Understanding the Love for Digimon World 3 | Digimon World 3/2003 Retrospective

0:05 when I was putting together my review of Digimon World one I thought no one was going to watch it I thought it would be a passion project I put together for myself but would be a oneandone a fun little experiment and that would be it that's not exactly how it went since then people have been excited to recommend new games for me to review in the Digimon vein but when they weren't suggesting next order or cyber sleuth the conversation usually went back to Digimon World 3 right off the bat I could tell that after this game a lot of other titles in the franchise would take notes from it at least in terms of presentation but I've been curious to see if they did the same with its style of gameplay since so many of these games are so different from each other I mean say what you will but I actually like how varied the Digimon games are and they offer so many new experiences

0:52 something I'm pleased to still see today as Digimon goes back to its roots or tries out new things like a visual novel strategy hybrid but if this is the game that says a standard for a while I think it's worth exploring how and why now in classic Digimon fashion there's an extra element here to complicate things we are looking at Digimon World 3 today but with an asterisk Digimon World 2 never made its way to Europe I would imagine the messy release of the first title both coming out so much later and also bringing so many bugs and issues with it that could even prevent you from completing the game had something to do with that and while I think there's some interesting elements to World 2 I can't help but wonder if the reception to that game kept it from getting localized Europe did get Digimon World 3 however but it was still a little late to the

1:38 party in 2002 we saw the game release in these states first and then in Japan and then much later in the tail end of that year it came to Europe it contained some features that were in the Japanese release but not in the American including some updates to the game's mechanics and postgame content and in a sort of Final Fantasy fashion came with a different title to compensate for the missing release I wanted to tackle what's widely agreed to be the most complete version of this game it came with its own set of challenges which we'll get into but I wasn't about to take the easy way out for what just might be the most requested and most highly anticipated video I've ever made a huge thanks to everybody that's been waiting this is Digimon World [Music]

2:26 2003 hello [Music] this game doesn't have the most complicated box art but I do think it's a bit nicer than what we had for World 2 showing off some favorites with auman and gilmon but also Baron the first two were easily recognizable from Digimon Adventure and Tamers but a lot of kids in America and Europe probably didn't know Bon as up to that point he was only shown off in a Japan exclusive OVA the previous year called Island of the Lost Digimon this was connected to the Digimon Frontier series and did get an English dub and release but not until

3:11 2005 a few years after this game launched obviously kid's not already being familiar with all the Digimon here is in no way a bad thing I think the mix of characters represented here varying in recognizability may have helped kind of saying you'd see both familiar and new stuff here plus bont has a great little design he's so precious I like the Japanese box art too but I'm not sure how I feel about war Greymon and gallantmon just sort of being slapped into the sky background not the worst looking but if the focus of the art here was just the rookie Digimon I think this case would have easily been my favorite I was lucky enough to get all three of these after buying the American release for myself my friend Josh getting me the Japanese version and my old Bud Channel pup helping me secure the European release No manual in this one sadly but at least the cover art is there listen I

3:57 don't know what to tell you I'm a picky collector one once again I am not using emulation for this review as a matter of fact I'm not even relying on the use of my PS3 for this one I'm playing this game entirely on an original PS1 system or I guess more specifically the later Slimmer model I had some unique struggles getting the footage captured for this one which I'll explain in further detail later but if you notice some of the early footage I use being a little dark or this irritating red line going down the screen I did address those issues before getting too deep into the recording process so it won't look like that the entire time when the game begins we're treated with an incredibly well animated CGI cut scene which I guess has become something of a staple for these games now makes it more of a shame that Rumble Arena 2 didn't get one but I guess that was when these

4:43 games were moving on into a new era everything here is rendered so well the characters are Lively and expressive and a lot of what's going on here is actually relevant to the events of the game except for Beamon you can get one in the game but I don't think you ever run into one or at least there's never one with any importance he's just here because you sort of expect to see him fighting gallantmon it's also probably fitting that we see a trio of Digimon here just like in Digimon World 2 our team will typically consist of Three core members at a time but there are some differences in the way it's handled here these early intros are something I've always enjoyed and I think they're worth talking about because not only is it the first thing a player is going to see when booting up the game it's something that will help set the tone nature and energy of the experience they can expect and I especially like that

5:30 this one in particular can kind of Hit the player differently the further they get into the game and they start to recognize what's being represented I think it's a really strong way to get the player invested before the title screen even shows up speaking of setting the energy that's something I need a lot of when working on a video this big thankfully when I'm sitting down for a recording session working on the script or editing I get a Little Help from our partners over at G fuel G fuel is an energy drink provider that specializes in creating energy drinks for people like You and Me In The Gaming Community fashioning their flavors after tons of recognizable characters and titles like Sonic the Hedgehog Elden ring and hotsun Miku I've been assured that Miku is a digital little creature and therefore counts as a digimon they have some original flavors as well like my

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7:01 reminded of Persona 3 with the way the transition screen is designed the use of blue is nice and we also see our first location which is our first in-game depiction of the real world okay everything that happens here is out of the player's control but this is the most time and attention that's been paid to the real world in any of these games and the relevance it plays to the main game will become more and more clear later and I like the Twist on Tokyo here with some slight sci-fi futuristic elements gives it a little personality we're introduced to our main character here named Junior as he's waiting on a city block for his friends Teddy and Ivy the overhead TV displays a news broadcast declaring the authorities have recently arrested members of a group known as the AOA a criminal organization that's been up to vague internet terrorism something something

7:47 manipulating Digimon to their will that sort of thing not sure what that's supposed to imply or why we need it to specify that they're stationed in Europe but I'm not the one writing the game I guess I do have a few guesses as to the members though though obviously one way or the other we know it's going to be important later so they haven't been resolved as a problem yet since we just got here well Teddy and Ivy finally show up and it turns out Digimon are already pretty well known in this world and the kids are all interested in this game known as Digimon online the group travels to the Mami online Center to essentially be sent into the game itself how many of you have seen Tron now how exactly this works is a little confusing to me at first they make it sound like your physical body is in the real world but your thoughts and ideas are turned

8:32 into data and sent into the digital one but as the game goes on it really feels like your entire being is digitized and sent in and honestly I feel like that's just an overall simpler explanation and it makes it less weird that certain things like the state of the players physical bodies aren't brought up while they're in the game itself and besides it's not like the idea of kids being fully thrown into the digital world is a foreign concept for this franchise I do really like this concept in principle though I'm not sure if the digital world as it's depicted here was actually created by Mami or like discovered and repurposed to form this MMO but I personally like to think it's the latter it's a little hard to read too deep into a lot of the details here because these early PS1 games have never had the cleanest translations to English and a lot of this stuff feels inferred rather

9:18 than fully spelled out it could also just be me muddling up the details from thousands of words that I've read over the course of a lot of hours playing this game so if anyone has a more concrete explan as to how this works I'm all yours in the comments going to be honest though I really don't think it has that big of an effect on how things actually play out in the game when the trio arrives at Mami to log into Digimon online they're faced with a few things that they'll need to do to get set up first creating an online name see at this point I was very happy to see this because it already felt like we were getting a bit disconnected from our player character it's the first time an MC has had a Canon name that we can't change and we spent a pretty good amount of time here just chatting with a lot of dialogue with no real input from the player we do also see Junior's competitive personality on full display

10:05 as he and Ivy kind of butt heads which does kind of remove the element of the main character being a direct avatar for you the player but I've never minded that in and of itself I'd always rather see the effort put into making the character you play as have a sense of place in the world that you're traveling through we do at least get to choose our own online name which I think is a smart way to implement the player agency and makes total sense when your characters are signing up to play an online game I also so really really love this music which is good because we're going to be hearing this particular track a lot as it plays over the safe screen which takes a really long time to do its thing but at least the tunes are Pleasant you also need to choose a digimon pack this will be the set of three rookie Digimon that you begin the game with with three packs available to you the balance pack

10:50 will start you off with a patamon renamon and kotemon the powerful pack with renamon monmon and auman and the maniac pack the one I chose will see you beginning your journey with gilon patamon and kumamon I mean uh beon okay I should probably go ahead and address this now uh there are a lot of Digimon that have different names depending on how they were localized so like tailmon is godon in the states or mugan Dramon is machine Dramon and I've never really been much of a stickler for certain names something I actually appreciate about the Digimon Community is that everyone uses their preferred localized names for these creatures but they don't treat it like a competition like I've never had anyone give me grief over calling omegamon omnimon or dukemon gallantmon and I

11:37 appreciate that they're just the names I'm used to this little guy is a special case though because in Digimon World 3 and 2003 he is known as kumamon but only in this game you see in Japan this guy has always been beon but I guess the localization team wanted to use the Japanese word for Bear which is Kum in his name to make it less on the nose when spoken in English I guess I don't know whatever outside of this one PS1 game the name kumamon actually belongs to this little guy and from what I can tell he existed at the same time as Bon and I don't think that this name swap has existed anywhere in the franchise outside of this one PS1 title so that is

12:24 why I will be referring to this guy as something other than what you see on on screen just thought that was a fun little piece of trivia okay let's get back to it so what is the purpose of choosing between these Digimon packs outside of just wanting your favorite rookie Digimon following you around that actually is the main motivation for your choice here because as we dig deeper into the game's mechanics you'll see just how much the stats and unlockable forms for these creatures are totally in your control but the intention here as long as you're not obsessing over the meta aspects of the game is to offer an early game balance based on your preference each of these Ries have different base stats that will grow with certain priorities in their attributes Baron is a strong fighter with plenty of attack power and panamon is more like your Mage with heavy emphasis on Magic

13:09 points for using text and learning healing abilities faster this is a good way of sort of controlling your early experience in the game and does have an effect over available digivolutions but that's going to be its own little section of discussion we'll get there intentions aside I would really just recommend choosing whichever pack as a digimon you like the most I really wanted Gil on but Bon also sort of wound up being my MVP for this playthrough so the maniac pack worked out just fine for me and don't stress out too much about missing out on any of these particular partners because you can actually recruit them into your team later if you would like yeah going to need everyone to jot that one down because recruiting will come up again and it just might be more important than you think let's get scratching

14:02 once our starting team has been chosen just be on guard for this loud awful noise that plays it's so charring and caught me totally off guard the first time I played but now we're ready to roll being transported into the game with a very our war gamees sequence of our digital self trying to access the game and once we're here oh oh man this song is great too and we have analog control thank you oh it feels so nice to be able to move around normally after taking a little time to chat with the residents of the opening area we're introduced to our partner Digimon and this is the only time we will get to see them actually speak our friends meet up with us and we see they've also chosen new online names Ivy has chosen the name kale heavily insisting on only that name

14:47 being used which Junior decides to quickly be really rude about for some reason and Teddy chooses the name Teddy godspeed Teddy and then we establish our own main mission in the game to pursue splitting off from the group to go find the leaders of the various cities beat them in battle to obtain their Badges and work our way up to the strongest tamer in Digimon online to become the Game's new Champion I've made it this far in these videos without making the direct comparison and I still don't want to but man where have I heard that one before well accomplish this by traveling across the domain overcoming various obstacles in our path between each location for the chance to challenge each leader but along the way we start uncovering the details of a Sinister

15:33 plot but let's slow down for a second on the outset we don't get to do a whole lot of exploring before being shuffled into a battle tutorial but it's probably a good idea to get the basics of the battle mechanics down now all of the battle mechanics that sort of thing that's probably better saved for its own section but I do have to point out that the victory battle theme is the same one from Digimon World 2 but it's preceded by a jingle derived from the main battle theme of Digimon World 1 [Music] that is so cute I love that there actually isn't going to be much connecting this game to the first two in terms of continuity I don't even think they're in the same version of the digital world but the little references

16:18 and connections like this are great now we're free to explore the city and get acquainted with some important stuff we'll be interacting with one of the obvious and most important is the ins where gamon will let us rest for for a small fee so our Digimon can replenish all of its HP and MP and these places will usually have a gamon that will let us save the game also just going to pop in here real quick and say hi to teron I'm pretty sure this is the only one in the game in the next building over we see two different types of shops gargomon will run the Armory shops across the game where yes in a more typical RPG fashion that we might be used to up to this point we can equip each of our Digimon with armor accessory and weapons now these weapons don't actually show up on character models it's really just to boost your rookies based stats like can you just imagine how weird it would be to see a digimon with like Claws and things like built in

17:06 attack power running around with equipment like a sword or an axe or something nope no no no nope not yet we'll get there this equipment can be incredibly helpful for beefing up attack Power Defense and there are various other stats that can benefit from what your Digimon is wearing as well the only thing is it's expensive you're going to need to go out and do a bit of battling to get the bits that you'll need to buy this stuff we also have a more standard item shop run by none other than wizardmon which is pretty wizard as the kids would say this will be stuff like healing items or discs you can use to help your Digimon recover from certain status effects like sleep confusion poison that kind of thing making good use of spots like this will obviously be really important throughout the game and

17:52 the populated cities that we visit in Digimon online will typically host these kinds of locations for recovery and replenishment we can also poke our heads into this bar here called The Lamb Chop this is established as a place where a lot of people visit it's really not you can count on one hand the amount of people that will actually show up here and not many of them actually serve any importance this is really just a way of conveying that exploring multiple locations and talking to as many NPCs as you can is a big part of this game and it will be downright essential for progression in some parts one of the other early places we can visit is this shop right here where we're introduced to the card game all right let's just go ahead and get this one out of the way a little bit ago I reviewed the title Digimon Digital card battle and in that video I said things like tabletop games trading cards

18:39 outside of just like collecting them it's just not my thing but I had a surprisingly good time playing that game and I think the reason I was so surprised is because I was expecting the gameplay to be more like what you find in the card game of Digimon World 3 yeah not a fan of this and I'm going to be really honest with you this is the one element of the game I felt a little unsure of covering because frankly I don't have a ton to say about it I tried it out in the beginning tried to get down the basics and then sort of forgot about it for most of the game the way it works is sort of similar to card battle where you'll be given some cards to start with at the beginning when the match begins you choose between two face down cards if you pull kulum on you get to go first which honestly feels like it has little to no effect on the match at

19:25 all next you'll draw some cards from your deck and if you have any program cards in your hand you can use them to activate their supporting effect like summon in a type of Digimon card add defense or attack power to a certain card in a group or of cards under a specific type or screw around with your opponent's cards then you place your digimon cards on the field you'll have a certain amount of s energy for each color type of card and the stronger a card is the more s energy it will require to use so you can't just load up on anything in your hand if you don't have the S energy needed to summon it the S energy you have depends on how many cards of that color type you have in your deck so if you focus and specialize on a certain card color you'll have an easier time actually summoning what you have available once you summon your available digimon cards from your hand you can enter the phase

20:11 where you load up program cards again I think the type of program card that you can use dictates which of the two phases let you use said card either way it all boils down to the numbers your cards add up to at the end HP and AP every Digimon card has a base number of Health points and attack points and the program cards you use can increase the stats for both you're essentially pitting the totals of these numbers against each other you want to have enough AP to exceed their HP and your HP to exceed their AP best out of three rounds wins the game and if you're the winner you get a booster pack ah see that's the thing that sets us all apart from digital card battle you can go visit divermon in cities and buy single cards directly from him but it's one at a time and they're usually really

20:57 expensive so your best bet is to win booster packs in card battles or win them by finding card Bon out in the Overworld and beating [Music] them let's get [Music] scratching cardmon can be found by fishing which is something that you can do after completing a fetch quest for an old gezer to collect a bunch of items to form a fishing rod or kicking the various trees scattered around in the world for that though you'll need kicking boots and this is where the game starts to show off how it handles side quests we talk to this guy over here who tells us he can tell us how to get the kicking boots but we first have to go find his missing gaban card and oh boy finding this thing sure is stupid how in

21:43 the world were you supposed to know it was just hiding in this bookshelf back in the city's Inn well by using a guide that's how you give them the card he tells you about this vmon that will give you the boots and he's hanging out somewhere in the Overworld this is one of the first pces of Lamb Chop Gathering info about where this Von is tracking him down all the way near the Second City playing hide-and-seek with him and finally getting those damn boots yep I will get into it later but this game can get very very aent heavy it also benefits from using a guide at least in places now you have the kicking boots but it's not as easy as just running up to any tree and kicking it to get a cardmon you have to use this radar that will basically play

22:28 mind sweeper with you to narrow down which tree actually has a cardmon to fight which ones won't do anything and which ones will send out a different Digimon to attack you or you can just run up to a random tree and accidentally get right into the scuff with one of these little guys I seriously recommend Just Fishing instead it's faster easier and more reliable just find a body of water drop down a line and try to stop this meter in the right spot to either Miss pull up an aquatic Digimon or land on a yellow one to fight a cardmon okay here's a cute little detail and the 2003 version when you successfully land on the cardmon spot this little chime will play so you know that you've got a cute little TCG demon before the fight starts that sound is just not in the American version it I don't know that's a strange difference like the Random

23:14 Encounters that you fight in the Overworld these cardmon will be more difficult depending on what locations you fish them up in but as long as you can defeat them before they flee you'll be gifted with a booster pack obviously the quality of the packs or rather the strength of the cards that you get out of them will be determined by their category and you'll get stronger booster packs from tougher card battle opponents or higher level cardmon which will toughen up as the game goes on and this is an element that I see some appeal to cuz that's part of the TCG scene that I really do enjoy getting a new booster pack to crack open seeing what new cards you get to add to your collection getting a whiff of that new card smell but that feeling is a little diminished by the weird choice to make booster packs impossible to open by yourself I mean I guess it gives him something to do but what's so hard about doing doing it yourself arbitrary

24:00 importance that is all you have and how does that make you feel okay actually that was incredibly mean and rude I'm I'm sorry so why don't I actually care about this well two main reasons first of all the tutorial is sort of terrible the way it's dished out is just a giant wall of muddled text from an NPC a far cry from the hands-on experience of learning how to play in digital card battle and to make matters worse the first battles you participate in here well I think we're supposed to just act as silent tutorials after you listen to this guy jabber are incredibly brain dead giving me the wrong impression that there would be nothing complex about how this would work get cards with big numbers big numbers win that was my takeaway here of course later on in the game program cards play a much larger role in all of this especially for

24:45 opponents that take advantage of specializing in certain color types that might seem weak at first but with the right program cards can boost their digimon cards to insane degrees but by the time I saw that sort of thing I just hadn't really been participating in card battles I didn't see the progression of the system and that is my own fault yes but the weak impression that the system left on me in the start just made the whole thing Fade Into the back of my mind while I was busy playing the rest of the game all that aside the second reason I don't really care about the card battles is they have no Consequence the entire Trading Card Game mechanic is entirely optional with even antagonistic characters later in the game challenging you to card battles but if you lose it's just just back to the Overworld nothing comes from it there's an entire area

25:32 dedicated to the TCG there's plenty of card battles to be had and some of the postgame content revolves around collecting legendary cards and taking on a tournament of opponents but I had checked out of this pretty early once I got close to the end I saw how out of my league I was and at that point because this was its own separated World essentially I saw no reason to get invested in the Twilight hour I would much sooner recommend the full game dedicated to this kind of play style instead even if I find opening booster packs can be pretty fun on its own okay so that whole topic kind of dodged around a few other things in the game that revolve around it but I did want to just address the mechanic in full as much as possible as early on as possible and just like when I was playing the game focus more on the parts of the title that I found more interesting and

26:17 could talk more about though I did have more to say about the card game than I thought I would that being said there is one little mechanic that is attached to the card game that plays around with other parts of the title in some really interesting ways as you embark on your journey properly you're going to start getting acquainted with the way battles work pretty quickly you might be walking around for a little bit and get jump scared by a random encounter you might be fishing and catch something that isn't a cardmon or you could talk to an NPC who wants to challenge you and a fight is initiated okay uh that actually kind of depends you see there's this stat that your Digimon has that can change the way characters interact with you out in the Overworld that being Charisma now this gaban right here would have every NPC in the game bowing at your feet they probably just kept them out so you wouldn't get overpowered

27:02 Charisma changes based on equipment and leveling up but the effect is how people will act when you talk to them most NPCs will have an initial piece of dialogue like a little tidbit about the world this old couple that wants to become Digimon what they like to do when they log into the game or this one lady who just completely unprompted feels the need to establish that she's not into younger guys which uh huh I guess this game doesn't give me Persona Vibes after all there's even an establishment that will only let you win when your Digimon are cool enough but what they really mean is that your Collective Charisma has to be high enough this is worth going for it though because it grants you access to the main City's Black Market where you can purchase more powerful items and gear and also opens the way to an auction house where at certain points in the game you can enter to bid on powerful items made

27:48 exclusively for certain partner Digimon having high Charisma also changes how these NPCs will respond to you once you try to speak to them past their initial dialogue with lower Charisma they'll challenge you to a card battle I'm not sure what this game is trying to say about the social status of TCG players but let's just try not to read too deep into that get your charisma high enough though and they'll challenge you to a digimon battle instead opening up the floodgates to a whole new level of mechanics and numbers to dig into just like in Digimon World 2 battles are portrayed with 3D models in a fairly traditional turn-based combat system only here while you do have a party of three Digimon these fights are oneon-one at least in the sense that only one Digimon from each opponent is

28:35 active at a time you can sort your party with whatever rookie is on top being the one that will start the battle the fight command will have your Digimon dish out and attack with physical damage basically their base move technique will let you use any text that your Digimon has learned tag will let you swap your active Digimon to another one you can use an item or you can choose run to try fleeing from the confrontation but you won't get any experience or bits that way Tech can range from a variety of different things with support stats like buffing your attack defense or speed to inflicting status ailments on opponents or use an attack based on an elemental weakness or boosted physical damage there are also healing tchs but these are a little weird because you can't use them on any Digimon that are currently active so if your Digimon takes a heavy bit of damage and you tag a Healer like

29:20 patamon paton's healing Tech will just heal himself and not anyone else so it kind of defeats the purpose of having a Healer class member on your team what you really want to do is stock up on healing atoms because they'll probably be just as effective as a healing Tech and not require learning a specific move that's not even mentioning your revive item it seems to be the only recovery item that actually affects your other Digimon that aren't currently in active combat so say if you're in a fight where two of your three Digimon get knocked out your active Digimon can use a life dis to revive them both at once and also bring them back to full health not MP though that's something that you need to rely on the ins for because you're not going to find much here in the way of MP recovery items which I find an odd choice but the inss aren't that far

30:05 spread from each other so it's not the end of the world or anything but having items that you could spend your bits on to recover this sort of stuff wouldn't have been either like if you're trying to balance it just make those items more expensive I I don't know what the deal is here and as you'd expect Tex can also inflict status effects like poison and confusion which are pretty effective confusion caught me off guard the first time I got hit by it though because the music is replaced by this crazy little jingle and your moves are all replaced with other words and you essentially have to choose between them and happen to choose that one that will randomly be selected to actually result in attacking using items here can be tricky which is kind of funny because there is an item that cures confusion but that effect is only granted to the Digimon using the item so do you see the problem here now

30:52 the effectiveness of your attacks is going to depend on the specific strengths of your Digimon and the weaknesses of the other on the defense each Digimon will have a pretty full list of stats to keep track of their attributes strength is pretty obvious but only determines the power of physical attacks defense determines dexterity Against The Same Spirit determines how strong your digimon's magic attacks will be and if you use a lot of text this is definitely something to upgrade wisdom on the other hand will determine how accurate your digimon's hit rate will be with magic as well as How likely they are to dodge Magic on top of that you also have various stats based on each element in the game those being fire water ice wind Thunder machine and dark boosting these stats will increase the tolerance you have to these elements Furious Digimon will have

31:39 specific strengths in these areas usually in the form of text that use said element in an attack now you might be wondering if boosting these stats will also increase the effectiveness of your text revolving around these elements man you tell me best answer I can come up with is no not really or at least not that I can tell I think magic strength is pretty much all handled by the spirit stat the other Specialties are just for defense really obviously by winning battles and earning experience these stats will naturally go up bit by bit every time you level up you see a little boost in these numbers and your Proficiency in each area will increase different rookie Digimon will have natural focuses on certain stats but there is actually a way to Grant controlled growth to certain stats for

32:25 each Digimon near the bottom of the screen you may have noticed something called TP and no it's not what you do to your friend's house while they're on vacation these are training points each time your rookie Digimon levels up they'll receive 5tp that can be used at a local gym for specialized training these gyms will be stationed around the world of Digimon online run by powerful Digimon and let you choose specific stats to hone in on and boost you can also control the extent of the training using different levels of TP to determine the extent and proficiency of that training you can choose between one t TP 5 TP and 10 TP to spend at once resulting in a lower or greater level of growth for the category you've chosen there is still a bit of a chance Factor here as your Digimon will run through a series of trials they can either succeed

33:12 in or fail but they always have a certain number of tries for each stat and if they continuously succeed in training the amount that stat will increase can be way higher I also love these animations it's such a great little vpet aesthetic and each rookie Digimon has ated animations for every single type of training it's one of the benefits to making the digivolution process center around a select set of everpresent rookies at the center yep I have not forgotten we'll talk about the digivolution soon now the types of training available won't be the same at every gym the gyms you can access in the early game will largely focus on the base stats like attack defense speed and stuff like that but later on heft your gyms will grant you access to training the elemental resistance stats as well

33:57 where success F training yields even greater rewards it's worth it to check out the various gyms to see which ones will grant the widest range of statu in hands as there are benefits outside of battles that these numbers can grant you which again we will get into soon you can also obtain an item called the training book from Brown newon in a later area of the game to heighten your Digimon success rate during training and can also earn tickets that will allow you to access different types of training including super training at any gym in the game which is greatly helpful if you find yourself tied to an area with an earlier gym there is one step that every Digimon has that I haven't really addressed yet but that's because I wanted to emphasize it here speed please train your digimon's speed

34:43 speed is one of the most crucial stats you can increase especially in the early game your first instinct will be to assume that this increases your digimon's place in the battle's attack order the one with the higher speed will get to take their turn first but it goes a step further than that increase your speed high enough and overshadow that of your opponent and you'll find that you can start taking your turn twice in a row letting you attack twice or heal before attacking without being interrupted this is already super helpful but there's still one more reason to focus on this because your Digimon speed also controls their blocking rate and physical attack accuracy I found this out the hard way in a battle with an important enemy that kept temporarily increasing his speed to the point that he was blocking every single attack I threw at him until his

35:30 stats return to normal get your speed high enough and you can not only stack your turns though I do think two is the limit but you can also ensure your attacks will hit more frequently and that your Digimon can block physical attacks way more often too that's the fun part of RPGs like this isn't it finding those little mechanics that you can bend to your will and manipulate giving you the upper hand in fights tackling the system before breaking it controlling it want to know how else to break this [Music] game accessories can make a huge difference in this title the training book is a good example but there's a bunch of other ways that you can use accessories to your advantage to even the playing field during battles you can equip two accessories per Digimon at a

36:16 time but you can't stack multiple of the same item or two items that have the same effect you can use rings that will boost your resistance to certain elements or items that add an elemental effect to your physical attacks and those accessor have an even stronger version that you can obtain later so you've got an enemy that dishes out strong machine attacks equip a machine ring to boost your defense and a bolt power to make your Digimon more effective in a battle against them but beyond all of these accessories there's one that's more well known than the rest and in one version of the game I would argue is sort of Infamous near a desert area of the game you can find some tuskmon out in the wild at this point my gilmon could dig evolve into war growlmon and had learned the tech picking CL which has a certain chance of stealing a drop item from an enemy which is Handy for grabbing stuff from certain

37:02 wild Digimon that have an otherwise rare drop rate for set item what exactly do you piler from these guys a little something known as a counter Crest take a little time to grind through these tuskmon until you can snag three counter Crest so you can equip them on all three of your Digimon in your party because this will give your Digimon a certain chance to counter physical attacks from your enemies I don't exactly get what attributes the strength of a counter is tied to but I've been up against the wall with some really strong opponents who took minimal damage from my Digimon whether the attacks were physical damage or magic but as long as they toughed out an attack and countered it it could sometimes take out the rest of the enemy's Health in a single blow how does this work beats me but you should totally use it it's just far too useful

37:48 not to and here's one of the craziest differences between Digimon World 3 and 2003 see in 2003 and I believe even the Japanese version the counter Crest gives you a possibility a likelihood of snapping back against physical attacks with a counter I don't know the exact number myself but I've read somewhere that there's a 25% chance of triggering a Counterattack which sounds about right in the American release of the game the Counterattack rate is a 100% chance it takes what would otherwise be a pretty useful item and turns it into an entirely broken mechanic with all of this equipment and training in mind what you end up with is honestly a pretty easy combat system okay that is as long

38:34 as you're paying attention to the items available to you and setting your Digimon up for Success without all of that you're going to have a tougher time but it's really not too hard to make sure your Digimon is ready for most challenges you can typically balance them out to be resistant to the right effects be strong with the others be fast and be able to counter there's even field items that you can drop to strengthen certain elements in a fight but I never used them because I never needed to now there are some other typee advantages to keep in mind that sort of exist outside of these stats like Fire based agod will be inherently strong against plant-based ones wind Digimon strong against Bug but there are some that seem less obvious like sure I guess I see the logic in water being strong over machine but ice Digimon having a natural boost over Dino Digimon is a

39:20 little less so and dark Digimon having a natural advantage over Dragon Digimon is just something you would have to tell me for me to know it at all but it's not enough to just focus on training the stats of a rookie Digimon and sending them out into battle you can bump up their numbers Harden their edges and give them equipment but that by itself won't really be efficient and it would be ignoring one of the staple elements of the Digimon franchise with that said it's finally time to start talking about digivolution so far we've seen the use of two very different digivolution systems in the Digimon World Games both have shared a common link in that the base form of a creature May hold much more potential than you would initially expect granted that you're willing to learn how to best build them up into new forms branching paths based on the manipulation of Nature and nurture

40:06 adding specifically trained or focused elements of the foundation to see what new forms can spring from it in Digimon World 3 your rookie Digimon will always be around they follow and train with you they learn and grow stronger from battles and the more they rise in levels the more branches of evolution start to open up to them let's take vmon for example for for a while this is the only form that you'll see from him but once he reaches level five he unlocks the ability to dig evolve into X vmon hail Dramon once he reaches level 20 and Imperial Dramon Dragon mode once he reaches level 40 now I don't mean that when X Von reaches level 20 he can dig evolve into pamon no I mean when Theon reaches level 20 he unlocks the digivolution as X Von levels up and yes

40:54 he has his own separate levels that grow alongside Von he will get access to other digivolutions that spring off from him okay so the standard experience that your Digimon receives at the end of a battle goes to your rookie Digimon and only the rookie as you unlock digivolutions you can essentially equip them to use in battles but you can only have three slots open for each rookie you can manually digivolve from your rookie to one of your slotted digivolutions once the battle begins but it's way easier to go into your rookie status screen and choose one of the digivolutions automatically load up when the battle begins so you're not wasting a turn with every fight and when you need to tag to a different Digimon wall in battle you can also choose which of their digivolutions they'll swap in with for more convenience it's pretty well thought out now if you have a

41:40 digivolution equipped during a fight your rookie will receive their normal experience and the digivolution you used will receive DV exp or digivolution experience how much experience your rookie needs in order to level up will depend on their level which is normal so auman will need to gain around 85 experience to level up from Level 5 to level six but we'll need to gain an additional 118 experience after that to reach level seven but greymond would need 10 DV experience to level up every time like he'll just need 10 DV experience for every single level until it reaches a high threshold like level 95 or something so this means while your rookie is taking a pretty widespread amount of battles to jump from just a couple of levels the digivolution there

42:27 utilizing in those same battles is leveling up almost every single Victory screen the balance made here actually comes from the Digimon their defeating every wild Digimon has a certain amount of DV experience they Grant when defeated but they actually gradually reward less and less of it the more powerful your rookie level is so the higher level your rookie they'll receive the same amount of experience from a certain wild Digimon on repeated victories but receive less DV experience for whatever digivolution you're training at the time that might sound like it could get pretty punishing but it's really not in the grand scheme of things as you make your way through the game you'll encounter more powerful Digimon that Grant more standard experience and require your rookie to be at a higher level before they begin yielding less DV experience okay that's

43:12 a lot of words that might sound complicated but what it really means is that there's not a ton to track for what you'll need in order to level up your dig volutions level at the very worst the maximum required battles it would take to level up your digivolution it would be 10 but that's if you're fighting the weakest of the weak wild Digimon that wouldn't even be giving off enough standard experience to benefit your rookie Now tracking how much standard experience your rookie needs in order to level up it doesn't tell you uh there's no indicator for like how much standard experience your rookie needs to get to the next level which gets really annoying and I have tried to find charts a lot of them are kind of all over the place some are accurate some are it's weird what you will need to track is the branching Paths of Digi evolutions for

43:59 each rookie there's a lot of guides and charts laying this stuff out and I'll link to some helpful ones in the description it's one of those things where when it's laid out in front of you in a visual and readable way it's pretty easy to follow but trying to put it into words is a little bit of a challenge as you level up a digivolution reaching certain levels will unlock new digivolutions stemming from that if you have a baron as your rookie and the digivolution you're using is grimon you'll need to get grimon to level 20 and have Bon's base Spirit stat trains to 80 to unlock kyubimon if grisman reaches level 30 and Bon has a wisdom stat of 80 you'll unlock the ability to dig evolve into digitamamon Digi Evolutions are naturally stronger than a rookie so when you dig evolve the digivolutions you choose will take the

44:45 stats of that rookie and amplify them this seems to be determined by the specific digivolution in question and obviously stronger and stronger Gigi volutions will amplify the base stats of the rookie more and more these slightly confusing part is that the Dig Evolutions add to these stats but it's also like these stats are being stacked on invisible inherit stats of the digi Evolution so for example a Greymon and Metal Greymon both have level 500 attack this is after factoring in any amplification that they've done to the stats of their rookie form even though those numbers would be exactly the same in the strength section of their respective stat screen the Metal Greymon physical attacks is still going to hit way harder it's a more powerful form it's automatically going to be stronger but its higher strength is not

45:31 represented solely by the numbers you see here listen I know it sounds like a lot of stuff but if it's any consolation this is by far the most difficult time I've ever had writing a video Let's Get scratching now you may have noticed unlocking certain digivolutions and higher tiers will sometimes require more than just hitting a certain level anytime a digivolution needs a level requirement and a stat in order to be unlocked that stat requirement is referring to the stats of your rookie not the Amplified numbers of their digivolution let's look at Gilman's digivolution tree I have a metal Mamon

46:17 and he's at level 40 but I also need a machine resistance level of 190 to unlock Metal guman guilmon's machine stat isn't quite there but when he did you evolves into metal Mamon the stat amplification pushes it to over 190 but that does not matter gilmon is the one with the stat requirement and no equipping an accessory like a ring to artificially enhance a rookie stat does not count I tried it on padon when trying to unlock skull Greymon your rookie needs to have been trained to that stat requirement either through level grinding or from the use of a gym making gyms with more training options available even more important based on the digivolution you're trying to achieve now those aren't the only two kinds requirements you might need to meet to unlock a certain digivolution sometimes you need to have unlocked

47:02 multiple digivolutions for a single rookie in order to gain access to a new one which will obviously mean any digivolutions required to get those digivolutions are also required could also depend on getting a rookie and one of their digivolutions to different levels like in paton's tree you would need to unlock anjuaman and get her to level 40 and also get pamon to level 15 to unlock rosemon the really interesting thing about all of this is that the requirements to reach different digivolutions will be different depending on the rookie that you're currently using but every rookie can access every digivolution the road they need to take to achieve each is just going to be very different like obviously as you get auman up to level 40 he'll unlock Greymon Metal Greymon and War Greymon along the way but it'll

47:47 take a lot of leg work to unlock grimon and that evolution tree while it was the first evolution I unlocked for Baron now outside of just seeing your favorite Digimon and enjoy enjoying the natural Buffs in higher forms what are the other benefits of going out of your way for certain digivolutions and leveling them up that's where techs come in so every digivolution amplifies the stats of the rookie that they stem from but that amplification does not change as the digivolution levels up that is all controlled by the base stats of the rookie so a level 99 stingmon won't be any stronger than a level 10 stingmon if their rookies have the same stats that said as each Digi Evolution reaches higher levels they will unlock new text to use something the rookie can't do on their own and the text they learn will depend on the digivolution as that digivolution reaches higher levels they

48:34 may also unlock the ability to load the text that they previously unlocked to do this you'll once again need to visit Piximon or the digivolution center just like when you were swapping what unlock digivolutions your rookie has in their digivolve slots but there's a limit to how many tchs you can load at once and they only remain loaded as long as your rookie currently has that digivolution that tchs were learned by in one of their slots this will allow any other digivolution being used by that rookie to use those same texts though they do require more MP to use it's a handy way of passing certain abilities around especially if you swap to another Digi Evolution for the same rookie that doesn't have any techs of their own yet this loading ability is not offered to every Tech though as digivolutions once they reach a high enough level that usually requires a lot of grinding for DV experience will have a special

49:19 training technique unique to that specific Digimon which leads to getting to use some signature moves like Metal Greymon using Giga Destroyer Imperial Dramon using Mega Crusher or pale Dramon using Desperado Blaster this one got me excited I am disappointed in the animation for the Terra Force move though it's just missing a little bit of that spice War grammon should have when he's in this pose but it's still the first time I've gotten to see this in action in one of the world games so it is still neat there will be times when you get a preview of these dig evolutions and attacks through two different means the first is through DNA digivolution which works a lot differently than it did in Digimon World 2 and in a way will probably feel a bit more familiar to fans of the show when tagging between two Digimon in battle if each rookie has unlocked digivolutions that are compatible with each other as

50:05 long as you're already using one of those digivolutions you can swap to the other and choose to spend a good chunk of MP to DNA digivolve them letting you temporarily fuse together into a new Digimon that will come swinging in with a special ability like a strong attack or healing up your party and clearing them of status effects this is a really cool feature though I will admit it's something that I found myself using very few times throughout the course of the game the other method is through blast dig evolving there's a meter on the screen during battles that will gradually build when your Digimon takes damage it's important to note though that if you have a counter crust equipped this meter will not fill if your Digimon successfully counters an attack you won't notice this thing budge much in the early game but as you face tougher enemies and sustain stronger attacks it'll fill up much faster once it's full your Digimon will

50:50 automatically blast dig evolve to their next natural dig Evolution with access to their special ability which will cost no MP to use and their health is restored this digivolution will only stick around for a few turns until reverting back to your previous form but it can really save you at the last second in a pinch by bringing your HP back to Max and giving you a little taste of what you're working towards it's honestly a really cool motivator I love this feature I feel like it starts really coming into play once you've got a better handle on game progression right when the carrot on the stick is at its most enticing not to mention just how cool these digivolution sequences always are like the DNA digivolution sequen is just need to see but there's something exciting about the standard one too whenever I unlocked a new digivolution I would often keep myself from setting that as the default until I got to see the animation for changing to

51:36 that form for the first time and hearing the very clear homage to Braveheart there's a status effect in the game that can actually force your Digimon to D digivolve and honestly I never mind it too much because at most it costs you one turn and it means an excuse to see this lovingly crafted animation again I'm pretty sure you can skip it too if you want but I never did overall I really liked the digivolution system in this game it takes advantage of the training aspect giving it that very Hands-On approach I already appreciate about the Digimon World Games and while it can feel really rewarding to plan things out once you have the help of a chart in front of you the way the Dig Evolutions Branch off of each other maintains that fun element of surprise where you could go in blind train naturally and just sort of see what new creatures you end up with it's both controlled and open-ended and it's honestly one of the most well-realized

52:22 elements of Digimon World 3 and an intelligent way to adapt the unique aspects of the Digimon franchise and incorporate them into a more traditional turn-based RPG format it is hard to explain and maybe it does really sound complicated but once you have it in your hands and you start working towards your favorite forms training those stats and building up those levels it becomes this really rewarding system that constantly gives you the next thing to work for and that's when it starts playing into another aspect of progression through the game and one that's understandably more contentious now that we understand the gamep play's core and what ties it together how do we use these systems and mechanics to walk our way through the game and how does our journey start to take on new and unexpected forms just like our little digital companions let's get

53:11 [Music] scratching understanding the gameplay you'll be spending the most time with is obviously important but the progression extends further than just getting into fights and watching numbers go up I mean that is the majority of what you'll be doing of course but there is also the context of the world you'll be doing all of it in and the events that change the motivation and nature of these mechanics our first destination will be the game's second little Hub seru City we make our way there after doing some initial training moving through some pleasant areas and I even stumbled across a temple in a jungle out there it didn't seem like there was a lot that we could do here just yet but I always enjoy being able to stumble across areas that I'll need to come back to later and still getting that sense that I discovered something on my own though that prediction of coming back to places

53:57 really should have felt like foreshadowing along the way I do come across a cute little Log Cabin that serves as another in and safe point so it's nice to establish early on that these will be laid out between major areas so safe points never feel overly Out Of Reach when we make it to seru city and try to challenge the leader though he's not there and is apparently hanging out in the protocol ruins which is that Temple that we found earlier well cool I'm glad I explored because now I know just where to go I'm going to ignore these guys over here very wisely mouthing off to a random kid that they're here to spy on the functions of the game something so ominous certainly won't be relevant later once we're in the ruins we search for the leader and even take on an optional fight against a feromon got to say I love the background for these boss fights it's such a cool backdrop for these more serious

54:42 encounters and the fact that the game even has optional bosses to take on is cool I like being able to put my training to the test and when the reward is getting my Digimon even stronger through a big fight it feels like something really worth taking the extra time for we also get an item called the old wand it doesn't seem like it'll do much good now but we should hold on to it you know it might come in handy later I do kind of wonder what it's for [Music] though well we've actually wandered off the beaten path scurred through a maze in the forest and beaten a pretty big Digimon in the dark recesses of this abandoned structure to find the seru leader and he apparently won't fight us

55:31 yeah nah I guess he thinks we're weak and not worth his time bro I will end your whole career but you know after I travel all the way to the dino region and fight this dinosaur you told me to take out to prove my worth welcome to something we'll be seeing a lot of in this game padding at least tyrano Valley is kind of a neat place to visit gives me some Digimon World one Vibes and it's not too far out of the way where we were but the motivation here just feels so artificial and lame go fight this guy to fight me fine it's it's fine it's fine oh hey we got an old claw for beating the master tyrannomon I I wonder what these old weapons are used for later okay now we go back to take on the seral leader and this time he's actually back in the city where he's supposed to be doesn't take too much to take this guy down and we get a silver ticket for the

56:17 gyms out of it but we still have three badges to go oh hey we ran into Teddy that's right we have friends that are

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