This review contains spoilers
Glad to be done with this game. I can tell it went through development hell, and I understand why it was delayed so much and had development restarted on it at one point. I was never expecting a AAA experience, I understood it was going to be a low budget game, and I knew before I got the game that it was going to be a visual novel over any gameplay.
This game feels like it was made for the PS2 back in the early 2000s, held onto and forgotten about, and eventually released in 2022. This game is mostly comprised of pictures and backgrounds that can at times have graphics comparable to PS2 graphics if you look at the grass.
Pros:
1. It's a Digimon game and if you're a fan like me you'll like being able to see a lot of the Digimon you grew up with.
2. The game was not buggy to me.
Cons:
1. The story is very flat/mediocre. I have played other visual novels games that have had me more invested like Doki Doki Literature Club and BlazBlue's visual novel story as two examples. I felt insulted constantly by the main character monologuing explaining situations I just saw unfold before me eyes like I am too stupid to understand what is going on or how someone feels. Perhaps if I was a teenager and had less experiences with various entertainment media the story would have grabbed me and I would not have felt insulted by the main character breaking events down for me. The story is a boring slog to get through and it feels padded out with the free time and exploration moments where it makes you feel like you can choose who you want to talk to (When you end up being forced to talk to about everyone anyways and they all have nothing useful to say to progress the story or the mysteries around you 95% of the time). The game does a poor job of making me want to care for the characters, so when I found out they could die I went out of my way to try to get as many of them to die as I could in an attempt to try to have fun with the game, but I could not even do that, as I had less freedom in my choices than I thought I would have. The game will give you speech options at various times making you feel like what you say matters, but it really doesn't. You think you can freely tell everyone to go or not go somewhere as one example, but even if you say not to go, your character ends up being convinced by the others to end up going to the place you did not want to go to. Your only real choices that matter are whichever 3 of the moral compasses you choose that ends up letting you branch off into one of three endings. I heard there is a new game plus that lets you see a true ending, but I am not going to bother. I feel like I wasted my time playing and buying this game's story.
2. The little bit of combat you get to play sucks. It is an extremely watered down Fire Emblem/TRPG/FF Tactics/Ogre whatever you want to call it. There is not much depth to it beyond hitting people in the side or back, getting to higher elevation, levelling up, staying in evolved forms, staying close to one another to get bonus stats or HP/SP regen, and equipment items to further buff your Digimon. I went through the whole game only have two different moves for each Digimon. An auto attack and one special move. Maybe there is a way to unlock more special moves for each Digimon, as there looked like there would be space for it, but the game did not tell me about it and I never encountered it. It also looked like the enemies only auto attacked or used one special move.
3. The hub world sucks. It feels and looks hastily put together.
4. The English translation sucks balls. There are times where various characters are called he, she, and it all throughout the game. Labraman is referred to as a he, then towards the end is referred to as a she. Renamon is referred to as a she in the beginning and then as a he for the rest of the game. There are other typos in the translation too, but that was the main stuff as examples that stuck out. While I am on the subject of English, there are no English voices. I understand the game is low budget, but there are Japanese voices. As some one who does not speak Japanese I found myself skipping the voice lines after reading the subtitles because of not knowing when they were done speaking.
This game was not worth $60 dollars and I feel burned by it. This is a live and learn situation for me to read reviews more instead of buying a game thinking it's going to be good or reading only one review comparing it to Persona 5 and getting excited. If this game was 10 or 5 dollars then I would be much more accepting for it being what it is. There are other Digimon games out there much, much better than this. This game should have been cancelled, as this is not what the advertisements were hyping it up to be. Truly a letdown.
This game feels like it was made for the PS2 back in the early 2000s, held onto and forgotten about, and eventually released in 2022. This game is mostly comprised of pictures and backgrounds that can at times have graphics comparable to PS2 graphics if you look at the grass.
Pros:
1. It's a Digimon game and if you're a fan like me you'll like being able to see a lot of the Digimon you grew up with.
2. The game was not buggy to me.
Cons:
1. The story is very flat/mediocre. I have played other visual novels games that have had me more invested like Doki Doki Literature Club and BlazBlue's visual novel story as two examples. I felt insulted constantly by the main character monologuing explaining situations I just saw unfold before me eyes like I am too stupid to understand what is going on or how someone feels. Perhaps if I was a teenager and had less experiences with various entertainment media the story would have grabbed me and I would not have felt insulted by the main character breaking events down for me. The story is a boring slog to get through and it feels padded out with the free time and exploration moments where it makes you feel like you can choose who you want to talk to (When you end up being forced to talk to about everyone anyways and they all have nothing useful to say to progress the story or the mysteries around you 95% of the time). The game does a poor job of making me want to care for the characters, so when I found out they could die I went out of my way to try to get as many of them to die as I could in an attempt to try to have fun with the game, but I could not even do that, as I had less freedom in my choices than I thought I would have. The game will give you speech options at various times making you feel like what you say matters, but it really doesn't. You think you can freely tell everyone to go or not go somewhere as one example, but even if you say not to go, your character ends up being convinced by the others to end up going to the place you did not want to go to. Your only real choices that matter are whichever 3 of the moral compasses you choose that ends up letting you branch off into one of three endings. I heard there is a new game plus that lets you see a true ending, but I am not going to bother. I feel like I wasted my time playing and buying this game's story.
2. The little bit of combat you get to play sucks. It is an extremely watered down Fire Emblem/TRPG/FF Tactics/Ogre whatever you want to call it. There is not much depth to it beyond hitting people in the side or back, getting to higher elevation, levelling up, staying in evolved forms, staying close to one another to get bonus stats or HP/SP regen, and equipment items to further buff your Digimon. I went through the whole game only have two different moves for each Digimon. An auto attack and one special move. Maybe there is a way to unlock more special moves for each Digimon, as there looked like there would be space for it, but the game did not tell me about it and I never encountered it. It also looked like the enemies only auto attacked or used one special move.
3. The hub world sucks. It feels and looks hastily put together.
4. The English translation sucks balls. There are times where various characters are called he, she, and it all throughout the game. Labraman is referred to as a he, then towards the end is referred to as a she. Renamon is referred to as a she in the beginning and then as a he for the rest of the game. There are other typos in the translation too, but that was the main stuff as examples that stuck out. While I am on the subject of English, there are no English voices. I understand the game is low budget, but there are Japanese voices. As some one who does not speak Japanese I found myself skipping the voice lines after reading the subtitles because of not knowing when they were done speaking.
This game was not worth $60 dollars and I feel burned by it. This is a live and learn situation for me to read reviews more instead of buying a game thinking it's going to be good or reading only one review comparing it to Persona 5 and getting excited. If this game was 10 or 5 dollars then I would be much more accepting for it being what it is. There are other Digimon games out there much, much better than this. This game should have been cancelled, as this is not what the advertisements were hyping it up to be. Truly a letdown.