Cascassus

TLDR: This is a very solid Monster Catching RPG which establishes itself among the competition with solid creature design, witty 4th-wall breaking humor and a decent storyline, although many Nexomon lack individuality in gameplay and the open-world aspect is a bit of a mixed bag. Pros: + There is quite the variety of monsters to catch, and most of them have decent to great designs. Character designs are pretty good as well. + Much more freedom to explore the game world than in, say, Pokémon, only a few areas are gated from the start. It also incentivizes you to interact with people and look around due to hidden items and gifts you sometimes get from said people. + Pretty good story which as a whole is a lot darker than your typical Pokémon game, as it establishes immediately in the intro. There's plenty of 4th wall breaks and jokes to keep things from being too grimdark, which makes for a good mixture of comedy and seriousness. Story is not all too predictable compared to the classic Pokémon games with a few plot twists. + A lot of side content to do, be it side quests or trade offers from random NPCs. This extends to the post-game. + NPC dialogue in game evolves as you are progressing in-game and rise in the ranks of the guild. A lot of people will recognize your deeds and remark on them, and even give you thank-you gifts. This overall makes them feel less static and more like actual people. Mixed: ~ The levels of wild nexomon and enemy tamers scale with your progress. This means that no matter where you are in the game, no areas are trivialised and you can easily replace your team members with new additions. This also means that your team members are not really special in any way, and it can feel like the hours of leveling were not really worth it since an equivalent specimen of the same species can just be caught within five minutes and possibly even at a higher level. Overall it's a trade-off, and it's expected considering the open-world nature of the game, but still feels a bit off-putting nonetheless. ~ There are a few really good music tracks(particularly boss themes), but in my opinion they change a bit too often, especially if you go in and out of houses in cities. This is a bit of a nitpick though. Cons: - A lot of the Nexomon are very same-y with their stats and movesets. Non-evolved nexomon in general have extremely similar stats to another, which hampers individuality. This does get better as they evolve. Passive abilities don't exist either. As for movesets, there is a decent variety overall, but aside from Normal/Physical Type Nexomon, almost no one gets any moves to cover their type weaknesses. There is also unfortunately no way to teach nexomon new moves either. -Difficulty curve could be improved, as in the early-to-midgame(around level 24) a lot of tamers start using exclusively fully evolved nexomon even though those Nexomon could not have evolved at this point. It would feel less bad if you yourself could do the same, but here the computer simply cheats.