Digimon World (PlayStation) review "Digimon "

Digimon
Digital Monsters
Digimon are the champions
Change... into a corrupted piece of junk known as Digimon World

That pretty much follows the basis of Digimon World. From the mass hysteria of the next Pokémon the market with several highly unordinary twists to it, the TV show Digimon has reincarnated into a bad game. Bad. Bad game. Baaaaad game! Bah. Bad boy, here, bad game! Yes, I’m a sheep!

Digimon World surprisingly starts off with the thought that it will be another high-tech polygonal game with the FMV, but it’s the only cinema action that you’ll find in the game. From then on, it’s downhill with the graphics, with an arid amount of detail.

After you wake from the plunge into an electronic device, you find out you’re in the Digital World – on the small landmass of File Island, to be exact. Hardcore animé fans will be confused when they learn of the plight of File Island, of the Digimon of File City losing their ability to communicate and eventually segegrating. The head honcho of those who are trying to reunite their lost power, Jijimon, sets you upon the task of recruiting the abandoners. Not only does it happen to contradict the story of the show, it also sets you on an original plot. But unlike how many people rave over original plots, this story has absolutely no plot twists save one near the end, and many questions go unanswered. You set upon your journey with almost no idea of where the heck you’re supposed to be going and what the heck you’re supposed to be doing, and by darn, that loans a sense of injustice for a Playstation game if one were to ask me.

For those fanatics who think that a battle system revolved around Digimon could actually work, I hate to inform you that you are wrong. Before you even go into battle, you stop by the Green Gym conveniently located next to the File City, where you can train in several courses to increase varied stats. Yes, stats. They’ve brought it here too! After training in some things that make no sense at all – WHY ON EARTH would you need MP in a game and storyline on it, and JUST how would you get it by enduring falling water? - You can then feel set to go out and explore the world.

The second fault in the battle system before you even go to battle is an animé injustice. In the show, Digimon would be able to evolve and devolve as required, and up to Mega Class, a step up above Ultimate class. Go west, Digimon World, the land of where things are corrupted. Go west. Not only was the game programmed to allow you to go no higher than Ultimate Class, but you are also unable to devolve to a lower level. You CANNOT.

OK, so you want to battle now, huh? Well, looking around for an opponent, you’ll find *GASP* a RECOLORED DIGIMON SPRITE! Heaven forbid! Engaging in battle, you’ll first be treated to an assortment of annoying beeps and boops, and then your music changes into… beeps and boops. Beeps and F’ING boops. After getting past the terrible attack sounds and the earsplitting scream of the main character, you give orders to your Digimon to battle the enemy(s). You attack. You attack again. And again. And again. All the while, your opponent’s just standing there dumbfounded, with an AI to match. Nevertheless, with the sad amount of damage to HP proportion in this game, you’ll finally give up throwing various items to recover your Digimon’s HP and MP and just use that charged up FINISH! attack that gets charged throughout the match.

After you finally beat the enemy Digimon, you hear the character’s victory cry. Now, does that not sound a lot like ‘FOCK SHEET!’ to you? Not only was this game censored, but the censoring was pathetic! After that ridiculous shout, you get a stat screen displayed where some of your stats increase by lame increments of 0, 1, or 2, and then you look near the bottom. Here, you see “Ag” in yellow text, and nothing else. After some lag in the addition of your stats, it finally finishes “Agumon dropped Brain Chip”. Good lord I say! Just to get a stats-increasing item? Some of the translators must have had hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – the fear of long words – while others had the fear of short words!

Finally, you’ll come around and realize that only those Digimon who are recruitable for the city actually have their proper colors, *cough*lamers at Bandai couldn’t take the time to make new polygons*cough* and you’ll start looking for those to fight. Your journey will eventually take you to the Great Canyon, and after going through some elevators in this place that just appear out of nowhere like it’s nobody’s business, and are also difficult to find thanks to a camera that has to stick from an overhead point of view, you’ll find a nest. Intruding on it, your game freezes! Heaving a deep sigh, you restart, and go to the nest again. Your game freezes again! Eventually, thankfully, you’ll be able to fight the Digimon here. All the while, you will just want to scream from the repetitive soundtracks that have to torture you with techo style music, and the bland backgrounds that make your eyes water and greatly reduce your vision. The game at least saves you from the torture of having to battle all the Digimon with a few mini-games, such as curling and managing a shop.

Digimon World suffers from many glitches. The idea of the game is actually fitting for the numerous amount of glitches in a digital world, with text bugs calling your Digimon “Gabumonmonmonmon” and the infamous, hazardous, deathly jukebox Playstation crasher. Giromon is evil! EVIL! Also, you won’t want to go anywhere without the teleportation item of this game – there are quite a few places that you can get stuck and note move. The gameplay is bored to death, you’ll be backtracking for mindless duties, and for some reason, you’ll never be able to catch that lousy Seadramon, especially when your parents ground you swearing incessantly and quite unnecessarily after a straight hour without success. The sound will make you unstable, and the graphics will cost you that precious eyesight.

However, I do believe that Digimon World has one redeeming flaw: the system of building a city. In this game, one could compare it to Breath of Fire II’s Township or Dragon Warrior III’s town to get the yellow orb, in the sense that although the building of it is automatic, your doings get it done. In Digimon World, you go around File Island, and some of the original color Digimon will battle you, and others will ask tasks of you. Once you defeat them/fulfill their task, they will join File City, and do something there; Birdramon will have a one-way air transport system, for example, while a half dozen of the Digimon will together upgrade the shop.

While those types of games have some appeal to me, things like Civilization and SimCity turn me off, as they require too much of an in-depth look. So, if you like games with a feature like the former examples, Digimon World may have a place in your heart. Otherwise, I wouldn’t give it the time of the day. No game’s worth your sanity.

Community review by yamishuryou (May 13, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.