The Digimon The franchise has come a long way over the past two decades now, and there have been a number of major anime, movie, and video game releases at the time. Digimon Survival It’s the latest entry in this long-running franchise, but it looks incredibly different from any of the games that have come before. While the games have been played with either role-playing, monster training, or even arena-fighting types, this latest installment on the franchise opts for a visual novel experience with a few batches of tactical RPG battles. It is an experience in almost every aspect.
Looking at the titles released over the years, it always seems like there’s something missing in any given game. It can have a fun battle system like seen in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, But story elements may not be available. The opposite might be true instead with a fun concept at the heart of things like classics Digimon World games, but grind everywhere else. Unfortunately, this long-running pattern holds up here. Digimon Survival It has a compelling story, but it has drawbacks in terms of how to tell that story. When it comes to marrying everything into a complete experience, Digimon Survival Ultimately because of its most attractive ingredient.
If you had no experience with visual novel titles in the past, then Digimon Survival It is definitely a good place to start. He’s very energetic in his presentation, so as players read through multiple conversations between characters for extended periods of time, there’s at least a compelling delivery in how he’s fully presented. Character profiles are given a wobbly kind of look, it might not be much but there are some animations to make in conversations. It helps when you spend a lot of time looking at the same art as a character, and it adds a layer of energy needed when you’re there for several hours.
The storytelling experience is divided into several different types of modes. There are periods where you are directed to certain characters to move the story through, and there are free exploration periods where you get a set number of potential conversation opportunities. This is important to the story because these are the best opportunities to build affinity with certain characters and get a large enough number, then their Digimon partners get the ability to evolve to the higher and final tournament stages. These conversations also feed into the course of your story, too.
There are multiple ways the story can play out, and depending on your choices (which fall into moral paths, rage or harmony) your central partner, Agumon, can evolve into different branching forms. The story also leads to different kinds of endings. However, the only problem when selecting dialog options is that once you select the path you want to chase, the options can become illogical, as you just need to keep choosing a particular path no matter how related it is to each character.
Making things even more confusing is a matter of choosing a particular dialogue option where your character will say something completely different than what the choice might mean. For example, there is a part of the story where each child is arguing about food supplies, choosing one option seemed like you would agree to the plan only for Takuma, the player character, to ignore it completely and go with something else. It’s not a common occurrence, but something that snows over the course of the experience.
Spread across stretches of the game’s visual novel are short bursts of tactical RPG battles. Digimon teams are assigned to a network and move in to try to direct an attack in a good location. Hitting from the side or the back causes more damage, but unfortunately, this is the maximum strategy followed. Most fights just try to hold these attacks down until the opponent is defeated. There are opportunities to get involved in Free Battles which is the best way to level up your Digimon quickly and recruit new Digimon to your team. It’s here where the cute Digimon art really stands out, but that’s the extent of the kinds of effects seen in battles. Spark’s effects and attacks can look somewhat similar depending on the genre, but you can speed up battles by pressing the X button.
Recruiting a Digimon sounds like a fun tactic too, but that’s only when it’s in your best interest. Much like what’s seen in franchises like Shin Megami Tensei, hiring Digimon on your team involves responding to their prompts for specific answers to build affinity. You only get a small percentage of the chance of being recruited (which lowers a Digimon’s top level), and only one chance at that before the Digimon leave the battle. This means that you can play many free battles before you get a chance to recruit the Digimon you are looking forward to. Moving forward in the story also means that you are locked away from some Digimon as well, so be sure to recruit whatever you want before moving forward.
But as mentioned before, these fights are only a flavor of the rest of the experience. The main draw is the story being told in the visual novel, and it’s the most compelling story the series has seen in a while. Reminiscent of the original anime series, Takuma and a crew of other young teens are drawn into a mysterious new world during a summer camp trip. And like many of the most beloved entries in this series, Digimon Survival is a darker issue. There are consequences to certain choices, darker potential developments, and greater risks for each character in general.
However, the main drawback is again all the smaller hiccups that magnify by the end of the experiment. The multiple endings mean many options to explore, and while this is a fun idea in theory, it also means working through the longer, more immersive chapters multiple times as well. There are some chapters in the story that feel stretchy (like expanding the debate about food into a debate about whether the food they find will last long enough), and while it turns out to be very interesting in the end, it takes a while to get to the point.
Digimon Survival Really gets in his way. Anime fans will find it familiar, but will be able to appreciate what the extra layer of violence adds to it. Getting past it is the hardest question. Dialogue options lead you far from where you want to go (and possibly separate you from the characters), the main battles are few and far between, and you’re required to jump back a few times despite it all feeling like rubbing salt into a wound for those who already have noticeable issues. It’s a story fans will want to check out, but maybe not many times Digimon Survival Wants.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Digimon Survive is now available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch platforms. The publisher provided a review version of the game for the purpose of this review, and it was reviewed on PlayStation 5.
.
[ad_2]
