Can I Learn to Like Card Games? | Digimon: Digital Card Battle Retrospective

0:00 [Music] foreign oh hey been a good minute I bet you've been wondering when my next proper video was going to release and believe me so have I let's put a pin in this [Music] well I'm not exactly swimming in options here but I always knew I was going to have to look at this one eventually so for those of you that have your decks and your play mats ready

0:45 put them away it's a video game you're not gonna need them pay attention and believe it or not spoilers ahead this is Digimon Digital card battle [Music] all right so a new Digimon World 2 was going to be a beefy project to tackle but in my Infinite Wisdom I decided to review it by playing it on original hardware and not on an emulator where I could use save states and speed things up wrapping that one up is gonna take a minute it's all good in the meantime there were some other games that came out on the PS1 they were released afterwards but I don't mind doing things a little out of order for the sake of

1:31 actually getting a review made so first things first yeah this game is based on the Digimon TCG from around that same time I actually had some of these old trading cards when I was a kid and absolutely loved looking at the art of each one this style is something really special to me and you know what I actually still collect the cards from the new TCG now as a matter of fact I was able to afford the PC I work on because I actually pulled an insanely rare parallel omnimon card and was able to sell it for a ridiculous amount of money it was insane man I just cannot stop looking through these so much love went into this artwork and I always get a kick out of filling out my collection for each set and seeing if I pull a particularly cool card that's pretty much all I ever did with them though I'm not much of a tabletop guy and as much as I enjoy the collection aspect of the trading card games it's the game part I always had a tough time with I don't

2:17 know if it's my short attention span and inability to focus or maybe I just have a tough time getting a grasp on all the rules and how the game is played I don't know it's just never really interested me and the prospect of a video game emulating a failed TCG just never really appealed to me okay failed in the states the way the original card game was handled in North America was laughably mismanaged and they changed the rules of what was apparently a perfectly fun and functional game in other regions and whittled it down into a mess that died off embarrassingly fast over here gotta recommend this video from the jaywitts if you're curious about digging further into that subject because since a good video and he knows what he's talking about more than I would all of that being said I'm pretty out of my depth here I don't know how this stuff works but if Digimon World taught me anything sometimes you just gotta suck it up go with the flow and sometimes you'll find

3:02 ways to appreciate what you normally wouldn't give the time of day and it's kind of appropriate to look to that game for inspiration because in a weird way you can kind of look at digital card battle as a follow-up to Digimon World okay so not exactly but there is still a bit of a connection you see this game that we got here in the US of a is in fact a sequel to a previous game that never left Japan called Digimon World digital card battle as you can imagine my inability to read kanji kind of keeps me from being able to do much with this game but according to the synopsis I found this is an adaptation of sorts at the first Digimon World title but re-contextualized to fit with the format of a card game you may recognize the player character here as mameo the same as in Digimon World just like in that game he's called to the digital world given a Digivice and test with reaching Infinity mountain and the warning

3:49 whatever evil presence is threatening the coded domain he's found himself in there are more background details but maybe I can tackle that another day if and when I'm confident enough to review the Digimon games from outside the North American region you know once the YouTube career is a little more self-sustaining get a totally unrelated note but I bet your name would look great in my patreon shout out for now let's just focus on this title turning this game on for the first time I actually kind of jump scared me I grew up with the English dub of the anime and it still has a very special place in my heart but as I got older and tried to take in more Digimon media I realized I had to take stuff like the English voices the score and Whimsical music pieces I was so familiar with and just sort of packed them away in my brain after that I just sort of associated the franchise more with Japanese voice

4:34 acting the music of recent games stuff like that so when my system booted this disc for the first time I was not expecting to hear you I mean the lyrics are gone which kind of makes this better by default but I felt like I was slapped in the face by my childhood in the best possible way probably the last time I'm gonna hear something so directly tied to classic Western Digimon but it was a fun surprise Digimon Digital card battle follows a kid that once again looks like mama yo I don't think he has any direct ties to the kid from the first card game even though he looks exactly the same you know what whatever if I start thinking too deep about the lore to these games I'm probably gonna lose just enough brain cells to finally go fully incapacitated your goal is to move between various cities here in the digital world and defeat opponents in

5:19 car battles to become the strongest card Tamer around a simple goal but more than enough to keep things moving we start our little quest in the aptly named beginner City and here we can meet a friendly little betamon who agrees to show us how the card game works this was going to be the Make It or Break It part of the game for me given my history or non-history with card games how well this tutorial is going to Dish things out and help me understand the mechanics was really important and it honestly kind of great it's gonna sound silly but I attribute part of this to how bodemon is written here having an actual character walk you through the steps show you how things work and give you a chance to apply them in gameplay feels pretty perfect and I can't imagine that getting all this information for more static text would be nearly as effective I like the language he uses telling you what rules he'll be ignoring during your

6:05 test run so you can get a good feel for each mechanic on their own it actually comes off as a buddy trying to show you the ropes rather than a textbook spouting rules at you it's a really good Gateway for kids that are trying to learn how to get into card games or grown adults who have no idea what they're doing at the beginning of a match there's a sort of coin flip to determine who gets the first move from there we move to our play setup each player has a deck comprised of 30 cards and draws out four cards from their Fresh Deck or online pile the four cards you pull will move into your hand and this is what you're going to start with first thing you have to do is choose a rookie Digimon card as most of the game is going to center around how you support and work around it you can start with a champion or ultimate Digimon card but this is the sort of thing you should always try to actively avoid unless you're down to your last legs and have

6:51 no other choice because these cards can be really powerful and have a good amount of HP to fall back on for defense but only if you build up to them naturally through the digivolving process if you just try to start with a higher level card all of its stats are totally kneecapped and you may even find yourself in a worse spot than if you were just using a rookie once your rookie Digimon is out you can pull other cards to start building support for it if you want to digivolve it you'll need to build up your DP meter by sacrificing another Digimon card and once you have enough DP you can digivolve to a champion level card as long as it shares the same specialty here represented by color once you did evolve the stats of that card you choose to digivolve to will take over replacing what you had before so if your rookie is really low on health you'll get beefed up to the default stats of your champion card when you move up but your DP will also reset to zero meaning if you want to move from

7:36 a champion to an ultimate Digimon card you'll need to take a few turns to sacrifice more cards and build up the DP needed to do so oh and obviously your carts need to survive long enough to actually digivolve at all the process starts with your draw phase where you pull out your cards and choose from what you have in your hand if you don't like what you've pulled or you literally can't work with it like if you don't pull any digimon cards at all you can discard what you've pulled and draw again but this also means you have to discard all of the cards in your hand and unless you get a card later that lets you draw from your offline pile that card is gone now and you will not get to use it later on and in case you're wondering yeah once you've moved through all 30 of your cards that's it that is all you get you don't get to reshuffle and start over so

8:21 you really have to learn how to properly use the cards you have when they come up and adapt to new situations and improvise to the circumstances so yeah a bit of luck but I don't think the game relies too much on chance if anything it relies much more on your sense of strategy and intuition so once you're done with the drawing and digivolving prep phases you move on to the battle phase and this is the part that feels particularly interesting to me because I don't think it's the sort of thing that would really work in a real physical card game although a friend did explain to me that a version of Magic the Gathering does kind of have a mechanic that works sort of like this each player picks one of three available attacks at the same time with each one being mapped to the triangle Circle or X buttons I know it's technically the cross button but that will never so natural to say the trick is at this point that decision cannot be changed

9:08 and the players do not know what the other is chosen and this is important for a couple of reasons each Digimon has different levels of attack power set to these three attacks and as you can imagine the higher level Digimon you have the higher these values will be circle is going to be your most powerful attack and is great for finishing off opponents triangle won't be as powerful but usually has fewer defenses that can be used against it and X is going to be an ultimately weaker attack but a lot of digimon cards will have special effects tied to it as well for example an opponent may be using a card that actually has no attack power set to the X attack but the special effect it has can counter your circle attack if that's what you've chosen and turn the damage against you it doesn't stop there though as once each attack has been chosen each player will choose a support card this could be another Digimon card that grants you a special effect like allowing you to attack first or you

9:55 could use an option card and these things can have a huge variety of effects this can be stuff like boosting your HP or more interesting effects so like reducing your opponents attack to zero or double your attack power if you and your rival are using different types of attack some of these support cards can get tricky too maybe even changing a digimon's specialty to keep them from being able to digivolve or at least make it harder some have a bit more risk involved like cutting in half not only your opponent digimon's HP but also your own or swapping which attack they're using don't have any card in your hand but want to use a support card you actually do have an option here but it's a gamble you can pull a card from your face down pile of cards and place it into your support slot and it isn't revealed until it's actually put into play there is a chance that the card you pulled won't actually have an effect or

10:40 it could do something that may even be detrimental to your current situation but sometimes it really just might do the trick and help you manage a win and that is always always satisfying there is a long list of option cards and it's important to learn not only the ones that you have at your disposal as you obtain new ones and rebuild your decks but also what your opponent has because it can say a lot about how they strategize but also how to properly prepare for their attack 6 and bounce back with your own what's cool is there's an actual in-game battle animations that will play when your Digimon attack each other and it's fun seeing these guys in action there's a surprising amount of energy given to each of these creatures and they feel like they really have some weight behind them as they go in for the kill they also take a while to get through and can be a bit of a pace breaker if you're just trying to grind through some matches but thankfully you can toggle these animations on or off during the

11:26 matches themselves and it helps the gameplay go by much faster and feel easier to play through several matches at a time in order to win a match you'll need to knock out three of your Rivals digimon cards during these battle segments before they can do the same to you and you'll need to plan out your deck so you have plenty of rookie Digimon at your disposal as well as a few champion and ultimate ones to digiboloth to and beef up your tactics with some well-planned option cards try to get familiar with common tactics try to assess what advantages and disadvantages your opponent has and predict their actions pay attention to whose turn it is and when your rival gets to choose their support card first check what its effects are and respond in turn keep here what's about you play smart and knock out those cards and yeah as you defeat opponents you'll move around between several locations obtaining new cards to add to your Arsenal and matching up against

12:11 different Rivals who specialize in different tactics I wound up using a red or fire deck throughout most of my playthrough with a heavier emphasis on attack but I tried to keep some option cards in my deck that could help me digiball faster by skipping the DP or even champion level requirements for getting up to higher levels or at least beef up my HP to make up for my lack of Defense other card Specialties of other colors have differing benefits like some cards are weaker around the attack but have a higher HP pool some specialize in messing with a specific other type and rendering their attacks useless no one card specialty is better than the others and there are just some that will collect with your style more and since I found my preferred style fairly quickly I decided to stick with it and I'm gonna be honest I didn't really deviate from it that much maybe it was because my partner Digimon that I chose at the beginning of the game was avmon another Fire card and I wanted to keep him

12:57 available for play partner cards are interesting and I think you can only get a Max of two or three in a full playthrough they are most mostly like other rookie cards but when you win matches you can obtain new cards like I mentioned before but also experience points for your partner card that will level them up after obtaining an fxb this can help raise their stats and quickly become one of the most powerful and useful cards at your disposal and it doesn't stop there you can also earn new perks to give them that will change their special effect during gameplay and at a certain point in the game you'll receive a Digi egg card you can use this when pulling out your partner Digimon to instantly armor digivolve them which essentially gives them some boosted stats with no DP requirements but you're also committed to that form now and won't be able to digivolve to a champion or ultimate form it is pretty useful I

13:42 don't use armor digivolving all the time but there were a few occasions where it really came in handy you can also level up your partner Digimon at Fusion shops by sacrificing some Surplus cards that you've collected and using them as XP to lend to your partners and yeah there is also a card Fusion mechanic and uh yeah you grab some extra cards smash them together and get something new out of it I I'm gonna be honest I was taking in enough information from this game already and this whole system just sort of intimidated me I couldn't even begin to tell you how to properly strategize smashing all these things together to get desired results but I'm sure there's some guides out there just take it from me you can beat the main campaign without paying too much attention to this foreign as you venture forth to become the

14:29 strongest Digimon Tamer you will need to travel between several different cities in the Digimon World you can speak to other card Tamers in the battle Cafe where some of them will give you tips and on rare occasion will even gift you helpful cards and you can challenge them to a rematch if you've already gone up against them before and want to obtain new cards and experience but the re-election is in the battle arena where you'll usually need to battle through several opponents in a row and you don't want to lose any of these matches either or you'll have to start over thankfully if you've beaten three matches in a row the game usually gives you a chance to save this way you can just boot up your save file if you're having trouble taking out the last couple matches in an arena but once you're in that Arena you only have your three prepared decks and won't be able to edit them until you've beaten that area or abandoned it that said as you progress further into the

15:14 digital world a lot of Digimon you play matches against are starting to act more and more aggressive than you eventually run into other humans you might recognize some of these guys too they're characters from the Digimon Adventure O2 anime they don't have a lot to share here though mostly confirming that yes something is up with the other Digimon around here and that they're all acting strange soon you start going up against this worm on and his various forms claiming that he's fighting to make someone named Ken proud another human he seems to both respect and fear so Ken huh I guess this jizz just straight up O2 isn't it as you continue to encounter and defeat warmon he becomes increasingly more desperate to beat you as to not disappoint Ken but eventually just starts trying to beat you for himself developing a sense of resolve of his own and in time you finally get to

15:59 go toe-to-toe with Ken some nice friends you got there Davis he proclaims himself as the Digimon Emperor using his abilities to manipulate and control the other Digimon you've encountered up to this point and he actually went down pretty easily like he's not a pushover but I wouldn't really say he's that hard to beat once you do best him though he just sort of Mellows out pretty anticlimactic but to be fair he wasn't really the big bad here just an obstacle along the way true Ken was having an effect on the Digimon on in this world hypnotizing them and controlling them to act more violently but even once he's gone good there's still an unsettling Shadow looming over the digital world and it's felt by many of the inhabitants including this Rosemont you keep running into actually the first few times you encounter her they try to keep her name a secret which is silly like finding out

16:46 her name doesn't really mean much especially since it's revealed that she's not even actually a rose mod in fact she's not a digimon at all she's actually something of an antivirus program who's trying to push the player in the right direction to locate and smoke out some kind of dark force that's threatening to drown the world in darkness this force is known only as a but it isn't elaborated on much yet after a long travel defeating some of the strongest card Tamers out there and earning their respect and Trust of several powerful Digimon you gain access to the infinity Tower and beat your way through all of the dark Digimon there until you finally make it to Venom iota's mon a dark and Powerful being who's aiming to bring Darkness to everything he does put up a good fight too he would actually be a pretty good final boss but that is not the role that

17:31 he's playing here once he's down the mysterious a finally shows up in a way I was not expecting the game sort of gets taken over like not the card game I mean the PS1 game not literally obviously but I really wasn't expecting a moment this meta as pc windows pop up all over the screen and we see code being input as a takes over venomyotus monas's Avatar and makes his Grand appearance or maybe I should say reappearance as the background distorts the music Fades and a droning creeping sound takes over the atmosphere we see the true identity of a the analog man who saw this coming it's an amazing twist like the last thing I was expecting from this card game spin-off title was the foreboding and

18:17 shocking Return of the main villain from Digimon World I actually think this makes me like him more as a villain it's a really really cool moment to be fair I think it's implied that this is more of like a digital copy of The Analog Man not the physical human we've seen before but man what a cool moment it is so good he gives you a chance to arrange your deck before facing him but you cannot save you cannot escape this area all you can do is prepare and face him if you fail you come right back here stuck in a loop with your enemy until you can best him and uh yeah he's he's hard he's very hard and given that he's hacking his way into this finale to begin with he could just ignore half the rules of the game his cards don't Shuffle he just has a set pattern for the cards that he pulls into his hand at the beginning of the

19:03 match and this stuff is just straight up broken instantly warping his Digimon to an ultimate form and stacking his HP to over 3 000. this is crazy I felt kinda hopeless here it took me a couple of tries but I was able to knock out the previous matches in Infinity Tower but this no I didn't think I could beat this I almost didn't finish this part it was so daunting but after stepping away from it for a few days I was able to come back and this time I had a plan first thing to keep in mind before going into this battle is talking to where Garber room on in the battle Cafe of Wiseman Tower after beating him and he'll hand you a very very helpful option card shuffle this into your deck and get yourself prepared with digimon

19:48 cards that can counter Circle attacks which Analog Man will usually default to because of the nature of the counterability and the option card you picked up you can actually rely on the abilities of your rookie cards more than you would think here I got my Affairs in order Blitz through Infinity Tower one last time and challenge Analog Man again and wouldn't you just know it my first hand won me the game I pulled out my rookie waited for him to stack up his HP and placed my support card a hacking card where if you have less HP than your opponent your HP stats are swapped the rest of it wasn't exactly a cakewalk he almost managed to crawl back up and take me down but after a really fun really intense car battle I beat him considering how much I was dreading

20:33 tackling this game game I could never have imagined how satisfying this conclusion was well main conclusion yeah after you bring peace to the digital world there is more to do if we're being honest this is hardly even halfway through the full contents of the game but I already know that everything after this pretty much amounts to post-game fluff grinding out battles collecting cards stuff like that and maybe I'll tackle that at some point but for now I saw the credits roll and I am satisfied with what I played here what a cool pleasant surprise I don't know if this turned me into a fan of card games in general but and I never thought I was going to say this after playing through Digimon Digital card battle I'm tempted to give real card games a try now I know this in the real TCG probably work under wildly different mechanics but still this has planted an interest in terms of

21:21 a recommendation I can only speak as a card game novice a total rookie but I had a really good time with this it does have its drawbacks mostly in terms of its pacing as a video game and the narrative outside of that really cool ending is just sort of there but who cares this was a good time you don't need to drop everything for this but if you're curious about it let it be known that even though I was sure I was going to hate this experience I finished this game with a smile on my face and we've got more on the horizon and don't worry I won't make you wait nearly as long for the next video probably gonna be skipping the April Fool's Day special this year mostly so that I can stay focused and keep things rolling along in a natural way which video is coming next

22:07 not going to say anything just yet but you won't have to wait long for it until then remember that my top tier Patriots get to see these videos two days early you can find me on Twitter twitch Discord Sunset City whichever you prefer links in the description and of course as always spread the word tell your friends and until we see each other again thank you so much for watching see you next mission hey there everyone thank you so much for watching and thank you for your continued support and patience as I've sort of been you know sorting my life out and just getting to the point where I could actually make videos again I really do appreciate it things do get busy I do have a full-time job on top of this but one day I do want this to be

22:53 the full-time job and that is made possible by the support of people like you the viewers and of course my wonderful supporters over on patreon right now I'd like to give a very special shout out to my current top tier patrons Brendan Hess Broski Earl Balco Jeremiah Harrison letterick mckenzel Mr Dr SP Dr pending nickel plated Patricia Marco Cinder in seven and Cyrus the skeptic thank you all so much for your support you make this possible and you make it worth it with all of that said I've got more work to do see you next mission [Music]