Okay, I gotta take a second to talk about a game I recently played.
Cassette Beasts ("CB" going forward) is a monster tamer title in a similar vein as Pokemon, but with several notable evolutions and subversions to the Pokemon formula.
In short, my opinion is that CB is what Pokemon should have been 15 years ago.
I found this game immensely enjoyable. It has an identity and vibe that slingshotted me into the feeling of playing Pokemon again for the first time, something other games have tried to do and failed. So often, Pokemon copycats crib the franchise's mechanics to the detriment of all else, when I'm convinced that isn't what brought Pokemon its popularity to begin with.
CB is tender, funny, and of course, adventurous. Everyone in the world of CB has been displaced from other realities, including yourself, each of you plucked for reasons beyond your understanding into a dimension where you can transform into monsters that you "record" with cassette players. The absurdity of this logic or process is not lost on the in-game characters. In fact, there's a lot that people just have to roll with, because that's how things work here.
The place where all of this occurs, New Wirral, has only seen humanity for about 100 years, and as such has a uniquely short archived history and means of development. Nobody can leave, but occasionally new objects, buildings, or people will land there, carrying over echoes of other realities into this purgatory where you've found yourselves. You have some people whose entire occupation is scouring the ocean to find technology/resources that might have materialized in their world but fell into the sea. Many people lament the fact that they don't have the Internet anymore, or can't listen to the music they love, or don't know if they'll ever see their families again.
Some people have born, lived, and died in New Wirral, while others had to figure out survival in a world that wasn't their own (indeed, the "recording to cassettes" function is a relatively new discovery, even among them, having only been possible for about 20 years).
As for combat, CB operates on a mostly-familiar type-advantage system like Pokemon. Fire beats Grass, which beats water, which beats fire, etc.
But CB takes this system and revamps it into something incredible. Not only do you have the increased damage of one type into another, but the way the 14 different elements converse with each other is vast, creative, and nuanced.
For example:
When a fire-type hits a plastic-type, that plastic will temporarily become a poison-type—you know, because melted plastic is noxious—and thus inform the strategic nature of what you should do next.
When an electric-type hits a water or ice type, it builds up "Conductivity" stacks, meaning each consecutive electric attack will do compounding damage.
When a fire-type attack hits a water-type, it causes some of the water to evaporate, giving the water type a "healing steam" that will recover that monster's health over the next few turns.
If a glass type is hit by too many wind-type attacks, it will build up "Resonance" and automatically shatter the glass, defeating them regardless of how much health they have left.
There are DOZENS of these considerations in play at all times, and when you have up to 3 monsters on both sides of the field, it can mean being really crafty about what you do next, because you need to prepare for strategies not only in the immediate, but several turns down the line. It is really easy to lose your advantage if you're careless, and you need to constantly adapt to new changes in he flow of battle.
The monsters themselves are hilarious and brilliant. To name just a couple clever selections from a gallery of 120 options:
1) Sanzatime: a giant, sentient hourglass that has shattered, the sands moving autonomously and wearing the remains of the hourglass like a hat.
2) Pondwalker: a baby shark in a fish bowl, which itself is inside a giant mech.
3) Fungogh: a fungus who has developed martial capabilities with its giant paintbrush
4) Mascotoy: a sentient stuffed doll whose stuffing is acting like a cancer, growing explosively and ripping itself apart.
OH, and did I talk about the VILLAINS?
There are three chief types of BIG enemies in this game, which you can find and engage with at your own pace.
1) The Landkeepers - These are essentially the equivalent of Team Rocket, except they are, hilariously, an agency of capitalist estate agents who want to buy up all the land.
2) The Ranger Captains - These are kinda like gym leaders, except you just find them roaming around the world, and they aren't themed after elements, but quirky gameplay gimmicks that make you engage with the combat system in a way you might not have previously.
3) The Archangels - These are the real Bosses of the game, and I freaking love them. Archangels are kind of like the other monsters you encounter, except...well, like you, it seems they don't belong in New Wirral. But where you and everything else are rendered in quaint, 2-D pixels popping with color, each Archangel is designed to look unique unto themselves, setting them apart from not only your surroundings, but each other. As such, they each possess a different art style: one is animated like an old Hannah Barbara cartoon, another is a holographic 3-D cube in a 2-D world, another looks like it's made of newspaper clippings, another is claymation, etc. Just being AROUND the Archangels tends to screw with people's minds, as their existence contradicts the reality of New Wirral.
And look, I've only scratched the surface. I could easily double the length of this post, but I believe I've already written more than enough.
I'll finish with this: several years ago, I wrote an article for website Geeks Under Grace lamenting the death of the monster tamer genre of games. I talked about how I was awaiting a game to be its renaissance—something that gave an honest attempt to transcend the shackles of Pokemon, regardless of whether it could succeed or not.
Cassette Beasts is the proof that people no longer believe Pokemon is living up to its full potential, a narrative espoused by most people who still play those games. It saw what Pokemon was leaving on the cutting room floor, and dared to do something more with it.
And it deserves attention for that effort.
(Edit: Oh, also it can do 2-player local co-op. A thing I didn't realize until I was halfway through the game.)