5 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner in Cassette Beasts

Are you looking for a monster catching RPG that’s good fun, and good on your wallet? Look no further than Cassette Beasts. I recently rolled credits on it, and can firmly say that it’s the most fun Pokémon-a-like that I’ve played in some time. It retains a lot of what makes it’s progenitor so endlessly replayable like a combat system driven by elemental advantages, and weakness while being chock full of weird and wonderful critters to collect.

That said, there were numerous points throughout my time with Cassette Beasts where I’d learn something, and wish I’d known it sooner. Hopefully sharing those pitfalls here will help others to avoid the same time wasting trappings that I constantly found myself in.

1. There’s a Sticker Vending Machine in the Town Hall

Cassette Beasts doesn’t have attacks, and spells in the traditional sense. Instead, it has stickers. You physically attach these to a cassette in order to teach new attacks to whatever critter is recorded on said cassette. You can also remove stickers at any time if you want to transfer those attacks to member of your ever expanding menagerie.

Stickers are obtained both through leveling up your different Cassette Beasts, and through purchasing them from vendors within Harbourtown. Or, that’s what I thought until I was gearing up to fight the final handful of bosses. It was at this time that I noticed the vending machine within Harbourtown’s Town Hall. It’s located just to the right of Wilma, and lets players purchase themed packs of 4 stickers. They also generally contain at least 1 uncommon, or rare sticker, which provide powerful additional effects beyond what a given sticker normally does. This makes the vending machine a practical way to give your different Cassette Beasts an extra edge throughout the entirety of your adventure, and is especially useful when fighting late-game bosses, or the post-story super bosses.

Don’t be like me – hit up Wilma’s vending machine as soon as you can. The additional effects on uncommon, and rare stickers are too good to pass up.

2. You Need to Complete Each Companion’s Side Quest to Unlock Fusion Powers

This may seem obvious, but I was confused by the in-game tutorial explaining this, so I figured I’d share it here.

Shortly after starting Cassette Beasts, you team up with Kayleigh who will guide you through the game’s tutorial. This concludes when you fight your first boss, and are introduced to Cassette Beasts’ fusion mechanic. This lets you combine both your, and your partner’s Cassette Beasts into a single super-powered entity. It’s an integral mechanic for fighting several of the game’s harder bosses, and is just plain fun to use.

From this point forward, the player will always be able to fuse with Kayleigh, and overtime they’ll gradually unlock increased strength when fusing with her. However, as you unlock new companion characters, you’ll find that you can’t fuse with them. This is where my confusion stemmed from – I thought I could unlock fusion by travelling, and battling with each companion just like Kayleigh. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Instead, players need to complete a side-quest for each character, which will unlock the ability to fuse with them. These quests are started as soon as you meet a companion for the first time, so all you need to do is prioritize finishing them. This will put everyone on equal footing, and keep you from being locked out of using one of Cassette Beasts’ best mechanics.

3. Rogue Fusion Fights Can Contain Remastered Creatures

These next 3 tips are aimed at helping folks who want to either complete their bestiary, or who just want to see all the different critters in Cassette Beasts.

In keeping Cassette Beasts legally distinct from Pokémon, the game doesn’t refer to its different creatures taking on more powerful forms as evolution. Instead, this is called remastering. It kind of suits the vibe of the game because you can remaster a music album, and you record all of the game’s critters on cassette tapes.

Unfortunately, doing all the necessary grinding to actually remaster every creature is a huge pain in the keister.

This is where Rogue Fusions come into play. These are randomly scattered throughout New Wirral, and fill a similar role to minibosses. They’ll pit you against a fused monster that is just as powerful as when you, and your teammate make use of monster fusion. Upon defeat, the fusion will split into the 2 critters that created it, which gives the player an opportunity to capture them for their own collection.

As you may have already surmised, there’s a chance for remastered creatures to appear in these fights. In fact, once you hit the mid-game, you’ll commonly run into at least 1 remastered monster when you take on a Rogue Fusion. Use this to your advantage, and take down Rogue Fusions if you’re trying to fill in your bestiary – it can save you a ton of time that you’d otherwise have to spend grinding.

4. You Can Buy Additional Starters After Becoming a Ranger Captain

Cassette Beasts does something that I think is equal parts brilliant, and frustrating: it gives both starter Cassette Beasts branching remasters. This isn’t exactly uncommon – a lot of critters in Cassette Beasts have 2 different remastered forms. However, catching additional copies of the starter Cassette Beasts isn’t exactly an option for the majority of your adventure. I wasn’t aware of this impossibility, so I spent way too long searching for both Bansheep, and Candevil to fill in missing pages of my bestiary.

Not all hope is lost however – once you become a ranger captain, Wilma will sell additional Bansheep, and Candevil for 20 Fused Material fragments. You can buy these as many times as you’d like, and by this point in the game you’ll likely have more Fused Material then you’ll know what to do with.

5. Certain Remasters Are Triggered by Stickers

As if it wasn’t already complicated enough trying to deal with certain Cassette Beasts having multiple remasters: some of them are hidden behind attaching specific stickers to your critters. At least the game has the decency to tell you about this…kinda.

Hidden throughout the world are books that the player can read which provide vague clues about which Cassette Beasts remaster when equipped with a specific sticker. You can try to find all of these on your own, like a massive chump (regrettably, that’s what I did), but I’ve included the full list of them below if you can’t be bothered. You do you – this is a no judgment zone.

Cassette Beast	Remasters From	Sticker
Aeroboros	Masquerattle	Zephyr
Gearyu	Velocirifle	Gear Shear
Diveberg	Diveal	Ice Coating
Khufo	Allseer	Close Encounter
Adeptile	Salamagus	Magic Tome
Faerious	Elfless	Toy Hammer

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That concludes all that I wanted to share today about Cassette Beasts. As I said before, I think very highly of the game, but the tips I shared above would have saved me several hours of playtime as I journeyed across New Wirral trying to be the very best that ever was. My hope is that other players won’t fall into the same pitfalls I did. Good luck out there.

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