Pokemon is a series that everyone is aware of. Like, even if you're not a gamer. My dad hasn't played a video game since Superman on the Atari 2600, but he knows what Pokemon is. Digimon is a whole other thing, though. The Digimon series started back in 1999 – three years after Pokemon launched - on PlayStation and WonderSwan, as Bandai's take on Pokemon. Which is to say that Digimon was a total ripoff. But over the years, it's retained its own cult following. A following nowhere near the levels of Pokemon fandom, mind. But still.
Myself, I've never played a Digimon game before. I've never paid the series any attention. Outside of knowing that it existed, I can't even say I had absorbed any details via social osmosis. I mean, I don't think there's any Digimon character as well-known as Pikachu for instance. But over the years I have played my fair share of Pokemon games. I enjoyed Yellow, Sapphire, and Sword just fine. But I also couldn't shake the feeling that were made for a younger audience. I mean, I had fun, but I never felt all that connected. But when Digimon Survive was announced, something about it really made me take notice. I can't exactly put my finger on it. But for one thing, I like an underdog. Here's a series that's gone on for years trying to compete in the shadow of Pokemon. And here was a new entry coming to modern consoles, and really embracing its Japanese roots. This wasn't going to be a cute story about a kid collecting little monsters in balls. No, this was going to be a rather dark and bleak visual novel – not a genre that mainstream Americans tend to go for. Oh, and the battles would be stripped down turn based tactics a la Fire Emblem. I don't know, it just felt so interesting and bizarre. One (fair) criticism that will undoubtedly get thrown at this game is that it has a slow start. That's definitely true. The opening act took me a little over an hour to get through, but it felt like two hours easily. I think the feeling of slowness comes from the fact that in that opening hour, you'll see now Digimon. It's basically a by-the-numbers visual novel for the first hour or so. You've got a group of teens (?) investigating a strange wilderness and finding a shrine. They'll talk amongst themselves, search for their missing friends, meet a professor... it's very slow. But as things pick up toward the end of the opening chapter, everything gets pretty weird and creepy. It's a slow burn, but it's solid when it comes to establishing a vibe. And then it gets slow again for a while. Y'know those games that people will say "get good after X hours"? This is one of those games. And the first few hours can be difficult to slog through. Mind you, the story itself is interesting and unique. But the dialogue can feel very sluggish. Like when you've got these teens, and their friends are missing, and they're meeting demons, and it's snowing out of season, and statues with glowing eyes are confronting them – just all this crazy stuff – and they're just chit-chatting and basically figuring out the longest way to say something, it just feels really tonally off. On top of that you've got bits of tutorial thrown in, and little mechanics like using your phone to scan for Digimon or demons or whatever you want to call them. It feels like there's a lot of time-killing going on early in the game. Maybe the intention is to ease you in. But frankly, this could scare many would-be players away. Truthfully, it started to push me away as well. Somewhere between four to five hours in, I started to feel extremely conflicted on this game. There's certainly a lot to admire about it. If we're comparing Digimon to Pokemon, I'm really enthusiastic that Digimon Survive went the visual novel route. It's a more niche direction, and frankly more interesting direction than the repetitive nature of the mainline Pokemon games. And using a turn based tactical format for battles appeals to me more than y'know, "catching" Pokemon. The problem is that even though I like the direction that the game goes in, I don't feel like it's executed all that successfully. As a visual novel, it's gorgeous to look at and the sound design is top notch. And I enjoy the dark tone where it feels like stakes are actually fairly high. While it might be a problem for some, I actually like that they kept the original Japanese voice overs. But my gosh, is the story slow. Even at the fastest text speed setting, scenes go on and on for way too long. There's so much fat in the dialogue that feels like it should have been cut to streamline the experience. Instead, it feels like they left in as much extraneous talking as they could to pad things out. Which is not a good sign when estimates put this game at forty-plus hours to beat. The actual battles also drop the ball. Again, I love tactical strategy games. But these battles are so over-simplified that it's a bit baffling. Given that the battles are already such a small part of the game, it would have been nice to actually give them some real depth and make them feel like a rewarding break from the story. Instead, they chug along like the sort of shallow take on the formula you might see in a Fire Emblem mobile game, rather than a "real" tactics game. Sure, there's lots of menus to dig into with special skills, items, evolutions, and even talking to other monsters. But at the end of the day, battles come down to positioning your team around one enemy and just pig-piling. It's honestly pretty boring. It's unfortunate because I had really high hopes for this game. And there's some really good ideas at play. But when these elements come together, none of them are quite good enough to prop up the others. I'd be happy if Bandai Namco uses Digimon Survive as a learning experience, and goes on to craft a sequel that improves things enough to let this blueprint see its full potential. But, my fear is that the review scores will probably lay this one to rest instead.
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