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.
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
@@chaoschalicewell, it don't need to be always the same evolution, in the ghost game anime they change back to the rookie form but there's plenty of evolutions possibilities
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
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.
In the world series, the gameplay varies wildly from game to game, when i bought next order i expected something more akin to digimon world 2003, but it ended up more like the first game in the series, 2 and 4 we dont need to talk abou
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
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??
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 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 honestly don't know why Bandai Namco don't just make a mobile digivice game that lets you raise Digimon old school style with some better minigames/training systems and with PVP / PVE content. It's hugely untapped potential. They can make it free to play and create evolution trees that you unlock over time. Then they could just have a bunch of cosmetic stuff that you can pay for or unlock slowly with the free currency. They could continue growing it for years by adding new evolutionary trees.
@@xflove yup, i think one of the reason when mobile game like Digimon New Generation get taken down was because bandai have a big One Piece game ongoing process, and lost because the franchise is bigger that Digimon. so they can't keep up with demanding update on foreign language.
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 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.
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-kaikid76 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 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 :)
@@ThrillingDuck honestly, I think that's the most endearing thing about Digimon. If they had a better mechanic that doesnt revolve around your digimon DYING over and over again and replaced with with something else that allowed the player to experiment with different digimon while stil lbeing attached to them, Im sure DGW1 and Next Order would be THE definitive experience. I mean, you had nothing but praise for the game until you reach that part lmao.
@@ThrillingDuck majority of people from south-east and east asia love Next Order. Because it is the closest to the first Digimon World which is what the v-pet all about. I think Bandai should just keep using this formula and the tamer-digimon relationship even better. Maybe incoperate phyisical Digivice with game where you could transport your digimon back and forth between the game and Digivice. That would be COOL!
I honestly think the anime isn't the definitive digimon experience. The core of digimon the the keychains, to me the true essence of digimon is world championship. It perfectly captures and expands on that formula and the emotional investment in that game is insane
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.
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
I find it so odd to call the digimon raising a ball and chain as it's honestly my favorite part of digimon. I love raising them and caring for them until they die. But I'm also a big fan of the v-pets so I dunno. But I'm also one of the few people who prefers the world games over the anime (I don't really like things like digimon degeneration honestly)
@ThrillingDuck I started as a fan of the anime, but as I grew up I started to way lean into the vpets and the world games! I feel like it just makes you feel a lot more like. Idk attached to them. Your actions are responsible for how they turn out.
@@ThrillingDuck but I could definitely see why someone might not like it, especially if they're not used to the caretaking style of these kinds of games. It can be heart breaking and also make it hard to want to start over again, but I think the benefit of traited eggs makes it a lot easier
@@absolutemaniac7368 The thing that I personally find irksome about Digimon World isn't the caretaking itself, but the way it interacts with the story's progression. I simply dislike needing to grind a Digimon back up from scratch periodically just to continue the story. When placed in a vacuum, or in a game where the raising is 100% the point (like Digimon World Championship for the DS), I can actually get behind it.
@ThrillingDuck hm, fair enough. I think it guys in well with the gameplay loop, but I understand why grinding to just have your fully evolved digimon for only a few days can be obnoxious. Especially when it doesn't mesh with the way the other partners act. It is kind of understandable how they couldn't just, make the other partners die and return (though I think Kouto's(?) partner does once?) But they wouldn't seem to be at the same "level" as you as you continue the story, I suppose? I don't know... I think I had just filled in the blank myself and assumed that in their implied supposed work in the background, their digimon had also died and returned. But yeah, as for actual gameplay, I definitely see why it would be obnoxious when you're just trying to get on with the story. Maybe it was because it was after I had played Cyber Sleuth, so I was trained to not really care for the story and was more satisfied with the fact that the gameplay was finally something I was having a blast with rather than the story. I definitely understand the game is flawed though.
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 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.
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.
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 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!
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.
I think that Next Order is the closest we have to the definitive Digimon game. But there's also Digital Tamers 2 I highly recommend trying out. It's a free fan game using the assets from Tournament.
@@Miraihidigital tamers 2 is the grindiest shit ever. It's like someone made a pay to win idle game and then forgot to give you ways to pay to win OR idle play.
@@ThrillingDuck digimon world series, including next order is a definitive digimon game imo. Of course it is not 100% same as the anime. Do you want to complete the game just with 1 digimon? of course no one want that! It will be so boring! So they make a system that u can try raise many kind of digimon without catching ( which is originally a pokemon's trademark ) by give the digimon a lifespan. So they can rebirth to different kind of digimon. U complaining the other tamer's digimon never died? who cares! they are npc. Just assume they also might die someday and reborn as same digimon, but not particulaly show it to us as player. u cannt also see the other tamer's craving for food, go to toilet, etc..u not complain about that?
The thing is, a lot of people expect Digimon to be like Pokémon, but that’s just not the case. Even within the Digimon franchise itself, the only things the games really share are the Digimon and some general concepts. Beyond that, every game does its own thing, with completely different narratives and gameplay styles. Games like Cyber Sleuth, Hacker's Memory, and Survive are clearly inspired by Shin Megami Tensei (SMT)-some even had developers from SMT working on them. These games lean into deeper storytelling, player choices, and strategy, which is way more SMT than Pokémon. And honestly, expecting Digimon to have some kind of "definitive" game just misses the point. That’s not what Digimon is about. Every game focuses on its own story and ideas, and it doesn’t try to follow the anime-or even stick to a single canon. Even the anime itself keeps reinventing what Digimon is supposed to be.
The problem with this though is the gameplay. There's no consistency when it comes what kind of genre the series has. Sometimes it's a v-pet simulator, other times it's a standard rpg, and even a dungeon crawler. Nothing can really be considered A mainline game to an extent because is there even a main series when it comes to the games? You could say it's world but like the first 4 titles are all completely different genres. Digimon just isn't consistent when it comes to this.
honestly part of why I don't think a digimon game that restrict the player with one given digimon partner will be great is the fact that at the end of the day people want to use their favorite digimon in their own play through. Digimon survive is great and all, but for some people that already have a specific favorite digimon in their mind, not being able to use that digimon will make the playthrough less satisfying.
@@powerpufboi3329 I feel that - that’s something a variable Digimon partner and/or a party of human tamers with paired up Digimon could help with - especially if everyone has an evolution tree as flexible as the ones in the current games. Make no mistake - I NEED my Beelzemon BM lol.
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.
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.
I come from the same place as you do, old time fan of the first seasons of the show, still loving the franchise, but you have to aknowledge that it's the show that actually doesn't respect the way digivolution works, it works the same way tamagotchis/digimon wolrds game portray it, your digimon gets bigger with time and stat, and ends up turning back to an egg
@@fulgurobaboon1321 I think the anime is the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, regardless of its V-Pet roots. Check out the pinned comment - it’s basically my response to this.
Why do the games need to adapt to the show when the show was initially an adaptation of the games? If anything is the show's fault to introduce concepts that strive away too much from the original vision. There's also not even a decent anime to base their games on right now. That good old "digimon is better for the anime" is not even true anymore, while pokemon games have been a regurgitation of the first ones so you can't say pokemon is a good game franchise either, unless it's the side games (ironically, the ones that resemble the show the less). I think the world series is the closest to the core concept of digimon, which is a monster breeding franchise. They should double down on its identity instead of becoming yet another rpg copycat.
I feel that the lifespan in the World games isn’t really that bad. If you need to extend lifespan for some reason, you have options. Digiseabass, restaurant meals, lifespan transfers, etc. As for the raising process, I feel it’s more of an issue with Next Order specifically and not the World subseries in general. The recommended way to gain stats is primarily through combat while using a guide to know which encounters will give you more stats. Of course you can’t fight without HP and MP and needing money to get items to keep them away from zero as you grind and of course actually traveling to and from. I really hate it. I can’t say anything about World 1, but in Decode you can pretty much just train in the gym and use restaurant buffs
I'm like 10 hours into Next Order, and yeah, they dropped the bag on making growth satisfying. I'm running inbetween zones to respawn a Black Garurumon two dozen times because the gym is a waste of time, and to make it worse, they made it a huge money sink right out of the gate in order to get the most out of using it. Using the gym doesn't give you money or item drops, it passes one hour per session, and the stat gains are worse than grinding out battles. This aspect of the game is really unfortunate.
@@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
I think a good approach could be persona but with digimon. Split normal human world with social sim/VN vibes and digital world with rpg exploration and combats. The supporting cast with a fixed partner that evolves with them in the story while the MC can capture, evolve, devolve, fuse, etc. Maybe with a special secret ending or easter egg for sticking with the initial partner all the game. But I wold not change the world formula too much, world games are the v-pet but videogame while I feel the story games are the opportunity too approach the anime side of digimon. Also a videogame based on the card game and Liberator manga/novel would be awesome.
@@karibui494 100% agree with all of this, including maintaining World as its own thing. To be clear I don’t want to abolish Story and World by any means - I more just want to see the rise of an anime-inspired 3rd pillar. Others here have brought up this Persona-like idea and I am 10000000% for it.
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 would best succeed in game form by taking inspiration from Atlus/Persona and Dark Cloud - Relationship Building of Persona with your Digimon and others. Maybe set protag to college age - City Builder in digital world to add addiontal day-to-day rewards and elements to the depth to the digital world
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.
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
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.
For me, playing games as a kid in the 90s.. I initially had this take towards Digimon World 1 as my introduction to digimon was the show. Now however I strongly feel that DW1 IS the difinitive experience and the pet raising aspect was just as awesome and fundamental as the exploration and town building.
@@JayZenVII If you’re into the V-Pet aspect then yeah, the World entries are pretty solid (although I’d still argue that World 1 is janky and outdated af, and Next Order would be your definitive entry). That said, I will die on the hill that the mortality aspect is not a good fit for RPG progression.
@@ThrillingDuck I enjoy the mortality and building up a new Digimon, stronger than the last. I think the best fix would just be giving the player agency in choosing when to revert your Digimon back to an egg (so long as you are taking proper care) so you can decide when to start fresh. That way if you have what you want and don't want to go down a diff evo path you don't necessarily have to waste time doing so.
Im 35 years old, and I love digimon. But bandia does not, they always halfass anything to do with digimon. They don't do anything for the people who actually support the franchise. Everything they make digimon wise is for 2 year olds and lackluster. Cybersluth and next order are the best digimon games.
I think one of the best thing about Digimon is that there is no definitive version. It is a franchise that is willing to experiment and constantly reinvent itself. Sometimes this leads to duds, but I think digimon is at its worse when it tries to rehash adventure 01 over and over again.
@@leotamer5 It doesn’t really do that that often though. I happen to agree that the experimentation is nice, but I think there’s a better balance to be found between innovation and refinement. Digimon games stray too far towards constant experimentation to produce anything of major quality imo.
@@ThrillingDuck I think the problem with trying to capture the anime into a game is the immediate question of which anime? So the main anime series are Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, Frontier, Data Squad, Fusion, Adventure 2020, and Ghost Game. Most of these have the same evolution rules except for Frontier and Fusion, but most of these take place primarily in the real world with the exception of Adventure, 02, Frontier and Fusion. Most, if not all the time, they end up in the digital world by the end but is that much different than how cyber sleuth handles things. Tamers, Data Squad and Ghost Game are all about digimon arriving in the real world, causing mischief and being misunderstood by the humans they are now in contact with until the protagonists become more involved with digimon and begin to understand their struggles. Which seems to be along the same narrative vein as Cyber Sleuth. And as you mentioned Survive is basically a dark reimagining of Adventure 01. I mean I still remember the Cave of Darkness and Skullgreymon. Survive just seems to take these elements and gives them more lasting consequences. It just has the problems with the game play being not great. I wouldn't be opposed to another narrative driven game like Survive that focuses on the bonds of humans and digimon with actually good gameplay, but I don't think that is necessary to create a good digimon game.
@@leotamer5 Yeah, I want to re-emphasize that I don’t think the existing Digimon games are “bad” lol - I’m talking about making something “definitive” as opposed to simply good. Digimon has good games. Regarding which anime to base it around, I was going to give you the same answer I give everyone but you answered your own question. Frontier and Fusion are the only real structural outliers with regard to the mechanics - everything else is consistent across series. Just pick a ratio between real and digital world time, I’m not THAT picky lol (though I’d prefer Digital World to be at least 50% of that ratio).
I would like to point out tamers and digidestined are different in lore, only the digidestined who are chosen by the kernel to fulfil a purpose have one destined partner who grows stronger from their bond, tamers follow different rules when it comes to raising digimon and nothing stops them from having multiple digimon.
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.
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
@@Trivial_Man 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.
@@Trivial_Man 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.
@@Trivial_Man 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?
Also having a lot of nostalgia for the show I can’t say I agree with your conclusion. With it being a monster forward franchise being told to either pick one or play as characters that don’t have my favorite Digimon has never been why I played the games. I also don’t think the games need to be like the anime, especially now when the anime is only relevant with people invested in the IP
@@WAB61994 Well yeah but so are the games lol. My point is the synergy which I really think benefits Pokemon significantly, but that’s just my opinion and I respect yours. Always appreciate respectful dissent 🙏
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.
The problem with digimon world games is that it was an adaptation of the digimon tamagotchi rather than the anime. In fact it was the anime that in a way adapts the first DW, file island and everything. You should look into this old ps2 digimon game, digimon world data squad (digimon savers: another mission in jp, so not actually a world game). My image of a definitive digimon game would be a combination of survive and data squad. Rework the hexagon combat (use meter or anything but declutter the screen), use the galaxy evolution system to explore different branches of evolution. Make evolution in battle more like survive, so you can evolve into the suitable typing for the situation. Have an overworld that you can explore and not just still images to interact with.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I'll table the World slander. >.> Actually I won't. If it's not for you fair enough, but you do gradually make permenant progress as you progress. The base-building provides you with better facilities and resources, the Tamer Tree provides you with buffs, and your stat inheritance is raised the higher you get with each generation. And the work you put in and the limited number of Digimon makes you both appreciate them more, and pushes you to engage with the micro-details to maximize your gains for each cycle. It's a Cozy game with Roguelite elements. --- Anyway, to your main point about franchise synergy, I do agree to an extent. It has lead to some really cool stuff, but it's also made the fanbase somewhat fractured across the iterations. And regardless of the VPets coming first, Adventure IS the most definiive aspect of the franchise. If I was trying to solve this, I do a combination between Survive and DW3. You have individual Digimon, each with their own distinct personality, who level up and gain access to their own personal evolution tree. That way you get all the benefits of a partner with a personality, and getting a large roster of Digimon. But I don't think it has to miror the anime exactly. Maybe it's one Digimon per human. Maybe one person who collects NPC Digimon as addition partners. Maybe they digivolve during battle, or outside. They're probably revert to Rookies for story segements just to cut down on addition VO. But ultimately you gotta go with what fits the medium and format. Survive adhered closely to the anime style, but it was such a story-heavy game it could. With games, that can be open ended, it might be better tobe more free-form. So you can explore the personality/story of each Digimon/Human, without it putting Ludo-narrative strain on the gameplay.
@@DakNJaxter Love this, but I want to point out that my issues with mortality in Digimon World stem from fundamental game design - not merely personal preference. I know the difference between sound design and my own taste. I’m well aware of the permanent progression that exists in Digimon World, but raising new partners up from scratch is not properly integrated into that game loop. In Next Order especially, optimal training is a huge timesink on the player, and all you’re really doing is a giant chore whose only direct benefit is getting to continue what you were actually up to in the primary game loop (the town building). Various town services ultimately aid in expanding your consumable resources and making selection of specific evolution paths easier, but not a single one of them cuts down on the optimal form of stat grinding. Looking at it as a hybrid Roguelite and Cozy game is an interesting perspective, but death has nothing to do with the player’s skill or actions (aside from training mistakes that no player who has half an idea what they’re doing will ever make), and most Cozy games give you more direct and permanent to semi-permanent rewards for any tedium you choose to engage in. Digimon mortality is just objectively not well-integrated. It only exists because V-Pet and does not gel well with anything else going on, imo.
@@ThrillingDuck Upgrading the gym, the restaurant, and the farm all provide direct benefits to raising your Digimon, and others have indirect benefits. The skill on the players part is learning the systems, and utilizing the time of their life-cycle effectvely. Maybe there's a version of this game that doesn't involve death (since various aesthetics at least tend to be worked into other games) but the town and it's services are so heavily built around the rebirth cycle to give them value. I can't agree that the death is poorly integrated when it obviously came first. I didn't mean to imply that you don't have a grasp of game design, so sorry for that, but I do think it is somewhat taste-based. I've only recently adopted using 'Cozy' to describe Next Order, but it really seems to fit, because whether or not you enjoy it is dependent on whether you see a core aspect of the loop as a 'chore'.
@@DakNJaxter The issue with your gym argument is that we both know that optimal stat grinding in Next Order does not take place in the gym. Like, at all. As soon as you have a rookie, you need to be marathoning specific battles. While the town's facilities do aid with raising your Digimon more effectively, they do next to nothing to cut down on the battle grind where most stat gains are. Upgrading the restaurant, farm, etc, can give you extra stat boosts here and there, but none of those things are anywhere near a replacement for the grind. At best, they're just an extra boost. In light of these factors, I'm simply going to have to agree to disagree with you on death being poorly integrated. I happen to agree that it was probably conceived first, but not because it's well integrated - simply because, again, V-Pets. I also agree that there's skill in managing your time effectively, but it's still fundamentally tied into this obnoxious "it's been a few hours so restart all your character progress" element. There are plenty of great RPGs with time management elements (Persona, Fire Emblem Three Houses, etc) that don't feel the need to rob you of your progress periodically.
@@ThrillingDuck Oooo, I had more to fire back, both on the inegration, and the validity of the rebirth cycle, but I'm happy to agree to disagree. Even if we argue the finer points, I don't think either of us would change our minds about how we feel about it. Back to the central point, and out of curiosity, in all the pow wow you've had across the comments, what do you think is the best approach to getting "the quintessental Digimon game experience"?
@@DakNJaxter I think that going by my admittedly somewhat arbitrary definition (i.e. an anime centric title), I've seen some really cool ideas thrown out - in particular some Xenoblade inspired ones, which I was definitely not expecting. A Xenoblade like world scope and structure would suit the Digital World very well I think, and Xenoblade's notoriously large active party sizes would also suit a party of Digidestined's partners. Even more interesting to me though is a concept of either a sort of "Digivolution meter" or even a Xenoblade 2-like battle system, which incorporates incremental digivolutions into battle, rather than just warp digivolving straight to the highest unlocked form whenever combat commences. This could very nicely emulate things like the Adventure cast starting every fight in Champion form and slowly working their way up stage by stage even once their Megas have been achieved. Obviously anything with the budget and ambition of a Xenoblade game is a pipe dream, but I think incremental mid-battle digivolution with new stages unlocked by story beats would go a long way in whatever format it was adapted into. And I can't imagine it would be too difficult to stick that into a traditional turn based JRPG for any dev team with a small bit of imagination.
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
I have very similar feeling. A lot of Digimon games feel like they are other games with Digimon branding. Which is fine once in a while but when it comes to making the definitive Digimon game it just isn't it. Anyways nice video!
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).
And then there's Digimon Data Squad: Another Mission (which like the Digimon Story games on NDS is _not_ a Digimon World title and I will not refer to it as one) and Digimon Adventure for the PSP which feel more like Digimon Story games in the way they handle gameplay. They even share elements of their battle UI with the Cyber Sleuth duology, just as ReArise did while Linkz had a digifarm and other Digimon Story elements. It certainly gives the impression that regardless of how much Bandai, Bandai Namco and Namco Bandai liked to go back to the original Digimon World, Digimon Story is the de-facto main game series for Digimon. At least the Adventure game tied evolution to an SP cost and was on a per-battle basis with partner evolutions being unlocked by story progress.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like Digimon does what it does in opposition to pokémon. Pokemon has effectively been the exact same game until legends and that was just a mechanics change. Digimon lets you go thru every type of game while still being a digimon game.
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.
I understand your point in the video, but to be fair, in next order, in the postgame, you can make your digimons inmortal, i'm not sure if they will die at certain amount of days passed, but you can effectively prolong their lifespan indefinetly with the restaurant, plus some items, but as in the postgame you have literally also infinite money, is no problem to feed your digimons at least once a day the lifespan menu in the restaurant.
@@amplyfier Others have brought this up, but that’s the postgame. The general experience of the story for the average player will inevitably involve the death loop.
@@ThrillingDuck Yes that's true, there's really no digimon game friendly for beginers at start. Not a single one. All of them have a tedious start, even digimon story, once you have started, the most friendly are indeed the story ones, slow, but friendly, the dungeons are more wide open, still no full map, but as the game is in 3D, and the zones are smaller, you can see the end of it most of the times, you can try the new story game when it came up, i'm not sure of the releasing date, but they are already working on it.
For those who dont know. The reason why the games dont follow the rules of rhe anime. Is because it was originally a virtual pet device made by theakers of tamagatchi. So the games follow rules closer to these devices than they did the rules in anime. Especially world 1 and next order. But one big trend among all games they did get from the v-pet is that when a digimon digivolves it doesnt randomly revery to child after the battle.
Oh yeah. Since I know you're gonna mention it. The 20th anniversary of the v-pet let you have 2 digimon at a time, so next order likely got the two partner system from. And since it started as v-pet before it was an anime. You could argue that world 1 and next order are the definitive games as with the exception of a slightly different combat system and more exploration they're essentially console versions of the v-pet devices.
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. 😅
And the other reason for the temporary evolution is you can resuse the evolution animation and save money. It’s honestly a cheap gimmick and Pokémon never required its use. It is popular in the magical girl genre.
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.
Next order would be better if the "reset" was an optional thing you did with higher stats being the reward, so that way you would reap the benefits of the grind but could also aim higher if you wanted, this would allow you a do over in case of unwanted evos
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"
Next Order is the "definitive game" if we go with the tamagotchi origins. Now that doesn't mean you'll like it, but I see Next Order, and the original PS1 game, as essentially definitive based on that. I think an issue with Digimon, is that from a video game perspective, most people will probably watch to have a variety of different monsters available, which is in stark contrast to the way the original anime work. No matter how unintentional it was, they've made a nearly impossible to please scenario due to the tamagotchi being so different than the anime.
Some people in the comments have crafted potential solutions to that dilemma, just fyi. Basically tying extra Digimon to other human party members, and then giving everyone branching evolutions they can switch between, while always returning to their default canon Rookie stages for cutscenes, to name one.
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.
Err... I think you are TOO MUCH fondle in the "Adventure" saga of things about Digimon. Tamers can form bonds with more than one Digimon at the time. Just because the first anime does that, doesn't means is restricted to that. The game reflects it, you need to form friendship with the Digimon to get into higher stages in some of the games (DS games SPECIALLY) so, those bonds you critizes on the Cyber Sleuth take are there. Also, enemy Digimon on the series, unless they are a big story component, didn't talk either. They are, in fact, wild animals, even the artbooks and source materials qualifies some of them as that.
@@ZirixStrarstrider Bro, literally every season of the anime features single partner Digimon, not just Adventure lol. I have no idea where you got the idea that that’s not the case.
@@ThrillingDuck Impmon in Tamers has 2 partners. Mimi forms a bond with all the other Digimon from the village, Calumon does not have a partner. You got a lot of examples of more and none partners. There is also a big difference between the Digi Destined from Adventure, and the Tamers.
@@ZirixStrarstrider Okay, I will give you Impmon and nothing else. Mimi’s only partner is Palmon - befriending her village absolutely does not even remotely count. That’s like saying every extraneous Digimon the gang befriends is a “partner.” Ridiculous. Calumon is so irrelevant I can’t even believe you brought her up. She has zero partners because she’s… not partnered. Wtf was your point lmao? Regardless, even if all 3 of these had been valid, a few exceptions does not a rule make. But 2 thirds were invalid anyway 🤷🏻♂️
@@ThrillingDuck it is irrelevant? Calumon was the reason they can evolve in the first place. Is like saying that Hikari was irrelevant during the Vamdemom saga.
@@ThrillingDuck And then again, you are clearly mixing terms. Digi Destined are one thing, Tamers are another different thing. As someone pointed out on another comment, Digimon came from the V-Pet. You get an egg, you raise it, you train it. That is the whole concept of the franchise, from its first manga onwards. Digimon Adventure (I really don't like either of the original Adventure duology) switched everything with the Digidestinied, the Tamers turned the steering wheel back towards the mascot thing. DS games, does exactly that. Your Digimon are yours, no matter how much you have. I would search for it, but there instances on mangas that tamers appear with more than one Digimon partner, i have a memory of some of them, i need to confirm it. Then again, the concept is not foreign to the franchise.
The anime and the game are inspired by the vpets which are very popular. I am from Malaysia, and Digimon vpets are super duper popular in south-east asia and east asia itself. We have been playing the vpet v1 since 1997 ( I was 10 back then buying my first vpet). The first Digimon Adventure anime and Digimon World game were just icing on top and secured the grip on us vpet owners and made new fans that would buy the digivice (d2, d3, dArk and so on). So it's hard to have a consistent Digimon experience when Bandai probably don't know how to please so many fans who love Digimon for many reasons. Some love the Anime, some love the games, some because of the vpets but I am hella sure Bandai would be a bit bias on the v-pet due to it's popularity in East and South-East Asia. People still play v-pets today. That's why Bandai keeps on releasing new v-pets into the market.
@@kurosenpai So interesting to hear about this side of the V-Pet as someone from the US. I was a kid when Digimon was arguably in its prime in the west and nobody on the playground had ever even heard of “V-Pets.” I think we all knew of Tamogachis, but we didn’t think of them as a genre, and I never heard anyone utter the phrase “Tamogachi but for boys” in reference to Digimon. All discourse about Digimon just surrounded the show. If anything, it was “Pokemon but they can talk and de-evolve.” I even had a Digivice (a D3 model? It was the one that Davis/Daisuke of Adventure 02 had), but neither I nor anyone else with a Digivice saw it as “the point.” It was just another piece of merch. If anything I preferred my Digimon toys to my Digivice, as I recall. Anyway, even if we’re to look at Digimon World as the definitive way to go, it needs a better way to handle its core loop, because halting all story progress every few hours to spend a few hours grinding up a new generation is just not it.
@@ThrillingDuck tamagotchi for boys thats kinda true in a sense. tamagotchi was very popular among the girls and women so Bandai went out releasing Digimon for the opposite gender. If you still have your first version of D3 (yes its from Adventure 02) you might wanna hold it for a while because it depending on the condition it might fetch a good selling price. its very sought after in SEA and East Asia. I actually want Bandai to keep the same old formula of World 1, because thats the core gameplay of Digimon which comes from the vpets. However i also do understand the repetitive nature and grind to play the game and hope Bandai can find a common ground that can appease both sides of the fans which mainly the anime and vpet fans.
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.
even though each game is experimental, I'm still enjoying each one of them. One thing I love about Digimon game is the Digivolution tree that was fleshed out even more in Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth and Digimon World Next Order. It make Digivolution so flexible and rewarding if you can digivolve into Digimon with high requirement/Keypoint They can make Digimon game into any genre, but the Digivolution Tree should exist in every game. Btw, disagree with you about Digimon World Next Order. My first playthrough, I could beat the story, recruit majority of Digimon, and reach 80k HP MP, 9999 STR STA WIS SPD from Second Generation only. Next Order is most forgiving than Digimon World 1 bcs it has many town feature that can help your Digimon Growth.
Not saying Next Order isn't the most forgiving World entry, but regardless of whether a first time player can finish the main story in 2 generations with the use of a guide (needing a guide isn't really a great defense btw), the fundamental disconnect of the mortality loop and the town building is still bad design. Hard agree on the flexible digivolution tree though.
@@ThrillingDuck mortality loop and town building as bad design is very subjective. I think you just expecting different game. It's like calling mortality as bad design in Monster Rancher game. The point of Digimon World 1 and Next Order is Digimon taming, adventure and saving the Digital World. Raising and build connection with Digimon from a baby to adult and when they died, it mean something. Same with Town building. seeing the city at the start being barren and became full of life and building the more we recruit Digimon make us feel like we done something good for the World Although I have to admit that I feel more connection with Digimon and city in Digimon World 1 than Digimon World Next Order. Like I said, If you don't like it, you can remove that mortality loop by giving them food that can increase their life for a long time. So I prefer they split into different series rather than make a game that try to appease everyone. As long as they give more attention, budget and marketing to any Digimon game they make in the future
@@kleberson777 I do like that each pillar of the series offers a different experience at least. I will say though that I also find the life-extending food argument pretty weak (have said so elsewhere on here) because that’s still a late/postgame acquisition and locks you in with whatever partners you have. The option is nice I guess, but “you can remove an annoying mechanic in the late/postgame” isn’t as strong of a defense as a lot of World fans seem to think it is. Most other games just don’t have said annoying mechanic to begin with lol. All that said, while I still think the separation of the 2 loops is bad design (you didn’t really address how divorced they are from each other), I can accept that V-Pet fans enjoy the mortality aspect because they are V-Pet fans. It’s just that game design in full fledged games is a more complicated beast than a 1-note V-Pet. If the town building cut down on the grinding a metric shit-ton somehow, like maybe supercharging the absolute shit out of the gym equipment gains or something, then there would be an actual feedback loop for me to praise. As things stand though there isn’t a true loop, only actual wrote repetition, despite how oxymoronic that sounds when put into words.
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
Since technically neither digimon nor pokemon started with an anime or manga, it could be argue that the "definitive" digimon game, the one that captures what digimon was trully about, at least when it started is the most obvious one: Digimon World for the ps1, as Digimon literally started as a bunch of tamagochi toys that you could battle with, in that front, Digimon World is definitive in translating that experience to a JRPG format while also being packed to the brim with references to the v-pet toys. But it could also be argued that it can't be the definitive digimon game, as the v-pets are something only the more hardcore fans are even aware of, unlike the anime.
The issue is people disagree. There’s no classic era Sonic games to harken back to. Digimon has always been disjointed. The video is saying since the anime was popular they should make a game like it. However, that game would be divisive to people who primarily play the games because they’re so different. You’ll never accomplish definitive without a lot of work. Honestly, the evolution from the anime needs to go in my opinion. It doesn’t make sense for the series setting and it used to cut costs for animation. The digimon are supposed to grow up in the first forms.
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))
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.
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.
12:15 Don't blame the console for devs not giving a shit about performance. You are right. It shouldn't run miserably on the Switch while looking like this. The Switch has Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey, Luigi's Mansion 3, Bayonetta 3, Mario Kart 8, NieR:Automata, Xenoblade 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Pikmin 4, Guilty Gear Strive and many more. The Switch has visually impressive games. It's just about developers investing the time in making the game run well/look good. Do you blame a High End PC for running a game notorious for bad optimization like ARK Survival Evolved, or for an older game that still runs terribly on modern Hardware - Sims 3?
@@Max_G4 I get what you’re saying, but I blame Nintendo for deciding to run hardware so underpowered that other devs have to put in so much extra work just to get their ports running acceptably, yes. This has been a rampant issue, and at some point it becomes Nintendo’s fault too, imo. Why should these companies need to dedicate so many extra resources to accomplishing what they do so effortlessly on other platforms? Also, some of the games on your own list run terribly on Switch, and some very visually unimpressive first party games do too (I’m looking at you Link’s Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom).
@@ThrillingDuck For Echoes of Wisdom it's a v-Sync bug, where the game switches to 30FPS Lock when it's running slightly under 60FPS, while for Link's Awakening I believe it was Loading problems. Though those two games aren't even first-party, but by an external studio. And what games in particular do you mean with running terribly? Survive really doesn't look like it should cause any problems on the Switch or need any optimizations *at all* to run there, yet it still does. It looks like it could run on the Wii. It's probably something wrong with how they optimized that takes way more resources than it should just doesn't show on other consoles because those consoles' power isn't stretched at all by the game. My take is if you release something on a specific hardware, you should care enough to make it run normally and shouldn't put the blame on the hardware So I wouldn't blame Nintendo for releasing a console 7 years ago for current developers not being able to optimize a very graphically simple game on there. Those are different console release dates and the other two are stationary while the Switch is a Handheld console.
That statement about the mortality system is basically the one thing keeping me from trying out the Digimon World games. It was also present in the DS Digimon Championship game and it was even worse there because you had to make sure you have strong digimons ready by the time a tournament arrives. The way the Story games does it is the best IMO. You evolve something to Mega level and then you can devolve them however you want at your leisure to make them stronger/try out a different evo branch. Story-wise I'm not actually much of a Digimon guy and didn't experience the many shows it has so I don't really care about the setting and how "lore-friendly" the gameplay is and such, but Digimon Story DS and Dawn/Dusk is one of my favorites (maybe even equal to DS Pokemon games) purely for the gameplay and progress mechanic it provides, and I didn't mind the grind because battles and levelups go quickly if you know what you're doing. Honestly the only bad thing I can say for the DS Story games were the horrendous random encounter rate, jebus...
IMO you should try it! I understand why it sounds unappealing but there's a reason games like DW1 still hold dear to so many fans. Personally by the time my Ultimate digimon dies on DW1 I was ready to move on and try to get another digimon. The training / grindr and resulting evolution are probably the most fun part of the games tbh. By the time you have an incredibly powerful digimon and you're just annihilating everything in your way, it feels amazing!
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
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
@@chaoschalicewell, it don't need to be always the same evolution, in the ghost game anime they change back to the rookie form but there's plenty of evolutions possibilities
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?
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.
In the world series, the gameplay varies wildly from game to game, when i bought next order i expected something more akin to digimon world 2003, but it ended up more like the first game in the series, 2 and 4 we dont need to talk abou
The only definitive version is the Digital Card Battle. Which doesn't exist on anything aside from PSX.
@@nazrin992 I wouldn't call it "definitive" but it's insanely underrated
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
@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
DCG rocks
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.
The model kits are pretty cool and highly recommended
Apparently Bandai believes in limited releases, like prerelease bonus and limited merch, which SUCKS
@@MrPsyren99 where to find and how much money wise
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'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 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??
Wouldn't that just be Devil Children?
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 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 honestly don't know why Bandai Namco don't just make a mobile digivice game that lets you raise Digimon old school style with some better minigames/training systems and with PVP / PVE content.
It's hugely untapped potential. They can make it free to play and create evolution trees that you unlock over time. Then they could just have a bunch of cosmetic stuff that you can pay for or unlock slowly with the free currency.
They could continue growing it for years by adding new evolutionary trees.
@@Jokerwolf666 This too! Hard agree.
they do …..japan only
@@xflove God dammit
@@xflove yup, i think one of the reason when mobile game like Digimon New Generation get taken down was because bandai have a big One Piece game ongoing process, and lost because the franchise is bigger that Digimon. so they can't keep up with demanding update on foreign language.
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.
@@JayceCH.u aren’t too bright
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.
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-kaikid76 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 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 :)
@@ThrillingDuck honestly, I think that's the most endearing thing about Digimon. If they had a better mechanic that doesnt revolve around your digimon DYING over and over again and replaced with with something else that allowed the player to experiment with different digimon while stil lbeing attached to them, Im sure DGW1 and Next Order would be THE definitive experience. I mean, you had nothing but praise for the game until you reach that part lmao.
@@ThrillingDuck majority of people from south-east and east asia love Next Order. Because it is the closest to the first Digimon World which is what the v-pet all about. I think Bandai should just keep using this formula and the tamer-digimon relationship even better. Maybe incoperate phyisical Digivice with game where you could transport your digimon back and forth between the game and Digivice. That would be COOL!
I honestly think the anime isn't the definitive digimon experience. The core of digimon the the keychains, to me the true essence of digimon is world championship. It perfectly captures and expands on that formula and the emotional investment in that game is insane
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.
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
I find it so odd to call the digimon raising a ball and chain as it's honestly my favorite part of digimon. I love raising them and caring for them until they die. But I'm also a big fan of the v-pets so I dunno. But I'm also one of the few people who prefers the world games over the anime (I don't really like things like digimon degeneration honestly)
I mean if you came to it as a V-Pet fan, that's understandable.
@ThrillingDuck I started as a fan of the anime, but as I grew up I started to way lean into the vpets and the world games! I feel like it just makes you feel a lot more like. Idk attached to them. Your actions are responsible for how they turn out.
@@ThrillingDuck but I could definitely see why someone might not like it, especially if they're not used to the caretaking style of these kinds of games. It can be heart breaking and also make it hard to want to start over again, but I think the benefit of traited eggs makes it a lot easier
@@absolutemaniac7368 The thing that I personally find irksome about Digimon World isn't the caretaking itself, but the way it interacts with the story's progression. I simply dislike needing to grind a Digimon back up from scratch periodically just to continue the story.
When placed in a vacuum, or in a game where the raising is 100% the point (like Digimon World Championship for the DS), I can actually get behind it.
@ThrillingDuck hm, fair enough. I think it guys in well with the gameplay loop, but I understand why grinding to just have your fully evolved digimon for only a few days can be obnoxious. Especially when it doesn't mesh with the way the other partners act. It is kind of understandable how they couldn't just, make the other partners die and return (though I think Kouto's(?) partner does once?)
But they wouldn't seem to be at the same "level" as you as you continue the story, I suppose? I don't know... I think I had just filled in the blank myself and assumed that in their implied supposed work in the background, their digimon had also died and returned.
But yeah, as for actual gameplay, I definitely see why it would be obnoxious when you're just trying to get on with the story. Maybe it was because it was after I had played Cyber Sleuth, so I was trained to not really care for the story and was more satisfied with the fact that the gameplay was finally something I was having a blast with rather than the story. I definitely understand the game is flawed though.
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 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.
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
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 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!
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.
I think that Next Order is the closest we have to the definitive Digimon game. But there's also Digital Tamers 2 I highly recommend trying out. It's a free fan game using the assets from Tournament.
@@Miraihidigital tamers 2 is the grindiest shit ever. It's like someone made a pay to win idle game and then forgot to give you ways to pay to win OR idle play.
@@crossfiyah674 I agree, it needs to be more "idly". But what I liked is that it comes close to the original tamagochi concept.
@@ThrillingDuck digimon world series, including next order is a definitive digimon game imo. Of course it is not 100% same as the anime. Do you want to complete the game just with 1 digimon? of course no one want that! It will be so boring! So they make a system that u can try raise many kind of digimon without catching ( which is originally a pokemon's trademark ) by give the digimon a lifespan. So they can rebirth to different kind of digimon. U complaining the other tamer's digimon never died? who cares! they are npc. Just assume they also might die someday and reborn as same digimon, but not particulaly show it to us as player. u cannt also see the other tamer's craving for food, go to toilet, etc..u not complain about that?
The thing is, a lot of people expect Digimon to be like Pokémon, but that’s just not the case. Even within the Digimon franchise itself, the only things the games really share are the Digimon and some general concepts. Beyond that, every game does its own thing, with completely different narratives and gameplay styles.
Games like Cyber Sleuth, Hacker's Memory, and Survive are clearly inspired by Shin Megami Tensei (SMT)-some even had developers from SMT working on them. These games lean into deeper storytelling, player choices, and strategy, which is way more SMT than Pokémon.
And honestly, expecting Digimon to have some kind of "definitive" game just misses the point. That’s not what Digimon is about. Every game focuses on its own story and ideas, and it doesn’t try to follow the anime-or even stick to a single canon. Even the anime itself keeps reinventing what Digimon is supposed to be.
The problem with this though is the gameplay. There's no consistency when it comes what kind of genre the series has. Sometimes it's a v-pet simulator, other times it's a standard rpg, and even a dungeon crawler. Nothing can really be considered A mainline game to an extent because is there even a main series when it comes to the games? You could say it's world but like the first 4 titles are all completely different genres. Digimon just isn't consistent when it comes to this.
honestly part of why I don't think a digimon game that restrict the player with one given digimon partner will be great is the fact that at the end of the day people want to use their favorite digimon in their own play through. Digimon survive is great and all, but for some people that already have a specific favorite digimon in their mind, not being able to use that digimon will make the playthrough less satisfying.
@@powerpufboi3329 I feel that - that’s something a variable Digimon partner and/or a party of human tamers with paired up Digimon could help with - especially if everyone has an evolution tree as flexible as the ones in the current games.
Make no mistake - I NEED my Beelzemon BM lol.
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
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.
I come from the same place as you do, old time fan of the first seasons of the show, still loving the franchise, but you have to aknowledge that it's the show that actually doesn't respect the way digivolution works, it works the same way tamagotchis/digimon wolrds game portray it, your digimon gets bigger with time and stat, and ends up turning back to an egg
@@fulgurobaboon1321 I think the anime is the cultural lynchpin of the franchise, regardless of its V-Pet roots. Check out the pinned comment - it’s basically my response to this.
The Nintendo switch is fine hardware wise it’s just that no ports are optimized usually
Why do the games need to adapt to the show when the show was initially an adaptation of the games? If anything is the show's fault to introduce concepts that strive away too much from the original vision.
There's also not even a decent anime to base their games on right now. That good old "digimon is better for the anime" is not even true anymore, while pokemon games have been a regurgitation of the first ones so you can't say pokemon is a good game franchise either, unless it's the side games (ironically, the ones that resemble the show the less).
I think the world series is the closest to the core concept of digimon, which is a monster breeding franchise. They should double down on its identity instead of becoming yet another rpg copycat.
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 feel that the lifespan in the World games isn’t really that bad. If you need to extend lifespan for some reason, you have options. Digiseabass, restaurant meals, lifespan transfers, etc. As for the raising process, I feel it’s more of an issue with Next Order specifically and not the World subseries in general. The recommended way to gain stats is primarily through combat while using a guide to know which encounters will give you more stats. Of course you can’t fight without HP and MP and needing money to get items to keep them away from zero as you grind and of course actually traveling to and from. I really hate it. I can’t say anything about World 1, but in Decode you can pretty much just train in the gym and use restaurant buffs
I'm like 10 hours into Next Order, and yeah, they dropped the bag on making growth satisfying. I'm running inbetween zones to respawn a Black Garurumon two dozen times because the gym is a waste of time, and to make it worse, they made it a huge money sink right out of the gate in order to get the most out of using it. Using the gym doesn't give you money or item drops, it passes one hour per session, and the stat gains are worse than grinding out battles. This aspect of the game is really unfortunate.
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!
I think a good approach could be persona but with digimon. Split normal human world with social sim/VN vibes and digital world with rpg exploration and combats. The supporting cast with a fixed partner that evolves with them in the story while the MC can capture, evolve, devolve, fuse, etc. Maybe with a special secret ending or easter egg for sticking with the initial partner all the game.
But I wold not change the world formula too much, world games are the v-pet but videogame while I feel the story games are the opportunity too approach the anime side of digimon. Also a videogame based on the card game and Liberator manga/novel would be awesome.
@@karibui494 100% agree with all of this, including maintaining World as its own thing. To be clear I don’t want to abolish Story and World by any means - I more just want to see the rise of an anime-inspired 3rd pillar.
Others here have brought up this Persona-like idea and I am 10000000% for it.
Cyber Sleuth with better progression systems and existing in the digital world would have been peak
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 would best succeed in game form by taking inspiration from Atlus/Persona and Dark Cloud
- Relationship Building of Persona with your Digimon and others. Maybe set protag to college age
- City Builder in digital world to add addiontal day-to-day rewards and elements to the depth to the digital world
@@IsaiasR79 I would absolutely love this
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.
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
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
For me, playing games as a kid in the 90s.. I initially had this take towards Digimon World 1 as my introduction to digimon was the show. Now however I strongly feel that DW1 IS the difinitive experience and the pet raising aspect was just as awesome and fundamental as the exploration and town building.
@@JayZenVII If you’re into the V-Pet aspect then yeah, the World entries are pretty solid (although I’d still argue that World 1 is janky and outdated af, and Next Order would be your definitive entry). That said, I will die on the hill that the mortality aspect is not a good fit for RPG progression.
@@ThrillingDuck I enjoy the mortality and building up a new Digimon, stronger than the last. I think the best fix would just be giving the player agency in choosing when to revert your Digimon back to an egg (so long as you are taking proper care) so you can decide when to start fresh. That way if you have what you want and don't want to go down a diff evo path you don't necessarily have to waste time doing so.
@ Sure! I could get behind that, I suppose.
Im 35 years old, and I love digimon. But bandia does not, they always halfass anything to do with digimon. They don't do anything for the people who actually support the franchise. Everything they make digimon wise is for 2 year olds and lackluster. Cybersluth and next order are the best digimon games.
I think one of the best thing about Digimon is that there is no definitive version. It is a franchise that is willing to experiment and constantly reinvent itself. Sometimes this leads to duds, but I think digimon is at its worse when it tries to rehash adventure 01 over and over again.
@@leotamer5 It doesn’t really do that that often though. I happen to agree that the experimentation is nice, but I think there’s a better balance to be found between innovation and refinement. Digimon games stray too far towards constant experimentation to produce anything of major quality imo.
@@ThrillingDuck I think the problem with trying to capture the anime into a game is the immediate question of which anime?
So the main anime series are Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, Frontier, Data Squad, Fusion, Adventure 2020, and Ghost Game.
Most of these have the same evolution rules except for Frontier and Fusion, but most of these take place primarily in the real world with the exception of Adventure, 02, Frontier and Fusion. Most, if not all the time, they end up in the digital world by the end but is that much different than how cyber sleuth handles things.
Tamers, Data Squad and Ghost Game are all about digimon arriving in the real world, causing mischief and being misunderstood by the humans they are now in contact with until the protagonists become more involved with digimon and begin to understand their struggles. Which seems to be along the same narrative vein as Cyber Sleuth.
And as you mentioned Survive is basically a dark reimagining of Adventure 01. I mean I still remember the Cave of Darkness and Skullgreymon. Survive just seems to take these elements and gives them more lasting consequences. It just has the problems with the game play being not great.
I wouldn't be opposed to another narrative driven game like Survive that focuses on the bonds of humans and digimon with actually good gameplay, but I don't think that is necessary to create a good digimon game.
@@leotamer5 Yeah, I want to re-emphasize that I don’t think the existing Digimon games are “bad” lol - I’m talking about making something “definitive” as opposed to simply good. Digimon has good games.
Regarding which anime to base it around, I was going to give you the same answer I give everyone but you answered your own question. Frontier and Fusion are the only real structural outliers with regard to the mechanics - everything else is consistent across series. Just pick a ratio between real and digital world time, I’m not THAT picky lol (though I’d prefer Digital World to be at least 50% of that ratio).
It's easy.
Get dropped in digital world.
Pick a Digimon.
Beat the evil 7 or whatever they are called.
Pokemon style.
Profit.
I would like to point out tamers and digidestined are different in lore, only the digidestined who are chosen by the kernel to fulfil a purpose have one destined partner who grows stronger from their bond, tamers follow different rules when it comes to raising digimon and nothing stops them from having multiple digimon.
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.
You are US, the digimon fan and believer, this is such a great take and very representative of most of digimon fans
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
@@Trivial_Man 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.
@@Trivial_Man 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.
@@Trivial_Man 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?
Also having a lot of nostalgia for the show I can’t say I agree with your conclusion. With it being a monster forward franchise being told to either pick one or play as characters that don’t have my favorite Digimon has never been why I played the games. I also don’t think the games need to be like the anime, especially now when the anime is only relevant with people invested in the IP
@@WAB61994 Well yeah but so are the games lol. My point is the synergy which I really think benefits Pokemon significantly, but that’s just my opinion and I respect yours. Always appreciate respectful dissent 🙏
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.
The problem with digimon world games is that it was an adaptation of the digimon tamagotchi rather than the anime. In fact it was the anime that in a way adapts the first DW, file island and everything.
You should look into this old ps2 digimon game, digimon world data squad (digimon savers: another mission in jp, so not actually a world game).
My image of a definitive digimon game would be a combination of survive and data squad. Rework the hexagon combat (use meter or anything but declutter the screen), use the galaxy evolution system to explore different branches of evolution. Make evolution in battle more like survive, so you can evolve into the suitable typing for the situation. Have an overworld that you can explore and not just still images to interact with.
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!
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 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 that DIGIMON WORLD 3 (PS1) is one of the best games of all time and I DESPERATELY need a remaster!
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.
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.
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.
I'll table the World slander. >.>
Actually I won't.
If it's not for you fair enough, but you do gradually make permenant progress as you progress. The base-building provides you with better facilities and resources, the Tamer Tree provides you with buffs, and your stat inheritance is raised the higher you get with each generation.
And the work you put in and the limited number of Digimon makes you both appreciate them more, and pushes you to engage with the micro-details to maximize your gains for each cycle. It's a Cozy game with Roguelite elements.
---
Anyway, to your main point about franchise synergy, I do agree to an extent. It has lead to some really cool stuff, but it's also made the fanbase somewhat fractured across the iterations. And regardless of the VPets coming first, Adventure IS the most definiive aspect of the franchise.
If I was trying to solve this, I do a combination between Survive and DW3. You have individual Digimon, each with their own distinct personality, who level up and gain access to their own personal evolution tree.
That way you get all the benefits of a partner with a personality, and getting a large roster of Digimon.
But I don't think it has to miror the anime exactly.
Maybe it's one Digimon per human. Maybe one person who collects NPC Digimon as addition partners. Maybe they digivolve during battle, or outside. They're probably revert to Rookies for story segements just to cut down on addition VO.
But ultimately you gotta go with what fits the medium and format. Survive adhered closely to the anime style, but it was such a story-heavy game it could. With games, that can be open ended, it might be better tobe more free-form. So you can explore the personality/story of each Digimon/Human, without it putting Ludo-narrative strain on the gameplay.
@@DakNJaxter Love this, but I want to point out that my issues with mortality in Digimon World stem from fundamental game design - not merely personal preference. I know the difference between sound design and my own taste.
I’m well aware of the permanent progression that exists in Digimon World, but raising new partners up from scratch is not properly integrated into that game loop. In Next Order especially, optimal training is a huge timesink on the player, and all you’re really doing is a giant chore whose only direct benefit is getting to continue what you were actually up to in the primary game loop (the town building). Various town services ultimately aid in expanding your consumable resources and making selection of specific evolution paths easier, but not a single one of them cuts down on the optimal form of stat grinding.
Looking at it as a hybrid Roguelite and Cozy game is an interesting perspective, but death has nothing to do with the player’s skill or actions (aside from training mistakes that no player who has half an idea what they’re doing will ever make), and most Cozy games give you more direct and permanent to semi-permanent rewards for any tedium you choose to engage in.
Digimon mortality is just objectively not well-integrated. It only exists because V-Pet and does not gel well with anything else going on, imo.
@@ThrillingDuck Upgrading the gym, the restaurant, and the farm all provide direct benefits to raising your Digimon, and others have indirect benefits. The skill on the players part is learning the systems, and utilizing the time of their life-cycle effectvely.
Maybe there's a version of this game that doesn't involve death (since various aesthetics at least tend to be worked into other games) but the town and it's services are so heavily built around the rebirth cycle to give them value. I can't agree that the death is poorly integrated when it obviously came first.
I didn't mean to imply that you don't have a grasp of game design, so sorry for that, but I do think it is somewhat taste-based. I've only recently adopted using 'Cozy' to describe Next Order, but it really seems to fit, because whether or not you enjoy it is dependent on whether you see a core aspect of the loop as a 'chore'.
@@DakNJaxter The issue with your gym argument is that we both know that optimal stat grinding in Next Order does not take place in the gym. Like, at all. As soon as you have a rookie, you need to be marathoning specific battles.
While the town's facilities do aid with raising your Digimon more effectively, they do next to nothing to cut down on the battle grind where most stat gains are. Upgrading the restaurant, farm, etc, can give you extra stat boosts here and there, but none of those things are anywhere near a replacement for the grind. At best, they're just an extra boost.
In light of these factors, I'm simply going to have to agree to disagree with you on death being poorly integrated. I happen to agree that it was probably conceived first, but not because it's well integrated - simply because, again, V-Pets.
I also agree that there's skill in managing your time effectively, but it's still fundamentally tied into this obnoxious "it's been a few hours so restart all your character progress" element. There are plenty of great RPGs with time management elements (Persona, Fire Emblem Three Houses, etc) that don't feel the need to rob you of your progress periodically.
@@ThrillingDuck Oooo, I had more to fire back, both on the inegration, and the validity of the rebirth cycle, but I'm happy to agree to disagree. Even if we argue the finer points, I don't think either of us would change our minds about how we feel about it.
Back to the central point, and out of curiosity, in all the pow wow you've had across the comments, what do you think is the best approach to getting "the quintessental Digimon game experience"?
@@DakNJaxter I think that going by my admittedly somewhat arbitrary definition (i.e. an anime centric title), I've seen some really cool ideas thrown out - in particular some Xenoblade inspired ones, which I was definitely not expecting.
A Xenoblade like world scope and structure would suit the Digital World very well I think, and Xenoblade's notoriously large active party sizes would also suit a party of Digidestined's partners. Even more interesting to me though is a concept of either a sort of "Digivolution meter" or even a Xenoblade 2-like battle system, which incorporates incremental digivolutions into battle, rather than just warp digivolving straight to the highest unlocked form whenever combat commences. This could very nicely emulate things like the Adventure cast starting every fight in Champion form and slowly working their way up stage by stage even once their Megas have been achieved.
Obviously anything with the budget and ambition of a Xenoblade game is a pipe dream, but I think incremental mid-battle digivolution with new stages unlocked by story beats would go a long way in whatever format it was adapted into. And I can't imagine it would be too difficult to stick that into a traditional turn based JRPG for any dev team with a small bit of imagination.
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
I have very similar feeling. A lot of Digimon games feel like they are other games with Digimon branding. Which is fine once in a while but when it comes to making the definitive Digimon game it just isn't it.
Anyways nice video!
@@Knight1029 Thanks a lot!
@@ThrillingDuck you make some really great videos!
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).
And then there's Digimon Data Squad: Another Mission (which like the Digimon Story games on NDS is _not_ a Digimon World title and I will not refer to it as one) and Digimon Adventure for the PSP which feel more like Digimon Story games in the way they handle gameplay. They even share elements of their battle UI with the Cyber Sleuth duology, just as ReArise did while Linkz had a digifarm and other Digimon Story elements. It certainly gives the impression that regardless of how much Bandai, Bandai Namco and Namco Bandai liked to go back to the original Digimon World, Digimon Story is the de-facto main game series for Digimon. At least the Adventure game tied evolution to an SP cost and was on a per-battle basis with partner evolutions being unlocked by story progress.
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
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.
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.
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.
I feel like Digimon does what it does in opposition to pokémon. Pokemon has effectively been the exact same game until legends and that was just a mechanics change. Digimon lets you go thru every type of game while still being a digimon game.
who's excited for Pokemon Legends: Z-A?
I wanna see more gameplay footage
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.
I understand your point in the video, but to be fair, in next order, in the postgame, you can make your digimons inmortal, i'm not sure if they will die at certain amount of days passed, but you can effectively prolong their lifespan indefinetly with the restaurant, plus some items, but as in the postgame you have literally also infinite money, is no problem to feed your digimons at least once a day the lifespan menu in the restaurant.
@@amplyfier Others have brought this up, but that’s the postgame. The general experience of the story for the average player will inevitably involve the death loop.
@@ThrillingDuck Yes that's true, there's really no digimon game friendly for beginers at start.
Not a single one.
All of them have a tedious start, even digimon story, once you have started, the most friendly are indeed the story ones, slow, but friendly, the dungeons are more wide open, still no full map, but as the game is in 3D, and the zones are smaller, you can see the end of it most of the times, you can try the new story game when it came up, i'm not sure of the releasing date, but they are already working on it.
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
For those who dont know. The reason why the games dont follow the rules of rhe anime. Is because it was originally a virtual pet device made by theakers of tamagatchi. So the games follow rules closer to these devices than they did the rules in anime. Especially world 1 and next order. But one big trend among all games they did get from the v-pet is that when a digimon digivolves it doesnt randomly revery to child after the battle.
Oh yeah. Since I know you're gonna mention it. The 20th anniversary of the v-pet let you have 2 digimon at a time, so next order likely got the two partner system from. And since it started as v-pet before it was an anime. You could argue that world 1 and next order are the definitive games as with the exception of a slightly different combat system and more exploration they're essentially console versions of the v-pet devices.
If you couldn't tell I really like next order so far. Just got it today finally at a hefty discount and freaking love it.
Yeah this franchise is very hit or miss. Just model it after Cybersleuth, add some Skip dialogs, and variety of training.
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. 😅
And the other reason for the temporary evolution is you can resuse the evolution animation and save money. It’s honestly a cheap gimmick and Pokémon never required its use. It is popular in the magical girl genre.
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.
Next order would be better if the "reset" was an optional thing you did with higher stats being the reward, so that way you would reap the benefits of the grind but could also aim higher if you wanted, this would allow you a do over in case of unwanted evos
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"
@@oyabuntan Lol fair enough. I tend to overthink things sometimes. Thanks for watching!
@@ThrillingDuck No prob homie, I like your stuff!
Next Order is the "definitive game" if we go with the tamagotchi origins. Now that doesn't mean you'll like it, but I see Next Order, and the original PS1 game, as essentially definitive based on that.
I think an issue with Digimon, is that from a video game perspective, most people will probably watch to have a variety of different monsters available, which is in stark contrast to the way the original anime work. No matter how unintentional it was, they've made a nearly impossible to please scenario due to the tamagotchi being so different than the anime.
Some people in the comments have crafted potential solutions to that dilemma, just fyi. Basically tying extra Digimon to other human party members, and then giving everyone branching evolutions they can switch between, while always returning to their default canon Rookie stages for cutscenes, to name one.
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.
So what we need is a Octopath Traveller/13 sentinels type of experience with good turn based gameplay. Wish Atlus got their hands on the franchise.
Err... I think you are TOO MUCH fondle in the "Adventure" saga of things about Digimon. Tamers can form bonds with more than one Digimon at the time. Just because the first anime does that, doesn't means is restricted to that. The game reflects it, you need to form friendship with the Digimon to get into higher stages in some of the games (DS games SPECIALLY) so, those bonds you critizes on the Cyber Sleuth take are there.
Also, enemy Digimon on the series, unless they are a big story component, didn't talk either. They are, in fact, wild animals, even the artbooks and source materials qualifies some of them as that.
@@ZirixStrarstrider Bro, literally every season of the anime features single partner Digimon, not just Adventure lol. I have no idea where you got the idea that that’s not the case.
@@ThrillingDuck Impmon in Tamers has 2 partners. Mimi forms a bond with all the other Digimon from the village, Calumon does not have a partner. You got a lot of examples of more and none partners. There is also a big difference between the Digi Destined from Adventure, and the Tamers.
@@ZirixStrarstrider Okay, I will give you Impmon and nothing else. Mimi’s only partner is Palmon - befriending her village absolutely does not even remotely count. That’s like saying every extraneous Digimon the gang befriends is a “partner.” Ridiculous. Calumon is so irrelevant I can’t even believe you brought her up. She has zero partners because she’s… not partnered. Wtf was your point lmao?
Regardless, even if all 3 of these had been valid, a few exceptions does not a rule make. But 2 thirds were invalid anyway 🤷🏻♂️
@@ThrillingDuck it is irrelevant? Calumon was the reason they can evolve in the first place.
Is like saying that Hikari was irrelevant during the Vamdemom saga.
@@ThrillingDuck And then again, you are clearly mixing terms. Digi Destined are one thing, Tamers are another different thing. As someone pointed out on another comment, Digimon came from the V-Pet. You get an egg, you raise it, you train it. That is the whole concept of the franchise, from its first manga onwards.
Digimon Adventure (I really don't like either of the original Adventure duology) switched everything with the Digidestinied, the Tamers turned the steering wheel back towards the mascot thing.
DS games, does exactly that. Your Digimon are yours, no matter how much you have. I would search for it, but there instances on mangas that tamers appear with more than one Digimon partner, i have a memory of some of them, i need to confirm it. Then again, the concept is not foreign to the franchise.
The anime and the game are inspired by the vpets which are very popular. I am from Malaysia, and Digimon vpets are super duper popular in south-east asia and east asia itself. We have been playing the vpet v1 since 1997 ( I was 10 back then buying my first vpet). The first Digimon Adventure anime and Digimon World game were just icing on top and secured the grip on us vpet owners and made new fans that would buy the digivice (d2, d3, dArk and so on).
So it's hard to have a consistent Digimon experience when Bandai probably don't know how to please so many fans who love Digimon for many reasons. Some love the Anime, some love the games, some because of the vpets but I am hella sure Bandai would be a bit bias on the v-pet due to it's popularity in East and South-East Asia. People still play v-pets today. That's why Bandai keeps on releasing new v-pets into the market.
@@kurosenpai So interesting to hear about this side of the V-Pet as someone from the US. I was a kid when Digimon was arguably in its prime in the west and nobody on the playground had ever even heard of “V-Pets.” I think we all knew of Tamogachis, but we didn’t think of them as a genre, and I never heard anyone utter the phrase “Tamogachi but for boys” in reference to Digimon. All discourse about Digimon just surrounded the show. If anything, it was “Pokemon but they can talk and de-evolve.” I even had a Digivice (a D3 model? It was the one that Davis/Daisuke of Adventure 02 had), but neither I nor anyone else with a Digivice saw it as “the point.” It was just another piece of merch. If anything I preferred my Digimon toys to my Digivice, as I recall.
Anyway, even if we’re to look at Digimon World as the definitive way to go, it needs a better way to handle its core loop, because halting all story progress every few hours to spend a few hours grinding up a new generation is just not it.
@@ThrillingDuck tamagotchi for boys thats kinda true in a sense. tamagotchi was very popular among the girls and women so Bandai went out releasing Digimon for the opposite gender. If you still have your first version of D3 (yes its from Adventure 02) you might wanna hold it for a while because it depending on the condition it might fetch a good selling price. its very sought after in SEA and East Asia.
I actually want Bandai to keep the same old formula of World 1, because thats the core gameplay of Digimon which comes from the vpets. However i also do understand the repetitive nature and grind to play the game and hope Bandai can find a common ground that can appease both sides of the fans which mainly the anime and vpet fans.
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.
even though each game is experimental, I'm still enjoying each one of them. One thing I love about Digimon game is the Digivolution tree that was fleshed out even more in Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth and Digimon World Next Order.
It make Digivolution so flexible and rewarding if you can digivolve into Digimon with high requirement/Keypoint
They can make Digimon game into any genre, but the Digivolution Tree should exist in every game.
Btw, disagree with you about Digimon World Next Order.
My first playthrough, I could beat the story, recruit majority of Digimon, and reach 80k HP MP, 9999 STR STA WIS SPD from Second Generation only.
Next Order is most forgiving than Digimon World 1 bcs it has many town feature that can help your Digimon Growth.
Not saying Next Order isn't the most forgiving World entry, but regardless of whether a first time player can finish the main story in 2 generations with the use of a guide (needing a guide isn't really a great defense btw), the fundamental disconnect of the mortality loop and the town building is still bad design.
Hard agree on the flexible digivolution tree though.
@@ThrillingDuck mortality loop and town building as bad design is very subjective. I think you just expecting different game. It's like calling mortality as bad design in Monster Rancher game.
The point of Digimon World 1 and Next Order is Digimon taming, adventure and saving the Digital World. Raising and build connection with Digimon from a baby to adult and when they died, it mean something.
Same with Town building. seeing the city at the start being barren and became full of life and building the more we recruit Digimon make us feel like we done something good for the World
Although I have to admit that I feel more connection with Digimon and city in Digimon World 1 than Digimon World Next Order.
Like I said, If you don't like it, you can remove that mortality loop by giving them food that can increase their life for a long time.
So I prefer they split into different series rather than make a game that try to appease everyone.
As long as they give more attention, budget and marketing to any Digimon game they make in the future
@@kleberson777 I do like that each pillar of the series offers a different experience at least. I will say though that I also find the life-extending food argument pretty weak (have said so elsewhere on here) because that’s still a late/postgame acquisition and locks you in with whatever partners you have. The option is nice I guess, but “you can remove an annoying mechanic in the late/postgame” isn’t as strong of a defense as a lot of World fans seem to think it is. Most other games just don’t have said annoying mechanic to begin with lol.
All that said, while I still think the separation of the 2 loops is bad design (you didn’t really address how divorced they are from each other), I can accept that V-Pet fans enjoy the mortality aspect because they are V-Pet fans. It’s just that game design in full fledged games is a more complicated beast than a 1-note V-Pet. If the town building cut down on the grinding a metric shit-ton somehow, like maybe supercharging the absolute shit out of the gym equipment gains or something, then there would be an actual feedback loop for me to praise. As things stand though there isn’t a true loop, only actual wrote repetition, despite how oxymoronic that sounds when put into words.
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
Since technically neither digimon nor pokemon started with an anime or manga, it could be argue that the "definitive" digimon game, the one that captures what digimon was trully about, at least when it started is the most obvious one: Digimon World for the ps1, as Digimon literally started as a bunch of tamagochi toys that you could battle with, in that front, Digimon World is definitive in translating that experience to a JRPG format while also being packed to the brim with references to the v-pet toys. But it could also be argued that it can't be the definitive digimon game, as the v-pets are something only the more hardcore fans are even aware of, unlike the anime.
They need to pull a sonic mania and just hire some passionate fan/devs to make a game to capture the franchise
The issue is people disagree. There’s no classic era Sonic games to harken back to. Digimon has always been disjointed.
The video is saying since the anime was popular they should make a game like it.
However, that game would be divisive to people who primarily play the games because they’re so different.
You’ll never accomplish definitive without a lot of work.
Honestly, the evolution from the anime needs to go in my opinion. It doesn’t make sense for the series setting and it used to cut costs for animation.
The digimon are supposed to grow up in the first forms.
You want more nostalgia pandering got it the fans don’t know what they want
Digimon has been mostly grind heavy from my various game play, I did enjoy the ones where you had to clean up the "data" like fossil fighters
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))
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.
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.
12:15 Don't blame the console for devs not giving a shit about performance. You are right. It shouldn't run miserably on the Switch while looking like this.
The Switch has Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey, Luigi's Mansion 3, Bayonetta 3, Mario Kart 8, NieR:Automata, Xenoblade 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Pikmin 4, Guilty Gear Strive and many more.
The Switch has visually impressive games. It's just about developers investing the time in making the game run well/look good.
Do you blame a High End PC for running a game notorious for bad optimization like ARK Survival Evolved, or for an older game that still runs terribly on modern Hardware - Sims 3?
@@Max_G4 I get what you’re saying, but I blame Nintendo for deciding to run hardware so underpowered that other devs have to put in so much extra work just to get their ports running acceptably, yes. This has been a rampant issue, and at some point it becomes Nintendo’s fault too, imo. Why should these companies need to dedicate so many extra resources to accomplishing what they do so effortlessly on other platforms?
Also, some of the games on your own list run terribly on Switch, and some very visually unimpressive first party games do too (I’m looking at you Link’s Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom).
@@ThrillingDuck For Echoes of Wisdom it's a v-Sync bug, where the game switches to 30FPS Lock when it's running slightly under 60FPS, while for Link's Awakening I believe it was Loading problems. Though those two games aren't even first-party, but by an external studio.
And what games in particular do you mean with running terribly?
Survive really doesn't look like it should cause any problems on the Switch or need any optimizations *at all* to run there, yet it still does. It looks like it could run on the Wii. It's probably something wrong with how they optimized that takes way more resources than it should just doesn't show on other consoles because those consoles' power isn't stretched at all by the game.
My take is if you release something on a specific hardware, you should care enough to make it run normally and shouldn't put the blame on the hardware
So I wouldn't blame Nintendo for releasing a console 7 years ago for current developers not being able to optimize a very graphically simple game on there. Those are different console release dates and the other two are stationary while the Switch is a Handheld console.
My favorite Digimon game is Digimon: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory😌👌🏻
That statement about the mortality system is basically the one thing keeping me from trying out the Digimon World games. It was also present in the DS Digimon Championship game and it was even worse there because you had to make sure you have strong digimons ready by the time a tournament arrives. The way the Story games does it is the best IMO. You evolve something to Mega level and then you can devolve them however you want at your leisure to make them stronger/try out a different evo branch.
Story-wise I'm not actually much of a Digimon guy and didn't experience the many shows it has so I don't really care about the setting and how "lore-friendly" the gameplay is and such, but Digimon Story DS and Dawn/Dusk is one of my favorites (maybe even equal to DS Pokemon games) purely for the gameplay and progress mechanic it provides, and I didn't mind the grind because battles and levelups go quickly if you know what you're doing. Honestly the only bad thing I can say for the DS Story games were the horrendous random encounter rate, jebus...
IMO you should try it! I understand why it sounds unappealing but there's a reason games like DW1 still hold dear to so many fans. Personally by the time my Ultimate digimon dies on DW1 I was ready to move on and try to get another digimon. The training / grindr and resulting evolution are probably the most fun part of the games tbh. By the time you have an incredibly powerful digimon and you're just annihilating everything in your way, it feels amazing!
Please dont compare the game vs the anime, it's Game of Thrones Show vs the Books