Digimon World DS Review
I remember when I discovered emulators I was downloading any game that seemed mildly interesting but not that I felt wasn’t worth risking my money on a potentially unsatisfying game; one such game was Digimon World DS. I remember having a great time playing it, most monster catching/battling games can never come close to capturing the magic of a main series Pokemon game but Digimon DS by far comes the closest.
In this game you play as an unnamed character who stumbles upon the Digital World and becomes a Digimon tamer. The story of the game unfortunately shallow; having the group of antagonist tamers literally called “The Bad Tamers” and most of the characters’ personalities are as unimaginative as the name they chose for the antagonists. The most interesting character development occurs with a Digimon called BlackAgumon, who begins as an evil Digimon who thinks the concept of humans training Digimon as pathetic, leading him to train so hard he is destroyed by a Digimon far stronger than him on his quest for power. He is eventually reincarnated and given into the care of the main character, who raises it to trust humans and eventually recover it’s memories of the Digimon it was before BlackAgumon which was Antylamon; a good Digimon that fell in battle defending the Digital World from evil. This story arc is the most compelling in the game as most other characters receive little backstory or development, which paired with one dimensional personalities and stories(most of the story is comprised of ‘X Digimon is bad and at Y location, let’s go confront them!’) leaves me wishing for a story a little more substance.
The start of the game is a little slow for my taste, being completely smothered by unnecessary dialogue but once you power through the first 30 or so minutes the game quickly becomes much less restrictive. As stated before the narrative of the game is mostly identifying a bad Digimon and traveling to a location to fight it so the game-play can be a bit repetitive, so what really engages the player are the Digimon battles. The difficulty curve for this game is surprisingly steep for a children’s game (especially by today's standards) so most of the time when you enter a new map or challenge a boss for the first time the player has to legitimately strategize or run the risk of having their party wiped out. Traversing older levels can be a bit of a nuisance though because: 1.) The battles are monotonous since there is no strategy involved. 2.) There is no way to avoid or lower encounter rates of enemy Digimon, and finally 3.) Not only can you not avoid them but you can’t predict them either since this games employs my least favorite encounter system, fully random wherever on the map. At least with Pokemon you just have to brace yourself in the tall grass. However one aspect of Digimon DS that i have to give credit for is how you recruit Digimon. Most Pokemon wannabes just make recruitment random at the end of battle (I’m looking at you Yo-Kai Watch & Ni no Kuni!) which is annoying when you have a particular creature you want to add to your party but have minimal control over that choice; but with Digimon World DS the recruitment is based on encountering the desired Digimon multiple times since at the start of every battle the opponents are scanned, and once you reach 100%(and you can usually reach 100% within 10 minutes depending on the rarity of the Digimon) you can create the Digimon and add it to your party.
Now would I describe Digimon World DS as fun? Well I would. Despite having a dreadfully boring storyline and a somewhat repetitive game-play; the difficulty is very refreshing in an age of games that want to hold your hand so it can sell more units and the capturing/battling system is more than enough to satisfy your Pokemon cravings. Overall this game was worth buying it on amazon to have a physical copy I could play on the go and I have Digimon World Dusk on my wishlist for when I’m feeling like splurging.