatevs)
CLOCKSLEY

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Today's friend is Clocksley, a Plastic type styled after a windup toy! Designwise it's pretty simple, with just the single spring legs in the core of the beast and a charming only-the-eyes head. The arm looks like it's on some kind of zipcord sort of thing, perhaps with LAUNCH ACTION that would fire it out over a distance, but coming from the back like it does, that looks pretty awkward. And, of course, the hat and name are a clue as to what this line will eventually become, borrowing from Robin of Locksley, or as most of you might know him, Robin Hood. Despite being known for his archery as a combat skill, Clocksley is described as using its long extending arm to wield melee weapons at long range as a workaround for its low speed. Again, I think the arm's cable kind of messes with the idea there, but it fits well enough.

Fortunately, Clocksley's gameplay perfectly reflects this design quirk, owing to its unique passive, Spring-Loaded. Any attack wielded by Clocksley becomes ranged, even if it's normally melee. That means it can use its high-impact ranged stats with any kind of attack it can access, from the humble Smack and Toy Hammer to the more complex techniques like Superheated Fist and Toxic Stab. Any stat that isn't ranged is on the weak side, so Clocksley needs some support to do its work, but it's a very hard hitter even before its remaster.

ROBINDAM

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Clocksley loses its goofy charm when it remasters into Robindam, but it only makes sense that a plastic toy in a monster collector would eventually transform into the apex predator of plastic toys: the ever-popular Gunpla! Robindam sports a design that looks very much like a translation of Robin Hood into mecha form, complete with the delightful tunic skirt plating and the stylin' helmet sporting a feather. The bow it wields, as the icing on the cake, even uses a suction cup arrow! Robindam is described as having keen aim and a keener sense of justice, accurately striking targets from 300m out. If you picked up what Clocksley was laying down, you will absolutely love Robindam.

It goes without saying that Robindam's plan in fights is identical to Clocksley's before it. It's most notable for its signature attack, Suction Cup Dart, which is a very powerful attack for how much AP it costs, but it's somewhat lacking in accuracy at 75%. It's not a bad idea to come prepared with moves that either boost accuracy or lower enemy evasion. Even without that, it still has plenty of potent moves to work with, and doesn't have to worry about whether they're melee or ranged: they're still fueled by the second-highest ranged offense in the game. Keep Robindam supported, and it'll flatten your foes in two shots at most.

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Clocksley is the signature tape of the second partner you encounter, Eugene! And while I love Eugene as a character, I'm a little frustrated by him as a gameplay teammate. He shows up basically as soon as you finish the prologue with Kayleigh, including unlocking fusion with her, getting in a shouting match with two vampires in business suits... or are they? In any case, Eugene makes a strong first impression, bold and courageous and willing to stand up for those who can't defend themselves, literally modeling his every action like that of a superhero in his pursuit to be someone of worth. And that's awesome! Hell yeah Eugene!

The problem comes from how fusing with new teammates happens. Kayleigh unlocks fusion with her during the prologue as mentioned. Most other companions, like Meredith, only ask you go clear a single area with them, usually culminating in an Archangel fight where you end up fusing during the showdown. In effect, you complete that partner's personal questline. That's still the same for Eugene, but in his case, his questline involves finding and busting all the vampire(?) bases on New Wirral, a task roughly equivalent to completely defeating Team Rocket in the original Pokémon titles. So you get this bombastic guy with a neat signature tape as soon as you're out of the prologue, but are locked out of one of the basic gameplay mechanics for him until you're like... 60% of the game through at an optimistic estimate. And that really sucks!
 
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