BeastLink Review

A Kaiju Playground With Ambitious Scope

BeastLink entered Early Access on August 18, 2026 from Grove Street Games, pitching a giant multiplayer kaiju sandbox where humans, vehicles, and towering "Beasts" collide across fully destructible cities. Players scavenge a coveted serum to Link with a chosen Beast, then either rampage as the monster or fight on foot and in vehicles against players controlling their own. It's an unusually direct swing at a genre that hasn't had a proper big-budget entry in years, and reviewers recognized the lineage immediately. "If you miss Rampage, Destroy All Monsters, Remote Control Dandy, and can tolerate some jank; you will enjoy this," one wrote, while another compared it to a console classic: "Reminds me of the old Godzilla game on GameCube. I am loving it so far." At review time it sat at a "Mixed" 101 positive against 100 negative, a near-even split reflecting a genuinely ambitious game still finding its footing in Early Access.

The Draw: SuperDestruction and Beast-on-Beast Combat

What reviewers on both sides of the recommend line agree on is that the core spectacle works. The game's "SuperDestruction" system, which lets entire city blocks crumble under a Beast's weight, drew consistent praise, as did the variety and feel of the different monsters. "I got in a jet flew between skyscrapers and landed a missile into the shnoz of an overgrown baboon, then got shot out of the sky by a laser beam by godzilla's smaller cousin lizard Lenny. I spawned back in got in a tank drove through a building and ran over a guy. 10/10," one reviewer wrote. A more measured account still found the fantasy compelling: "The destruction is great. The human play isn't bad at all once people get the concept. Monsters have fun combat need to have some fine tuning and balancing. Given this is an Indi company I would say they are doing great." Even players who ultimately couldn't recommend the game in its current state said the same thing about the fundamentals: "Kaiju fights feel good, a lil more tweaking and they got gold on that. Honestly play for the kaiju fights and you should be satisfied."

The Recurring Complaint: Performance Problems Dominate the Negative Reviews

By far the most consistent and heavily corroborated criticism, showing up in negative reviews and as a caveat inside otherwise-positive ones, is that BeastLink runs badly for a large share of its player base. "Plays better than expected but it is very badly optimised in its current state so cannot recommend it. Single player story maps ran fine around 100 fps but as soon as I entered multiplayer I was capped at like 25 fps which is unplayable," one reviewer wrote. Another described a more severe failure: "I love the concept and the game looks really fun if it could stay at a decent framerate. unfortunately it chugs hard unless you have a beefy pc... Played on steam deck. Doesn't run well." Crashes compound the problem for some players entirely: "Yeah I wish I could be positive about this but I can't. Game is wonky, was fine with it till I got to the character editor....it completely froze and CRASHED my entire OS." Even reviewers who recommended the game flagged it as the single thing standing between BeastLink and real success: "The game performance is horrible and it constantly crashes in multiplayer matches. I was really excited for this game but its not in a good state," while a more forgiving player summed up the trade-off many are making: "Fun game when it works....."

A Second Complaint: Human Combat Feels Underbaked Next to the Beasts

Set against the well-received monster-on-monster fighting, reviewers were far less charitable about the game's on-foot human combat, which several described as a placeholder rather than a finished system. "Foot soldier fighting is a joke, its unlimited ammo and feels like a roblox game. They need to do better and not lazily just placeholder infantry fighting. Also... 3pp mode only? where is our 1pp?" one detailed reviewer wrote. Another reviewer's structured pros-and-cons breakdown made the same point more bluntly under "The Bad": "Vehicles & combat don't work — helicopters fire everywhere except where you aim... PVE is just bots — no real opponents, no challenge, no point." A separate reviewer's more sympathetic take still landed on the same conclusion after 26 hours: "The human pvp is atrocious, but the monsters are pretty damn cool and fun to play." The gap between the two halves of the game, city-flattening kaiju battles that mostly deliver and human combat that reviewers repeatedly call an afterthought, is one of the clearer structural issues Early Access will need to close.

Goodwill Despite the Jank: Players See a Future in This

Notably, a large share of even the harshest critical reviews stopped short of writing the game off, explicitly framing their complaints as first-impressions of an Early Access build rather than a verdict on the finished product. "This game has a ton of potential. Have to remember this is just early access not a finished product if you want to support this project... Given this is an Indi company I would say they are doing great," one wrote after describing it as barely playable in its current state. Another put it succinctly: "Let them cook. the game is fun specially with friends." Steam's own update history backs up that the studio is moving fast, patch notes landed within a day of launch and have continued at a roughly weekly cadence since, alongside regular "Play With The Devs" community sessions, a level of visible post-launch effort that several reviewers cited directly as a reason for cautious optimism rather than a refund.

Verdict

BeastLink arrives in Early Access with a genuinely compelling hook, city-leveling kaiju combat with real scale and variety, that reviewers on both sides of the fence agree already works. What it doesn't yet have is the technical stability to deliver that fantasy consistently: widespread reports of crashes, sub-25fps multiplayer performance, and Steam Deck incompatibility currently define the experience for a large portion of the player base just as much as the Beast fights do. Add in human combat that reviewers repeatedly describe as an unfinished placeholder next to the monster mayhem, and BeastLink reads less like a game with a design problem and more like one that needs several more months of optimization before its $19.99 asking price feels fair. For kaiju genre die-hards willing to tolerate real jank for a glimpse of something special, there's enough here to justify a cautious look; everyone else should wait for the performance patches reviewers keep saying are the only thing standing between BeastLink and being genuinely great.