So this game is a game that took… really long to come out, and seems to have had a kinda troubled development, what with the change of devs what seems like no more than a year before release, and it was delayed… like, 3 or 4 times… But people were pretty excited for this one, and I was one of them.

So it came out in July, and I… bought it in November at half price during Black Friday. Yeah I took a while to get to it.

So let’s see if the long-awaited game is good!

Developer: Hyde
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Release date: July 28th, 2022
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4 (Switch version reviewed)
Genre: Visual Novel Strategy RPG

Review

This game is all about the story, so I won’t go too deep into it. You’re playing as the goggles-wearing Digimon protagonist, out on some camping trip. You and a few other kids (as well as an older professor) end up at a shrine, where an earthquake happens and everyone seemingly falls through a hole in the ground. Everyone meets a monster that says they’re destined to be together, and those monsters are obviously digim… I mean, Kemonogami (translates to “Beast Gods”). Yeah, weirdly enough, not once is anything in this game referred to as a Digimon, and in fact they aren’t monsters that are digital this time around… but for ease of writing I’ll just call them digimon. The kids meet back up at the school though they find it in ruins and there’s no one else around, so after dealing with a spider problem, they realize they’re not in the human world anymore, so they argue about whether they should try to find a way back, or… not?

But it becomes clear pretty quickly that they are not safe in this world, with evil fog that can kill them (killing their partner digimon at the same time), and yes, you’re likely not coming out of this will all the kids alive. There’s evil digimon around that are under orders to offer kids up for sacrifice for whatever evil reasons. There’s actually 2 kids that seem to have lived in the ruined school for a while, there’s some big mystery surrounding them. The professor has been researching the digimon for a long time, with the shrine being a really important element of it. And the group explores the island, at their own perils of course, to find a way out. There’s mysteries, maybe more kids to find, and figuring out who the villains are and stuff. I just don’t want to go too far in talking about the plot.

Overall the story is quite good. It is a visual novel for the most part, so yeah, story is pretty important. If I had any complaints, I’d say some of the characters are weirdly dumb for kinda no reason, and man is there a lot of text that could be outright deleted from the game and none of the story or character development would change at all. There’s lots of repeating going on, sometimes just because a character that wasn’t there is there now and they need to spell things out again for no reason. And there’s a lot of waffling around with the game just not wanting to give you the big reveal at points, even though it’s obvious. GEE I WONDER IF THE HOT WHITE HAIRED WOMAN IS ARUKENIMON IN DISGUISE LIKE USUAL WOAMG! Also I’d say they telegraph the deaths a bit too much. But yeah, story’s good. Solid twists, a lot of the digimon tropes are still here and still fun (with actually a better explanation for some of them), the characters develop pretty well for the most part… It’s good. It’s a bit dark, but then again, it’s not like the kids in Digimon are free from weird ass dark shit happening to them. Maybe less death usually, but… I mean, we all remember the fucked up shit that happens in Tamers. I was seeing people saying this was a bit horror-ish, but it really isn’t.

The localization is fairly awful, which is very unfortunate since this is a game that is all about the writing. I went and looked for examples of some of these because I’m too lazy to take screenshots myself and other people are better at doing this. May it be missing lines, confused genders (can’t decide if some of the digimon are meant to be male or female, especially labramon who is supposed to be female but is randomly called “he”), confused genders but a second time (they really have no idea), more confused genders (seriously it does not stop… in this example that’s a man not a lady, in case your eyes aren’t working, and I did verify the original script in case you’re wondering), missing words in sentences (I actually have a screenshot of a Gomamon saying “There’s only way to the dam” rather than “only one way”… too lazy to post it but trust me it’s there), adding bullshit that straight up is not in the original script for no reason (also Minoru mentions bear poop an uncomfortable amount of times and then there’s whatever this is), incorrectly named characters (in that example, for the uninitiated, that’s Biyomon, not Patamon). But in the end, the localization isn’t quite bad ENOUGH to ruin the story, but boy is it distracting and shouldn’t be this bad, since it’s basically ALL TEXT. And there’s japanese voice acting in some parts (thank god they didn’t waste money on shitty english VAs), so you can compare to the original text sometimes. It’s not always completely off which is better than I can say about other recent games. And Digimon is actually, weirdly, well known for awful game localizations. Point is, localization shouldn’t be what it currently is. They should just be straight translations, the problem right now being “localizers” think they’re better than the original japanese creators and they just decide to add lines about bear poop everywhere for no reason. IT’S FUCKING WEIRD MAN.

So gameplay! Well, it’s a visual novel, more than half the time. Mash A to advance the story and get to the actual gameplay! But that’s not all of course. There’s frequently choices to make. These have multiple possible results. Each character has an affinity stat with you, so some questions are about trying to say something that will make them happy. The affinity stat is mostly useless as far as I can figure for story progress, except for a few very specific things… that I will talk about later. Also, you have 3 “personality” stats of your own. Moral, Wrathfulness and Harmony (not sure why they’re different kinds of words, weird). Actually hovering on an option that will affect one of these stats will change the colors of the option’s background (red for Moral, green for Harmony, yellow for Wrathfulness) so you can control which one you get and focus on.

The ending you get is determined by one choice at a specific point of the game. The options you get at that point are determined by how much stats you have in each personality stat… and a choice for the bad ending of course (it’s very obvious).  So it’s probably possible to have access to all choices at that point, minus one you can’t get on your first playthrough. Affinity with specific very obvious characters does have an effect to get the true ending, but it only happens on a second playthrough. The game actually teases you about this when you finish it the first time, noting that there’s more endings and also saying “If you didn’t let X character die, maybe no one would’ve died”, showing that there’s at least one ending you can’t get the first time around, since that one character will always die on your first playthrough, regardless of what you do. Also, once you get to a path after the big choice, you get that ending with no way to affect it. So if you get the Harmony ending like I did (which is anything but harmonious) any deaths that are meant to happen there will happen and there’s nothing you can do about it, and so on with other endings. Which is funny, because a death that happens in that ending was the first time I thought I could’ve prevented it with a better choice, but nope, she dies no matter what in that path.

In-between pure story moments that are just reading and occasional dialogue choices, you get exploration segments, and free choice segments which are basically the same thing but limited. You get access to a world map, which is just a selection of places you can go to. This will show which places have which characters in them in a menu, and you can go to the area to talk to said character. In exploration scenes, there’s always gonna be some “required” conversations, so you probably want to do non-required things first. In free choice segments, you get a number of points you spend by talking to people (to show that you have limited time in that instance), as well as moving around sometimes costing points. Once you’re out of points, the story will continue. And both exploration and free choice segments will have free battles, which you can do as much as you want.

But in addition to a visual novel, this is also a strategy RPG! Combat is fairly simple as far as SRPGs go. Unit turns are determined by their speed stat (and there’s a timeline on the right side of the screen giving you the turn order). You get a few things you can do in your turn, namely one move per turn (which goes as far as your move stat), one attack per turn OR one item usage per turn. Each digimon has 2 attacks. Just a plain attack, right in front of them, and a special attack, which is generally stronger, and generally has more range or AOE. Attacks deal more damage if done from the side or back of the target, and have more crit chance if you have more elevation than your target. Also Digimon are one of 4 types: Vaccine is stronger against Virus, Virus is strong against Data, Data is strong against Vaccine, and Null gets normal damage from everything (these typings are the only things that are close to a reference of the Digimon being Digital). And each digimon will have elemental resistance/weakness on top of the typing stuff. If currently controlling a digimon that is one of the partner digimon, you get an evolve action that doesn’t take away either your move or attack. Evolving costs SP, and it costs more SP each turn after that. Un-evolved digimon (that includes “evolved” wild digimon) actually gain SP every turn.

Actually the fact that you have to basically start every battle by evolving all your partner digimon is such a drag. The non-partner digimon remain evolved, for free, so the partner ones just take extra time to run. Even running the fights at 3X speed (which you totally should), it’s a bunch of time each battle to do this.

One thing partner digimon get that others don’t (and that depends on the partner digimon) is that their partner might be able to talk. There’s 2 different talk action types. In Free Battles (or shadow battles) you can talk to enemy digimon. This launches something you may find similar to Shin Megami Tensei, where you talk/negotiate with the monsters. Here they’ll ask 3 questions, and your goal is to try and get at least 3 points (up to a maximum number of 6). A good answer can give 1 or 2 points, and a bad answer can remove points. If you get 3 points, you can either ask for an item, or ask the digimon to join you (it will give you a percentage chance of whether they’ll join, so you can decide). And then they’ll leave the battle. If you fail to get 3 points, they get a buff and keep fighting. The other talk type can be done once per partner digimon per battle, and can be aimed at any partner digimon. These will be buffs or healing, depending on the character doing it. I will say, you will want to get at least a few “wild” digimon, as some battles limit your partner digimon choice so you might HAVE to use wild ones for a bit of help.

Powering up is fairly simple but there’s a few ways to do it. Of course winning a battle gives EXP, and actually most battles give you a level or close for all digimon that were placed into the battle (they don’t even need to do anything). Levels are a bit minimal as far as how useful they are, though in the grand scheme of things they obviously help. The big way to increase stats is fruit. Sometimes, using your camera or as reward for battles, you’ll get fruits and veggies. Those can be given to digimon to increase stats. A single fruit will give at least twice as many points to a specific stat as a level up would. So the best way to make base stats better is eating healthy. And then there’s evolutions.

Partner digimon earn new evolutions as you progress through the story, but all the ones above Champion other than Agumon are missable, as they tend to pop up after certain conversations during free action segments (and then you have to spend some of your free action points to get to the battle where the character will earn their next evolution). Agumon’s evolutions are determined by your personality stat. I went Harmony, and as such ended with the pretty lame Dinorexmon as my Mega (so I didn’t even SEE the Greymon line at all in the game, I know it’s there though). Agumon also has 2 evolutions above Mega, not sure how you get those because I didn’t, maybe you only get that in the true ending route. The other partners have a set champion and ultimate, then one of the megas is going to be based on if you get to enough affinity with them (I got exactly 0 affinity megas on my first playthrough, sadge), and they have other mega possibilities, some they get if you go through certain story routes. I think New Game Plus actually lets you keep your evolutions which is nice (so I think if I progress more through it I’ll be able to get Dinorexmon from the start, and another mega that I won’t spoil).

Wild digimon also evolve, in a better way since you don’t need to spend time doing it every battle and it costs no SP every turn which… what a weird unbalanced system. Anyways, how they evolve is by finding items that let you unlock a specific level of evolution. So if a digimon is ultimate, you need a CD tablet to evolve it to mega.

I will note difficulty is a bit weird. Namely, most of the game on normal is a total walk in the park. Digimon levels don’t even really matter most of the time, you’ll basically wreck everything without effort. And then the final battle completely fucked me up and, for the first time in the game, I died. So I did 2 battles to power up my team at that point, most importantly a slightly underleveled MetalSeadramon (most things got 1 or 2 levels, and I got a few fruits). And that ended up being JUST enough to win the final battle, I was literally one attack away from losing and barely got just enough damage to deal the last blow with my MetalSeadramon that barely had any HP left. From what I’ve heard, levels get way higher in the true ending route, so it’s possible difficulty is less weird in there.

Overall

I enjoyed it. It’s pretty simple overall.

The combat is fun though I’d really like if you didn’t need to waste your first turn every battle digivolving. The story was actually quite good despite the pretty awful localization that had a lot of problems (as highlighted). It looks good… Yeah, it’s pretty much good stuff. There’s plenty of replayability if you’re into replaying a game to get all the endings, though I’d hate to do this in a fucking visual novel (though the true ending, as noted above, is locked behind replaying the game).

I give this one a recommendation. This goes in the “honorable mentions” segment of my GotY post, though I’m not going back to edit that.