Digimon Still Has No Definitive Game

0:00 hey fam between this and my last video it seems I'm on a bit of a cyberspace kick but let's roll with it this is another one of those topics I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a while but for no particular reason I'm only just now getting around to talking about it I'm a millennial with some big boy Nostalgia for Digimon it's quite possibly one of my most nostalgic franchises but it's always kind of lagged behind in the games Department I feel that a lot of this is due to equal parts infrequent and experimental releases but I think another obstacle to the broader more mainstream success of Digimon games is something that people don't really talk about much online

0:45 there sort of is no definitive Digimon game experience that's a pretty vague statement so to demonstrate what I mean I'm going to make a quick Pokémon comparison please keep in mind that I'm not a Pokémon elitist by any any means I'm far more attached to Digimon and if you've seen the one Pokémon related video on this channel then you'll know that there's no love lost between me and modern Pokemon but one thing I think that Pokemon has nailed since the very beginning is a real sense of synergy between the anime and the games and for a multimedia franchise like this that Synergy is very important when ju deposing Pokemon and Digimon the classic line is always always Pokemon has the

1:31 better games while Digimon has the better show and I Echo that sentiment broadly speaking but I think a large part of what makes Pokemon games so much more compelling for most fans of the property as a multimedia entity is that the games actually resemble the experience portrayed in the anime they don't cast the player in the shoes of Ash Ketchum but the fundamental rules of the world the way things work the rules of Pokémon combat and Evolution the way regions are laid out the unique varieties of Pokémon native to each of these regions these things tend to be very consistent between the games and the anime when you play a Pokemon game it really feels like you are immersed in

2:16 the world portrayed by the show Digimon games however even at their very best have almost never accomplished this and they've certainly never nailed it to demonstrate my point I want to break down what I like to think of as the Digimon game franchises big three today this refers to the three most recent and modern entries released in all regions Digimon World next order Digimon survive and the Cyber sluth duology to be clear I don't necessarily mean to imply that these are the end all Beall of their respective subf franchises I'm still personally very attached to the DS era Digimon story games for example I love their Sprite art more vibrant color

3:02 palettes and while I love that modern Digimon games kind of grew up with their audience as evidenced by their older core casts I feel like the DS story titles capture more of the childhood magic of the earlier Seasons which makes them worth returning to on their own merits from time to time on top of that I know that many fans of the world entries remain partial to the original Digimon World for both nostalgic reasons and its own element of exploration and World building which were never nailed quite as well again in later installments I myself do prefer some elements of redigitized decode to next order but for all intents and purposes The Big Three are the most modern entries with the best quality of life

3:48 features and are the most readily accessible to the average player and especially series newcomer additionally many of the fundamental points I'm going to be looking into do rough apply in a blanket fashion to earlier story and World titles as well to start with I actually want to hit the Cyber saloth duology first because this is often cited as being the overall best gaming experience that Digimon has to offer and while I 100% agree with this sentiment I still don't think it's a truly definitive Digimon experience in the way that Pokémon games are for their franchise so the Cyber sluth games are great games which is why they're always the most recommended foundationally

4:35 they're just solid traditional turn-based jrpg titles they were clearly made on a budget but it's clear that a considerable portion of that budget actually went into the Digimon models and animations cyber sleuth gives you the opportunity to just get in there and catch them all while combat is limited to three Digimon per team the player gets to keep a very generous stable of Digimon in their traveling party and an insane roster of backup Digimon in the digi Farm the digifarm as a mechanic in general is so brilliant I'm frankly shocked that Pokemon hasn't copied it yet it's basically the ability to passively raise Pokemon in your PC uh but I digress despite having the overall

5:22 best gameplay in the Digimon Pantheon bar nun the Cyber sleuth games in my opinion actually fumble the ball the hardest of all the subs Series in the story and World building departments what I mean by this isn't that the story and World building are poor but that they don't really feel like Digimon at all for one thing there's absolutely no exploration of the digital world I'm not saying that the entirety of a digimon game needs to take place in the digital world but I am saying that cyber sluth Eden and cun are distinctly not the digital world they're a form of tradition cyers space but they're not the digital world proper and the games themselves even acknowledge this by giving you a teeny tiny Peak into that

6:08 world towards their finales and that's part of the problem too the stories themselves don't actually feel like Digimon stories until their final acts when the Royal Knights and so forth begin actually invading the human world before this point the Digimon themselves are portrayed in universe as mere programs most of them don't even speak or have any sort of agency barring the villains and rare exceptions like Nokia's auman and gabumon there are very few actual Digimon characters most of them are just Mindless husks that do battle for you and the other hackers if we're to use the anime as a guiding star that's just not Digimon not my Digimon anyway see as fun as collecting them all

6:55 inherently is in a game setting the Digimon anime isn't about that human Tamers walking around with parties of three mute Digimon isn't a thing they have one partner who they have a real bond with that's the way it works that's Digimon that's why every time the show deviates from that formula like with Frontier and fusion people start freaking out the Digimon story games do an admirable job adapting elements such as digivolution into higher forms and degeneration into lower forms because that's a very noticeable core mechanical difference in the way Digimon operate compared to contemporaries like Pokémon but while digivolution and degeneration work here as a mechanic the way they've

7:40 been implemented they also don't really resemble the way they work in the show in the show Digimon which are bonded to a human partner digivolve to higher stages both in response to literal threats that they need to rise to the occasion to meet but also in resonance with key moments of emotional growth on the part of their human Partners digivolution in the anime is famously an allegory for human maturation it's understandable that this would be basically impossible to properly translate into a collect them all style monster taming RPG but it's another thing that keeps cybersleuth from being a true quote unquote definitive Digimon game in my eyes and degeneration forget it they're not even close degeneration

8:27 in the story games goes one stage at a time and is completely voluntary in the anime it happens because Digimon with human Partners need to expend stamina or energy in order to maintain their stronger forms for battle when they degenerate it's more akin to when a human finally sits down on the couch after a strenuous workout it's not whatever weird stat enhancing Shenanigans the story games use it for and I want to stress yet again that I am by no means attempting to slander the cyber or any other Digimon story titles I still firmly feel that they're great extremely fun games that I have a blast with cyber sluth in particular is still the Digimon game I would most recommend

9:12 to the average gamer and Digimon fan alike I think it's the best overall gaming experience that Digimon has to offer but it isn't a definitive Digimon game there are just too many elements from the show that are nowhere to be found Digimon survive then is exceptionally tragic to me because on paper it could so easily have been this definitive Digimon experience I've been waiting for anyone who's played it knows that it really feels like a spiritual successor to the original season of Digimon Adventure just with its protagonists aged up a bit and a noticeably darker take on the digital world it features a small core cast of human kids who have singular Digimon partners with fleshed out personalities

9:59 and actual agency in the story the setting is again for all intents and purposes the digital world of the show from its mechanics to its Aesthetics and for the first and so far only time in the history of Digimon games digivolution and degeneration actually work exactly the way they do in the show digivolution to new stages is tied to key moments of growth on the part of the human partner and degeneration is always straight back back down to rookie form after battle because the Digimon expends stamina in order to maintain higher Evolutions the player can still recruit extraneous wild Digimon to their cause but digivolution works differently for them relying instead on a special

10:44 Expendable item that places them permanently in a higher form which they don't need stamina to maintain but giving them lower base stats and by extension combat potential in exchange this is as I just said exactly how it works in the show down to Digimon who don't have human Partners abiding by different rules for digivolution it is a genuine Revelation for Digimon games in general and I really hope that later titles at the very least keep this if nothing else from survive so if survive Nails the feel of Digimon like nothing that came before it if it gets the characters and setting so right while even adapting the digivolution mechanics with 100% faithfulness to the source

11:30 material then why is it not the definitive Digimon game you may ask because unfortunately as an actual game it's arguably one of the worst that Bandai has ever put out what I needed from this game was for it to be the shin Mami tensei devil Survivor of Digimon a tactical RPG set within the property which simply conveyed its story via visual novel elements instead it's simply a visual novel with an occasional smattering of mediocre and overly simplistic tactical RPG combat it's 70% visual novel and 30% combat with the combat itself being severely underbaked also how does a game that looks like this and has like three polygons total

12:16 to its name run like such hot steamy ass on the switch I am seriously getting so tired of this shitty underpowered limp dick excuse for a console that can't even run upress ports of PS2 games at 60 FPS my point overall is that if cybersleuth nailed the game part while fumbling a large portion of the Digimon part then survive nailed the Digimon part while completely the bad on the actual game part which brings us to Digimon World next order which in my opinion is a fairly anticlimactic place to end but this also speaks to the larger issue of there being no definitive Digimon game at all so why am I choosing to end on next

13:03 order when it's neither the best game nor the most recent one I wanted to save it for last because I think of it as the middle ground game when it comes to the big three which is interesting unfortunately it's not the middle ground in so far as it achieves the best balance of game quality to Digimon ratio but in the sense of it being a jack of both trades and a master of none rather than excelling at one while more or less completely missing the other again like with cyber sluth and the other Digimon story titles a lot of what I'm going to say about next order can essentially be applied to the rest of the Digimon World Subs series next order and its predecessors notably take a great deal of inspiration from digimon's primordial

13:51 origin as a vet and while I think this homage is a very cool idea that at least has some Crossover with the way Gon Work in the anime Source material it will also pretty much always be one of the biggest ball and chains wearing these games down first let me hit the elements of the game I like though next order is actually set in the digital world this incarnation of the digital world greatly resembles its appearance in the anime from its General Vibe all the way down to The Surreal and unnatural Fusion of Nature and Technology woven into the landscape the world itself is really one of the stars of the show and is a real joy to explore and get immersed in additionally next order features a small

14:38 core cast of human characters with singular Partners bonded to them and these Partners have actual dialogue personalities and agency in the narrative technically the protagonist and the ultimate antagonist have two partners but the unusual nature of this is acknowledged in the story and the protagonists of the prior two World titles only have one the story itself also feels like a digimon Story the Digimon takes Center Stage it takes place in their world and the protagonists are essentially a small band of Digi destined furthermore next order is built like an actual video game with an actual game Loop you train and maintain your Digimon so that they can digivolve into stronger forms all while

15:24 making exploratory excursions out into the vast and varied landscape of the the digital world in order to recruit new Digimon to the town which serves as your central base of operations while there are plenty of for lack of a better term feral Digimon to fight in the Overworld there are also tons of recruitable NPC Digimon which also have their own personalities aspirations and dialogue to convey those things because next order and its ilk actually remember that Digimon can speak and are supposed to be fully sension not just empty husk programs used by hackers in man-made cyberspace combat itself is nowhere near as fun or developed as it is in cyber sluth but it's still engaging in its own

16:09 simple sort of way and demands more and more of your attention the less overpowered your Digimon are so where does next order falter aside from the combat being okay but not as good as in Cy sleuth well that brings me back to the aforementioned ball and chain that is the Digimon raising mechanics once again even here in Digimon World the rules and nature of digivolution do not work the way they do in the show and I would argue that they're even less representative of the show than cyber sluth is in next order you digivolve your Digimon by manually raising their stats to certain thresholds through training and digivolution is linear degeneration simply doesn't exist

16:56 players will inevitably end up spending their time with lower Evolutions throughout their playthrough but this is simply because your Digimon have a limited lifespan and when they die they are reverted back to their lowest form for you to start the process all over again this is admittedly how the world games allow you to explore multiple digivolution trees while feeling bonded to only one or two partners but it also creates one of the weirdest and most ungratifying gameplay Loops I have ever seen like if this wasn't tied to a Digimon game I wouldn't give it the time of day in a million years despite next order's Town building gameplay Loop being surprisingly addictive the Rogue

17:43 element of your Digimon partner's mortality is the most obnoxious Pace breaker ever conceived no matter how much time or effort you put into a digimon it is only mortal so you will inevitably need to period ically just stop what you're doing in the story or your acquisition of New Town members and just start raising a baby up from scratch again they do get stronger and stronger by default with each new reincarnation but never nearly to the degree that any serious amount of work is cut out on the player's end this is literally the worst form of grinding in the history of video games it is astoundingly bad it is literally for

18:28 first periodic Mega grinding that you don't even get to permanently keep the benefits of and it is the reason I could never in good faith recommend a Digimon World game to anybody despite titles like next order achieving what is otherwise a very nice Middle Ground between cyber sleuth and survive and to make matters even worse there's the Ludo narrative dissonance of the fact that in red digitize and next order the other human characters Digimon Partners don't even abide by the same rules that the players do while their digivolution is completely linear with no degeneration at any point as well barring a rare instance of total reincarnation due to plot Shenanigans the other Tamers simply

19:16 have Immortal Partners who slowly work their way up from Rookie to Mega across the duration of the story and as such their Digimon get to have actual dialogue and personalities only the player has to deal with the burdens of mortality apparently and this discrepancy is never addressed in game which brings me back to my original assertion for all the years that Digimon has been around as an IP and all the games that have released for it experimental or otherwise there's still no truly definitive Digimon game there's no title that Nails both the game play and story there's no title that fully captures the feel and mechanical lore of the anime while also just being a good

20:03 game that makes me sad but more importantly I wouldn't be surprised if it's a key reason why Digimon fell so far from the public conscience aside from you know overall franchise neglect I'm hopeful that the upcoming new entry in the Digimon story Subs series will at least improve over cyber sleuth in the story Department I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it's going to take place at least partially in the digital world proper which is a good sign if true but it's still going to be a digimon Story game with all the anime in congruous mechanics that come with that what I'd like to see more than anything is another stab at something like Digimon survive with more priority given to the actual gameplay or possibly even a more

20:51 traditional RPG where your party is made up of Digimon bonded to a party of human companions even if that comes at the expense of collecting them all for one or two games sort of like the Digimon Adventure PSP or Data Squad PS2 licensed games except you know good but whatever bamco nandi chooses to do with future Digimon games I really think they should prioritize making a truly definitive experience a true Digimon killer app not in terms of scope and budget necessarily but in terms of really capturing the lore and essence of the show which is the True Heart of the franchise and doing so without compromising quality of game design until then I'll just be here

21:38 dig evolving from disappointed man into waiting patiently man and if you're hearing this then thanks for sticking around to the end let me know in the comments how you feel about the current state of Digimon games do you agree with my takes here disagree I say this in almost every video but I really make these two have a conversation so I always pay attention to and engage with the comments I'm not just asking this for the algorithm anyway I hope you enjoyed and to see you next time peace out also subscribe