if Bandai Namco want commercial success then yes 100% they need to and should have been basing the games on the anime. Despite their roots in the vpets, that is such a niche market (said as someone part of that niche) What a regular joe in the street thinks of a franchise IS the franchise, not what the dedicated lore junkies say it is. For example I’m a huge Comic fan, I know all these little details and contradictions that are not in, say, the Batman films. like all the times Batman has used a gun! But The Nolan movies cemented no guns as a cornerstone of Batman in the larger public consciousness, so that IS who Batman is. All this to say as a fan of the vpets roots of the Digimon World games, it’s not what most people think of when they think Digimon since the Anime is what they fondly remember. It’s the same reason most kids struggled with the first Digimon World because they were expecting Pokemon but in the world they loved from the anime. I hope there is always experimentation in the Digimon Franchise but not at the expense of making a game that will resonate with a wider audience first. That’s the only way to ensure the longevity of Digimon. Love all three games but you definitely captured what keeps each from being great.
@@Cosmicillustrator I think “no guns” may even go further back than that (for me for example, it stems from BTAS), but just in general, hard, hard, HARD yes to all of this. Well put.
I made my niece, who has never seen anything about Digimon, play Digimon Survive, she loved it in a way that I can barely describe, she was so excited when Agumon evolved the first time she jumped out, and she cried so much when one of the character died, she stopped for a while because of that, but already started playing again
In regards to the lack synergy between the show and games: As some commenters pointed out, the anime isn't the source material, but a adaption, and very loose one at that. And even if the anime is arguably the face of the franchise, it doesn't have a definitive style. Most seasons/series share basic elements and tropes, like the partnership between a single human and digimon, and their evolutions being a temporary; everything else changes dramatically. One series had the group travel between worlds freely. One series was about how there was a culture split between "human" digimon and "beast" digimon, despite the fact that all digimon can flip-flop between them. Even the important things likes the life-death-rebirth cycle, and species/kingdom type systems are just a optional and a not a hard rule of digimon lore. Bandai and Toei are rarely on the same page, as each one is just trying to do whatever, whenever. For there to be any kind of synergy, either Toei needs to just make in adaption of one of the games or Bandai-Namco needs to brainstorm with Toei.
The very constants you pointed out are all they really need in order for there to be some synergy, I feel. The anime DOES change some rules from season to season, but broadly speaking certain elements carry over consistently.
Its just the anime should be the game is base from because people didn't play tamgotchi also digivolution in anime is cool I wish they made evolution like the anime in story games like just make a evolution a system in the game
@@tenkuken7168 what? digivolution in anime is cool? The digivolution in anime is basically a magical girl transformation with a badass soundtrack 😂, if you want your monster to evolve to the same monster every time just play pokemon stop asking digimon to become pokemon
I think the main issue is that people will understandably want the huge number of digimon available but that doesn't quite work with how the show portrays them.
Yeah, I acknowledge that there's a bit of an inherent conflict there, but others here have concocted few pretty elegant solutions - namely allowing party members' Digimon to revert to canon Rookie forms for cutscenes, while granting robust access to the usual branching evolution trees for gameplay. I think that's a pretty sock solid middle ground that would allow players to "collect em all" while still allowing a story for Digimon as actual characters :)
You could have say 8 options for partner Digimon, then a Data, Vaccine, Virus route to champion, a Data, Vaccine, Virus route to Ultimate, same for Mega and beyond mega. This would lead to roughly 968 possible evolutions which can be filled with various Digimon and even overlap in places if that's too many. So all the Digimon you want available, but still a partner system where the actions of the Tamer direct the growth of the partner.
@@FireShadow210 That still means it's hard to do well. I'm sure there wouldn't be like 900 vas but it would be hard to have those digimon be involved in a story
While I do agree that the franchise doesn't have a "core" video game series, I do believe that the "Story" and "World" games work the best. They at least offer gameplay that can appeal to either side of the fan base.
I hear the card game is fairly popular now, so if they developed an online client for Steam and consoles like Master Duel then that could go a great way in increasing Digimon’s mass appeal.
I think Survive wouldve been hailed as the ultimate Digimon game had they not screwed up one thing. The marketting. Bamco marketted the game HARD as a Strategy RPG, when thats not what it is. Its a VN with Strategy game elements. Had Bamco actually advertised it like "you get to experience your own digimon anime" it probably wouldve sold WAY more copies.
Clearer marketing definitely would have helped fan expectations, but tbh I would still have complained about the choice to lean into VN over strategy RPG regardless. VNs are just sort of the lowest form of game design.
Survive would have been absolutely goated had it had more/better gameplay. Think open world exploration and more refined battle system. That said I understand why it didn't happen. Such a game was absolutely not going to get that budget. I'm not sure if it did well enough to explore a possible sequel that will do that but I hope it will. Most fans understand what the game is and what it tried to do and praise it, as it deserves. It is very rare to get that phenomenal story telling in videogames these days. Imagine Survive's story plus Cyber Sleuth's gameplay. Like I said, let's hope it will happen.
The strategy rpg was extremely lackluster anyway being literally only elemental weakness and positional damage. They definitely should have just stuck to making it a good VN that could maybe hit heights like Higurashi.
Hi! As a professional translator who has worked for an author on one visual novel in my career, I don't even feel the marketing itself was bad. I think a huge aspect of the marketing simply got lost in translation. The first issue being that Japanese doesn't really have a word for "Visual Novel". They're just "games" like any other. The closest thing you might get is "Adventure Game", based on old text-RPG style games like Wizardry, but some games we classify as Visual Novels in English wouldn't really fit that description either (including Digimon Survive), so it's not 1:1. Some of the oldest and most popular VNs by VN pioneers such as Leaf (To Heart, Comic Party, Utawarerumono) were classified as RPG gamesーUtawarerumono is even an SRPG game like Digimon Surviveーso it was entirely appropriate to call this an SRPG based on past precedence. Survive is standing in a vast field of VN games with rich stories and kinda simple, cheap, and/or infrequent gameplay loops. Second, I followed the marketing in Japan pretty closely. There were no false pretenses about what this game was intended to be. Whether trailers, interviews with creative staff, or the official website, even before the massive move of studios, this game was said to be a story-driven experience with a heavy focus on dialogue choices, and they constantly put emphasis on this. The most we got out of SRPG-specific gameplay was a single screenshot for ages, and then we got one interview describing the SRPG elements specifically, and one trailer that focused on it as well. My personal guess is that English-language gaming news sites reported on the SRPG gameplay more exclusively, and/or a lot of gamers in the West don't see VNs as true "games", so they had a harder time seeing the VN elements as true "gameplay" and leaned on discussing the SRPG content more, placing unrealistic hopes on the game from the start. It's truly a shame. As a VN, Survive is spectacular, and fans in Japan didn't have the same negative reaction English-speaking fans did regarding gameplay. I honestly feel VN games get an undeservedly negative rep in the West. Unless you're diving into actual VN-loving indie niches, you do not see any game companies releasing English-original VN games, so it's more of a Japanese-only genre. That alone is probably half responsible for the sudden whiplash felt by so many English-speaking fans who expected something more akin to at least Fire Emblem, but got something more along the lines of most late night anime spin-off games, or even OG Utawarerumono.
@@ThrillingDuck - Speak for yourself. I translated a VN for an author over the course of 2 Years while he was working on it and the complexity of the Princess Maker-like gameplay made my head spin. Some of the most intimidatingly complex games I've played have been VN games, or games with complex VN-inspired social management elements. Survive itself isn't anywhere near the highest point of this scale of complexity, but I think you're selling the VN genre as a whole pretty short here.
I always said this, the Atlus team who mmade Persona should work on a Digimon game. Both have varity of casts, parallel deminsions, Digimons and Personas, dark theme, adult jokes...etc
@@killingspeerx Yeah I’m seeing a lot of “let’s get a Persona-style Digimon game” (aside from just the art style), and I couldn’t agree more. It would just fit too perfectly. Party member Personas even evolve with enough Confidant, like what??
I think the main problem comes with the fact that Digimon is essentially a Tamagotchi spin off. How many times do you see people talking or praising Tamagotchi games for actual consoles? People only talk about the little portable pet simulators, and I guess Digimon falls under that same thing, plus the fact that the name of the franchise makes people think that this will be a Pokemon experience, when it's not.
I have to agree. Despite my many, many problems with the state of modern Pokemon, one big advantage they have over their closest competitors is their consistency. People have a clear and consistent vision of what a mainline Pokemon experience should be, and when they experiment in a way that veers too far off from that vision, it's clearly marketed as a spinoff. Whatever we might say about the modern Pokemon games, most of us still love that core formula and want to see it be continuously refined. Digimon doesn't have that. I appreciate their willingness to experiment, but I think it's just as important to refine what you already have, and Digimon as a franchise doesn't get to spend much time doing that.
@@dood3530 I completely understand this take - my issue is that I feel like they don’t even have a formula worth iterating on right now. The Digimon Story titles are the closest thing to that, and there’s definitely clear room for improvement there, but it’ll never be “definitive” Digimon for me by the criteria I laid out.
@@ThrillingDuck Oh definitely, I didn't mean to imply that one of the recent games should be the definitive game. I was just saying that the series does so much experimentation for its own sake, yet they haven't focused on getting a definitive "mainline" experience to keep everything grounded.
@@philbuttler3427 I’d hardly call the highest grossing franchise in the world constantly putting out buggy unfinished trash a stupid complaint. That said, each release seems to outsell the last, so the complainers clearly aren’t voting with their wallets lol.
@@ThrillingDuck no, you see, that's a valid complaint, but pokémon fans do find dumb reasons to be mad at every release. like new pokémon designs being too unoriginal, or too character-ified, or not having enough presence, etc. and then saying 'therefore it's bad' instead of 'that's why i don't like it'. or the story 'not having stakes' or characters 'not being good' and then instead of providing an actual critique of the writing, providing reasons why they subjectively dislike the character/plot and then comparing it to something they perceive as 'much better' when it's actually of the same or worse quality and they've been nostalgia blinded. or getting genuinely heated about the typing assigned to pokémon, which is???? so strange to me???????? and! even with your very valid complaints, there are some fans who take it ABIT too far, where they flame modern fans who like the games despite the bugs, when there are still valid reasons to like the modern games? like, scarvi might be a laggy buggy mess, but i can clearly tell that the team behind it really did try! the characters, the story and the attempts at teambuilding (especially in the indigo disk) all have a lot of heart put into them, and for that i can see why some would love the game for it! heck, scarvi is probably top 5 in the franchise for me? something like that. ...what was i talking about again? oh right, yeah so. tl;dr while there are valid complaints about new pokémon games, a lot of fans like to dogpile the games with terrible criticisms ngl.
I’ve always believed that the way Persona handle their games would translate to Digimon almost perfectly, especially the social sim aspect, social bonds between Tamers affecting what Digimon their partners can evolve into just sounds cool. This way it also feels closer to the actual show with having actual Digidestined Party Members. The Player can switch between different Digimon as well but will still have a main partner Digimon. Joker to Arsene, Tai to Agumon. But they still have a small rag tag group of Digimon to choose from.
I don't mind the story of Cyber Sleuth being human world focused but they definitely should have had your partner digimon be a character that talks and does things since they have you pick one of 3 rookies at the start anyway. They can get around having to account for what they're digivolved into by having them degenerate in between battles since they're a human's partner digimon. I also wish there was a bit more interaction with digimon in the Farm like the DS world games had a bit of. I didn't *not* enjoy Survive but I would have liked it more if they just stuck with their guns and went all the way in making it a high quality VN instead of what we got with the pretty mid SRPG gameplay that ended up feeling like something I had to slog through for more of the story. It's basically structured like a VN anyway. Never grew up with the PS1 World games, so I'm basically all in agreement with what you said about Next Order. I'm really hoping they're able to pull together the best of all they got with how long that next story game's been cooking. Survive was supposed to release in the meantime and hold us over, but it's been 2 years since then, and there's no real word on the Story game other than it's not dead yet. Fingers crossed for Digimoncon 2025.
Tbh I'd probably have enjoyed Survive even less if there had been no combat at all, but I reeeeeeally don't like VNs (barring Ace Attorney), so that's a personal taste thing haha. Agree with pretty much everything else though :)
Even up till now, my favorite digimon game is Digimon World DS because of the farm aspect! I also liked that we get to choose 1 of 3 like pokemon at the start!
I think the problem here is you're thinking of the anime as THE inspiration/source material for digimon games when, in reality, the inspiration/source material for the games AND the anime IS THE VITRUAL PETS! The vpets don't talk. They don't de-digivolve. You have to work on certain stats for them to digivolve into certain forms. The way you raise digimon in the games is the video game version of what happens with the virtual pets. Bandai focuses on this because the vpets are still really popular in Japan, so they follow that formula.
@@DrowningArrows Yeah I didn’t realize just how popular the V-Pets still apparently are abroad. But I mean yeah, you saw the rest of the pinned comment. Next Order and its predecessors are there for the fans who are most invested in that side of the franchise :)
Honestly something like Survive was on the right track. Tone down the amount VN, increase the roleplaying, put it into a digital world, and it can lean closer to something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. Survive was just a few steps to being *it*.
@@yo-kaikid1925 how was it Amazon it barely had gameplay don't get me wrong the gameplay was good but they should capped digimon world 3 style with the new combat system they put in the game. It's the sad truth people wanted a rpg but instead they got a comic book😔
@@Retro-Design-4033 you know visual novels are not only a genre but a very popular one right? its not their fault people thought they were getting a game they didn’t advertise lol. just because you aren’t a fan of the genre doesn’t mean the game is bad it only means its not the game for you. i and many people really liked the game because we enjoy the genre and series.
I do think Story & World are the two "main" series since they have the most consistent of gameplay among generations, while Survive is, as they put it, something on the side. But I can see why it's hard to rec a game to start with in regards to Digimon.
Digimon has the Sonic problem where every game, show, or story is different and whatever you started with is what you think the franchise should be like. You started with SA1? You probably want hub worlds and NPCs. You started with Digimon World? You probably want virtual pet mechanics. You watched AoStH/SatAM? You probably want a lighthearted/serious story. You watched Digimon Tamers/Frontiers/02? You probably want a story set primarily in the real world/digital world/both worlds in equal measure. The franchises have both been so many different things at different times that ironically not having a cohesive identity is in fact part of their identity
@@metalsonic8888 This is true, but I still think the series has decently consistent constants that can be a guiding star - especially among the anime seasons. The only real outliers with regard to show structure and mechanics of digivolution are Frontier and Fusion. Everything else functions more or less the same, and only the set dressing changes.
@@ThrillingDuck Yes and no. I know your thesis statement is more or less that the anime should be what the games try to imitate, but if you disagree with that then there's no reason why that bit of mostly consistent worldbuilding (but not completely consistent by your own admission) within it's own medium should be applied to the games. Which is really what my comment was about rather than disagreement with the conclusions you drew from this starting point. You grew up watching Digimon on Fox Kids and so you think the Digital World should look like it does there and that Digivolution mechanics should match that, but I'm pretty confident that there are more examples of things not working like that in the franchise than there are examples that do. Someone starting with a different story might have radically different ideas about what the franchise should focus on. Like me for example. Rather than a game that closely matches the show, I want a show that follows the mechanics of Digimon World/virtual pets. I want the heroes to have to grapple with the deaths of their friends. With the weakness they are thrust back into time and again after tasting power. I want them to experience the desperation of trying to become stronger to survive and having to balance that with caring for their very fleeting friends. To have a dark digivolution episode where a partner is pushed too hard like when Agumon became SkullGreymon, but instead of things going back to normal at the end of the episode that partner has to be put down to stop its rampage. A show where progress is measured in graves, but the heroes struggle to form bonds and friendships despite that. And also sometimes the digimon should shit on the floor.
@@metalsonic8888 Okay, first of all, I absolutely love your second paragraph. I had never even thought of that, but I think it would make for a really neat season! That said, I think you’re going a little too far in your first paragraph insofar as you’re really blowing the inconsistency waaaaaay out of proportion. There’s no “by my own admission” here - I admitted that Frontier and Fusion are outliers. That’s it. That still leaves us with Adventure, 02, Tamers, Data Squad, Adventure 2020, and Ghost Game aaaaaall abiding by the same general world and rules - a SIGNIFICANT majority. And even the outliers still share the general vibe and aesthetic of the Digital World with the other seasons. The existence of an outlying minority doesn’t do ANYTHING to invalidate the significant majority.
@@ThrillingDuck Again, you are talking about the anime specifically being mostly consistent. Which it is. It is not consistent with other aspects of the franchise such as the games. This is a key point in your video. And I don't know what happens in the various manga or light novels or audio dramas or whatever, but I know that things like X-Antibodies and Appmon exist somewhere which don't fit that mold either. Taken as a whole with all parts equal rather than putting the anime on a pedestal, there are more parts that are unlike the anime's commonalities than there are parts like it. Maybe I am exaggerating how common this could be, but I still think it is not that unlikely that people out there would pick different aspects of the franchise to identify as its core identity than the ones you chose if their intro to digimon was, say, Digimon World 3 or even Cyber Sleuth.
@@metalsonic8888 I see what you’re saying, but I’d argue that the anime IS the cultural lynchpin of the franchise in the west. I don’t imagine the demographic of players who came to Digimon through the games first is very large. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect they’re a significant minority, hence my thesis that the anime should be the central inspiration. Well that and the benefit of general franchise synergy it would create. Again, you’re missing my point that the existence of a minority of outliers (in this case people introduced to the franchise via old PS1 games and nothing else) does not invalidate the consistency that the franchise does have, or the notion that the aspect the majority of fans are familiar with and attached to (the anime) should lead the direction of the games. I do agree that there are similarities to Sonic’s situation, but again, as the anime is the cultural lynchpin here - and IT is very consistent - it seems like there’s an obvious point of reference that 90%+ of fans could gravitate towards and understand. Even Sonic maintains constants like an emphasis on speed and the presence of his supporting cast. Are you saying Sonic has no identity just because he’s broken the mold in the past?
Maybe they do feel like they're working in Pokemon's shadow, but I feel like that's their opportunity to success. There's no special magic to modern Pokemon regions, the routes are often just grasslands and caves that you could find in any game. But the Digital World can be literally anything. It can have a fantasy setting, it can be a relaxing beach resort or the cold depths of outer space, it can be North Dakota. USE IT.
Yeah... I've been saying this for quite a while, I wish they made a AAA Digimon game while actually striving to make an AMAZING game. It has everything to blow away Pokémon mainline games!
I think what most people forget is that Digimon Survive was never meant to be mainly a rpg, the devs told us from the start (and kept telling us) that it was MOSTLY a visual novel with a lil bit of game included. What I tell anyone who goes way too hard in the complaints of this is. "My brother in Jesmon, you bought a book." Maybe I'm biased because I'm a huge VN fan, idk
@@IcarusOOT I understand this perspective, and I’ve seen it before. I just think it’s also important to acknowledge that VNs are not a super popular genre, especially in a franchise often associated with combat, even among the V-Pets. I respect that Survive did what it set out to do, but the decision was weird enough that I’m inclined to levy the criticism I have for it as a game regardless.
Ironically, I think Fusion would have been prime time to release a game that bridged the discrepancies between games and anime. Fusion’s story felt like a cross (pun not intended) between World gameplay and a traditional Digimon story, having a human tamer exploring the Digital World, recruiting different Digimon, while maintaining a special relationship with a single Digimon that served as the backbone of the protagonist’s fighting force. That would have made for a great game.
@@jasperjavillo686 I’ve always felt that Fusion had the most video-games-ass premise of any season, down to the human protag literally collecting Digimon for his “army,” as well as a bunch of mcguffins (the Code Crowns). Ironically, Fusion did receive a game in the Story series which was probably the most directly faithful adaptation of an anime season the series ever received, but we never got it here in the west.
As an outsider to the Digimon franchise and still never really getting it I think the main issue is that digimon as a brand, doesn't have a definitive core identity that they can latch to and develop from Every instance of the franchise seems to be a completely different take from the rest, even within the same sub series like Digimon World, each game being different Meanwhile, Pokemon has been really smart by having a very strong identity with the mainline games that the different sub series have been able to follow. The anime, the games, the manga, the card game, even the spinoffs have managed to keep the general core of the franchise intact and do not alienate the fans of a specific branch of the series. People who love the games can jump into the anime and receive a similar experience, and can also jump into the manga and have a different take of the same general idea. And the spinoffs while being different, still keep the spirit of the core of the franchise You don't have different developers inserting their own Pokemon in the spinoffs that may never be brought up again The Pokemon company has been pretty consistent on making each Pokemon marketable in their own way and easy to recognize to the point that people say that every Pokemon is someone's favorite This is why Digimon just seems near impossible to get into for most people, they may like a particular game, or anime season, but when you keep changing and re-inventing the series for the next installment, then its impossible to keep your new fans hooked to your brand
Well for the World Moniker 1 through 4 was before they realized to divide the naming schemes. As they then made World titles based on World 1, Story to be turn based rpg, and rumble for fighting are the quick examples. While the Ds game say World for like Dawn/Dusk that was a western thing as the Japanese names say Story. So they have been giving name synergy for a long while now.
All of this. I watched many of the shows back in the day but even now I can't name one that's my favorite because I haven't been able to play any of the games, and the games that do exist aren't that great or appealing because they don't match what I liked about the show.
Honestly, imo it’s the anime that created the issue. Digimon’s original games were all console/handheld versions of the vpets. Then Digimon World 1 came onto the scene as a fleshed out vpet RPG. Too many people have different ideas about what Digimon is at this point. I want to raise and care for a Digimon until end of life, with the new eye having boosted stats. Others want to collect creatures that never die. Heck in my opinion the Japanese name for stages don’t even make sense once you’ve abandoned the idea of concept of digivolution via age.
@@lazites That’s a fair point. I still feel like most western fans at the very least are more familiar with/attached to the show than the V-Pet, and although not spot on the Story games handle digivolution much more similarly to the anime imo, but I see what you’re saying and it definitely contributes a lot to this disconnect.
That is a fair point but i think its also fair to point out that even if the anime wasn't the origin of digimon, it is what has defined digimon in the public eyes. It's like how the Yugioh manga was never originally meant to be card game centric. It was originally a series about games in general with a dark twist of Yami Yugis death games.
@@rhysjonsmusic Yeah, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Yugioh had gone back to its roots, instead of focusing on Duel Monsters for the anime and the rest of the series, because I honestly liked how dark and different the original manga had been, and how the Pharaoh was an actual "King of games", because he was smart enough to manipulate all games to go in his favor, rather than how in the anime he has the BS he showed with the heart of the cards and all that other cringy BS, that basically gave him his wins. I also agree that Digimon should have focused on the virtual pets aspect, for their main series of games, because that was what I liked on the original PS1 game, and I always felt lied to by Bandai whenever I bought a new Digimon World game and it wasn't like that first PS1 game, and unfortunately the one game that did follow that gameplay, and would have been amazing if released in America was Re:Digitized, but we never got an official English translation as the game stayed in Japan, and Next Order just came around too late, which is why its sort of frustrating to be a fan of these japanese series, since a lot of good stuff stays over there like Medarot as well.
the solution is to make multiple series. 1. Digimon World : Game where you explore Digital World, breed Digimon, survival townbuilding where your Digimon can die of old age and reborn. Just like Digimon World 1, Digimon World Redigitize, and Digimon World Next Order 2. Digimon Story : Game with story heavy or visual novel like Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Survive 3. Digimon Adventure : Game where you travelling around the world (real or digital), fighting other trainer, collecting Digimon, going into dungeon, and participate in the tournament. Your Digimon can't die of old age. Just like Digimon World 2 and 3. 4. Digimon Rumble : Fighting game
For me, Digimon World 1 and Digimon World Next Order is my kind of game. But I like game such as Digimon World 2 and 3 too, as long as it let us explore the world, instead of teleport us from one hub to the other hub.
Digimon has that magic that often people say "THIS is the best game" and some other say "THIS is the worst game" even while talking about the same game. It has such a variety of response and genres that I feel the main appeal is pretty much to choose your favorite among the many games of the franchise
Kinda related point and kinda not. Honestly, I think a far bigger issue in terms of synergy between the anime and games is the target audience. The anime (aside from million and one Adventure sequels) are very much aimed at kids, while the games and other media are aimed at older teens and adults. People always talk about wanting a dark, mature Digimon game, but I honestly think they'd be better off as a middle ground between Pokemon and Megami Tensei and aim for a shounen (specifically battle shounen) audience.
@@s3studios597 I can get behind this take, I just feel like Digimon has remained more popular with its “gen wunners” than it actually is with today’s kids, simply because the franchise isn’t as active as Pokemon and the landscape of television programming has changed. So obviously it’s aimed at kids first and foremost, but I do think there’s a place for it’s adult audience as well, and judging by all the Adventure sequels and the latest games, I feel like Bandai has some awareness of this too.
@@ThrillingDuck That's why I say they should go the battle shounen route. That way, you can appeal to kids and adults. It did wonders for Pokemon given how much attention the XY anime got in the west.
I think an open world digimon game that plays kinda like dragon quest would be so sick. Have some nice turn based combat, have a nice open world where digimons roam around freely and interact with eachother and have beautiful cutscenes for the story or other meaningful boss encounters.
We need a Digimon game like the Persona games. Social states can influence your Digimon's growth and hanging out with the other characters can get you alternate evolutions or fusions.
I think they should merge the World and the Story gaming models - have you start off with your partner after being teleported to the digiworld, you can pick your partner out of several mons, and whilst the same base rookie remains you can unlock and digivolve into a few different forms as the game progresses, kinda like the vpets where each rookie can turn into 1 of maybe 4 champions and so on, but always reverting back to the same rookie. Explore the world and build up your city whilst completing quests and the storyline - maybe post-game is when you can gain more digimon partners. Give all the rookie's proper characterisation and their own mini sidequests to complete.
yeah thats been my thinking on it. digimon masters style but with branching evolutions that fit with each rookie. they could have agumon become (up to the megas) wargreymon, victorygreymon, shinegreymon, and blitzgreymon with varying champions and ultimates that line up. you unlock them through various means such as collecting different types of data or completing certain missions. you can throw in the armor and spirit evolutions. this way plenty of the digimon are being utilized rookie to mega! i wish they would stop wasting space with the baby and in-training evolutions. sorry but for a game i want the megas!!
I think a good idea was with the Adventure PSP game, basically translate what happened in the anime to a game. I would love for them to continue this throughout all seasons of the anime... It's a good opportunity to make some fanservice with some extras, in the Adventure PSP we had evolution sequences for all the L6 of the protagonists, imagine the same happening for all the other seasons protagonists that don't had all their evolutions in the anime.
Open world. A random partner(maybe based off of questions you answer when you start the game). Conflicts that take you from the digital world and the human world and vice versa. Evolutions that derive from choices you make in the game, items you collect, or the way you treat/fight with your partner(like friendship in pokemon). Thats what I want to see in a Digimon game.
In my head, I am already building and playing the game... If I had the skills to do so, I would've started building the game for real. I have hope that one day we will get a game like this.
Hey, good video, but I really don't think you had to spend 2 full minutes defining "the big 3" when you could have just said "let's take a look at the 3 most recent games"
Honestly, I love the solution for adding both the partner and the collect em all aspects that survive had. Another would he having your partner be a calumon or similar digimon with the power to create copies of other digimon. The only real digimon you have is your partner - they have personality and growth, and it's own evolution tied to story progress. Or do something like that weird Savers game, where everyone has a partner, but the partner can change forms freely, with the new levels locked by story progression - once you unlock a partner's first champion, they can unlock other by non-story means
I was never able to get into the Cyber Slueth series and so I don't really understand why they're so highly regarded as the pinnacle of Digimon games? They feel like pretty standard RPGs to me. In my opinion, Next Order is always going to be THE Digimon experience. It feels like what Digimon is actually meant to be, a virtual pet simulator like the original Tamogotchi toys but with a battle element. It also goes back to the original Digimon world on PS1 before that got turned into another standard rpg too. I wish they'd continue making Digimon world games as a main stay and do these other projects on the side.
that's exactly why - its a core standard rpg game using digimon with good animations and cutscenes the bar not so much his low but its the only one with at a time a good budget to make that happen
What @marcusclark1339 said. Cyber Sleuth allows players to experience control over a wide variety of Digimon at once and actually invest in them with the knowledge that they won't keel over and die forever in a few hours. They also have great presentation value and simple but fun mechanics as far as combat is concerned. Next Order can definitely be the definitive Digimon game if you value the V-Pet aspects above all, and I agree that Digimon World is more "original" than Cyber Sleuth. But there's a reason that time-based party member mortality doesn't exist anywhere else in the industry: It's just not fun for most people.
I liked survive BECAUSE it was a visual novel with combat. Fully character driven and a dark take. Then i want to collect a lot of digimon and fight non stop in shibuya so i have cyber sleuth. Then i want adventures in the digital world and raise a partner throughout different life cycles, each one unique and stronger than the previous one, so i play world. This 3 paths ARE the definitive experiences. And i hope we can get more of each one
@@facundomorera9762 I feel like a happy medium is a far from impossible task, but I appreciate and enjoy all 3 of these for what they are. I do stand by Survive’s status as a visual novel being a hindrance to it though. It’s kind of the lowest form of game design. There are plenty of “real games” which have a visual novel presentation style for their narratives, but then actual gameplay built around them, and many of them still feature perfectly lengthy and involved cutscenes, just with a healthier gameplay balance ratio. Survive really only uses its status as a VN to allow its dialogue to run on for too long with redundant loops of the same information.
Cyber sleuth could've been that and more. Seeing as its an IP that a lot of people knows, it won't get drowned on the plethora of the classic monster collecting with a turnbased combat RPG. I really enjoyed the dusk and dawn on the DS and I think the cyber sleuth games leveled it up a bit and nailed it.
I want to see a new game that focuses on the theme of “Digimon can become anything” and what that could actually mean for the concept of identity. When you take so many forms… what makes you “you”? Is it how you bond with other people? Does a Digimon’s form inherently determine its personality? If you are just a formless entity with no one affecting you, are you really a sentient being?
While I dont think digimon games are the best in the market and having a "definitive" game probably gonna help as a commercial success i dont agree with this video. Just a note: digimon anime is not the core of the franchise by the time line (vpets-1997, videogames-1998, movie&anime-1999) and the production of anime,games and cards are directed by different groups of people. Saying that i think this is what makes the digimon franchise very attractive and they just should invest in make more games with different developers, focus on making a multimedia, in fact i am glad they invested in something like a VN with survival and hope digimon world games keep releasing since they are the most unique of all, and with the increasing of popularity in rogue-like games they could learn how to make better games in this style.
@@ThrillingDuck yes, i already read this comment before a write my comment and not understand what the "but" should mean (not native english-speaker), the concept of core is simply subjective and this not actually exist and not affect my opinion, in fact because this supposedly not exist that i think my opinion makes sense, every new anime season and new game feels fresh (mostly) because is not attached to a core. Thanks for the answer, have a nice day.
Digimon doesn't need a definitive game and that's what makes it great. It's not shoehorned into one kind of game style. It also made fans not get comfortable with a set amount of digimon in the game. The main issue is Bandai is just awful at marketing it's games(and I mean all there games) that's not Dragon Ball and Toei hasn't been great with writing the anime. Like why in the world would you announce at Odiba day that a random day in January would be appropriate for an anime announcement instead of just announcing it on Digimon's anime anniversary day.
@@yep_itsmeagain I get this perspective, and I didn’t mean to imply that I dislike the variety. I think I made it clear that I like the games I was talking about. But within the scope of the variety, I fail to see the harm in a title (or preferably a new pillar of titles) that synergizes with the show.
@@ThrillingDuck the problem with this is Digimon doesn't have a set show series. Like Pokemon had Ash for 25 years. Every Digimon show has its own gimmick, its own characters, and etc. For example, Digimon Adventures is just barebones digimon, but Digimon adventures Zero two introduces DNA evolution and armor evolution, Tamers introduce bio-merge evolution, Frontiers introduce human and Digimon merging together that for a long time didn't even have levels, Savers had burst evolution, etc. The Story games typically have ALL of these in it's gameplay. World usually only have DNA evolution and regular evolution. They did attempt to have the games be based on the anime during Digimon savers aka Data Squad and they didn't sell well. Those were the Digimon story games on the DS. There was even a Xros war game that loosely followed the anime. Like I mentioned the issue really isn't the games being similar to the anime currently airing. The issue is Bandai SUCKS at promoting things and developing games that isn't Dragon Ball Z. Like Sparking Zero got announced last fall and releasing this year. It got update videos and everything. The newest Story game was announced 5 or 6 years ago. We lost Habu from it's development and still no update on the game. They're even fumbling the trading card game with oversaturation.
@@yep_itsmeagain So, someone else on here has brought these points up, and I have the same counterarguments for you. Regarding the show switching up characters from season to season, this is a complete non-issue. Again, Pokemon games don't actually feature Ash - they always feature a brand new cast with a protag who simply goes on an Ash-adjacent style adventure. There's literally no reason Digimon can't do this - just look at Survive. Regarding slight alterations to Digivolution mechanics, I don't even know why you brought this up - you countered your own argument. Yes, the Story games DO have all of these special evolutions, so why can't another game incorporate them? Literally no reason. Pokemon also has multiple methods of evolution technically speaking: leveling, friendship, stones, trading, trading while holding an item, etc. What's your point here? Seems to work pretty well for Pokemon and clearly worked fine in Digimon Story. If you're trying to say that each season changes the rules slightly and therefore there's no familiar template for game devs and fans to follow I'd argue that that's kind of reductive. Regardless of the details that change from season to season, there are generally some pretty good constants, and most seasons follow these constants. To prove my point, here are all the seasons which feature traditional Digimon-Human partnerships and functionally traditional Digivolution (i.e. Baby-Mega): Digimon Adventure Digimon Adventure 02 Digimon Tamers Digimon Data Squad Digimon Adventure 2020 Digimon Ghost Game Now here are all the season which do not feature traditional partner bonds and evolution paths: Digimon Frontier Digimon Fusion I think game devs can figure out which to draw from - it's literally the exact ones that Digimon Story and World draw from. Literally all of them except 2. An anime-adjacent game doesn't need to follow the formula of the current anime season to the letter, it just needs to adopt the formula that encompasses the vast majority of the franchise. Not rocket science. Now, citing the failure of the Digimon Adventure PSP and Data Squad PS2 games is indicative of you missing my fundamental point. I'm not advocating for a licensed game centered around a specific season of the show, and even if I was, those games didn't underperform because they were anime-adjacent, they under-performed because they were under-marketed and also just not high quality products. I do agree with you that Bandai sucks at promoting the franchise though lol.
@@ThrillingDuck I'll try clarifying my point then: While games like D&D and Pathfinder focus a lot on the mechanics and battles, there are also more narrative-centric games like Fate and Fabula Ultima. Digimon would work incredibly well as the second. You create your character, give them a Digimon partner, and some sort of theme to strive for. Their "Crest", if you will. And then your GM would decide when you've achieved a grand moment that resonates with your Crest, to unlock the next Digivolution stage. For example, a Player Character with the "Courage" Crest would unlock their next Digivolution when the GM acknowledges that they've done something truly courageous and heroic. Of course, a lame player may decide to metagame with such a system, to which the GM would have all the right to deny that. If a character starts jumping in front of all danger just to make their partner stronger, that is not courage, it is foolishness.
@@FenexTheFoxthe gm would then have their digimon dark digivolve and actually kill them like wendigomon in Survive or almost kill them like skullgreymon in adventure. The lore itself from digimon prevents "metagaming" in the example you described or maybe not prevents but allows the dm to punish the player in an appropriate way killed off if they won't stop or barely surviving if they've learned their lesson. I do think digimon would be one of the best franchises for a trrpg
You completely missed one of the longest standing digimon games and is still played to this day. The game where you can collect almost any digimon in the series and go thru any area of the series as well is DMO. Digimon Masters Online. I played it back in 2008 and its still running to this day
Honestly this could work, possibly even down to protagonist-chan having some sort of special Ditto-like Digimon partner that can copy the code of any enemy Digimon.
I think it would be cooler is the digimon stay in rookie form but in the start of the battle the game will tell you what level your digimon will evolve from the start and then there will be a digivolution sequence then the battle starts
Or you can also play Shin Megami Tensei game. The latest game was Shin Megami Tensei V. SMT series is the origin of monster collecting mechanic way before Pokemon
The Cyber Sleuth games and Survive don't seem enough to you? At first I didn't like New World Next Order, but if you don't like any them, you simply don't like any of the Digimon Worlds, nor JRPGs games of Digimon.
@@xyannail4678 Okay but did you like… absorb my argument? I even said multiple times that I really like Cyber Sleuth lol. And everything about Next Order aside from the partner mortality mechanic.
@@ThrillingDuck But partner mortality mechanics are a core part of the digimon experience. The World games especially are at their heart, V-Pet games. Pet simulators. If you strip that away, you basically strip away the identity of World games. I don't disagree that there could, and even should be something for casual fans to dig into though, but what would that be? To me, it'd be more Digimon Story games, or stuff like Dawn & Dusk.
I like the v-pet games, even if they are grindy they feel more original to me, but I guess in an ideal world those could be side games and the mainline would focus on a mix between survive and sleuth
I would be all for that. And the funny thing is I happen to really like Decode and Next Order, but I enjoy them despite the mortality elements, rather than because of them.
@ThrillingDuck the problem with world next order besides budget, same with og cyber sleuth was that they were 1st made for the psvita in mind and they weren't originally supposed to have English releases
My first Digimon game was World 3 and instead of traveling with a trio team of Digimon like they wanted me to I ended up storing the other two and had that one partner. I just wanted my experience to be more like the anime. Im a realist.😅💯
Lol I did the same thing but for a different reason. Grinding was such a damn chore in that game, just training 1 digimon was tedious enough, let alone all 3 of them.
@@s.silverman9864 I know bro. I ran through that game with just Guilmon and it was much much much simpler. I had Gallantmon right on time for the final bosses. I think it's a cheat code.😂
@@divineeternity7268 It definitely felt like the optimal way to play. The only time it was an issue was with that one boss that could instakill, Zanbamon I think.
Milking them is just all of marketing job, pokemon can always bounce back from scarlet and violet, while digimon never even reach the popularity of pokemon ruby sapphire because of the identity crisis😅
Its really not, especially when it struggles to hit 1 million sales. Pokemon's straightforwardness got it far enough to become a cultural icon, regardless of the dark age its in since 2013.
MAJOR VISUAL SPOILERS for some old games and Digimon Survive (not super old, but not exactly new either). Also, some quick housekeeping: 1) I’m aware that the V-Pet predates the anime, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that the anime has become the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, since the golden days of V-Pets are long behind us and the earlier seasons of the show seem to be the aspect of the franchise that fans are most vocally attached to online. This is why I consider emulation of the show to be the top priority of a “definitive” Digimon game experience. Digimon World is basically the best possible adaptation of the V-Pet aspect into a full fledged videogame, but I’d argue that the Digimon lifecycle is still a pretty bad mismatch for a more robust game, since the player has more on their plate than just managing their Digimon’s needs, and it’s not integrated well into the game’s central progression loop. 2) When I refer to the Digimon World games within the context of this video, I’m only referring to the V-Pet style entries designed in the mold of the original - so Digimon World 1, ReDigitize, and Next Order. 3) Obviously when I call Digivolution in the World games “linear,” I mean that it goes in one direction. Digivolution branches but it only goes from lower forms to higher ones. There’s no proper Degeneration. 4) I somehow forgot to mention how much Eden in Cyber Sleuth looks like the Internet in Our War Game. That is very cool, but my point about the Digital World proper still stands. 5) In general, I think I came across a little harsher on Cyber Sleuth’s narrative than I really feel about it. It definitely has its hype moments, but most of its run time feels like a series of uninteresting detective cases and doing the Digimon as actual characters pretty dirty, before suddenly turning into an actual Digimon story around the final third or so. All in all though - again - I absolutely LOVE Cyber Sleuth as an overall product. “Collecting them all” may not really be Digimon’s thing, but I would never insinuate that there’s no place for it in some of the games. The ability to actually invest in your favorite Digimon and enjoy them while not being under the gun of a lifespan timer alone puts it leagues above Digimon World in terms of fun factor for me, to say nothing of the combat. I would just like to see more attempts to actually capture the show’s essence in future titles, that’s all.
Survive as a VN is amazing! The point and click are great, the karma system works, and the cast is great. The only gripe I had with it is how they locked the true end behind NG+, and force a second playthrough to get it. Even with skip and the combat on very easy, this is a skog! The gameplay is bad, and the balance is even worse! The game is a joke on Hard up until the cheapest boss fight in the game. In NG+, they enemies don’t scale with you despite the devs intending you to play through it again. 😊
@@ThrillingDuck As someone whose making one, its easy to make a VN. It’s not easy to make a good one. Storywriting isn’t coding, but it’s very difficult in its own right
@@Iceblade269 Oh I agree 100%. I’m speaking in terms of game design - not writing quality. The thing about writing quality is that it’s completely independent of whatever game it’s in, much like a soundtrack. Best of luck with your project! When I say VNs are “the lowest form of game design,” all I mean is that they’ve got to be the most simple to code and playtest by a huge margin. I think they’re great projects for aspiring independent developers, but I expect more effort from a company with the budget of Bandai Namco. The fact that it took them roughly as long to get a VN out the door as it takes Nintendo to produce a modern Zelda game is just embarrassing, even with the restart they had to contend with halfway through.
Evolution is so tough to implement, it should be a narrative thing but you also don’t want to hold out on the gameplay end of providing player advancement. Always thought it’d be really cool for the JRPG games to make a combat system about constantly swapping evolutions mid-fight. Make some evolutions story-based, others stat based, then you expend some energy resource to swap between forms. Maybe after enough milestones you get the ability to start at a certain stage in evolution chain from the very start of the fight. Can turn the branching evolution paths into the central mechanic, needing to branch out and expand what forms your Digimon can take to take on different fights more efficiently. Would also naturally make you spend more time with your partners, bringing it closer to the ideal experience.
12:19 I’m by no means a Nintendo glazer, but I would honestly blame this more on the porters than the console itself. The Switch has become infamous for having the worst ports, yet their first parties(for the most part) run great. Also, the Switch has Monster Hunter Rise, Alien Isolation, Doom, and Astral Chain. We gotta hold these companies to better standards. Or maybe the Switch is just diffcult to port to, devs are lazy/crunched, or a little bit of both ends. Also regarding the MGS port, it’s Konami. Kinda speaks for itself lol.
To me, Re:Digitize Decode is the definitive Digimon game. The problem is that the West never got it (officially). I think "the definitive Digimon game" is one that offers an experience unique to Digimon. And that's the v-pet RPG which to this day seems exclusive to this franchise. And Re:Digitize Decode is the best, most feature-dense, polished version of this format.
@@the_echoYT While I’m not as nuts about the V-Pet RPGs, I definitely think they’re the most unique experiences the franchise currently has on offer, and Decode probably is my overall favorite of that trilogy as well.
Honestly another factor I wanna say that I feel probably affected Digimon Survives production a LOT were the delays on top of Covid like originally Digimon Survive announced its release date for 2019 and then got delayed till 2022. It sucks too cause Digimon Survive imo has the BEST story of any digimon game (heck has one of my favorite stories in the franchise actually tbh), but the gameplay is def on the more tamer side, and while they did market it as a Visual Novel first I wish there was more to the gameplay to make it memorable, which there possibly was, and maybe plans fell through due to the delays or etc. This does make me hope tho one day theyll make another Digimon Survive Esque game so we can get an an amazing story like survive again except just with better gameplay.
Survive was weird because its the one time they shouldn't have had the recruitment mechanic, to make losing people more impactful Or bare minimum not being able to recruit wild versions of partner digimon so the partners feel unique
So when I heard Digimon Survive was coming out, I originally pictured a game aimed at adults with a big old M rating on it (I use the ESRB rating.) and it would have the JRPG party mechanics of Digimon World 3, the Dungeon Crawling aspects of World 2, with elements of Cyber Sleuth + Hacker’s Memory’s Shin Megami Tensei mechanics, and the Pet Raising aspects of World 1, Re: Digitized(DeCoded) and Next Order, BUT we finally get to take control of our Digimon with Real-Time Action Combat (Kinda like FF 15 and the FF 7 Remake series). You’d be given 3 Digi eggs to choose from (Those would be the three main party Digimon, one to represent the Wrathful Path, one to represent the Harmony Path, and your egg to represent the Moral Path while the Truthful Path would let you have all three Digi Eggs.) The Cyber Sleuth catching mechanic would be used to either turn the Digimon you caught into Data to be consumed by your party, or could be fused with your Party’s Digimon to make new ones. Raising your Digimon would still be crucial because as you progress through the story your Digimon will advance through each stage going from Baby to Mega only to reincarnate as a baby again chosen amongst the pre-approved or unlocked pool of Digimon unique to the path you’re currently on. Each cycle only increases your Party’s stats but by doing specific things you can unlock new evolutions (Regular, DNA, Armor, Dark, etc) for that current evolution line. Heck if you wanted to throw the crests in there, that’s how you could unlock specific branches and the ability to Warp Digivolve your Party to skip training. The Dungeon Crawling would have just been for funsies, get some overworld prebuilt levels/areas to run through by selection where you want to go to on a map, and in those areas, there can be dungeons to explore and other stuff. Edit: I forgot about the city-building aspect of World 1, Re:Digitized, and Next Order. Instead of building a City, you’re building an Army.
The original Digimon Adventure/Next Order (Haven't played the game but from how you describe it, it sounds similar) was the best game for me personally, but I agree that the death and rebirth system there makes the game unenjoyable. I honestly don't want a Digimon game where I catch 'em all because that's already on Pokemon. Digimon's basis is one on one instead of having as many as possible. I want a Digimon game where a single Digimon becomes my partner throughout the game, connected by our Digivice, without it dying from old age. AND LET MY DIGIMON PARTNER TALK TOO.
So the problem with Digimon is this: The franchise started with the Tamagotchi like devices, where you had to care for your Digimon as if they were a virtual pet, and that is what basically the first Digimon World on PS1 follows as well as its weird pseudo sequels, which are Digimon Re:Digitize and Next Order, and for the hardcore fans of Digimon this is what they actually count as Digimon, as that is their earliest experiences with the franchise. Then the Digimon Adventure anime came out and changed everything, because the anime portrayed that Digimon weren’t just Tamagotchi like virtual pets, but they were actually friends and partners for the kids, that actually grew alongside them which is what made the anime so interesting for a bunch of people, as when these people were kids they just wanted to experience something similar to the cast of the anime, but unfortunately there has been no games that give a close enough experience like that. The reason why people enjoy Pokemon so much, is because since the first couple of games, the focus had been on that RPG like element, where people would collect Pokemon and then try to make the best teams, in order to battle competitively, as that is what a lot of people thought being a “Pokemon Master” meant. As the Pokemon series went on, they added a bunch of spin off games in between the main line games, which basically spiced up the franchise and made it even bigger, because not every Pokemon fan was completely into just the battles, and it was fortunate as well that the Trading Card Game had a lot of success as well, which just made Pokemon a money printing machine for GameFreak and Nintendo, and its why they have been making tons of money for about 30 years now, despite them having a lot of blunders in the last decade. For Digimon however the situation has been different, because they have always been playing catch up with Pokemon, as the first Pokemon games came out in 1996, and the first Digimon Tamagotchi device came out in 1997, and while when these franchises first started they weren’t similar at all, the respective animes for these franchises was what started the rivalry basically, and it is what made people compare Digimon to Pokemon, and while Digimon always tried to do its own things across various games and stuff, that was what also prevented people from liking it more, because Bandai just split the fandom across all the spinoffs and stuff, since there wasn’t a Digimon main series per say, and especially with the PS1 in America, a lot of us fans got tricked into buying sequels for Digimon World, where we thought we would be getting an experience similar to the first PS1 game, but all the Digimon World games for the PS1 were just too different from each other, which is what caused the split in the fandom, because while I did have fun in a lot of the Digimon games that I played, I got tired of trying to search for the actual sequel to the Tamagotchi like style of games, and sort of gave up on getting new Digimon games, since those games that I was searching for stayed in Japan and never got an official English translation until Next Order, and it didn’t help that I was mad that Bandai made Digimon Rumble Arena 2 play like a cheap knock off of Super Smash Bros, when the original Rumble Arena on PS1 had a really cool and unique playstyle. The only thing that kept me being a Digimon fan was honestly the anime, because I felt that I had grown alongside Tai and his friends, since Digimon between the different anime series felt like the main cast kept passing on the torch to the next set of protagonists, and I was kind of glad that Bandai had done that since I felt a close connection with the cast from Digimon Adventure, but when they made Digimon Adventure Tri as a quick cash grab for peoples nostalgia, and then they remade Digimon Adventure that was when I kind of lost my respect for Bandai and kind of stepped away, because Tai and his friends are no longer growing up, and they were reverted back to kids again, which is something that I had heavily criticized Pokemon for where they didn’t allow Ash to grow up. I still like Digimon and stuff because I like the design of most of the mons and stuff, since they look edgy as heck and in many cases iconic, but I can no longer get behind the games or the anime because of Bandais decisions. -EDIT- Thinking back maybe what Digimon actually needed was a game series similar to the Pokemon mystery dungeon games, where people could be given a Digimon based on a personality type Quiz, so that they could go on an adventure playing as that Digimon, and then exploring a very quirky Digital World through the eyes of a Digimon, rather than just a regular human like all the games have tried.
@@Chrisezo Bro Digimon Mystery Dungeon with mid-dungeon digivolving that resets you back to Rookie when you leave would be lit af. Definitely just another fun spinoff, but a really cool one.
I'd love a digimon game with character creation of the human protagonist and full customization of a single digimon partner with a turn-based system with every possible digimon being available to the player
On its home turf the core of the franchise was always the Virtual-Pets, those kind of toys stook around in Japan way longer than everywhere else. The anime is a supplementary thing. Digimon manga series also have a lot more variety than the animated counterparts. Your idea of what Digimon should be is kind of "wrong" from the perspective of the people working on the property. It sucks for us as outsiders but in Japan the franchise is doing well enough to meet whatever minimum threshold they have. Also not even alluding to ReArise is crazy 😭 The gameplay had sort of the same issues you bought up for Cybersleuth but the story mode was like literally beat for beat something that could have easily been an anime like Data Squad or Appmon. If it wasn't a gacha game it would have been the definitive Digimon game you're talking about.
The problem is that, Digimon's core franchise is Vpet, and Digimon games like World series, be it the World 1, Re:Digitize, or Next 0rder are direct connection to the source material, that is pet raising, only it's blended with RPG and adventure elements. If you want to play a "definitive" digimon game, that would be something like Digital Monster ver. Wonderswan, that is pure pet raising without any RPG element at all. Digimon doesn't need a "definitive" game like Pokemon. It just needs a real good game without wasted potential.
@@renaldisaputra91 I would suggest taking a gander at the pinned comment, but I do agree that a higher quality product with a more committed budget would do the franchise good.
Story Games for the turn based folks, World games for the Vpet folks, Survive/ novel games for the anime folks. These 3 should be the bases which should be improved on.
There's an argument there for sure, and I'll certainly continue to purchase further iterations on these. I'd just really like to see if we can't get them in a blender together, personally.
You know there's a PSP game that's an adaptation of Digimon Adventure, right? I also really just disagree with the entire premise of this video that the games should or need to resemble the anime. You really just base the entire thesis of the video on that concept, but don't bother to provide an argument for it. Why SHOULD the games emulate the anime? You take that notion as a given. I disagree with the notion, it's a notion you didn't substantiate in any way, therefore I really just spent this entire video going "why do you keep acting like a 'definitive' Digimon game should resemble the anime?" >"Digimon Survive is the worst game they've put out" and you lost me.
A lot to unpack here: 1) I mentioned the PSP game after the point you pulled out. This is why you should watch an entire video before commenting. Also I clearly never had you lol. 2) I gave a reason for my thesis at the very beginning of the video: franchise synergy ala Pokemon. In the west at least, the anime is inarguably the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, no matter what the vocal minority of V-Pet enthusiasts will have you believe. This point is further reinforced in the pinned comment, and plenty of other commenters seemed to have figured it out without me needing to spell it out like this, but you do you I guess. 3) Digimon Survive IS arguably the worst game they've put out. As a visual novel, it's already barely even a game. On top of this, the combat that's there is paper thin and piss easy. You know your comment wasn't very well thought-out, right?
@@ThrillingDuck you're treating the games like they're secondary to the anime. Like the purpose of the games is to immerse you in the world of the anime. Which isn't the case. For neither Digimon nor Pokemon. Pokemon was video games first. The anime was an adaptation of the games. The anime is secondary to the games. Your thesis in this video treats the anime as the primary medium, and the games as following in their wake. The Digimon games do not need to emulate the anime because the anime is merely an adaptation. Digimon is unique in that both the games and the anime are adaptations, and the source material is the V Pets. The anime and the games need to be judged in relation to the V Pets. The games do not need to be judged against the anime. Your entire foundation of this video is treating the anime as the Primary Medium. And it just isn't. And you do not substantiate it as being so, you just treat that viewpoint as the assumed default which does not need to be supported or defended. And it makes the entire rest of the argument in this video nonsensical. The definitive Digimon Game is the original Digimon World for the PS1. It is the truest video game adaptation of the V Pet. The suggestion that it does not qualify as being a "definitive" Digimon game because it does not resemble the anime is just ridiculous.
@@randomfox12245 Lmao okay, 1) Read the pinned comment and/or the 2 comments I have posted in the comments, which were originally the pinned comment. All 3 of these already dismantle your points and I'm not rewriting them. 2) I'm not asking for the eradication of the currently existing Digimon game styles, merely for them to take a crack at an anime-inspired style. 3) Have a nice day.
I love the Digimon World games so much, but I completely agree with what was said in the video. I’ll add that whichever creative designer they had for World 1 that made up the encounters for the npc’s that join your town.. please get them back. Next Order’s joinable npc’s were grossly underwhelming. They just.. were around, and would be like “it’s not time yet”. That’s freaking boring. Also whoever made the music and sound effects for World 1. The nature sounds brought you into the digital world. Playing the same god damn theme song for the entirety of Next Order sucks.
I enjoyed both the story and cast of Survive. I would very much like to see them in more future content. I was never all that into the Monster raising aspect. I prefer Partner Digimon have more personal relationships with you. They just need to build on that mechanic. I envision something akin to the Xenoblade trilogy as a good basis for the perfect Digimon game.
i disagree. Pokemon anime and the games are completely different. As a pokemon fan since 1998 when i was 5, i loved the anime and the Pokemon Blue and Yellow. But the anime always felt different from the games. Hell, i believe the anime and religious parents are what caused pokemon to have a shift in the vibe of pokemon. Pokemon in the anime are completely sentient. That was not the case for the early games. Pokemon went from wanting to win and be the best. To being about journeying with friends... which is cool. But they act like pokemon isnt about battles. The anime always had trainers pull out bs that isnt even mentioned by a third party in games. Like using the enviornment and whatever. Pokeballs work differently in the anime, games, and manga(the manga being more like the games). The anime basically tries to dodge that conversation a lot too. The list goes on. In the anime anybody is basically a trainer. In the games, really only the most dedicated and hardcore were trainers. I also kinda disagree with you saying digimon doesnt have a definitive game. I believe digimon has 2 definitive game types. The ones based on the keychain(the "world" games), and the ones that are basically rpg's(the "story" games)(also keep in mind the "world games on ds were called "story" games in japan. So this idea still holds true in my mind). I do agree that digimon was too experimental tho. also i disagree about the show thing. The first 2 seasons of digimon were so trash to me lol. Especially in the english dub, adding clown music in every scene cause they think american kids would lose interest if a show has too many consecutive moments of no sound but voices lol (pokemon season one was guilty of this too. But less annoying and more episodes were full of emotion.). the first 2 seasons of pokemon also had far more fights than digimon. Your cybersleuth argument, i totally agree with. well minus the part about the digimon talking. I personally dont feel digimon need to talk. Ive noticed you seem to think pokemon and digimon is defined by their anime interpretations. Both digimon and pokemon did not start with their anime. They started with their games. Both receiving manga after, THEN the anime. The anime is probably the least on the developers mind when keeping that history in mind. Both franchises also had card games which are extremely popular, before their anime releases (oops im wrong about pokemons card game releasing before the anime. But for digimon this was the case) why do you seem to think the anime is the source? it's not
There is a definitive game: Digimon Adventure for PSP It covers the first anime with novel additions and more in depth stuff It has an english patch. Great jrpg, welcoming for beginners, explains the world, mechanics and more. Try playing it!
@@GokudoBarzinho I mentioned it towards the end of the video! Fundamentally it’s exactly the idea I have in mind, but it’s not much of an actual game - tiny world, way too easy, etc. Absolutely dig the formula though.
@@ThrillingDuckwelp, being honest i beat all pokemon games spamming one move pressing A the entire time (as most casual pokemon players). So difficulty may be something not that important. It just have to feel good to play and evolve your monsters lol
As a fan of yo-kai watch(another monster collecting series) I agree main game does not need to have any real difficulty so long as you give the players actually difficult challenges optionally or for the post game(I've Alloway said the yo-kai watch games only really begin once you've beaten the final boss and seen credits(1 less so but that's because it's the first one))
I’ve made a couple of videos on my channel talking about how I want a Digimon game to be. It pulls a lot from Survive and the anime narratively while being inspired by Xenoblade in gameplay
@@rekcroom I’d love that, and yeah I’ve been sing a lot of Xenoblade inspiration pop up in the comments here. I’m not a massive Xenoblade fan so it’s interesting to me that that’s what people are gravitating towards, but I could totally see it: The expansive environments, overly large party sizes, and even aspects of the combat. Like Xenoblade 2’s combat has an unusual structure where you’re kind of building things on top of other things - at a macro level that could work SUPER well as a mechanism for incremental mid-battle digivolution like what occurs in the anime, rather than simply warp digivolving straight to your highest available form.
@@ThrillingDuck Oh totally! I didn’t even think of the progressive Digivolution part that’s smart! And I think part of why Survive and Xenoblade get associated is because XC3 came out the same day as Survive. I know that’s what happened in my mind. I played XC3 first so I was still coming off the hype when I started Survive. Xenoblade has great characters and narratives so I think it fits in really well with Digimon!
@@rekcroom Omg that's right, I'd almost forgotten. Poor Survive came out on the same day because it released late while XC3 released EARLY 😂 And yes, of course the narrative and character writing quality would be a boon to any Digimon game :)
It’s honestly wild that Pokemon and Digimon seem to have completely opposite problems in terms of their games. Pokemon started off with a naturally great formula that they have rarely strayed from, now frustrating long time fans. Digimon has never had a consistent gameplay style and fans are clamoring for a game that can satisfy a wider margin of the fanbase. This might have been mentioned in the video but I was throwing it out there before I watch it. If does get brought up in the video, yes. I agree 😅
you speaking very truth about digimon games and hope Bandai will hear you. I am fan of DMW2 and Cyber Sleuth as old player not a kid. Thanks for video! :)
I don't get why digimon games need to copy the anime to be a "definitive" digimon game, digimon's core are Digimon, that's it, not a chosen one thrope that ignores the actual non spiritual lore of the franchise or degeneration as presented in the anime. The problem of popularity comes from Bandai making 5 consecutive games with no coherent gameplay or themes, and letting the IP die for years due to how much subpar games they made. Proof of that is how the franchise nearly died until Digimon X Evolution came out, and oh surprise, it has nothing to do with the anime and has the poorest animation on the whole franchise and still was well received by the JP fandom, because the true reason Digimon is so stagnant are Bandai and Toei's obsesion with replicating Adventure and not letting the IP expand, the worst thing for digimon would be to make it repeat Adventure's formula once again. Nowadays the things that are more relevant to the franchise are the card game and videogames, and ghost game was well received thanks to departing from Adventure's formula, being set in the real world and having a more sinister atmosphere. And as a World player: Next Order is the worst World game by far, due to how grindy it is and stat heavy it is, in the OG world spending time in the gym was a time and resources sink, due to how inneficient it was outside of baby I and II, because exploring and fighting was pretty much enough to have your digimon evolve and gain stats, something borderline imposible in Next Order, due to how little skill and knowledge matter in relation to just big numbers and grinding, in world one it was and skill issue needing to farm, in Next Order is mandatory.
I see what you're saying, but you're kind of completely ignoring my point about the anime/game synergy which I feel is pretty crucial to Pokemon's success. And while Bandai does a lot of things wrong, it's hard to blame them for attempting to copy the original season when everything that doesn't (barring Tamers) is received so poorly in the west. Also Ghost Game was distinctly NOT received well in the long term. This is mostly because they decided to make it strictly episodic, but I feel it's worth pointing out. Regarding the Digimon World games I only really have experience with Decode and Next Order. I find that the way Next Order handles grinding is a double-edged sword because of how stat gains work. In Decode, the most efficient stat farming comes from the gym, which takes up way more in-game time but way less real world time - so the player feels each individual grind less but also spends less time with each Digimon because raising them eats up so much of their lifespan. In Next Order, this is inverted - optimal stat grinding takes up way less of your Digimon's lifespan but way more real world time. To me both suffer fromt he same fundamental issue, but divide the player's time up a little differently. It's too apples and oranges for me to feel one is superior to the other though. I think Next Order has the best combat hands down though. You're allowed to be hands on from the get-go without needing to waste time on the Brains stat, and Guard Order actually allows you to employ skillful timing to overcome enemies that are a little too much for you. I do agree with the insane stat requirements being an issue though.
@@ThrillingDuck The thing with the anime/game sinergy is that it just doesn't work unless you have a strong coordination to mach themes and ideas, in Pokémon those are the generations, but that's pretty much the only franchise to succefully work that way (kinda). Other than that all other similar multimedia franchises disapeared about 10 years ago and thanks to how much Toei and Bandai neglect Digimon, to me it's kinda imposible to get both anime and games work together, Ghost Game had a lot of potential due to the vital brazalet and, well, we know how well Bandai and Toei handled it's initial success, and as far as I know Ghost game had good audience, just most of us aren't kids and got bored of it quickly. On the other hand, having a Digimon Game being similar to the anime hasn't done much, the Digimon Aventure Game for the PSP sold less than Re: Digitize, and a lot of people gave Digimon a shot due to CS being a solid Game not because it felt closer to the anime, Survive got a lot of hype thanks to the previous success. For the most part people expect Digimon in their Digimon Game and solid gameplay and story, not much else really, a dark story with only Digimon could work perfectly if handled well like X Evolution, they don't need to change the formula, they need a solid product to get a minimum of quality. I also don't like NO, you say you can't recommed it because you don't like the gameplay loop, I wouldn't recommend it due to how unispired and bland it feels, the Vita version was terrible, but now it's kinda decent. I think NO biggest problem are the evolution stages, since having Adult, Perfect Ultimate as oposed to Child, Adult, Perfect makes Adult and Child Digimon quite weak in NO forcing you to grind from Rockie to Adult to Perfect to Ultimate to not die instantly in the endgame. While in World a Rockie can put a fight using healing items and an Adult can beat the whole game. IDK, but next order feels far more tedious, grindy and uninteresting, in DW I can clear almost all the file Island in one to two generations in less than 10 hours and doing barely any gym training, while in NO that's pretty much imposible unless you abuse ExE and bust stats as much as posible, while also having a lot of dead zones we're you only can walk and little more, I can't call that the better game in any single way.
@@leixalkvinay2729 Agree to disagree on all of this - especially the synergy. Digimon has plenty of constants among its themes and mechanics - you're just not crediting them. And ain't nobody is completing DW with "barely any gym training," yeah okay lmao.
Okay, I'm getting a concerning amount of "the anime is an adaptation, not the source material. The V-Pet is the source material, so your argument is invalid." Here's my rebuttal: First of all, I acknowledged the V-Pet as being the "primordial origin" of the franchise in the video, so none of this is news to me. Beyond that, the real point here is the *synergy* between show and games. I apologize for overuse of the term "source material." Truth is, I don't really care which came first, because they each initiated close enough to each other. The anime is inarguably the cultural lynchpin of the series. That's what most fans are familiar with, and certainly most western fans. I happen to live in a densely populated metropolitan area of the country and I have NEVER in my life seen anyone walking around with a Digivice or a fucking "vital bracelet." It's 2024. 99.9999999% of westerners don't care about V-Pets. Now, for those saying "the World games emulate the V-Pets, ergo they're the definitive experience," I say congratulations. If the V-Pets are all you care about or what you consider to be the modern core of the series identity, then yes: the definitive Digimon game *does* exist. Enjoy playing the 2-3 titles that emulate the V-Pet and force you to grind your progress to a screeching halt in order to raise new party members from scratch every 4-5 hours in a 20+ hour RPG. For the rest of us, Digimon World is not definitive.
@ThrillingDuck People just have more attachment to the anime. They see themselves in any chosen child or 'digidestined'. Those characters mean something to somebody! Anyway... If you wanna throw hands, you better be wearin' ur V-pet 🤓💀
@ThrillingDuck I think it's the average fan that's fond of the anime series like me. It seems the V-pet side is very vocal and are straight up savants of digimon child-rearing 🤷♂️ 'stay away from my child' lol 😆
@@ThrillingDuckso nearing the end of your video, based on what you want from a digimon game is exactly why Survive can't be a good game, the mechanics you want don't make for good gameplay also the World ala world 1/next order style stick closest to the source material, because they play like a vpet in game format. Also ofc the pokemon games feel definitive, THEY'RE the source material in that series.
@@billythenarwhal1579 Ok I’m not even bothering with the source material “argument” - I already covered that in the very comment you’re responding to. “The mechanics I want don’t make for good gameplay” - where are you getting this from? Survive wasn’t bad because the mechanics were bad - it was bad because the combat encounters were under-designed to high hell since it was really a visual novel. The mechanics were the one thing I liked about the combat.
imo it just seems like Digimon games aren't for you. That's honestly why Digimon doesn't NEED a definitive game. There's a game series for just about everyone. If you don't like the world games don't play them. If the Story games are more of your jam than play that. The main issue with Digimon games is how Bandai doesn't market them or have a team that can work on multiple games. We've gotten 2 or 3 Dragon Ball games since the next Story game was announced. Bandai is more focused on the arena fighters.
I do agree with a lot of your points on Digimon World: Next Order, but I actually really like the system of your Digimon dying and having to start from scratch with a new Digimon. Firstly, this system encourages you to make the absolute most of your time once you’ve reached the champion, ultimate, or mega stage depending on how early you are in the game. Once you’ve reached your preferred stage, you can go for the objectives that are reachable at your level and find areas that you can go back to when you’re stronger. Going for the objective and recruiting certain digimon to your village with also make raising your digimon much easier when it dies and returns to its baby form, creating a satisfying feedback loop. Secondly, if you spend your money on the right things you can significantly increase the effects of the gym training on your digimon, making it so you’ll never have to go out and fight actual digimon to train. For example, after you’ve recruited Seraphimon, which can be done fairly early and easily, you can spend money to buy a certain food item he sells, and this will extremely increase your gains from training at the gym, making it a breeze to get mega-level Digimon stats and breeze through any competition you come across, as well as getting tbe stats you want for a particular evolution. This process will save precious time and get you very strong partner Digimon. You can also spend money to upgrade your gym’s equipment, as well as finding materials to upgrade your facilities as a whole, increasing training gains even further. This is to say, don’t grind on wild digimon, as using the gym can be MUCH more efficient. Thirdly, as you raise more and more Digimon, your Tamer Level will increase. As your Tamer Level increases, you will get increasing amounts of skill points which you can spend on various skills to make the raising process more efficient, such as; extending your Digimon’s lifespan, increasing training gains, increasing stats gained from evolving, etc. As your Tamer Level increases, you will also increase the amount of stats that are passed down from your previous Digimon to your current one. This is just what I can think of at the moment, but I really like the growth and rebirth systems for these reasons, as well as being able to raise all different sorts of Digimon, some that I may not have even expected to be raising.
So, I'm aware of all of these mechanics, but I do want to offer some counterpoints: 1) There are plenty of RPGs with time management aspects that don't require you to accept complete erasure of your characters' progression (Persona, FE Three Houses, etc), so I don't really feel like this tradeoff with mortality is worth it. The town-building is a satisfying loop, but the mortality is completely divorced from it. The mere fact that you have built in reasons to return to the town (collecting daily rewards, emptying your pockets of materials, etc) basically nullifies the value of the time management aspect anyway. Games like Etrian Odyssey have a very similar loop except, again, your characters don't just periodically die and make you grind them up from scratch. Digimon World's mortality mechanic isn't as inextricable a part of the loop as you think it is. 2) Literally everyone brings this point up and I tell them all the same thing: Improved gym equipment and food can help increase fundamental stat gains when those activities are performed, but in Next Order in particular, stat requirements are so high that these things barely put a dent in the grinding - they just make it a little easier to reach specific digivolution thresholds. You're also objectively incorrect about gym training efficiency and anyone in the comments would back me up on this - in Next Order specifically, ideal grinding comes from specific battles at specific stages. This is a known thing, look it up. You get far higher stat growths, in every stat simultaneously, and for exponentially less of your Digimon's lifespan. It takes far more real world time, but far less of your Digimon's lifespan. You probably thought the gym was better because you didn't know which Digimon to fight when, which is on the game, not you. It's bad design. 3) Again, I was aware of all this, but my counter argument is the same as in point 1: These things give you a little boost to make thresholds easier to hit, but they have an EXTREMELY minimal effect on cutting down grinding for the stats you need.
To be fair, the dissonance between the anime and the games can be explained. In the anime, they introduced the new concepts of evolution that deviates from the original Digimon lore. Original Digimon lore is based on the concept of virtual pets, and these pets evolve based on the level of care, effort and attention paid by the tamer to their pet partner. If you take good care of it, it evolves into a stronger form. If you treat it badly, you get a slime (literally). And that evolution is permanent, it cannot be reversed until your Digimon passes away and reincarnates into a Digi-egg again. But in the anime, they introduced the concept of using Digivices and friendship-bond that allows Digimon to temporarily transform into stronger forms. Even the show acknowledges it, as many of the other supporting characters who are Digimon have a concept of current evolution stage, they take time and effort to evolve into higher stages and cannot revert back to a younger evolution stage. These ‘wild’ Digimon are surprised when they see the chosen children Digimon having such temporary boosts in power and able to revert back to a younger form. The evolution lines are also generally linear, Agumon doesn’t evolve into a slime (there are some exceptions like Skullgreymon) As to why the anime decided to introduce an evolution mechanic that is so different from the original lore. My guess is that it makes for a good storytelling, friendship, bonds and trust are good themes that drive a show and character development. It also makes it easier to be attached to cute main characters since they revert back to younger forms which are cuter. And maybe more toys to be sold. So with this dissonance created, the problem comes when the games decide to stick to the original lore, the concept of evolution being permanent and based on care, effort and attention. The gameplay then becomes so different from the anime. So Digimon fans who are fans because they watched the anime first, will find it so hard to connect. While Digimon fans who started from the virtual pet brick devices first, like the virtual pet concept of gameplay. I don’t think there is a way to mend that dissonance. One way to appease the Digimon fans who enjoy the anime’s concept of bond and friendship giving rise to temporary evolution is to have a game with such a mechanic. There was one such game, Digimon Adventure PSP was a very good title that is underrated. They should do a refresh of that title and make a series for each of the anime titles in my opinion. Imagine games where you play through Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers etc. So one way to allow the dissonance to exist and the lore to be consistent is to have two types of games. One with the virtual pet mechanic and one with the Digivice mechanic (temporary evolution). And admittedly, there haven’t been many game titles in the latter category.
Yeah, these are all good points. Honestly I think the best way to mend the dissonance would just be to create a proper third pillar that emulates the anime's lore more faithfully. Survive could even be the first in that pillar, provided its hypothetical followups are more ambitious than a friggin visual novel.
@@ThrillingDuck yeah. The closest thing to having gameplay similar to the anime is the Digivice Toy itself. The Digivice COLOR does carry the anime gameplay mechanics. But hopefully they try to expand this concept to a full proper title like the Digimon Adventure PSP game. Or better still, have a whole new story line that has the same Digivice mechanic and maybe the characters are connected to the anime somehow.
@@ThrillingDuck oh you should! It is great if you can get yours hands on one of those. I am doing a let’s play series on it, but probably only publishing in Jan 2025 cos of the amount of backlog. 😅
I think on the flip side of this is that due to Digimon not having a 100% distinct identity, each medium of Digimon can have different things that draw people into them, and this goes for the games too. I took a long break from Digimon and jumped back into it with Cyber Sleuth as it was on the Vita and I needed something to scratch that Persona itch. I loved that it felt like a MegaTen esque story as well. I also got a few of the V-pets and the Vital Bracelet and jumped into those, and those also feel very different in a good way. At the end of the day, there is just more to the franchise overall. I can agree that the anime is the mainstream cornerstone, and the experiences of trying to find something similar is annoying. However, I do not think Digimon holds itself to one identity. The card game currently has a webtoon and a web novel now because of how it got popular. It's more subjective to what each person wants from digimon I think is what I am trying to get at if that makes sense. edit: I'd also like to point out that it's also really weird that there are separate game series but a shared continuity with some of the World/Story games sharing characters, or the old WonderSwan games that are in a weird continuity with the anime itself.
I think they did a great job on story on cyber sleuth and survive (Survive being my favorite) But man they sure have problems deciding gameplay for a game
Also, I'm glad to know you share my thoughts on Survive's lack of being the "Devil Survivor" entry to the Digimon franchise. The gameplay really does hold it back.
Dunno if I'm late to the party with this but there's a PSP game that follows season 1 of adventure and War Games. It's in Japanese but has a full English Patch. It's seriously awesome, check it out if you haven't already.
I mentioned it very briefly towards the end (without showing footage, so everyone seems to have missed the moment lol). I'm aware of it and love the idea - it just seems to be a little lacking in execution from what I've seen online (overly stringent party system, tiny linear game world, short and lacking in content, too easy, etc).
Digimon Story games are the definitive version of Digimon. I wasn’t feeling it with Next Order and Survive. Generally feeling I’m tired of solely using Omnimon everything. Imo they should focus on the Olympo XIII, Seven Deadly Digimon and the Royal Knights, if not make a new group entirely. Everything Digimon game, peaked with Digimon Story Dawn/Dusk and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. And they should aim as to always make their games like that imo to be able to properly compete. Hope the next Digimon Story is similar to Dawn and Dusk if it’s not a remake.
I think the simple solution would be to just do the persona thing. Group of kids have partners, player character has like a digimon that can turn into any digimon somehow
I actually like the digimon game's variety of game genere. Since Survive(currently playing) is a dark and nice strategy game with a good story and side routes. Cyber sleuth is probably the best for beginners for digimon I should know since it's the first I played. Good story,lots of digimon and location.
@@BlueKnight931 I enjoy the variety as well! I just think it would be cool if they could put all 3 of these pillars in a blender and make something that fully captures the show’s essence (while not being a visual novel).
I feel like a blend of Survive and World is what is needed. At least that is how I've built my TTRPG for Digimon. Making the life-cycle the price you pay for digivolution to higher stages; making it a tense resource management system that can appeal to the survival aspect. Granted that is just meshing the anime and the V-Pet... but that is literally what Digimon is anyway. The mesh of those principles. Fundamentally it should be a conversation between those different ways of creating a sense of bonding and affection. If you don't want to raise Digimon, to bond with them, maybe the anime is just the better option for you.
@@Twilord_ I basically agree with this, except for the very last part - I think that’s a bit reductive. I feel a lot more attached to my Cyber Sleuth Digimon even though I have a bazillion of them because I can actually invest in them without them dying. I’m actually fine with literally every aspect of raising in Digimon World (feeding, crapping, even training somewhat) except for the perma-death mechanic.
@@ThrillingDuck Sorry if that seemed that way, might have been a bit of an knee-jerk response. I just worry about accidentally throwing out some of the most original and potentially fascinating concepts, after-all it was the outlandish success of the V-Pet design philosophy that ever even lead to Digimon getting so much additional content in both home-console and television formats; and then the anime itself was grounded in a more metaphorical conversion of the care and development aspects (the heart of the V-Pets) into self-care and personal-development. My ideal would be to have life-cycles that are cut into every time you Digivolve, meaning that at lower-levels Champion is a treat, but at higher levels you've lengthened your Digimon's life-cycle enough that Mega now take that role instead. Ideally combined with a "days" system not unlike Persona or Three Houses, with it taking a certain amount of days before you can Digivolve to various ranks again, but without them regressing in terms of the level of the actual Rookie. That would also let you can control their diets over weeks and months which would help guide their stat-growth. My TTRPG has three meals a day, but for a game you could probably get away with just one. I think if you spread that cost across a team of partnered Digimon you'd get all the advantages and none of the draw-backs, while also being forced to explore different party compositions which can only be a good thing when you have a cast of creatures as wide as Digimon allows and requires. (My TTRPG also has a Personality-Crest system that needs to be triggered when the level and days requirements are met in order to acquire new evolutions, but I don't know how you'd do that for a regular RPG.)
While I think most of your points have merit, I disagree wholeheartedly on your opinion on World's evolution mechanic. I really, really, really love the psuedo-vpet formula and find the resulting emergent peak-and-valley gameplay tempo really engaging and fresh in a world of smooth progression. That said, I do really agree World isn't a good "definitive digimon experience". What Digimon really needs is just a good, well-funded game made specifically to include the core points of the Digimon formula. Also the World ExE evolution only working when you and both your digimon are the best friends ever, giving you a godlike power boost, while blasting the opening theme is the most anime thing in any of the games and you know it.
100% agree on the handling of ExE lol - in fact I'd love for that mechanic to return (complete with faux anime OP lol) in every future Digimon game. I've also seen in the comments here that you're far from alone in your attachment to Digimon World's V-Pet style evolution and mortality mechanics, and I respect that. The reason I dislike it is because I'm a gamer first and a V-Pet guy never, and when looking at its integration into World from a game design standpoint, I don't feel like it's well-integrated into the gameplay loop, which makes it come off as a drawn out, periodic nuisance. But if the act of grinding them back up from scratch has intrinsic value to you, then more power to you! Honestly, I envy you lol, because I love just about everything else that Decode and Next Order do.
You perfectly nailed explaining why Digimon Survive was such a massive letdown, because I too DEFINITELY thought it was finally going to be a true and definitive Digimon title... They really could've had this one in the bag, (and I'm sure Survive's development hell did not help it one bit-) but no, ofc, leave it to Bamco to screw it up. I'm a HUGE fan of Pokémon and Digimon both, and it's always made me upset that Digimon has never gotten to the global popularity that Pokémon has (at least in the games department) because it 100% deserves it. For anyone here looking into hopping into a Digimon game for the first time, I also gotta agree that the Cyber Sleuth duology is gonna be your best bet. They absolutely aren't perfect (and not even English dubbed along with Survive, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, BANDAI-), but they're at least simple enough for first timers and a blast to play.
I fell that the cyber sleuth games and survive was the closest we got to a good consistent story, so they were on the right path, just needed for more interactions between the protagonists and their digimon partners. The problem feels more 50/50, where there doesn't seem to be a agreed on upon standard for what the gameplay should be every time, so we either lack the story, or the gameplay is weak.
To me, the definitive genre is still the v-pet sim that Digimon World 1 has. Even today, i think this game brings the most close that we have to travel around the digiworld. Of course the game has his issues, but his atmosphere is something that they couldn't replicate on redigitize and next order. My hopes are for a new digimon world game!
I think an interesting game would be one where you controller your human/1 Digimon partner. Then you travel around the digital world/human world (depending on story) and meet other gamers who you can recruit (I.e. Baldurs gate style) and that’s how you can “collect them all”. In battle you control the other tamers Digimon mechanically but story wise the tamer chooses actions. You can also recruit wild Digimon by completing some by some kind of quest that you can then call on them in future battles. I don’t know what the story would be like but I feel like that would hit more of the shows feel.
Survive was so close to being it. The hype was so strong. If it had been a Fire Emblem style RPG as the focus instead of a visual novel, I think it could have been the one that finally did it. The RPGs before just never really hit at the level it needed to. All the games are just missing something IMO, down to Survive being a visual novel and missing the hype train as a result.
if Bandai Namco want commercial success then yes 100% they need to and should have been basing the games on the anime. Despite their roots in the vpets, that is such a niche market (said as someone part of that niche) What a regular joe in the street thinks of a franchise IS the franchise, not what the dedicated lore junkies say it is. For example I’m a huge Comic fan, I know all these little details and contradictions that are not in, say, the Batman films. like all the times Batman has used a gun! But The Nolan movies cemented no guns as a cornerstone of Batman in the larger public consciousness, so that IS who Batman is. All this to say as a fan of the vpets roots of the Digimon World games, it’s not what most people think of when they think Digimon since the Anime is what they fondly remember. It’s the same reason most kids struggled with the first Digimon World because they were expecting Pokemon but in the world they loved from the anime. I hope there is always experimentation in the Digimon Franchise but not at the expense of making a game that will resonate with a wider audience first. That’s the only way to ensure the longevity of Digimon. Love all three games but you definitely captured what keeps each from being great.
@@Cosmicillustrator I think “no guns” may even go further back than that (for me for example, it stems from BTAS), but just in general, hard, hard, HARD yes to all of this. Well put.
Digimon was my show
But hou have
Adventure psp
Wonderswan games for 02 and tamers
One Savers game for ps2
And one 3ds game for Appli monster
There are anime games
Batman didn't use guns at all in the burton movies or the animated series.
@@billyboleson2830 I know but I feel like The Dark Knight was when that concept was at its cultural peak for it to reach the most people
I made my niece, who has never seen anything about Digimon, play Digimon Survive, she loved it in a way that I can barely describe, she was so excited when Agumon evolved the first time she jumped out, and she cried so much when one of the character died, she stopped for a while because of that, but already started playing again
This is wholesome lol, thanks for sharing!
How old is she? Don't think that game is for kids.
She seems young dude Digimon survive is not for kids
Digimon is a niche. Definitely not for everyone
@@hebert2129 did she like it?
In regards to the lack synergy between the show and games:
As some commenters pointed out, the anime isn't the source material, but a adaption, and very loose one at that.
And even if the anime is arguably the face of the franchise, it doesn't have a definitive style. Most seasons/series share basic elements and tropes, like the partnership between a single human and digimon, and their evolutions being a temporary; everything else changes dramatically. One series had the group travel between worlds freely. One series was about how there was a culture split between "human" digimon and "beast" digimon, despite the fact that all digimon can flip-flop between them. Even the important things likes the life-death-rebirth cycle, and species/kingdom type systems are just a optional and a not a hard rule of digimon lore.
Bandai and Toei are rarely on the same page, as each one is just trying to do whatever, whenever. For there to be any kind of synergy, either Toei needs to just make in adaption of one of the games or Bandai-Namco needs to brainstorm with Toei.
The very constants you pointed out are all they really need in order for there to be some synergy, I feel. The anime DOES change some rules from season to season, but broadly speaking certain elements carry over consistently.
Its just the anime should be the game is base from because people didn't play tamgotchi also digivolution in anime is cool I wish they made evolution like the anime in story games like just make a evolution a system in the game
@@tenkuken7168there is the Digimon Adventure game for PSP and it is very very good
@@tenkuken7168 what? digivolution in anime is cool? The digivolution in anime is basically a magical girl transformation with a badass soundtrack 😂, if you want your monster to evolve to the same monster every time just play pokemon stop asking digimon to become pokemon
I think the main issue is that people will understandably want the huge number of digimon available but that doesn't quite work with how the show portrays them.
Yeah, I acknowledge that there's a bit of an inherent conflict there, but others here have concocted few pretty elegant solutions - namely allowing party members' Digimon to revert to canon Rookie forms for cutscenes, while granting robust access to the usual branching evolution trees for gameplay. I think that's a pretty sock solid middle ground that would allow players to "collect em all" while still allowing a story for Digimon as actual characters :)
@@ThrillingDuck There are always ways to solve a problem, its just up to the person (persons in bandai's case...) to put their mind to it.
You could have say 8 options for partner Digimon, then a Data, Vaccine, Virus route to champion, a Data, Vaccine, Virus route to Ultimate, same for Mega and beyond mega.
This would lead to roughly 968 possible evolutions which can be filled with various Digimon and even overlap in places if that's too many.
So all the Digimon you want available, but still a partner system where the actions of the Tamer direct the growth of the partner.
@@FireShadow210 That still means it's hard to do well. I'm sure there wouldn't be like 900 vas but it would be hard to have those digimon be involved in a story
Why not just do a sorta mix between redigitized with how you train digimons Stats (but with no limit to time)
I guess the card game took that spot
@@mrmeow2297 Lol
And Bandai is ruining all again by launching a 4th TCG to compete with it.
@@Zero_Unitoh well
Theres a card game?
Yea it came out a few years ago. Its got like 17 core sets now. Its pretty cheap to get into.@@TheReZisTLust
While I do agree that the franchise doesn't have a "core" video game series, I do believe that the "Story" and "World" games work the best. They at least offer gameplay that can appeal to either side of the fan base.
I feel that way too regarding what currently exists! I just wish we could get an even more ideal happy medium is all.
It’s a crime that Digimon isn’t as big as Pokémon or Yugioh is merchandise wise.
@@scarvello Legit, Digimon merch in the west basically doesn’t even exist out in the wild.
I hear the card game is fairly popular now, so if they developed an online client for Steam and consoles like Master Duel then that could go a great way in increasing Digimon’s mass appeal.
I think Survive wouldve been hailed as the ultimate Digimon game had they not screwed up one thing.
The marketting.
Bamco marketted the game HARD as a Strategy RPG, when thats not what it is. Its a VN with Strategy game elements.
Had Bamco actually advertised it like "you get to experience your own digimon anime" it probably wouldve sold WAY more copies.
Clearer marketing definitely would have helped fan expectations, but tbh I would still have complained about the choice to lean into VN over strategy RPG regardless. VNs are just sort of the lowest form of game design.
Survive would have been absolutely goated had it had more/better gameplay. Think open world exploration and more refined battle system.
That said I understand why it didn't happen. Such a game was absolutely not going to get that budget. I'm not sure if it did well enough to explore a possible sequel that will do that but I hope it will. Most fans understand what the game is and what it tried to do and praise it, as it deserves. It is very rare to get that phenomenal story telling in videogames these days. Imagine Survive's story plus Cyber Sleuth's gameplay. Like I said, let's hope it will happen.
The strategy rpg was extremely lackluster anyway being literally only elemental weakness and positional damage. They definitely should have just stuck to making it a good VN that could maybe hit heights like Higurashi.
Hi! As a professional translator who has worked for an author on one visual novel in my career, I don't even feel the marketing itself was bad. I think a huge aspect of the marketing simply got lost in translation.
The first issue being that Japanese doesn't really have a word for "Visual Novel". They're just "games" like any other. The closest thing you might get is "Adventure Game", based on old text-RPG style games like Wizardry, but some games we classify as Visual Novels in English wouldn't really fit that description either (including Digimon Survive), so it's not 1:1. Some of the oldest and most popular VNs by VN pioneers such as Leaf (To Heart, Comic Party, Utawarerumono) were classified as RPG gamesーUtawarerumono is even an SRPG game like Digimon Surviveーso it was entirely appropriate to call this an SRPG based on past precedence. Survive is standing in a vast field of VN games with rich stories and kinda simple, cheap, and/or infrequent gameplay loops.
Second, I followed the marketing in Japan pretty closely. There were no false pretenses about what this game was intended to be. Whether trailers, interviews with creative staff, or the official website, even before the massive move of studios, this game was said to be a story-driven experience with a heavy focus on dialogue choices, and they constantly put emphasis on this. The most we got out of SRPG-specific gameplay was a single screenshot for ages, and then we got one interview describing the SRPG elements specifically, and one trailer that focused on it as well. My personal guess is that English-language gaming news sites reported on the SRPG gameplay more exclusively, and/or a lot of gamers in the West don't see VNs as true "games", so they had a harder time seeing the VN elements as true "gameplay" and leaned on discussing the SRPG content more, placing unrealistic hopes on the game from the start.
It's truly a shame. As a VN, Survive is spectacular, and fans in Japan didn't have the same negative reaction English-speaking fans did regarding gameplay. I honestly feel VN games get an undeservedly negative rep in the West. Unless you're diving into actual VN-loving indie niches, you do not see any game companies releasing English-original VN games, so it's more of a Japanese-only genre. That alone is probably half responsible for the sudden whiplash felt by so many English-speaking fans who expected something more akin to at least Fire Emblem, but got something more along the lines of most late night anime spin-off games, or even OG Utawarerumono.
@@ThrillingDuck - Speak for yourself. I translated a VN for an author over the course of 2 Years while he was working on it and the complexity of the Princess Maker-like gameplay made my head spin. Some of the most intimidatingly complex games I've played have been VN games, or games with complex VN-inspired social management elements. Survive itself isn't anywhere near the highest point of this scale of complexity, but I think you're selling the VN genre as a whole pretty short here.
I always said this, the Atlus team who mmade Persona should work on a Digimon game. Both have varity of casts, parallel deminsions, Digimons and Personas, dark theme, adult jokes...etc
@@killingspeerx Yeah I’m seeing a lot of “let’s get a Persona-style Digimon game” (aside from just the art style), and I couldn’t agree more. It would just fit too perfectly. Party member Personas even evolve with enough Confidant, like what??
I think the main problem comes with the fact that Digimon is essentially a Tamagotchi spin off. How many times do you see people talking or praising Tamagotchi games for actual consoles? People only talk about the little portable pet simulators, and I guess Digimon falls under that same thing, plus the fact that the name of the franchise makes people think that this will be a Pokemon experience, when it's not.
I'm sad they haven't ever fixed the core problems in 20 years... They keep fumbling when the potential of the IP is huge
I have to agree. Despite my many, many problems with the state of modern Pokemon, one big advantage they have over their closest competitors is their consistency. People have a clear and consistent vision of what a mainline Pokemon experience should be, and when they experiment in a way that veers too far off from that vision, it's clearly marketed as a spinoff.
Whatever we might say about the modern Pokemon games, most of us still love that core formula and want to see it be continuously refined. Digimon doesn't have that. I appreciate their willingness to experiment, but I think it's just as important to refine what you already have, and Digimon as a franchise doesn't get to spend much time doing that.
@@dood3530 I completely understand this take - my issue is that I feel like they don’t even have a formula worth iterating on right now. The Digimon Story titles are the closest thing to that, and there’s definitely clear room for improvement there, but it’ll never be “definitive” Digimon for me by the criteria I laid out.
@@ThrillingDuck Oh definitely, I didn't mean to imply that one of the recent games should be the definitive game. I was just saying that the series does so much experimentation for its own sake, yet they haven't focused on getting a definitive "mainline" experience to keep everything grounded.
I don't buy this given Pokemon fans find a dumb reason to be mad every release
@@philbuttler3427 I’d hardly call the highest grossing franchise in the world constantly putting out buggy unfinished trash a stupid complaint. That said, each release seems to outsell the last, so the complainers clearly aren’t voting with their wallets lol.
@@ThrillingDuck no, you see, that's a valid complaint, but pokémon fans do find dumb reasons to be mad at every release. like new pokémon designs being too unoriginal, or too character-ified, or not having enough presence, etc. and then saying 'therefore it's bad' instead of 'that's why i don't like it'. or the story 'not having stakes' or characters 'not being good' and then instead of providing an actual critique of the writing, providing reasons why they subjectively dislike the character/plot and then comparing it to something they perceive as 'much better' when it's actually of the same or worse quality and they've been nostalgia blinded. or getting genuinely heated about the typing assigned to pokémon, which is???? so strange to me????????
and! even with your very valid complaints, there are some fans who take it ABIT too far, where they flame modern fans who like the games despite the bugs, when there are still valid reasons to like the modern games? like, scarvi might be a laggy buggy mess, but i can clearly tell that the team behind it really did try! the characters, the story and the attempts at teambuilding (especially in the indigo disk) all have a lot of heart put into them, and for that i can see why some would love the game for it! heck, scarvi is probably top 5 in the franchise for me? something like that.
...what was i talking about again? oh right, yeah so. tl;dr while there are valid complaints about new pokémon games, a lot of fans like to dogpile the games with terrible criticisms ngl.
I’ve always believed that the way Persona handle their games would translate to Digimon almost perfectly, especially the social sim aspect, social bonds between Tamers affecting what Digimon their partners can evolve into just sounds cool.
This way it also feels closer to the actual show with having actual Digidestined Party Members. The Player can switch between different Digimon as well but will still have a main partner Digimon.
Joker to Arsene, Tai to Agumon. But they still have a small rag tag group of Digimon to choose from.
@@chasedownall6492 Been seeing this Persona idea a lot in these comments and I love it so so much. Cmon Bandai.
Jesus christ, please dont. Tai to Agumon is NOT Joker to insert random Persona here.
@@JayceCH. Huh? Arsene is literally Joker's main Persona.
I don't mind the story of Cyber Sleuth being human world focused but they definitely should have had your partner digimon be a character that talks and does things since they have you pick one of 3 rookies at the start anyway. They can get around having to account for what they're digivolved into by having them degenerate in between battles since they're a human's partner digimon. I also wish there was a bit more interaction with digimon in the Farm like the DS world games had a bit of.
I didn't *not* enjoy Survive but I would have liked it more if they just stuck with their guns and went all the way in making it a high quality VN instead of what we got with the pretty mid SRPG gameplay that ended up feeling like something I had to slog through for more of the story. It's basically structured like a VN anyway.
Never grew up with the PS1 World games, so I'm basically all in agreement with what you said about Next Order.
I'm really hoping they're able to pull together the best of all they got with how long that next story game's been cooking. Survive was supposed to release in the meantime and hold us over, but it's been 2 years since then, and there's no real word on the Story game other than it's not dead yet. Fingers crossed for Digimoncon 2025.
Tbh I'd probably have enjoyed Survive even less if there had been no combat at all, but I reeeeeeally don't like VNs (barring Ace Attorney), so that's a personal taste thing haha. Agree with pretty much everything else though :)
my only problem with Cyber Sleuth was level design. Kinda hope that it was like Digimon World 1, 3 and Next Order.
Even up till now, my favorite digimon game is Digimon World DS because of the farm aspect! I also liked that we get to choose 1 of 3 like pokemon at the start!
I think the problem here is you're thinking of the anime as THE inspiration/source material for digimon games when, in reality, the inspiration/source material for the games AND the anime IS THE VITRUAL PETS! The vpets don't talk. They don't de-digivolve. You have to work on certain stats for them to digivolve into certain forms. The way you raise digimon in the games is the video game version of what happens with the virtual pets. Bandai focuses on this because the vpets are still really popular in Japan, so they follow that formula.
Ps. I read the comment you left about knowing about vpets.... ggs. Lol
@@DrowningArrows Yeah I didn’t realize just how popular the V-Pets still apparently are abroad. But I mean yeah, you saw the rest of the pinned comment. Next Order and its predecessors are there for the fans who are most invested in that side of the franchise :)
@@DrowningArrows Bro doesnt know Digimon.
Honestly something like Survive was on the right track. Tone down the amount VN, increase the roleplaying, put it into a digital world, and it can lean closer to something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. Survive was just a few steps to being *it*.
@@BestgirlJordanfish Hard agree. The recipe was right but the ingredient ratios were all off.
@@ThrillingDuck Bro that game sucks it should've been a anime or a Manga they scammed us😂😂
@@Retro-Design-4033that game was amazing what are you talking about
@@yo-kaikid1925 how was it Amazon it barely had gameplay don't get me wrong the gameplay was good but they should capped digimon world 3 style with the new combat system they put in the game. It's the sad truth people wanted a rpg but instead they got a comic book😔
@@Retro-Design-4033 you know visual novels are not only a genre but a very popular one right? its not their fault people thought they were getting a game they didn’t advertise lol. just because you aren’t a fan of the genre doesn’t mean the game is bad it only means its not the game for you. i and many people really liked the game because we enjoy the genre and series.
I do think Story & World are the two "main" series since they have the most consistent of gameplay among generations, while Survive is, as they put it, something on the side. But I can see why it's hard to rec a game to start with in regards to Digimon.
@@rikajougasaki3296 I definitely see Story and World as the 2 pillars - I just find it hard to label either as truly “definitive” experiences.
Digimon has the Sonic problem where every game, show, or story is different and whatever you started with is what you think the franchise should be like. You started with SA1? You probably want hub worlds and NPCs. You started with Digimon World? You probably want virtual pet mechanics. You watched AoStH/SatAM? You probably want a lighthearted/serious story. You watched Digimon Tamers/Frontiers/02? You probably want a story set primarily in the real world/digital world/both worlds in equal measure. The franchises have both been so many different things at different times that ironically not having a cohesive identity is in fact part of their identity
@@metalsonic8888 This is true, but I still think the series has decently consistent constants that can be a guiding star - especially among the anime seasons. The only real outliers with regard to show structure and mechanics of digivolution are Frontier and Fusion. Everything else functions more or less the same, and only the set dressing changes.
@@ThrillingDuck Yes and no.
I know your thesis statement is more or less that the anime should be what the games try to imitate, but if you disagree with that then there's no reason why that bit of mostly consistent worldbuilding (but not completely consistent by your own admission) within it's own medium should be applied to the games. Which is really what my comment was about rather than disagreement with the conclusions you drew from this starting point. You grew up watching Digimon on Fox Kids and so you think the Digital World should look like it does there and that Digivolution mechanics should match that, but I'm pretty confident that there are more examples of things not working like that in the franchise than there are examples that do. Someone starting with a different story might have radically different ideas about what the franchise should focus on.
Like me for example. Rather than a game that closely matches the show, I want a show that follows the mechanics of Digimon World/virtual pets. I want the heroes to have to grapple with the deaths of their friends. With the weakness they are thrust back into time and again after tasting power. I want them to experience the desperation of trying to become stronger to survive and having to balance that with caring for their very fleeting friends. To have a dark digivolution episode where a partner is pushed too hard like when Agumon became SkullGreymon, but instead of things going back to normal at the end of the episode that partner has to be put down to stop its rampage. A show where progress is measured in graves, but the heroes struggle to form bonds and friendships despite that. And also sometimes the digimon should shit on the floor.
@@metalsonic8888 Okay, first of all, I absolutely love your second paragraph. I had never even thought of that, but I think it would make for a really neat season!
That said, I think you’re going a little too far in your first paragraph insofar as you’re really blowing the inconsistency waaaaaay out of proportion. There’s no “by my own admission” here - I admitted that Frontier and Fusion are outliers. That’s it. That still leaves us with Adventure, 02, Tamers, Data Squad, Adventure 2020, and Ghost Game aaaaaall abiding by the same general world and rules - a SIGNIFICANT majority. And even the outliers still share the general vibe and aesthetic of the Digital World with the other seasons. The existence of an outlying minority doesn’t do ANYTHING to invalidate the significant majority.
@@ThrillingDuck Again, you are talking about the anime specifically being mostly consistent. Which it is. It is not consistent with other aspects of the franchise such as the games. This is a key point in your video. And I don't know what happens in the various manga or light novels or audio dramas or whatever, but I know that things like X-Antibodies and Appmon exist somewhere which don't fit that mold either. Taken as a whole with all parts equal rather than putting the anime on a pedestal, there are more parts that are unlike the anime's commonalities than there are parts like it. Maybe I am exaggerating how common this could be, but I still think it is not that unlikely that people out there would pick different aspects of the franchise to identify as its core identity than the ones you chose if their intro to digimon was, say, Digimon World 3 or even Cyber Sleuth.
@@metalsonic8888 I see what you’re saying, but I’d argue that the anime IS the cultural lynchpin of the franchise in the west. I don’t imagine the demographic of players who came to Digimon through the games first is very large. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect they’re a significant minority, hence my thesis that the anime should be the central inspiration. Well that and the benefit of general franchise synergy it would create. Again, you’re missing my point that the existence of a minority of outliers (in this case people introduced to the franchise via old PS1 games and nothing else) does not invalidate the consistency that the franchise does have, or the notion that the aspect the majority of fans are familiar with and attached to (the anime) should lead the direction of the games.
I do agree that there are similarities to Sonic’s situation, but again, as the anime is the cultural lynchpin here - and IT is very consistent - it seems like there’s an obvious point of reference that 90%+ of fans could gravitate towards and understand. Even Sonic maintains constants like an emphasis on speed and the presence of his supporting cast. Are you saying Sonic has no identity just because he’s broken the mold in the past?
Maybe they do feel like they're working in Pokemon's shadow, but I feel like that's their opportunity to success. There's no special magic to modern Pokemon regions, the routes are often just grasslands and caves that you could find in any game. But the Digital World can be literally anything. It can have a fantasy setting, it can be a relaxing beach resort or the cold depths of outer space, it can be North Dakota. USE IT.
Yeah... I've been saying this for quite a while, I wish they made a AAA Digimon game while actually striving to make an AMAZING game. It has everything to blow away Pokémon mainline games!
You literally dont know anything about Digimon do you? Pokemon has done that and the beach resort btw.
I think what most people forget is that Digimon Survive was never meant to be mainly a rpg, the devs told us from the start (and kept telling us) that it was MOSTLY a visual novel with a lil bit of game included.
What I tell anyone who goes way too hard in the complaints of this is.
"My brother in Jesmon, you bought a book."
Maybe I'm biased because I'm a huge VN fan, idk
@@IcarusOOT I understand this perspective, and I’ve seen it before. I just think it’s also important to acknowledge that VNs are not a super popular genre, especially in a franchise often associated with combat, even among the V-Pets.
I respect that Survive did what it set out to do, but the decision was weird enough that I’m inclined to levy the criticism I have for it as a game regardless.
Ironically, I think Fusion would have been prime time to release a game that bridged the discrepancies between games and anime. Fusion’s story felt like a cross (pun not intended) between World gameplay and a traditional Digimon story, having a human tamer exploring the Digital World, recruiting different Digimon, while maintaining a special relationship with a single Digimon that served as the backbone of the protagonist’s fighting force. That would have made for a great game.
@@jasperjavillo686 I’ve always felt that Fusion had the most video-games-ass premise of any season, down to the human protag literally collecting Digimon for his “army,” as well as a bunch of mcguffins (the Code Crowns). Ironically, Fusion did receive a game in the Story series which was probably the most directly faithful adaptation of an anime season the series ever received, but we never got it here in the west.
this a digimon game that allows you to collect a force of digimon but with a set partner digimon to grow attached to and battling other digimon armys
As an outsider to the Digimon franchise and still never really getting it
I think the main issue is that digimon as a brand, doesn't have a definitive core identity that they can latch to and develop from
Every instance of the franchise seems to be a completely different take from the rest, even within the same sub series like Digimon World, each game being different
Meanwhile, Pokemon has been really smart by having a very strong identity with the mainline games that the different sub series have been able to follow. The anime, the games, the manga, the card game, even the spinoffs have managed to keep the general core of the franchise intact and do not alienate the fans of a specific branch of the series.
People who love the games can jump into the anime and receive a similar experience, and can also jump into the manga and have a different take of the same general idea. And the spinoffs while being different, still keep the spirit of the core of the franchise
You don't have different developers inserting their own Pokemon in the spinoffs that may never be brought up again
The Pokemon company has been pretty consistent on making each Pokemon marketable in their own way and easy to recognize to the point that people say that every Pokemon is someone's favorite
This is why Digimon just seems near impossible to get into for most people, they may like a particular game, or anime season, but when you keep changing and re-inventing the series for the next installment, then its impossible to keep your new fans hooked to your brand
@@Ikiez_r Exactly - synergy and consistency.
I think they should base their games into an anime like make a cyber sleuth anime
Well for the World Moniker 1 through 4 was before they realized to divide the naming schemes. As they then made World titles based on World 1, Story to be turn based rpg, and rumble for fighting are the quick examples. While the Ds game say World for like Dawn/Dusk that was a western thing as the Japanese names say Story. So they have been giving name synergy for a long while now.
All of this. I watched many of the shows back in the day but even now I can't name one that's my favorite because I haven't been able to play any of the games, and the games that do exist aren't that great or appealing because they don't match what I liked about the show.
Honestly, imo it’s the anime that created the issue. Digimon’s original games were all console/handheld versions of the vpets. Then Digimon World 1 came onto the scene as a fleshed out vpet RPG.
Too many people have different ideas about what Digimon is at this point. I want to raise and care for a Digimon until end of life, with the new eye having boosted stats. Others want to collect creatures that never die.
Heck in my opinion the Japanese name for stages don’t even make sense once you’ve abandoned the idea of concept of digivolution via age.
@@lazites That’s a fair point. I still feel like most western fans at the very least are more familiar with/attached to the show than the V-Pet, and although not spot on the Story games handle digivolution much more similarly to the anime imo, but I see what you’re saying and it definitely contributes a lot to this disconnect.
That is a fair point but i think its also fair to point out that even if the anime wasn't the origin of digimon, it is what has defined digimon in the public eyes.
It's like how the Yugioh manga was never originally meant to be card game centric. It was originally a series about games in general with a dark twist of Yami Yugis death games.
@@rhysjonsmusic Yeah, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Yugioh had gone back to its roots, instead of focusing on Duel Monsters for the anime and the rest of the series, because I honestly liked how dark and different the original manga had been, and how the Pharaoh was an actual "King of games", because he was smart enough to manipulate all games to go in his favor, rather than how in the anime he has the BS he showed with the heart of the cards and all that other cringy BS, that basically gave him his wins.
I also agree that Digimon should have focused on the virtual pets aspect, for their main series of games, because that was what I liked on the original PS1 game, and I always felt lied to by Bandai whenever I bought a new Digimon World game and it wasn't like that first PS1 game, and unfortunately the one game that did follow that gameplay, and would have been amazing if released in America was Re:Digitized, but we never got an official English translation as the game stayed in Japan, and Next Order just came around too late, which is why its sort of frustrating to be a fan of these japanese series, since a lot of good stuff stays over there like Medarot as well.
the solution is to make multiple series.
1. Digimon World : Game where you explore Digital World, breed Digimon, survival townbuilding where your Digimon can die of old age and reborn. Just like Digimon World 1, Digimon World Redigitize, and Digimon World Next Order
2. Digimon Story : Game with story heavy or visual novel like Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Survive
3. Digimon Adventure : Game where you travelling around the world (real or digital), fighting other trainer, collecting Digimon, going into dungeon, and participate in the tournament. Your Digimon can't die of old age. Just like Digimon World 2 and 3.
4. Digimon Rumble : Fighting game
For me, Digimon World 1 and Digimon World Next Order is my kind of game. But I like game such as Digimon World 2 and 3 too, as long as it let us explore the world, instead of teleport us from one hub to the other hub.
Digimon has that magic that often people say "THIS is the best game" and some other say "THIS is the worst game" even while talking about the same game. It has such a variety of response and genres that I feel the main appeal is pretty much to choose your favorite among the many games of the franchise
Kinda related point and kinda not. Honestly, I think a far bigger issue in terms of synergy between the anime and games is the target audience. The anime (aside from million and one Adventure sequels) are very much aimed at kids, while the games and other media are aimed at older teens and adults. People always talk about wanting a dark, mature Digimon game, but I honestly think they'd be better off as a middle ground between Pokemon and Megami Tensei and aim for a shounen (specifically battle shounen) audience.
@@s3studios597 I can get behind this take, I just feel like Digimon has remained more popular with its “gen wunners” than it actually is with today’s kids, simply because the franchise isn’t as active as Pokemon and the landscape of television programming has changed. So obviously it’s aimed at kids first and foremost, but I do think there’s a place for it’s adult audience as well, and judging by all the Adventure sequels and the latest games, I feel like Bandai has some awareness of this too.
@@ThrillingDuck That's why I say they should go the battle shounen route. That way, you can appeal to kids and adults. It did wonders for Pokemon given how much attention the XY anime got in the west.
My favorite Digimon Games are: Digimon World 1, Digimon World Card Battle and Digimon Rumble Arena ❤
Rumble Arena is my favourite as well. It was my first and only digimon game I've played
I think an open world digimon game that plays kinda like dragon quest would be so sick. Have some nice turn based combat, have a nice open world where digimons roam around freely and interact with eachother and have beautiful cutscenes for the story or other meaningful boss encounters.
That could be cool!
There is literally one called Digimon Masters Online. Highly recommend if you are looking for this
We need a Digimon game like the Persona games. Social states can influence your Digimon's growth and hanging out with the other characters can get you alternate evolutions or fusions.
This would be PERFECT
Edit: Also cultured af profile pic lol
@@ThrillingDuck oh cool. Didn't expect you to recognize Izuna. Did you know there's a new game in the works?
@@witchbladefan1 BRO FOR REAL??
@@ThrillingDuck ua-cam.com/video/scKOsntbTnk/v-deo.htmlsi=DWbEISfVRKqpZ0jU
@@ThrillingDuck
ua-cam.com/video/scKOsntbTnk/v-deo.htmlsi=5fxAYVpSgg3W9T2Y
I think they should merge the World and the Story gaming models - have you start off with your partner after being teleported to the digiworld, you can pick your partner out of several mons, and whilst the same base rookie remains you can unlock and digivolve into a few different forms as the game progresses, kinda like the vpets where each rookie can turn into 1 of maybe 4 champions and so on, but always reverting back to the same rookie. Explore the world and build up your city whilst completing quests and the storyline - maybe post-game is when you can gain more digimon partners. Give all the rookie's proper characterisation and their own mini sidequests to complete.
I would absolutely love this.
yeah thats been my thinking on it. digimon masters style but with branching evolutions that fit with each rookie. they could have agumon become (up to the megas) wargreymon, victorygreymon, shinegreymon, and blitzgreymon with varying champions and ultimates that line up. you unlock them through various means such as collecting different types of data or completing certain missions. you can throw in the armor and spirit evolutions. this way plenty of the digimon are being utilized rookie to mega! i wish they would stop wasting space with the baby and in-training evolutions. sorry but for a game i want the megas!!
that would just be digimon world 3.
I don't get why they don't do it like in smt digital devil saga you can transform in the game like in the battle and can revert back to normal form
I think a good idea was with the Adventure PSP game, basically translate what happened in the anime to a game.
I would love for them to continue this throughout all seasons of the anime...
It's a good opportunity to make some fanservice with some extras, in the Adventure PSP we had evolution sequences for all the L6 of the protagonists, imagine the same happening for all the other seasons protagonists that don't had all their evolutions in the anime.
Open world. A random partner(maybe based off of questions you answer when you start the game). Conflicts that take you from the digital world and the human world and vice versa. Evolutions that derive from choices you make in the game, items you collect, or the way you treat/fight with your partner(like friendship in pokemon). Thats what I want to see in a Digimon game.
I'd seriously pop off for this.
Sign me up
In my head, I am already building and playing the game... If I had the skills to do so, I would've started building the game for real. I have hope that one day we will get a game like this.
Hey, good video, but I really don't think you had to spend 2 full minutes defining "the big 3" when you could have just said "let's take a look at the 3 most recent games"
@@stovespiegel Lol fair enough. I tend to overthink things sometimes. Thanks for watching!
@@ThrillingDuck No prob homie, I like your stuff!
Honestly, I love the solution for adding both the partner and the collect em all aspects that survive had.
Another would he having your partner be a calumon or similar digimon with the power to create copies of other digimon.
The only real digimon you have is your partner - they have personality and growth, and it's own evolution tied to story progress.
Or do something like that weird Savers game, where everyone has a partner, but the partner can change forms freely, with the new levels locked by story progression - once you unlock a partner's first champion, they can unlock other by non-story means
@@andrellnogueira Absolutely love all these ideas!
I was never able to get into the Cyber Slueth series and so I don't really understand why they're so highly regarded as the pinnacle of Digimon games? They feel like pretty standard RPGs to me.
In my opinion, Next Order is always going to be THE Digimon experience. It feels like what Digimon is actually meant to be, a virtual pet simulator like the original Tamogotchi toys but with a battle element. It also goes back to the original Digimon world on PS1 before that got turned into another standard rpg too.
I wish they'd continue making Digimon world games as a main stay and do these other projects on the side.
that's exactly why - its a core standard rpg game using digimon with good animations and cutscenes
the bar not so much his low but its the only one with at a time a good budget to make that happen
What @marcusclark1339 said. Cyber Sleuth allows players to experience control over a wide variety of Digimon at once and actually invest in them with the knowledge that they won't keel over and die forever in a few hours. They also have great presentation value and simple but fun mechanics as far as combat is concerned.
Next Order can definitely be the definitive Digimon game if you value the V-Pet aspects above all, and I agree that Digimon World is more "original" than Cyber Sleuth. But there's a reason that time-based party member mortality doesn't exist anywhere else in the industry: It's just not fun for most people.
i love next order except for the rebirth mechanic.
@@bluelunarmonkeytarot8533 Same!
It's new game plus@bluelunarmonkeytarot8533
I liked survive BECAUSE it was a visual novel with combat. Fully character driven and a dark take. Then i want to collect a lot of digimon and fight non stop in shibuya so i have cyber sleuth. Then i want adventures in the digital world and raise a partner throughout different life cycles, each one unique and stronger than the previous one, so i play world. This 3 paths ARE the definitive experiences. And i hope we can get more of each one
@@facundomorera9762 I feel like a happy medium is a far from impossible task, but I appreciate and enjoy all 3 of these for what they are.
I do stand by Survive’s status as a visual novel being a hindrance to it though. It’s kind of the lowest form of game design. There are plenty of “real games” which have a visual novel presentation style for their narratives, but then actual gameplay built around them, and many of them still feature perfectly lengthy and involved cutscenes, just with a healthier gameplay balance ratio. Survive really only uses its status as a VN to allow its dialogue to run on for too long with redundant loops of the same information.
Cyber sleuth could've been that and more. Seeing as its an IP that a lot of people knows, it won't get drowned on the plethora of the classic monster collecting with a turnbased combat RPG. I really enjoyed the dusk and dawn on the DS and I think the cyber sleuth games leveled it up a bit and nailed it.
My favorite Digimon game is Digimon: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory😌👌🏻
I want to see a new game that focuses on the theme of “Digimon can become anything” and what that could actually mean for the concept of identity. When you take so many forms… what makes you “you”? Is it how you bond with other people? Does a Digimon’s form inherently determine its personality? If you are just a formless entity with no one affecting you, are you really a sentient being?
Pretty deep lol, I love it.
While I dont think digimon games are the best in the market and having a "definitive" game probably gonna help as a commercial success i dont agree with this video.
Just a note: digimon anime is not the core of the franchise by the time line (vpets-1997, videogames-1998, movie&anime-1999) and the production of anime,games and cards are directed by different groups of people.
Saying that i think this is what makes the digimon franchise very attractive and they just should invest in make more games with different developers, focus on making a multimedia, in fact i am glad they invested in something like a VN with survival and hope digimon world games keep releasing since they are the most unique of all, and with the increasing of popularity in rogue-like games they could learn how to make better games in this style.
@@ruikk069 These are good points but check out the pinned comment too - especially regarding the “core” of the franchise.
@@ThrillingDuck yes, i already read this comment before a write my comment and not understand what the "but" should mean (not native english-speaker), the concept of core is simply subjective and this not actually exist and not affect my opinion, in fact because this supposedly not exist that i think my opinion makes sense, every new anime season and new game feels fresh (mostly) because is not attached to a core.
Thanks for the answer, have a nice day.
Digimon doesn't need a definitive game and that's what makes it great. It's not shoehorned into one kind of game style. It also made fans not get comfortable with a set amount of digimon in the game.
The main issue is Bandai is just awful at marketing it's games(and I mean all there games) that's not Dragon Ball and Toei hasn't been great with writing the anime. Like why in the world would you announce at Odiba day that a random day in January would be appropriate for an anime announcement instead of just announcing it on Digimon's anime anniversary day.
@@yep_itsmeagain I get this perspective, and I didn’t mean to imply that I dislike the variety. I think I made it clear that I like the games I was talking about. But within the scope of the variety, I fail to see the harm in a title (or preferably a new pillar of titles) that synergizes with the show.
@@ThrillingDuck the problem with this is Digimon doesn't have a set show series. Like Pokemon had Ash for 25 years. Every Digimon show has its own gimmick, its own characters, and etc. For example, Digimon Adventures is just barebones digimon, but Digimon adventures Zero two introduces DNA evolution and armor evolution, Tamers introduce bio-merge evolution, Frontiers introduce human and Digimon merging together that for a long time didn't even have levels, Savers had burst evolution, etc. The Story games typically have ALL of these in it's gameplay. World usually only have DNA evolution and regular evolution. They did attempt to have the games be based on the anime during Digimon savers aka Data Squad and they didn't sell well. Those were the Digimon story games on the DS. There was even a Xros war game that loosely followed the anime.
Like I mentioned the issue really isn't the games being similar to the anime currently airing. The issue is Bandai SUCKS at promoting things and developing games that isn't Dragon Ball Z. Like Sparking Zero got announced last fall and releasing this year. It got update videos and everything. The newest Story game was announced 5 or 6 years ago. We lost Habu from it's development and still no update on the game. They're even fumbling the trading card game with oversaturation.
@@yep_itsmeagain So, someone else on here has brought these points up, and I have the same counterarguments for you.
Regarding the show switching up characters from season to season, this is a complete non-issue. Again, Pokemon games don't actually feature Ash - they always feature a brand new cast with a protag who simply goes on an Ash-adjacent style adventure. There's literally no reason Digimon can't do this - just look at Survive.
Regarding slight alterations to Digivolution mechanics, I don't even know why you brought this up - you countered your own argument. Yes, the Story games DO have all of these special evolutions, so why can't another game incorporate them? Literally no reason. Pokemon also has multiple methods of evolution technically speaking: leveling, friendship, stones, trading, trading while holding an item, etc. What's your point here? Seems to work pretty well for Pokemon and clearly worked fine in Digimon Story.
If you're trying to say that each season changes the rules slightly and therefore there's no familiar template for game devs and fans to follow I'd argue that that's kind of reductive. Regardless of the details that change from season to season, there are generally some pretty good constants, and most seasons follow these constants. To prove my point, here are all the seasons which feature traditional Digimon-Human partnerships and functionally traditional Digivolution (i.e. Baby-Mega):
Digimon Adventure
Digimon Adventure 02
Digimon Tamers
Digimon Data Squad
Digimon Adventure 2020
Digimon Ghost Game
Now here are all the season which do not feature traditional partner bonds and evolution paths:
Digimon Frontier
Digimon Fusion
I think game devs can figure out which to draw from - it's literally the exact ones that Digimon Story and World draw from. Literally all of them except 2. An anime-adjacent game doesn't need to follow the formula of the current anime season to the letter, it just needs to adopt the formula that encompasses the vast majority of the franchise. Not rocket science.
Now, citing the failure of the Digimon Adventure PSP and Data Squad PS2 games is indicative of you missing my fundamental point. I'm not advocating for a licensed game centered around a specific season of the show, and even if I was, those games didn't underperform because they were anime-adjacent, they under-performed because they were under-marketed and also just not high quality products.
I do agree with you that Bandai sucks at promoting the franchise though lol.
That's why I say we need a Digimon Tabletop RPG. I feel like that's the best way to get a definitive Digimon experience.
That would be neat af too! I'm just primarily a "gamer" lol.
@@ThrillingDuck I'll try clarifying my point then:
While games like D&D and Pathfinder focus a lot on the mechanics and battles, there are also more narrative-centric games like Fate and Fabula Ultima. Digimon would work incredibly well as the second.
You create your character, give them a Digimon partner, and some sort of theme to strive for. Their "Crest", if you will. And then your GM would decide when you've achieved a grand moment that resonates with your Crest, to unlock the next Digivolution stage.
For example, a Player Character with the "Courage" Crest would unlock their next Digivolution when the GM acknowledges that they've done something truly courageous and heroic.
Of course, a lame player may decide to metagame with such a system, to which the GM would have all the right to deny that. If a character starts jumping in front of all danger just to make their partner stronger, that is not courage, it is foolishness.
There's a fan made TTRPG called Digimon Digital Adventures taht I hear is pretty good, they're currently working on their second edition.
@@FenexTheFoxthe gm would then have their digimon dark digivolve and actually kill them like wendigomon in Survive or almost kill them like skullgreymon in adventure. The lore itself from digimon prevents "metagaming" in the example you described or maybe not prevents but allows the dm to punish the player in an appropriate way killed off if they won't stop or barely surviving if they've learned their lesson. I do think digimon would be one of the best franchises for a trrpg
@@Ryzearn True!
You completely missed one of the longest standing digimon games and is still played to this day. The game where you can collect almost any digimon in the series and go thru any area of the series as well is DMO. Digimon Masters Online. I played it back in 2008 and its still running to this day
I don't really play MMOs, but it's cool that that's out there! I see a looooot of mixed reception to it online though haha.
Fuse Persona 5 with Digimon. Good action and storyline to beat Pokémon.
Honestly this could work, possibly even down to protagonist-chan having some sort of special Ditto-like Digimon partner that can copy the code of any enemy Digimon.
@@ThrillingDuck Metamormon does exactly that, so that idea is valid.
I think it would be cooler is the digimon stay in rookie form but in the start of the battle the game will tell you what level your digimon will evolve from the start and then there will be a digivolution sequence then the battle starts
Or you can also play Shin Megami Tensei game. The latest game was Shin Megami Tensei V.
SMT series is the origin of monster collecting mechanic way before Pokemon
The Cyber Sleuth games and Survive don't seem enough to you?
At first I didn't like New World Next Order, but if you don't like any them, you simply don't like any of the Digimon Worlds, nor JRPGs games of Digimon.
@@xyannail4678 Okay but did you like… absorb my argument? I even said multiple times that I really like Cyber Sleuth lol. And everything about Next Order aside from the partner mortality mechanic.
@@ThrillingDuck But partner mortality mechanics are a core part of the digimon experience. The World games especially are at their heart, V-Pet games. Pet simulators. If you strip that away, you basically strip away the identity of World games. I don't disagree that there could, and even should be something for casual fans to dig into though, but what would that be? To me, it'd be more Digimon Story games, or stuff like Dawn & Dusk.
@@FireWizzrobe Still not sounding like you actually absorbed the video lol. I discussed it there.
I like the v-pet games, even if they are grindy they feel more original to me, but I guess in an ideal world those could be side games and the mainline would focus on a mix between survive and sleuth
I would be all for that. And the funny thing is I happen to really like Decode and Next Order, but I enjoy them despite the mortality elements, rather than because of them.
@ThrillingDuck the problem with world next order besides budget, same with og cyber sleuth was that they were 1st made for the psvita in mind and they weren't originally supposed to have English releases
You are US, the digimon fan and believer, this is such a great take and very representative of most of digimon fans
They need to pull a sonic mania and just hire some passionate fan/devs to make a game to capture the franchise
My first Digimon game was World 3 and instead of traveling with a trio team of Digimon like they wanted me to I ended up storing the other two and had that one partner. I just wanted my experience to be more like the anime. Im a realist.😅💯
@@divineeternity7268 Lmao love that
@@ThrillingDuck I feel your pain. I'm PatientlyWaitingMon too.😂
Lol I did the same thing but for a different reason. Grinding was such a damn chore in that game, just training 1 digimon was tedious enough, let alone all 3 of them.
@@s.silverman9864 I know bro. I ran through that game with just Guilmon and it was much much much simpler. I had Gallantmon right on time for the final bosses. I think it's a cheat code.😂
@@divineeternity7268 It definitely felt like the optimal way to play. The only time it was an issue was with that one boss that could instakill, Zanbamon I think.
It's better than having a definitive game, and milking it into a dried up cow
Ain't that right, Pokemon
I guess so? But we're FAR from getting anywhere near Digimon milking a definitive entry dry in this timeline lol.
Milking them is just all of marketing job, pokemon can always bounce back from scarlet and violet, while digimon never even reach the popularity of pokemon ruby sapphire because of the identity crisis😅
Its really not, especially when it struggles to hit 1 million sales. Pokemon's straightforwardness got it far enough to become a cultural icon, regardless of the dark age its in since 2013.
MAJOR VISUAL SPOILERS for some old games and Digimon Survive (not super old, but not exactly new either). Also, some quick housekeeping:
1) I’m aware that the V-Pet predates the anime, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that the anime has become the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, since the golden days of V-Pets are long behind us and the earlier seasons of the show seem to be the aspect of the franchise that fans are most vocally attached to online. This is why I consider emulation of the show to be the top priority of a “definitive” Digimon game experience. Digimon World is basically the best possible adaptation of the V-Pet aspect into a full fledged videogame, but I’d argue that the Digimon lifecycle is still a pretty bad mismatch for a more robust game, since the player has more on their plate than just managing their Digimon’s needs, and it’s not integrated well into the game’s central progression loop.
2) When I refer to the Digimon World games within the context of this video, I’m only referring to the V-Pet style entries designed in the mold of the original - so Digimon World 1, ReDigitize, and Next Order.
3) Obviously when I call Digivolution in the World games “linear,” I mean that it goes in one direction. Digivolution branches but it only goes from lower forms to higher ones. There’s no proper Degeneration.
4) I somehow forgot to mention how much Eden in Cyber Sleuth looks like the Internet in Our War Game. That is very cool, but my point about the Digital World proper still stands.
5) In general, I think I came across a little harsher on Cyber Sleuth’s narrative than I really feel about it. It definitely has its hype moments, but most of its run time feels like a series of uninteresting detective cases and doing the Digimon as actual characters pretty dirty, before suddenly turning into an actual Digimon story around the final third or so. All in all though - again - I absolutely LOVE Cyber Sleuth as an overall product. “Collecting them all” may not really be Digimon’s thing, but I would never insinuate that there’s no place for it in some of the games. The ability to actually invest in your favorite Digimon and enjoy them while not being under the gun of a lifespan timer alone puts it leagues above Digimon World in terms of fun factor for me, to say nothing of the combat. I would just like to see more attempts to actually capture the show’s essence in future titles, that’s all.
Survive as a VN is amazing! The point and click are great, the karma system works, and the cast is great. The only gripe I had with it is how they locked the true end behind NG+, and force a second playthrough to get it. Even with skip and the combat on very easy, this is a skog!
The gameplay is bad, and the balance is even worse! The game is a joke on Hard up until the cheapest boss fight in the game. In NG+, they enemies don’t scale with you despite the devs intending you to play through it again. 😊
@@Iceblade269 Yeah Survive happens to be a gorgeous VN. It’s just kind of a shame that VNs are basically the lowest form of game design imo lol.
@@ThrillingDuck As someone whose making one, its easy to make a VN. It’s not easy to make a good one.
Storywriting isn’t coding, but it’s very difficult in its own right
@@Iceblade269 Oh I agree 100%. I’m speaking in terms of game design - not writing quality. The thing about writing quality is that it’s completely independent of whatever game it’s in, much like a soundtrack.
Best of luck with your project! When I say VNs are “the lowest form of game design,” all I mean is that they’ve got to be the most simple to code and playtest by a huge margin. I think they’re great projects for aspiring independent developers, but I expect more effort from a company with the budget of Bandai Namco. The fact that it took them roughly as long to get a VN out the door as it takes Nintendo to produce a modern Zelda game is just embarrassing, even with the restart they had to contend with halfway through.
@@Iceblade269 I agree as someone who has played these types of games. If the writing isn't solid, it's a waste of energy and time to get through it.
Evolution is so tough to implement, it should be a narrative thing but you also don’t want to hold out on the gameplay end of providing player advancement. Always thought it’d be really cool for the JRPG games to make a combat system about constantly swapping evolutions mid-fight. Make some evolutions story-based, others stat based, then you expend some energy resource to swap between forms. Maybe after enough milestones you get the ability to start at a certain stage in evolution chain from the very start of the fight. Can turn the branching evolution paths into the central mechanic, needing to branch out and expand what forms your Digimon can take to take on different fights more efficiently. Would also naturally make you spend more time with your partners, bringing it closer to the ideal experience.
@@screech9608 This is so cool and well thought out!!
12:19 I’m by no means a Nintendo glazer, but I would honestly blame this more on the porters than the console itself. The Switch has become infamous for having the worst ports, yet their first parties(for the most part) run great. Also, the Switch has Monster Hunter Rise, Alien Isolation, Doom, and Astral Chain. We gotta hold these companies to better standards. Or maybe the Switch is just diffcult to port to, devs are lazy/crunched, or a little bit of both ends.
Also regarding the MGS port, it’s Konami. Kinda speaks for itself lol.
I think that DIGIMON WORLD 3 (PS1) is one of the best games of all time and I DESPERATELY need a remaster!
world 3 / dusk- dawn ARE PEAK digimon
agree with you there! we need a world with exploration like 3 but with combat and graphics of Cyber Sleuth
To me, Re:Digitize Decode is the definitive Digimon game.
The problem is that the West never got it (officially).
I think "the definitive Digimon game" is one that offers an experience unique to Digimon. And that's the v-pet RPG which to this day seems exclusive to this franchise. And Re:Digitize Decode is the best, most feature-dense, polished version of this format.
@@the_echoYT While I’m not as nuts about the V-Pet RPGs, I definitely think they’re the most unique experiences the franchise currently has on offer, and Decode probably is my overall favorite of that trilogy as well.
It would be nice if Bandai decide to make Digimon game with dynasty warriors style, I would absolutely buy one copy or maybe more if it satisfies me
@@NetBattler That could be a cool spin-off. I’d be down :)
That would be wicked
Honestly another factor I wanna say that I feel probably affected Digimon Survives production a LOT were the delays on top of Covid like originally Digimon Survive announced its release date for 2019 and then got delayed till 2022. It sucks too cause Digimon Survive imo has the BEST story of any digimon game (heck has one of my favorite stories in the franchise actually tbh), but the gameplay is def on the more tamer side, and while they did market it as a Visual Novel first I wish there was more to the gameplay to make it memorable, which there possibly was, and maybe plans fell through due to the delays or etc. This does make me hope tho one day theyll make another Digimon Survive Esque game so we can get an an amazing story like survive again except just with better gameplay.
@@JayTeeBeez For me that would basically be a definitive experience.
Survive was weird because its the one time they shouldn't have had the recruitment mechanic, to make losing people more impactful
Or bare minimum not being able to recruit wild versions of partner digimon so the partners feel unique
That was my problem with survive not enough diversity in digimon you could get to join you
So when I heard Digimon Survive was coming out, I originally pictured a game aimed at adults with a big old M rating on it (I use the ESRB rating.) and it would have the JRPG party mechanics of Digimon World 3, the Dungeon Crawling aspects of World 2, with elements of Cyber Sleuth + Hacker’s Memory’s Shin Megami Tensei mechanics, and the Pet Raising aspects of World 1, Re: Digitized(DeCoded) and Next Order, BUT we finally get to take control of our Digimon with Real-Time Action Combat (Kinda like FF 15 and the FF 7 Remake series).
You’d be given 3 Digi eggs to choose from (Those would be the three main party Digimon, one to represent the Wrathful Path, one to represent the Harmony Path, and your egg to represent the Moral Path while the Truthful Path would let you have all three Digi Eggs.)
The Cyber Sleuth catching mechanic would be used to either turn the Digimon you caught into Data to be consumed by your party, or could be fused with your Party’s Digimon to make new ones.
Raising your Digimon would still be crucial because as you progress through the story your Digimon will advance through each stage going from Baby to Mega only to reincarnate as a baby again chosen amongst the pre-approved or unlocked pool of Digimon unique to the path you’re currently on. Each cycle only increases your Party’s stats but by doing specific things you can unlock new evolutions (Regular, DNA, Armor, Dark, etc) for that current evolution line.
Heck if you wanted to throw the crests in there, that’s how you could unlock specific branches and the ability to Warp Digivolve your Party to skip training.
The Dungeon Crawling would have just been for funsies, get some overworld prebuilt levels/areas to run through by selection where you want to go to on a map, and in those areas, there can be dungeons to explore and other stuff.
Edit: I forgot about the city-building aspect of World 1, Re:Digitized, and Next Order. Instead of building a City, you’re building an Army.
The next digimon world probably will be in a digital world because Olympus Twelve major characters.
Its story game, not world
The original Digimon Adventure/Next Order (Haven't played the game but from how you describe it, it sounds similar) was the best game for me personally, but I agree that the death and rebirth system there makes the game unenjoyable.
I honestly don't want a Digimon game where I catch 'em all because that's already on Pokemon. Digimon's basis is one on one instead of having as many as possible. I want a Digimon game where a single Digimon becomes my partner throughout the game, connected by our Digivice, without it dying from old age. AND LET MY DIGIMON PARTNER TALK TOO.
So the problem with Digimon is this:
The franchise started with the Tamagotchi like devices, where you had to care for your Digimon as if they were a virtual pet, and that is what basically the first Digimon World on PS1 follows as well as its weird pseudo sequels, which are Digimon Re:Digitize and Next Order, and for the hardcore fans of Digimon this is what they actually count as Digimon, as that is their earliest experiences with the franchise.
Then the Digimon Adventure anime came out and changed everything, because the anime portrayed that Digimon weren’t just Tamagotchi like virtual pets, but they were actually friends and partners for the kids, that actually grew alongside them which is what made the anime so interesting for a bunch of people, as when these people were kids they just wanted to experience something similar to the cast of the anime, but unfortunately there has been no games that give a close enough experience like that.
The reason why people enjoy Pokemon so much, is because since the first couple of games, the focus had been on that RPG like element, where people would collect Pokemon and then try to make the best teams, in order to battle competitively, as that is what a lot of people thought being a “Pokemon Master” meant.
As the Pokemon series went on, they added a bunch of spin off games in between the main line games, which basically spiced up the franchise and made it even bigger, because not every Pokemon fan was completely into just the battles, and it was fortunate as well that the Trading Card Game had a lot of success as well, which just made Pokemon a money printing machine for GameFreak and Nintendo, and its why they have been making tons of money for about 30 years now, despite them having a lot of blunders in the last decade.
For Digimon however the situation has been different, because they have always been playing catch up with Pokemon, as the first Pokemon games came out in 1996, and the first Digimon Tamagotchi device came out in 1997, and while when these franchises first started they weren’t similar at all, the respective animes for these franchises was what started the rivalry basically, and it is what made people compare Digimon to Pokemon, and while Digimon always tried to do its own things across various games and stuff, that was what also prevented people from liking it more, because Bandai just split the fandom across all the spinoffs and stuff, since there wasn’t a Digimon main series per say, and especially with the PS1 in America, a lot of us fans got tricked into buying sequels for Digimon World, where we thought we would be getting an experience similar to the first PS1 game, but all the Digimon World games for the PS1 were just too different from each other, which is what caused the split in the fandom, because while I did have fun in a lot of the Digimon games that I played, I got tired of trying to search for the actual sequel to the Tamagotchi like style of games, and sort of gave up on getting new Digimon games, since those games that I was searching for stayed in Japan and never got an official English translation until Next Order, and it didn’t help that I was mad that Bandai made Digimon Rumble Arena 2 play like a cheap knock off of Super Smash Bros, when the original Rumble Arena on PS1 had a really cool and unique playstyle.
The only thing that kept me being a Digimon fan was honestly the anime, because I felt that I had grown alongside Tai and his friends, since Digimon between the different anime series felt like the main cast kept passing on the torch to the next set of protagonists, and I was kind of glad that Bandai had done that since I felt a close connection with the cast from Digimon Adventure, but when they made Digimon Adventure Tri as a quick cash grab for peoples nostalgia, and then they remade Digimon Adventure that was when I kind of lost my respect for Bandai and kind of stepped away, because Tai and his friends are no longer growing up, and they were reverted back to kids again, which is something that I had heavily criticized Pokemon for where they didn’t allow Ash to grow up.
I still like Digimon and stuff because I like the design of most of the mons and stuff, since they look edgy as heck and in many cases iconic, but I can no longer get behind the games or the anime because of Bandais decisions.
-EDIT- Thinking back maybe what Digimon actually needed was a game series similar to the Pokemon mystery dungeon games, where people could be given a Digimon based on a personality type Quiz, so that they could go on an adventure playing as that Digimon, and then exploring a very quirky Digital World through the eyes of a Digimon, rather than just a regular human like all the games have tried.
@@Chrisezo Bro Digimon Mystery Dungeon with mid-dungeon digivolving that resets you back to Rookie when you leave would be lit af. Definitely just another fun spinoff, but a really cool one.
I'd love a digimon game with character creation of the human protagonist and full customization of a single digimon partner with a turn-based system with every possible digimon being available to the player
Yes yes yes yes yes yes!
On its home turf the core of the franchise was always the Virtual-Pets, those kind of toys stook around in Japan way longer than everywhere else. The anime is a supplementary thing. Digimon manga series also have a lot more variety than the animated counterparts.
Your idea of what Digimon should be is kind of "wrong" from the perspective of the people working on the property. It sucks for us as outsiders but in Japan the franchise is doing well enough to meet whatever minimum threshold they have.
Also not even alluding to ReArise is crazy 😭 The gameplay had sort of the same issues you bought up for Cybersleuth but the story mode was like literally beat for beat something that could have easily been an anime like Data Squad or Appmon. If it wasn't a gacha game it would have been the definitive Digimon game you're talking about.
@@radioactivebirdj.1845 I don’t play mobile games, so I wasn’t even aware of ReArise. As for the rest, that disconnect really blows lol 😅
Digimon desn't even do well in home soil though. There's areason why the digimon department have been appealing to china than it is to japan
The problem is that, Digimon's core franchise is Vpet, and Digimon games like World series, be it the World 1, Re:Digitize, or Next 0rder are direct connection to the source material, that is pet raising, only it's blended with RPG and adventure elements. If you want to play a "definitive" digimon game, that would be something like Digital Monster ver. Wonderswan, that is pure pet raising without any RPG element at all.
Digimon doesn't need a "definitive" game like Pokemon. It just needs a real good game without wasted potential.
@@renaldisaputra91 I would suggest taking a gander at the pinned comment, but I do agree that a higher quality product with a more committed budget would do the franchise good.
Digimon World 3 is the definitive game
Story Games for the turn based folks, World games for the Vpet folks, Survive/ novel games for the anime folks.
These 3 should be the bases which should be improved on.
There's an argument there for sure, and I'll certainly continue to purchase further iterations on these. I'd just really like to see if we can't get them in a blender together, personally.
You know there's a PSP game that's an adaptation of Digimon Adventure, right?
I also really just disagree with the entire premise of this video that the games should or need to resemble the anime. You really just base the entire thesis of the video on that concept, but don't bother to provide an argument for it. Why SHOULD the games emulate the anime? You take that notion as a given. I disagree with the notion, it's a notion you didn't substantiate in any way, therefore I really just spent this entire video going "why do you keep acting like a 'definitive' Digimon game should resemble the anime?"
>"Digimon Survive is the worst game they've put out"
and you lost me.
A lot to unpack here:
1) I mentioned the PSP game after the point you pulled out. This is why you should watch an entire video before commenting. Also I clearly never had you lol.
2) I gave a reason for my thesis at the very beginning of the video: franchise synergy ala Pokemon. In the west at least, the anime is inarguably the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, no matter what the vocal minority of V-Pet enthusiasts will have you believe. This point is further reinforced in the pinned comment, and plenty of other commenters seemed to have figured it out without me needing to spell it out like this, but you do you I guess.
3) Digimon Survive IS arguably the worst game they've put out. As a visual novel, it's already barely even a game. On top of this, the combat that's there is paper thin and piss easy.
You know your comment wasn't very well thought-out, right?
@@ThrillingDuck you're treating the games like they're secondary to the anime. Like the purpose of the games is to immerse you in the world of the anime. Which isn't the case. For neither Digimon nor Pokemon.
Pokemon was video games first. The anime was an adaptation of the games. The anime is secondary to the games. Your thesis in this video treats the anime as the primary medium, and the games as following in their wake.
The Digimon games do not need to emulate the anime because the anime is merely an adaptation. Digimon is unique in that both the games and the anime are adaptations, and the source material is the V Pets. The anime and the games need to be judged in relation to the V Pets. The games do not need to be judged against the anime. Your entire foundation of this video is treating the anime as the Primary Medium. And it just isn't. And you do not substantiate it as being so, you just treat that viewpoint as the assumed default which does not need to be supported or defended. And it makes the entire rest of the argument in this video nonsensical.
The definitive Digimon Game is the original Digimon World for the PS1. It is the truest video game adaptation of the V Pet. The suggestion that it does not qualify as being a "definitive" Digimon game because it does not resemble the anime is just ridiculous.
@@randomfox12245 Lmao okay,
1) Read the pinned comment and/or the 2 comments I have posted in the comments, which were originally the pinned comment. All 3 of these already dismantle your points and I'm not rewriting them.
2) I'm not asking for the eradication of the currently existing Digimon game styles, merely for them to take a crack at an anime-inspired style.
3) Have a nice day.
Survive is a godsend compared to Digimon World 4.
@@ThrillingDuckSurvive is a godsend compared to Digimon World 4 and DW: Data Squad.
I love the Digimon World games so much, but I completely agree with what was said in the video. I’ll add that whichever creative designer they had for World 1 that made up the encounters for the npc’s that join your town.. please get them back. Next Order’s joinable npc’s were grossly underwhelming. They just.. were around, and would be like “it’s not time yet”. That’s freaking boring. Also whoever made the music and sound effects for World 1. The nature sounds brought you into the digital world. Playing the same god damn theme song for the entirety of Next Order sucks.
I enjoyed both the story and cast of Survive. I would very much like to see them in more future content.
I was never all that into the Monster raising aspect. I prefer Partner Digimon have more personal relationships with you. They just need to build on that mechanic.
I envision something akin to the Xenoblade trilogy as a good basis for the perfect Digimon game.
i disagree. Pokemon anime and the games are completely different. As a pokemon fan since 1998 when i was 5, i loved the anime and the Pokemon Blue and Yellow. But the anime always felt different from the games. Hell, i believe the anime and religious parents are what caused pokemon to have a shift in the vibe of pokemon. Pokemon in the anime are completely sentient. That was not the case for the early games. Pokemon went from wanting to win and be the best. To being about journeying with friends... which is cool. But they act like pokemon isnt about battles. The anime always had trainers pull out bs that isnt even mentioned by a third party in games. Like using the enviornment and whatever. Pokeballs work differently in the anime, games, and manga(the manga being more like the games). The anime basically tries to dodge that conversation a lot too. The list goes on. In the anime anybody is basically a trainer. In the games, really only the most dedicated and hardcore were trainers.
I also kinda disagree with you saying digimon doesnt have a definitive game. I believe digimon has 2 definitive game types. The ones based on the keychain(the "world" games), and the ones that are basically rpg's(the "story" games)(also keep in mind the "world games on ds were called "story" games in japan. So this idea still holds true in my mind). I do agree that digimon was too experimental tho.
also i disagree about the show thing. The first 2 seasons of digimon were so trash to me lol. Especially in the english dub, adding clown music in every scene cause they think american kids would lose interest if a show has too many consecutive moments of no sound but voices lol (pokemon season one was guilty of this too. But less annoying and more episodes were full of emotion.). the first 2 seasons of pokemon also had far more fights than digimon.
Your cybersleuth argument, i totally agree with. well minus the part about the digimon talking. I personally dont feel digimon need to talk.
Ive noticed you seem to think pokemon and digimon is defined by their anime interpretations. Both digimon and pokemon did not start with their anime. They started with their games. Both receiving manga after, THEN the anime. The anime is probably the least on the developers mind when keeping that history in mind. Both franchises also had card games which are extremely popular, before their anime releases (oops im wrong about pokemons card game releasing before the anime. But for digimon this was the case)
why do you seem to think the anime is the source? it's not
There is a definitive game: Digimon Adventure for PSP
It covers the first anime with novel additions and more in depth stuff
It has an english patch. Great jrpg, welcoming for beginners, explains the world, mechanics and more. Try playing it!
@@GokudoBarzinho I mentioned it towards the end of the video! Fundamentally it’s exactly the idea I have in mind, but it’s not much of an actual game - tiny world, way too easy, etc. Absolutely dig the formula though.
@@ThrillingDuckwelp, being honest i beat all pokemon games spamming one move pressing A the entire time (as most casual pokemon players). So difficulty may be something not that important. It just have to feel good to play and evolve your monsters lol
As a fan of yo-kai watch(another monster collecting series) I agree main game does not need to have any real difficulty so long as you give the players actually difficult challenges optionally or for the post game(I've Alloway said the yo-kai watch games only really begin once you've beaten the final boss and seen credits(1 less so but that's because it's the first one))
I’ve made a couple of videos on my channel talking about how I want a Digimon game to be. It pulls a lot from Survive and the anime narratively while being inspired by Xenoblade in gameplay
@@rekcroom I’d love that, and yeah I’ve been sing a lot of Xenoblade inspiration pop up in the comments here. I’m not a massive Xenoblade fan so it’s interesting to me that that’s what people are gravitating towards, but I could totally see it: The expansive environments, overly large party sizes, and even aspects of the combat. Like Xenoblade 2’s combat has an unusual structure where you’re kind of building things on top of other things - at a macro level that could work SUPER well as a mechanism for incremental mid-battle digivolution like what occurs in the anime, rather than simply warp digivolving straight to your highest available form.
@@ThrillingDuck Oh totally! I didn’t even think of the progressive Digivolution part that’s smart! And I think part of why Survive and Xenoblade get associated is because XC3 came out the same day as Survive. I know that’s what happened in my mind. I played XC3 first so I was still coming off the hype when I started Survive. Xenoblade has great characters and narratives so I think it fits in really well with Digimon!
@@rekcroom Omg that's right, I'd almost forgotten. Poor Survive came out on the same day because it released late while XC3 released EARLY 😂 And yes, of course the narrative and character writing quality would be a boon to any Digimon game :)
@@ThrillingDuck Omg I forgot about the late vs early part. That’s so funny.
Honestly Digimon worlds lifespan shit wouldn’t be bad if the Combat was better and more diverse.
@@VainSick Honestly I’d still hate it, but any other improvements to the general experience would at least soften the blow for sure.
That's where redigitize came in!
@@zebimicio5204 Re Digitize’s combat is pretty similar to the original, no?
It’s honestly wild that Pokemon and Digimon seem to have completely opposite problems in terms of their games. Pokemon started off with a naturally great formula that they have rarely strayed from, now frustrating long time fans. Digimon has never had a consistent gameplay style and fans are clamoring for a game that can satisfy a wider margin of the fanbase. This might have been mentioned in the video but I was throwing it out there before I watch it. If does get brought up in the video, yes. I agree 😅
LET' GOO!!!! Bandia doesn't understand any of their IPs
you speaking very truth about digimon games and hope Bandai will hear you. I am fan of DMW2 and Cyber Sleuth as old player not a kid. Thanks for video! :)
I don't get why digimon games need to copy the anime to be a "definitive" digimon game, digimon's core are Digimon, that's it, not a chosen one thrope that ignores the actual non spiritual lore of the franchise or degeneration as presented in the anime.
The problem of popularity comes from Bandai making 5 consecutive games with no coherent gameplay or themes, and letting the IP die for years due to how much subpar games they made.
Proof of that is how the franchise nearly died until Digimon X Evolution came out, and oh surprise, it has nothing to do with the anime and has the poorest animation on the whole franchise and still was well received by the JP fandom, because the true reason Digimon is so stagnant are Bandai and Toei's obsesion with replicating Adventure and not letting the IP expand, the worst thing for digimon would be to make it repeat Adventure's formula once again.
Nowadays the things that are more relevant to the franchise are the card game and videogames, and ghost game was well received thanks to departing from Adventure's formula, being set in the real world and having a more sinister atmosphere.
And as a World player:
Next Order is the worst World game by far, due to how grindy it is and stat heavy it is, in the OG world spending time in the gym was a time and resources sink, due to how inneficient it was outside of baby I and II, because exploring and fighting was pretty much enough to have your digimon evolve and gain stats, something borderline imposible in Next Order, due to how little skill and knowledge matter in relation to just big numbers and grinding, in world one it was and skill issue needing to farm, in Next Order is mandatory.
I see what you're saying, but you're kind of completely ignoring my point about the anime/game synergy which I feel is pretty crucial to Pokemon's success. And while Bandai does a lot of things wrong, it's hard to blame them for attempting to copy the original season when everything that doesn't (barring Tamers) is received so poorly in the west.
Also Ghost Game was distinctly NOT received well in the long term. This is mostly because they decided to make it strictly episodic, but I feel it's worth pointing out.
Regarding the Digimon World games I only really have experience with Decode and Next Order. I find that the way Next Order handles grinding is a double-edged sword because of how stat gains work. In Decode, the most efficient stat farming comes from the gym, which takes up way more in-game time but way less real world time - so the player feels each individual grind less but also spends less time with each Digimon because raising them eats up so much of their lifespan. In Next Order, this is inverted - optimal stat grinding takes up way less of your Digimon's lifespan but way more real world time. To me both suffer fromt he same fundamental issue, but divide the player's time up a little differently. It's too apples and oranges for me to feel one is superior to the other though.
I think Next Order has the best combat hands down though. You're allowed to be hands on from the get-go without needing to waste time on the Brains stat, and Guard Order actually allows you to employ skillful timing to overcome enemies that are a little too much for you. I do agree with the insane stat requirements being an issue though.
@@ThrillingDuck The thing with the anime/game sinergy is that it just doesn't work unless you have a strong coordination to mach themes and ideas, in Pokémon those are the generations, but that's pretty much the only franchise to succefully work that way (kinda).
Other than that all other similar multimedia franchises disapeared about 10 years ago and thanks to how much Toei and Bandai neglect Digimon, to me it's kinda imposible to get both anime and games work together, Ghost Game had a lot of potential due to the vital brazalet and, well, we know how well Bandai and Toei handled it's initial success, and as far as I know Ghost game had good audience, just most of us aren't kids and got bored of it quickly.
On the other hand, having a Digimon Game being similar to the anime hasn't done much, the Digimon Aventure Game for the PSP sold less than Re: Digitize, and a lot of people gave Digimon a shot due to CS being a solid Game not because it felt closer to the anime, Survive got a lot of hype thanks to the previous success.
For the most part people expect Digimon in their Digimon Game and solid gameplay and story, not much else really, a dark story with only Digimon could work perfectly if handled well like X Evolution, they don't need to change the formula, they need a solid product to get a minimum of quality.
I also don't like NO, you say you can't recommed it because you don't like the gameplay loop, I wouldn't recommend it due to how unispired and bland it feels, the Vita version was terrible, but now it's kinda decent.
I think NO biggest problem are the evolution stages, since having Adult, Perfect Ultimate as oposed to Child, Adult, Perfect makes Adult and Child Digimon quite weak in NO forcing you to grind from Rockie to Adult to Perfect to Ultimate to not die instantly in the endgame.
While in World a Rockie can put a fight using healing items and an Adult can beat the whole game.
IDK, but next order feels far more tedious, grindy and uninteresting, in DW I can clear almost all the file Island in one to two generations in less than 10 hours and doing barely any gym training, while in NO that's pretty much imposible unless you abuse ExE and bust stats as much as posible, while also having a lot of dead zones we're you only can walk and little more, I can't call that the better game in any single way.
@@leixalkvinay2729 Agree to disagree on all of this - especially the synergy. Digimon has plenty of constants among its themes and mechanics - you're just not crediting them. And ain't nobody is completing DW with "barely any gym training," yeah okay lmao.
Okay, I'm getting a concerning amount of "the anime is an adaptation, not the source material. The V-Pet is the source material, so your argument is invalid." Here's my rebuttal:
First of all, I acknowledged the V-Pet as being the "primordial origin" of the franchise in the video, so none of this is news to me. Beyond that, the real point here is the *synergy* between show and games. I apologize for overuse of the term "source material." Truth is, I don't really care which came first, because they each initiated close enough to each other. The anime is inarguably the cultural lynchpin of the series. That's what most fans are familiar with, and certainly most western fans. I happen to live in a densely populated metropolitan area of the country and I have NEVER in my life seen anyone walking around with a Digivice or a fucking "vital bracelet." It's 2024. 99.9999999% of westerners don't care about V-Pets.
Now, for those saying "the World games emulate the V-Pets, ergo they're the definitive experience," I say congratulations. If the V-Pets are all you care about or what you consider to be the modern core of the series identity, then yes: the definitive Digimon game *does* exist. Enjoy playing the 2-3 titles that emulate the V-Pet and force you to grind your progress to a screeching halt in order to raise new party members from scratch every 4-5 hours in a 20+ hour RPG. For the rest of us, Digimon World is not definitive.
@ThrillingDuck People just have more attachment to the anime. They see themselves in any chosen child or 'digidestined'. Those characters mean something to somebody! Anyway... If you wanna throw hands, you better be wearin' ur V-pet 🤓💀
@ThrillingDuck I think it's the average fan that's fond of the anime series like me. It seems the V-pet side is very vocal and are straight up savants of digimon child-rearing 🤷♂️ 'stay away from my child' lol 😆
@@ThrillingDuckso nearing the end of your video, based on what you want from a digimon game is exactly why Survive can't be a good game, the mechanics you want don't make for good gameplay also the World ala world 1/next order style stick closest to the source material, because they play like a vpet in game format. Also ofc the pokemon games feel definitive, THEY'RE the source material in that series.
@@billythenarwhal1579 Ok I’m not even bothering with the source material “argument” - I already covered that in the very comment you’re responding to.
“The mechanics I want don’t make for good gameplay” - where are you getting this from? Survive wasn’t bad because the mechanics were bad - it was bad because the combat encounters were under-designed to high hell since it was really a visual novel. The mechanics were the one thing I liked about the combat.
imo it just seems like Digimon games aren't for you. That's honestly why Digimon doesn't NEED a definitive game. There's a game series for just about everyone. If you don't like the world games don't play them. If the Story games are more of your jam than play that.
The main issue with Digimon games is how Bandai doesn't market them or have a team that can work on multiple games. We've gotten 2 or 3 Dragon Ball games since the next Story game was announced. Bandai is more focused on the arena fighters.
I do agree with a lot of your points on Digimon World: Next Order, but I actually really like the system of your Digimon dying and having to start from scratch with a new Digimon.
Firstly, this system encourages you to make the absolute most of your time once you’ve reached the champion, ultimate, or mega stage depending on how early you are in the game. Once you’ve reached your preferred stage, you can go for the objectives that are reachable at your level and find areas that you can go back to when you’re stronger. Going for the objective and recruiting certain digimon to your village with also make raising your digimon much easier when it dies and returns to its baby form, creating a satisfying feedback loop.
Secondly, if you spend your money on the right things you can significantly increase the effects of the gym training on your digimon, making it so you’ll never have to go out and fight actual digimon to train. For example, after you’ve recruited Seraphimon, which can be done fairly early and easily, you can spend money to buy a certain food item he sells, and this will extremely increase your gains from training at the gym, making it a breeze to get mega-level Digimon stats and breeze through any competition you come across, as well as getting tbe stats you want for a particular evolution. This process will save precious time and get you very strong partner Digimon. You can also spend money to upgrade your gym’s equipment, as well as finding materials to upgrade your facilities as a whole, increasing training gains even further. This is to say, don’t grind on wild digimon, as using the gym can be MUCH more efficient.
Thirdly, as you raise more and more Digimon, your Tamer Level will increase. As your Tamer Level increases, you will get increasing amounts of skill points which you can spend on various skills to make the raising process more efficient, such as; extending your Digimon’s lifespan, increasing training gains, increasing stats gained from evolving, etc. As your Tamer Level increases, you will also increase the amount of stats that are passed down from your previous Digimon to your current one.
This is just what I can think of at the moment, but I really like the growth and rebirth systems for these reasons, as well as being able to raise all different sorts of Digimon, some that I may not have even expected to be raising.
So, I'm aware of all of these mechanics, but I do want to offer some counterpoints:
1) There are plenty of RPGs with time management aspects that don't require you to accept complete erasure of your characters' progression (Persona, FE Three Houses, etc), so I don't really feel like this tradeoff with mortality is worth it. The town-building is a satisfying loop, but the mortality is completely divorced from it. The mere fact that you have built in reasons to return to the town (collecting daily rewards, emptying your pockets of materials, etc) basically nullifies the value of the time management aspect anyway. Games like Etrian Odyssey have a very similar loop except, again, your characters don't just periodically die and make you grind them up from scratch. Digimon World's mortality mechanic isn't as inextricable a part of the loop as you think it is.
2) Literally everyone brings this point up and I tell them all the same thing: Improved gym equipment and food can help increase fundamental stat gains when those activities are performed, but in Next Order in particular, stat requirements are so high that these things barely put a dent in the grinding - they just make it a little easier to reach specific digivolution thresholds. You're also objectively incorrect about gym training efficiency and anyone in the comments would back me up on this - in Next Order specifically, ideal grinding comes from specific battles at specific stages. This is a known thing, look it up. You get far higher stat growths, in every stat simultaneously, and for exponentially less of your Digimon's lifespan. It takes far more real world time, but far less of your Digimon's lifespan. You probably thought the gym was better because you didn't know which Digimon to fight when, which is on the game, not you. It's bad design.
3) Again, I was aware of all this, but my counter argument is the same as in point 1: These things give you a little boost to make thresholds easier to hit, but they have an EXTREMELY minimal effect on cutting down grinding for the stats you need.
To be fair, the dissonance between the anime and the games can be explained. In the anime, they introduced the new concepts of evolution that deviates from the original Digimon lore.
Original Digimon lore is based on the concept of virtual pets, and these pets evolve based on the level of care, effort and attention paid by the tamer to their pet partner. If you take good care of it, it evolves into a stronger form. If you treat it badly, you get a slime (literally). And that evolution is permanent, it cannot be reversed until your Digimon passes away and reincarnates into a Digi-egg again.
But in the anime, they introduced the concept of using Digivices and friendship-bond that allows Digimon to temporarily transform into stronger forms.
Even the show acknowledges it, as many of the other supporting characters who are Digimon have a concept of current evolution stage, they take time and effort to evolve into higher stages and cannot revert back to a younger evolution stage. These ‘wild’ Digimon are surprised when they see the chosen children Digimon having such temporary boosts in power and able to revert back to a younger form. The evolution lines are also generally linear, Agumon doesn’t evolve into a slime (there are some exceptions like Skullgreymon)
As to why the anime decided to introduce an evolution mechanic that is so different from the original lore. My guess is that it makes for a good storytelling, friendship, bonds and trust are good themes that drive a show and character development. It also makes it easier to be attached to cute main characters since they revert back to younger forms which are cuter. And maybe more toys to be sold.
So with this dissonance created, the problem comes when the games decide to stick to the original lore, the concept of evolution being permanent and based on care, effort and attention. The gameplay then becomes so different from the anime. So Digimon fans who are fans because they watched the anime first, will find it so hard to connect. While Digimon fans who started from the virtual pet brick devices first, like the virtual pet concept of gameplay.
I don’t think there is a way to mend that dissonance.
One way to appease the Digimon fans who enjoy the anime’s concept of bond and friendship giving rise to temporary evolution is to have a game with such a mechanic. There was one such game, Digimon Adventure PSP was a very good title that is underrated. They should do a refresh of that title and make a series for each of the anime titles in my opinion. Imagine games where you play through Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers etc.
So one way to allow the dissonance to exist and the lore to be consistent is to have two types of games. One with the virtual pet mechanic and one with the Digivice mechanic (temporary evolution).
And admittedly, there haven’t been many game titles in the latter category.
Yeah, these are all good points. Honestly I think the best way to mend the dissonance would just be to create a proper third pillar that emulates the anime's lore more faithfully. Survive could even be the first in that pillar, provided its hypothetical followups are more ambitious than a friggin visual novel.
@@ThrillingDuck yeah. The closest thing to having gameplay similar to the anime is the Digivice Toy itself. The Digivice COLOR does carry the anime gameplay mechanics.
But hopefully they try to expand this concept to a full proper title like the Digimon Adventure PSP game.
Or better still, have a whole new story line that has the same Digivice mechanic and maybe the characters are connected to the anime somehow.
@@digimonresearch Huh that does make me kinda want to check out the Digivice Color in the meantime lol.
@@ThrillingDuck oh you should! It is great if you can get yours hands on one of those.
I am doing a let’s play series on it, but probably only publishing in Jan 2025 cos of the amount of backlog. 😅
I think on the flip side of this is that due to Digimon not having a 100% distinct identity, each medium of Digimon can have different things that draw people into them, and this goes for the games too. I took a long break from Digimon and jumped back into it with Cyber Sleuth as it was on the Vita and I needed something to scratch that Persona itch. I loved that it felt like a MegaTen esque story as well. I also got a few of the V-pets and the Vital Bracelet and jumped into those, and those also feel very different in a good way. At the end of the day, there is just more to the franchise overall. I can agree that the anime is the mainstream cornerstone, and the experiences of trying to find something similar is annoying. However, I do not think Digimon holds itself to one identity. The card game currently has a webtoon and a web novel now because of how it got popular.
It's more subjective to what each person wants from digimon I think is what I am trying to get at if that makes sense.
edit: I'd also like to point out that it's also really weird that there are separate game series but a shared continuity with some of the World/Story games sharing characters, or the old WonderSwan games that are in a weird continuity with the anime itself.
Fair points! I agree with basically all of this.
I think they did a great job on story on cyber sleuth and survive (Survive being my favorite)
But man they sure have problems deciding gameplay for a game
Also, I'm glad to know you share my thoughts on Survive's lack of being the "Devil Survivor" entry to the Digimon franchise. The gameplay really does hold it back.
I was playing Next Order and immediately uninstalled once my Digimon died💀💀💀
@@monteiro1345 Lol I definitely would not want to be blindsided by that mechanic.
Yeah this franchise is very hit or miss. Just model it after Cybersleuth, add some Skip dialogs, and variety of training.
Dunno if I'm late to the party with this but there's a PSP game that follows season 1 of adventure and War Games. It's in Japanese but has a full English Patch. It's seriously awesome, check it out if you haven't already.
I mentioned it very briefly towards the end (without showing footage, so everyone seems to have missed the moment lol). I'm aware of it and love the idea - it just seems to be a little lacking in execution from what I've seen online (overly stringent party system, tiny linear game world, short and lacking in content, too easy, etc).
Digimon Story games are the definitive version of Digimon. I wasn’t feeling it with Next Order and Survive. Generally feeling I’m tired of solely using Omnimon everything.
Imo they should focus on the Olympo XIII, Seven Deadly Digimon and the Royal Knights, if not make a new group entirely.
Everything Digimon game, peaked with Digimon Story Dawn/Dusk and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth.
And they should aim as to always make their games like that imo to be able to properly compete.
Hope the next Digimon Story is similar to Dawn and Dusk if it’s not a remake.
The Cyber Sleuth games are the definitive 7/10 JRPG experience imo
@@DeadbeatShadows Lol sure, but I feel like Digimon can do better than that.
They just need to refine World 3. The DS games were sort of a progression on that but a refinment on that series and presentation would be perfect.
I think the simple solution would be to just do the persona thing. Group of kids have partners, player character has like a digimon that can turn into any digimon somehow
@@silentbob4343 A couple others here have brought this idea up. I’d be 10,000% down with it.
I actually like the digimon game's variety of game genere. Since Survive(currently playing) is a dark and nice strategy game with a good story and side routes. Cyber sleuth is probably the best for beginners for digimon I should know since it's the first I played. Good story,lots of digimon and location.
@@BlueKnight931 I enjoy the variety as well! I just think it would be cool if they could put all 3 of these pillars in a blender and make something that fully captures the show’s essence (while not being a visual novel).
I feel like a blend of Survive and World is what is needed. At least that is how I've built my TTRPG for Digimon. Making the life-cycle the price you pay for digivolution to higher stages; making it a tense resource management system that can appeal to the survival aspect.
Granted that is just meshing the anime and the V-Pet... but that is literally what Digimon is anyway. The mesh of those principles. Fundamentally it should be a conversation between those different ways of creating a sense of bonding and affection.
If you don't want to raise Digimon, to bond with them, maybe the anime is just the better option for you.
@@Twilord_ I basically agree with this, except for the very last part - I think that’s a bit reductive. I feel a lot more attached to my Cyber Sleuth Digimon even though I have a bazillion of them because I can actually invest in them without them dying. I’m actually fine with literally every aspect of raising in Digimon World (feeding, crapping, even training somewhat) except for the perma-death mechanic.
@@ThrillingDuck Sorry if that seemed that way, might have been a bit of an knee-jerk response.
I just worry about accidentally throwing out some of the most original and potentially fascinating concepts, after-all it was the outlandish success of the V-Pet design philosophy that ever even lead to Digimon getting so much additional content in both home-console and television formats; and then the anime itself was grounded in a more metaphorical conversion of the care and development aspects (the heart of the V-Pets) into self-care and personal-development.
My ideal would be to have life-cycles that are cut into every time you Digivolve, meaning that at lower-levels Champion is a treat, but at higher levels you've lengthened your Digimon's life-cycle enough that Mega now take that role instead.
Ideally combined with a "days" system not unlike Persona or Three Houses, with it taking a certain amount of days before you can Digivolve to various ranks again, but without them regressing in terms of the level of the actual Rookie. That would also let you can control their diets over weeks and months which would help guide their stat-growth. My TTRPG has three meals a day, but for a game you could probably get away with just one. I think if you spread that cost across a team of partnered Digimon you'd get all the advantages and none of the draw-backs, while also being forced to explore different party compositions which can only be a good thing when you have a cast of creatures as wide as Digimon allows and requires.
(My TTRPG also has a Personality-Crest system that needs to be triggered when the level and days requirements are met in order to acquire new evolutions, but I don't know how you'd do that for a regular RPG.)
While I think most of your points have merit, I disagree wholeheartedly on your opinion on World's evolution mechanic. I really, really, really love the psuedo-vpet formula and find the resulting emergent peak-and-valley gameplay tempo really engaging and fresh in a world of smooth progression.
That said, I do really agree World isn't a good "definitive digimon experience". What Digimon really needs is just a good, well-funded game made specifically to include the core points of the Digimon formula.
Also the World ExE evolution only working when you and both your digimon are the best friends ever, giving you a godlike power boost, while blasting the opening theme is the most anime thing in any of the games and you know it.
100% agree on the handling of ExE lol - in fact I'd love for that mechanic to return (complete with faux anime OP lol) in every future Digimon game.
I've also seen in the comments here that you're far from alone in your attachment to Digimon World's V-Pet style evolution and mortality mechanics, and I respect that. The reason I dislike it is because I'm a gamer first and a V-Pet guy never, and when looking at its integration into World from a game design standpoint, I don't feel like it's well-integrated into the gameplay loop, which makes it come off as a drawn out, periodic nuisance.
But if the act of grinding them back up from scratch has intrinsic value to you, then more power to you! Honestly, I envy you lol, because I love just about everything else that Decode and Next Order do.
You perfectly nailed explaining why Digimon Survive was such a massive letdown, because I too DEFINITELY thought it was finally going to be a true and definitive Digimon title... They really could've had this one in the bag, (and I'm sure Survive's development hell did not help it one bit-) but no, ofc, leave it to Bamco to screw it up. I'm a HUGE fan of Pokémon and Digimon both, and it's always made me upset that Digimon has never gotten to the global popularity that Pokémon has (at least in the games department) because it 100% deserves it.
For anyone here looking into hopping into a Digimon game for the first time, I also gotta agree that the Cyber Sleuth duology is gonna be your best bet. They absolutely aren't perfect (and not even English dubbed along with Survive, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, BANDAI-), but they're at least simple enough for first timers and a blast to play.
I fell that the cyber sleuth games and survive was the closest we got to a good consistent story, so they were on the right path, just needed for more interactions between the protagonists and their digimon partners. The problem feels more 50/50, where there doesn't seem to be a agreed on upon standard for what the gameplay should be every time, so we either lack the story, or the gameplay is weak.
To me, the definitive genre is still the v-pet sim that Digimon World 1 has. Even today, i think this game brings the most close that we have to travel around the digiworld. Of course the game has his issues, but his atmosphere is something that they couldn't replicate on redigitize and next order.
My hopes are for a new digimon world game!
I still want new entries in both of the 2 main pillars as well :)
I think an interesting game would be one where you controller your human/1 Digimon partner. Then you travel around the digital world/human world (depending on story) and meet other gamers who you can recruit (I.e. Baldurs gate style) and that’s how you can “collect them all”. In battle you control the other tamers Digimon mechanically but story wise the tamer chooses actions.
You can also recruit wild Digimon by completing some by some kind of quest that you can then call on them in future battles.
I don’t know what the story would be like but I feel like that would hit more of the shows feel.
This would be PERFECT! It's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.
Survive was so close to being it. The hype was so strong. If it had been a Fire Emblem style RPG as the focus instead of a visual novel, I think it could have been the one that finally did it. The RPGs before just never really hit at the level it needed to. All the games are just missing something IMO, down to Survive being a visual novel and missing the hype train as a result.
Hard agree on all of this. Survive had all of the right ingredients, but decided to be a visual novel first for some ungodly reason.