My Top 7 Digimon Things
Back when I was a young Blakey Blake, the amount of cartoons, anime, and games that I consumed was ridiculous. While a lot of people were stuck on Pokemon(I was too), I was running around playing and consuming Digimon: Digital Monsters. While Pokemon didn’t seem to have a strong story going for it, Digital was giving story content, kind of mature themes(depression, death, mental abuse, and so on). People loved the show and the characters, but no one was really talking about the games that were released. People were playing Pokemon games as they were the bigger thing. So to show Digimon a little bit of love, I’ve decided to talk about my top 7 Digimon Things. This will be including tv shows, movies, toys, and games. But why 7, cause it is half of my favorite number.
7. Digimon World: Next Order
Growing up, I always wanted to play the first Digimon World game. Once i was able to get my hands on it, it had aged HORRIBLY. The biggest issue was that the game didn’t really give you a tutorial. A lot of it was you learning from your errors. Almost 18 years later, we got a reboot of it called Digimon World: Next World. They changed the story, added the up to date canon Digimon roster, a tutorial, but kept the premise of the first game. This was a much more enjoyable experience. Wondering the open digital world, exploring different evolutionary paths, actually raising your Digimon. I have put hundreds of hours into this game easily and that was just working to find different evolutions of the digimon. Battle is semi-automatic so you don’t really have to do too much in battle but you definitely do not want to take your eye off combat. One big thing players seem to have an issue with is the grind. In this game, your Digimon age and one they get old enough, they’ll die, and come back as a digiegg. Even though the baby form Digimon would be stronger than before, people hated that you had to level the digimon back up. There was also the side quest. There were a lot of them so it felt never ending. I will say this, if you love Digimon and RPGs you can sink countless amounts of hours in, You will love Digimon World: Next Order.
6. D-Tector Digivice
This one I can’t fully remember as I didn’t have that long. The D-Tector from the Frontier season, was my favorite Digimon toy I had. Rubbing your finger across the scanner to power up the Legendary Spirit warrior during battle and capturing other spirits. These things had PvP too but unfortunately i never got to experience it as no one else near me had one. I would love to get my hands on another(WITH INSTRUCTIONS) so that I can see if it is nostalgia that has me confused or if it was really great.
5. Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory
350 hours have gone between these two games AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN. Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory are so good. You got the 3v3 combat, turn-based, Online PvP, huge evolutionary chains, a good story, side quest, and so much more. So you are probably wondering how come it’s not higher. Well, the thing is that, even though it has some strong elements, the game is really grindy. Even though world digimon does not scale with you, the mid-bosses and bosses do, so you will never really train or level enough to one shot them. Cyber Sleuth has 249 digimon you can unlock and play with. Hacker’s Memory adds 92 more digimon to unlock as well as visiting areas from the original game. Digimon Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition released in 2019 and it added the new 92 from Hacker’s Memory to Cyber Sleuth. If you want to pick it up, it is currently on sale on Steam for $19.99 until January 5th.
4. Digimon Adventure 2020
Ok, hear me out. I know I said that Digimon Adventure 2020 let me down but it has gotten a lot better. This season of Digimon has strayed from the path of the original so much. New evolutions, new modified evolutions, and even some new Digimon. Even though everyone has the same personality as the first season(TK and Kairi are still annoying), the character development and dynamic seems to be better in this series. One of my favorite things about it is the evolution animation. Even though they have these epic animations, from time to time you will see quick evolution so that they can get back into the fight. Yes I do have my issues with this season but overall I love seeing where it is going.
3. Digimon Frontier
Digimon Frontier was the fourth season of the Digimon series and fam, it changed a lot. Instead of Tamers and Digimon partners, the humans can change into one of the legendary warriors via Spirit Evolution. This season also gives off a darker vibe with the story. Of course, it is not connected to the previous seasons, so you may not see some of the main Digimon from them. They have Spirit Evolution, Beast Spirit Evolution, Fusion Spirit Evolution, and Unified Spirit Evolution. Unfortunately, this season does the Digimon thing where the “leaders’’ of the squad get the higher evolution, such as Fusion and Unified. Another thing is that, where other seasons feel like the characters grow and learn from what they do, here, they don’t. One person lesson from the episode can be “Listening will get you the solution quicker” and the next episode or two, that character does not do a better job at listening. There are a few things I do love from Frontier. One is the evolution animations. To me the Spirit Evolution scenes were some of the best evolution in the series. Between all of the evolution, the fusion evolution are my favorite.
Another is the opening theme from the English dub. This is another thing that changed with the Frontier season. Instead of going with the original Digimon song from season 1–3, they decided to change it up.
Lastly, I LOVEEEEEEEEEEEE the evolution song. My number one is Breakthrough from Digimon Tri, Digimon Frontier is close second, and Tamers in 3rd.
2. Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Last Evolution was the final movie to close out the Adventure saga. This involves Digimon Adventure, Adventure 02, Adventure Tri, and the original Digimon Adventure movies. After watching and growing up with the original DigiDestined, I felt as this was the perfect way to end this saga. This showed us what actually happens when your Digimon reaches its potential. Being that Tai and Matt usually did the heavy lifting of the team, this movie is more about them and their partner. To me, this was the perfect ending to the saga and it definitely didn’t leave anything open. The Last Evolution designs for Agumon and Gabumon were really cool and well done but I do wish that we got a name for them. Also there is a small twist in this movie that I didn’t see coming. The 02 DigiDestined were also in this movie and it was cool to see them and their Digimon(especially after seeing the unclear beginning of Tri).
1. Digimon World 3
You may think I am crazy for putting a PlayStation 1 game at the top of the list and there is so much other Digimon media out there but Digimon World 3 is my number one. This is the game that introduced me to the Evolution chain of Digimon that was different from the shows. DW3 was a turned-based RPG where you joined a MMORPG called Digimon Online. You pick a team of 3 Digimon to face the gym leaders.
There’s more to the story but I won’t spoil it. This game was released back in 2002 and it was around the time Frontier was just airing so it included Digimon from that season. Spending countless hours grinding, leveling, and digivolving my partners and dedigivolving to unlock other evolution paths or other Digimon. Since you were able to choose from three different teams, later in the story, you were able to recruit the other Digimon so you could have them. This is one of the Digimon games that I would love to see remade as I feel like it was a missed gem and new Digimon fans would love it
There’s a lot of Digimon stuff out there for you to consume and I recommend checking it all out because you can never have enough Digimon. Thinking about all this stuff makes me excited for the new card game dropping in January.