Crystal Mind

My personal blog. It's almost always video games here. Current icon and banner are Valerie from Pokemon.

[crystalelemental]

Continuing Digimon World Next Order.

I'm still in what's called Chapter 2. I've mostly been putzing around, both to recruit and to gather materials.

I've gotten...a lot of people. City prosperity reached like 92 as of my last recruits. I started getting plot stuff around 50. I did handle the other two humans, but after that got sucked into the Meaty vs Veggie teams fiasco and recruited all of them. Rosemon was terrifying but we won out, but I'm getting way ahead of myself.

I first explored around the sides because Leomon wanted me to gather info, but this game has terrible signposting about quest progression so I kept exploring areas. This led to the night town, where three things happened. First, my MetalSeadramon and Vikemon were really struggling to hold up against the enemies. Second, I found DigiNight and DigiGodwood, which were high need items. Third, the scariest enemies are guarding the Godwood spot. I did eventually get them. The fields are maximized. I also upgraded my training area, and have put my Tamer points into everything I can get in training. I'm one level away from the last boost to parameters from any training.

I also learned that another 500-ish points in Stamina and Wisdom turned many of the scariest fights into pretty simple clears. This was unexpected, but not unwelcome. I farmed some gold off the BlueGraymons. We had defensive stats around 2500, strength and speed around 2000, and around 13,000 HP.

And then they died. Tragic, really. The new paths were chaotic. Again.

Botamon, Koromon, Veemon, Veedramon, MachGaogamon. So we're back on Gaogamon path.

Poyomon, Tokomon, Biyomon, RedVeedramon (yes, I had the Red and Blue forms simultaneously, I'm bummed they didn't keep that up perfectly), MegaKabuterimon.

In a surprising twist, upgrading the Dojo allows me to block path progression. Meaning I can force things down an evolutionary path by just blocking the areas I don't want them going down. I had been stressing about control over evolution once stats started to all be covered, and this answers my question very well.

That said, I'm a little miffed. The stats on rebirth were lower than suspected. At around 1.2k stats, they came back with like 400 points, and with only one of the revival carry-overs. At over 2k, they retained...like 600. Don't get me wrong, we caught back up, but this retained functionally nothing at higher values. I'm very disappointed with that investment, and am considering taking those off entirely since it apparently doesn't matter all that much. Which is frustrating, because it means the grind is functionally a part of every cycle, and that kind of annoys me. It's really slow.

That said, bonus stats on evolution did matter. We caught back up pretty quick, and at present, you may notice we're not at a Mega rank, but my stats are already on par with the last iteration. This is staggering to me, but definitely welcome.

A large part of this was having enough money to invest in some real cuisine. Renamon's cuisine gives some incredibly nice buffs, rapidly reduces weight for those needed evolutions, and most significantly, boosts training yields in key stats. How much is the boost? Well, with my current layout of Rank 2 gym, Level 2 equipment, and boosts to all training types and critical training, I can get around 55 points in a stat, or 550 in HP/450 MP. When I popped that food, my WIS went up 165 points. It's triple yield. We gained 600 WIS in an evening. Meramon can do similar, his food can give training bonuses to Strength, HP, and Stamina, and you can just rapidly raise that effect. While costly, it also offsets the use of my meat-based resources. The Mega level creatures don't poop, apparently, but they do go through food extremely fast. I was running out of meat for a bit there. But this? This solves a lot.

One thing that still eludes me is why evolutions don't take place as soon as conditions are met. It really feels like the game is waiting for a specific amount of time to pass. I've checked the mega conditions of my current team, and they've got more than one available. But they still haven't evolved. So I can only assume that this is a matter of place in the life cycle, and that I really do just need to wait. I don't love that answer, but so be it.

That said, it that is the answer, I think it's an interesting design choice for collection purposes. Going through older areas because your Digimon aren't powered up gives a lot of access to older gather points, which can yield materials you maybe didn't collect enough of. It's an imperfect method though, I find the majority of building upgrades require the rarest stuff, so at any given point I can't make squat, but it's an idea, if nothing else.

My game plan is to train to around 3k in every core stat, and work my way through zones that have opened. In particular, I really need to find a place with gold and white gold for some construction. The training gym also requires like every color of Digizoit, which. Tall order.

[crystalelemental]

I looked into Yasu, but I didn’t really get what it all meant. From what I gather, I’m guessing you mean Allister is Bea in the same sense that Florian is Juliana, meaning genderflips of each other.

Basically, yeah. It was very brave of you to try and read something about Umineko, though.

[crystalelemental]

So apparently, there’s five types left that don’t have Arc Suits yet, and they fit in surprisingly conveniently for now until half-anniversary. I’m thinking Red/Pikachu and Leaf/Eevee for anniversary (or Chase and Elaine, but they’re not going to forego Red for Chase, even if it would mean they don’t have to give Leaf something), Adaman/Leafeon and Irida/Glaceon for Eevee Day, Cynthia reclaims Giratina and awakens Arc Suit Renegade in the process (I mean, she kind of is the closest thing to a central character the Arceus Arc seems to have, so of course she’s getting a second one), and we presumably end on Rei and Arceus for half-anniversary. Although I’d kind of prefer a Bea/Allister event if we DO get a Ghost Arc Suit, because WHY DOES DENA INSIST ON THOSE TWO NOT INTERACTING IN ANY FORM?!?!? Fuck, they don’t even have teamup lines with each other! Let Stow-on-Side’s Gym Leaders at least be AWARE of each other!

I highly doubt they'll bother shotgun approaching the missing Arc suit types. More than likely they'll stagger those releases so people keep speculating on things to receive. I'd be stunned if Red didn't make it to basically every anniversary for the rest of this game's hopefully short life, but I'm hoping for eclectic mix. It would not surprise me to see Kantrio 3.0, though.

Because they have nothing interesting to say to one another. Alternatively, because they're the same person Umineko Yasu style.

[watchdune1984]

made an image you guys can use if your friend asks you to get lunch at a sushi place downtown but they pick a place that isn’t open today

[elbiotipo]

the funniest thing the Chinese Crusader Kings 3 community did is, after years of western players saying they don't want China and India added because of "performance", the first thing the Chinese modders did when the devs added China was a mod to deactivate Europe

[elbiotipo]

do we really need these weird kingdoms like "France" and "Byzantium" in my scholar-officer simulation game? It's not like you're gonna interact with them in your average Song Dynasty playthrough... I guess a lot of people want them but idk... to me they just worsen performance :/

[crystalelemental]

Before anyone gets mad at me for this, I want it on the record that we bought this back before the Switch 2 even came out, and it's just been sitting there because I bounced off of it the first time I tried playing because of immediate mechanics overload.

I've been playing Digimon World Next Order.

To clarify something: the first bounce off was not immediate. I read tutorials in-game, and was like okay I understand training. I got to Rookie level, can't even remember what I got but remember not liking that I had no control over evolution, and then went out to battle and immediately got my shit blasted open. No, it was not even the big scary ogre man in the first zone's dead end, it was a regular ass level 1 encounter. I realized immediately I was obtaining basically no food, training wasn't getting me anywhere near far enough to battle things, and despite being an open arena, I have no real control on my characters' movements, despite attacks being able to miss due to positioning. I was in no mood and never went back.

This time, I started over from scratch and made a few adjustments. First, I set the difficulty to the easiest setting. I doubt I did this the first time, but it turns out this is highly recommended, as most discussions of the difficulty settings insist that the only real difference is how much you get from training. It literally just lessens the grind, proving once and for all that Digimon is a series about tedium. Second, I opted to over-train. I think I broke to Champion rank before moving out, and was able to shit-stomp enemies much more effectively for it. This allowed me to venture out, acquire resources, and even recruit a few characters, including Palmon, who improves meat yield from the farm to a sustainable level day after day.

Once a foothold was established, the game's core mechanics revealed themselves as pretty simple despite all the tutorials that you have to talk to NPCs to acquire. Train, eat, poop (yes, you have to take them to the bathroom or they shit themselves), repeat. Once you're Rookie/Champion rank, start exploring. Fights give money, a few stat points, and items with surprising regularity. Train when you get held up by stronger enemies, and save every time you go to a new spot in case you're suddenly dealing with level 8 Black Gabumon instead of level 2 Goblimon. Take resources and invest into the town to get better training effects, more items in shops, or extra fields for more food. Repeat.

Basically what I'm getting at is this is a cozy game. This would not feel out of place in, say, Rune Factory. It even has the poor signposting on what to do to progress the story, and the awkward difficulty spikes if you walk the wrong way! And I really like Rune Factory, so it may not surprise you to hear that I kinda really like this game too. I find it mostly playing the actual game, with a small amount of unobtrusive story. The gameplay is repetitive, but this has never truly been a hindrance to me, as long as the cycle progresses somewhere. Training is essential to improving stats as you evolve, and from there, fighting gets money, items, and the Victory points toward specific types of evolutions.

On that note, my routes. My first set of partners was Tanemon and Nyaromon. Nyaromon went Renamon -> Kyubimon Silver -> Taomon Silver, while Tanemon went Palmon -> Red Veggimon -> Lilymon. They did not make it to Mega rank before dying. Oh yeah, after a time, your Digimon just fucking die, proving again that this series' aesthetic approach is replacing the childhood belief in friendship with edgy nonsense. They revive immediately, but in base form again, and you work your way up. But! They retain some stats. Anyway, if this evolutionary path seems too good to be real for me given the lack of control, it's because I looked up stat requirements. The first run, stats are low enough at base to effectively be guaranteed success on a chosen path if you know the numbers.

My second run was Punimon and Conomon. Punimon went Tsunomon -> Gaomon, while Conomon -> Kokomon -> DemiDevimon. Then it went off the rails. Seeing Gaomon, I went okay, let's go your unique path. It instead went to Leomon, I do not know why, so I was like okay, GrapLeomon it is, only to get Rapidmon. So okay, MirageGaogomon then? No, Vikemon. Which is insane, because DemiDevimon avoided Devimon and went IceDevimon, then hit Zudomon despite efforts for Gigadramon, and then Zudomon was supposed to go Vikemon but instead landed on MetalSeadramon fucking somehow. I will be honest, I was tracking numbers like always, but it went completely off the rails despite being perfectly on target. In fact, MetalSeadramon evolved independent of Vikemon, so they don't even have to evolve in tandem, which is what I thought was happening when previous stages wouldn't evolve once all their stats were reached. I am completely in the dark on how this works.

I kind of appreciate it. While I love absolute control, I kind of appreciate a monster catcher that's like "Work with what you've got." I wouldn't deliberately be using Rapidmon or Leomon, but here we are, and they were really good! I kind of appreciate them now.

The last thing to note mechanically is your Tamer Skills. By just doing stuff, you gain points toward a Tamer Rank. Each level up gives a certain number of skill points to allocate. Now, I am usually all about passives. And this is mostly what I chose. However, from reading a sort of "tips and tricks" thing at the outset of this game, because of how hard I bounced off the first time, I learned that Guard and Perfect Guard are essential tools. This is not exaggeration. The first two boss fights are both Machinedramon that can likely one-shot you immediately. The only real way to win is to use the perfect guard skill to reduce that 5000+ damage to 1 damage, charge up your special moves, and blast it with those until it drops. Even at Ultimate rank, Machinedramon was a massive threat. In fact, random encounters are sometimes like this, but the Guard into super move combo is able to get you through most jams. That said, this operate on gank rules. Bosses are scary, but nothing is more terrifying than several medium tier threats at once. Machinedramon was a little spooky, but going to the garbage area of the volcano and fighting three Bomber Nanimon at once was impossible.

The rest of the points are...debatable. Recommendations tend to start with the guards, then talk about recovering HP while walking and boosting money yields. I skipped the HP recovery, a rare move on my part, because I want to center building stats. There's a lot of debate around optimization. Some argue that the boosted stat inheritance on death is one of the less valuable skills. I wouldn't know, but I'm investing in them. The bigger debate that rages is around efficiency, between going for boosting training yields, and boosting combat stat bonuses. I personally value training. I think I understand the core of the debate, but to me this is a no-brainer; in-combat boosts may be superior for in-game time efficiency because combat doesn't seem to consume time, but this takes excessive amounts of real-world time that you could do in an instant with training. To me, the best stat approach is training maximization and maximizing carry-over on reincarnation, complete with boosted stats for evolving and evolving into a new creature.

There are, however, some frustrations. Once I hit a Mega tier, a lot of them vanished and I could progress, but making my way through certain zones, particularly the issue of getting through the water area to get Zudomon, who I needed to get his apprentice so I could recruit enough people to kick off the next story section, given that some people you can find and recruit just don't recruit until later for no discernible reason. Fight difficulty is just very erratic, it's hard to tell what makes something too much in the first place.

There's also the small issue of just...visuals. When you reach bigger forms, your Digimon are legitimately in the way while looking around for material points. It's a bit of eye strain. The material points themselves are also of issue, rare drops and all that. I'm struggling to find some things I know I've found but are apparently rare. But, I got to Field Lv 4, and just got Item Shop Lv 3 so I can soon buy the upgraded tent, so not all bad. I think at this point my biggest problem is money. I spent the 50k I built up on improved training equipment, and now I need to spend what little I have just to fly out to the new locations, because walking takes so much time.

That said, actually seriously enjoy this. It's a bit silly, but I'm into it.

[crystalelemental]

While I'm waiting for the virtual cards that apparently didn't make it to download on my Switch 2 again, I'm going to talk about Time Stranger again, because I think I've figured out how to articulate something.

Games operate on principles of reinforcement. Primarily, positive reinforcement. You do your battles or tasks, and you receive money, experience, etc. Monster catchers have the added value of things like new acquisitions and evolutions to add to the mix.

An important thing to consider with design of these system is rate of such reinforcement. The ideal is that, early on, reinforcement rates are high, to encourage continuation of the behavior (ie, playing the game). This is something easily recognizable in gachas; you are showered with resources early on, and then it fades and expects payment to continue access. Eventually, things level off, and the rate of reinforcement is either slowed down gradually enough that players persist, or it goes too low too fast and loses people.

The exact rate is a subjective assessment, but you can probably pick up a sense for it yourself. For anyone who's played the GBA to DS eras of Pokemon games, you're probably familiar with the midgame slog. Your creatures have fully evolved, you have all the pretty good moves you need, experience is slower to accumulate, and the longest routes between major gyms exist in this phase. My wife dropped off playing LeafGreen in this phase, because it just went too low too fast. She couldn't maintain interest.

Digimon Time Stranger's own systems kind of work against it in some ways. While the limitation of Agent Rank blocking off further evolution upward is nice to keep focus on your initial forms, the problem with this is that it functions as a limit to total reinforcement for playing. You're not getting the thrill of evolving to new things. Pokemon's extremely early first stage evolution vexes me because I have come to generally like the first stages best and would like more time with them, but giving those first evolutions super early is wise; it gets players invested in the development.

But Time Stranger also limits de-evolution. Unless you share a personality, something that takes considerable time and RNG luck to achieve if you weren't lucky enough to already be there, you also can't de-evolve to things you haven't seen before. So you're gated on both ends.

Acquiring new Digimon also tapers off after literally the first dungeon. The tutorial introduces that slime-level Digimon take two encounters to their best stats, and the phase right above that takes only four. Immediately after this dungeon though, most encounters are back to the 15-20% per encounter rate; a substantial dropoff basically right away. This means that only one out of every ten encounters with that thing specifically yields a reward in the form of your new find.

This isn't necessarily distinct. Considering Pokemon again, you can go a lot longer than ten encounters looking for your low appearance rate favorite in the grass. But in Pokemon, battling through every encounter yields a lot of EXP and a lot of levels. In Digimon, EXP scaling is sharp, and the rewards are significantly limited.

But wait! Digimon offers other avenues of reward from battles. One is just straight money. Similar to Nexomon, you get cash for random encounters. That's useful! Except it takes a long while for encounters to give more than a couple hundred Digidollars, and costs of materials is sharp. In the early game alone, there are items necessary for specific items that unlock new evolutions, that costs like 1200 a pop. The most lucrative encounter in this phase of the game is the gold poop guys, who gives like 120. Again, one in ten gets a reward. You need four of one kind of item, and three of another, to get everything. Comparatively, Nexomon gives plenty of money for your Traps and healing.

Well okay, but what about personality conversations? You can get special conversations with your Digimon that can augment their personalities, giving access to better stat spreads for their role, or potentially unlocking desired abilities. Except all of this is wildly random. Every four fights, you get a chance to do this, and for any new Digimon, you need two answers in the same direction to change personality at all. The personality skill situation is even more bleak, with Digimon seeming to learn a skill once every ten conversations (based on my experience of consistently soft resetting for an attempt), and then have a stated 10% chance to learn the rare skills that are often the desired ones (Great Embrace, Magic Theft).

But these also improve Bond! Literally half as substantially as feeding them in the farm, and the feeding option is a minuscule fraction of the time. But that costs money (50k per Digimon to be precise), and it does nothing else. It's the best, most efficient handling, but it doesn't connect to the personality adjustments or skills. You can do that with training equipment, but that's either a sizable real-world time requirement, or costly (10k per training).

Even boss fights are not immune to this. Barring the major fights after timeskip, bosses give astoundingly little EXP and gold, and even after timeskip, some of the roughest fights still give only around 2k EXP at a time when 20k wouldn't get a level. You're often better off leveling by having them eat other Digimon, but see the issue of how slow it is to acquire Convert status.

But what about moves? Maybe as you level, you can get new moves! This is partially true, Digimon do have access to some moves as they level. However. If you have enough of them going in different type directions, you have enough options in relatively short order, and then moves are just a mix and match affair; nothing is uniquely exciting in leveling up your mons. Improving stat allocations, learning personality skills, making money, learning move sets, hell even evolution access becomes more about Agent Points pretty early compared to leveling. But fighting a bunch of battles is necessary to get the creatures in the first place.

Time Stranger's system just feels very low-reinforcement to me.

[crystalelemental]

"tulipsnflowers: As someone who knows nothing about Digimon, I don't understand half the words here but uh... Oof? From what I DO understand... Idk I never saw much point to delaying evolutions, even if its for a benefit, maybe it's just me but like.. I don't care if I get Flame Burst 20 levels early I'll get it anyway..."

Fair. There's a lot of specific terms. The simplest way to put it is imagine if Pokemon let you change natures, but your nature determined you ability, and the ability to roll was completely random and relied on you stopping every four fights to do a quick conversation in the same style as talking in Pokemon Amie and hoping to god you got the right conversational topic this time to maybe adjust your nature and then maybe also get lucky enough to get the skill you wanted.

As for delaying evolution, I actually think Pokemon has better reasons for it than this game. Talent/Level Cap is not hard to increase by any means, and it's far more essential to upgrade early so you can level early and get better stats when you need them. At least with Pokemon, your reason is "This gets me a much better attack if I delay." I have been known to delay evolution in Pokemon at times for the purpose of getting a good move they otherwise can't. It's silly, but creates a push and pull of demands between stats and other traits. This game really just has no reason to delay, you just get locked out of doing the one you want because your stats didn't grow the right way.

[crystalelemental]

As of yesterday, I have fully completed Digimon: Time Stranger. The entire time I've been playing, I've been relatively negative in a grand sense, and have consistently referenced differences in Cyber Sleuth. Before writing about my general thoughts and experience with Time Stranger, I decided to pick up Cyber Sleuth again for a few hours to see if this was actually a fair criticism, or if I'm wildly off base.

The short is I'm right for all the reasons I complain about, but wrong in other ways.

Let me start with this: my feeling of "Time Stranger is bad with EXP and the Bond system is a nightmare" is 100% accurate. Cyber Sleuth doesn't have Bond, but Camaraderie, which you get one point of when you are actively in a match. I'm in Chapter 2 of like 20, and my starting Palmon has 44 Cam. It is also a Sunflowmon now, because stats are lower and much, much easier to achieve for the purposes of evolution. Level up is easy, even before I get the Tactician USBs. At least, in my current iteration they are.

See, there is a hiccup here. Cyber Sleuth is much more permissive of going up and down evolutionary paths. Without the bonus stats situation, there's no real reason to delay evolution or explore around. In fact, there are incentives to do exactly that. The frustrating aspect of the game is the Memory system. You start with 20 Memory, and the stage of Palmon here takes 5 memory. Meaning I can have four creatures at this stage. After two chapters, I got a Memory Up item, which means now I can have five creatures! Except Palmon evolved to Sunflowmon, who now takes 8. And my Agumon and Gabumon could evolve too, but then I'd have a team of exactly three things. So Sunflowmon is benched with no real idea of when she's coming back, and the lads aren't able to evolve just yet to keep balance.

This is something Time Stranger handles better. There's no memory restriction, instead you just get a team of six. I bitch about it when games like Nexomon do it so I'm doing it here too: I don't really love the decision to adjust closer to a Pokemon model, even if you are letting me do triple battle shenanigans all day. This frees up memory. But in addition, Agent Rank puts a cap on evolutionary stage, and is something I actually enjoy. I like that each phase of the evolutionary chain sticks around for an extended time. When going through evolutions, it's nice to have a decent stretch of time with Kudamon, then get a stretch with Angemon, then a long stretch with Sirenmon who I love, and then get to Ceresmon. One of my biggest complaints about Pokemon is how the super cute early stages are often passed over. Many, I would argue most, games in this series allow easy access to evolving your starter before you even reach the first gym. By the second it's literally guaranteed in every game. Out of eight, with an Elite Four, and an antagonist group intermission. The broad majority of the game is spent in the final form, and it's nice to have a monster training game where each phase has its extended show.

This is something Cyber Sleuth lacks, at least organically. The Memory system incentivizes not evolving, but it does not incentivize it for normal reasons. I can run Sunflowmon just fine. I'd just have to restrict my other options.

However, this does not mean Time Stranger nailed it. Because you don't know your evolutions going forward, there is a chance you run into something you don't like. Hey Gomamon, what evolution did you just unlock? Oh, Hyogamon? I do not like Hyogamon. Revert. But! Because EXP is so low in this game, now you're behind. My first attempt at this game, I consistently struggled with (though never lost to) boss fights, because my levels tended to be lower due to this back and forth. In the second attempt, when I knew what stages I wanted, I fared substantially better. Training for level is slow and annoying. And more importantly, ineffective past like level 10 for much of the game. EXP yields are just too low to matter.

Moreover, evolutions are not immediately available upon reaching Agent Rank whatever. Quite often, I can't get to my desired evolution because stats aren't cooperating. Nothing was more revealing than dealing with the Lunamon line. To even get to Lunamon, you need more SPI than most things are achieving. So okay, you give a stat booster or two, maybe adjust nature, and eventually get Lunamon. Okay now get an absurd amount of speed for this slow thing to reach Lekismon. Shift things around, more stat boosters, finally get Lekis. Crescemon I remember being pretty straight-forward, but then to get Dianamon you need absurd SPI again. Three out of its four phases were reliant on getting massive stat boosts, or completely adjusting nature. That feels pretty shitty for something that's meant to be its natural progression.

Agent Points don't help. They're supposed to allow for boosting statistics over time, but the points you get are really low compared to how much it costs to do things. The game doesn't really open up and shower you with Agent Points to unlock this stuff and make the Digivolving easier until the end of the game, when you get like twelve million sidequests. And guess what! That's my favorite part of the game! You get like 100 points for the easiest quests that just teleport you to relevant moments and fight like one thing! Compare this to early game, where you're manually walking your ass all over the multiverse and dealing with repeated fights for a whopping 45, and it's like hey. Maybe you could've streamlined this a bit better? Just putting it out there, but this is a fairly low reinforcement situation that stacks most goodies for the literal end, when you no longer really need them as much.

In addition, Bond is an absolute nightmare. Instead of one fight to one point, you need four fights, and then talk to each Digimon in your party individually, to get one (1) Bond point. The exact mechanics of Bond still elude me; some claim it has influence on the amount of stats you gain for the blue stats, others emphatically deny this, but the consistent affirmed uses are (1) each point of bond is one evolution that carries over some stats (which seemed more influenced by level), (2) Cheer, one of the best skills, applies only to the highest Bond rank on the team, so ideally you want them all capped, and (3) various in-combat adjustments like boosted crit or extra strike rate. So it functionally does more, but it makes it a mess to keep track of, and is extremely slow to build. The best way to do it is to buy a bunch of food for the Digifarm, and max it out that way. But this requires a lot of money, which is fairly scarce, especially if you play like my wife who actually buys significant numbers of healing items instead of just dealing with status the way you personally deal with illness in real life.

There's also the issue of personality. In Cyber Sleuth, when you create a new Digimon, you get assigned a personality that improves one of its core stats, or allows for better searching or building of materials. These can eventually be changed for a cost, but they generally matter less because stats for evolutions are easily achieved, and early-game, the Builder is actually the most important so you can make Tactician USBs. In Time Stranger, you need to talk to your Digimon, hope to god they discuss something that gears them toward the personality you want, and then further hope that they acquire the personality skill that you want. Nowhere is this more significantly obnoxious than getting to Overprotective, a center grid state, for Great Embrace, which is overheal. This is the single most critical skill for anything you're setting up for support, and it takes forever. At least with the pure magically offensive Digimon, they just so straight to Astute, the bottom corner of their grid, and continue there until they organically pick up Magic Theft. And for everyone else, Cheer is a really easy acquisition. Very, very rarely you may want the extend buff skill. Even more rarely, you may decide to go for Haymaker if you have crit rate, or First in Line if you have a specific skill effect or just really want to try making debuffs relevant.

"Why aren't debuffs relevant?" Because everything has triple actions. Every major fight where a debuff matters is gone in a single round, so unless you have a dedicated debuffer it seems like this doesn't really matter. I have read that, due to how damage calculation works, debuffs to defensive stats matter significantly more than buffs to offensive stats for damage calculation, but unless your debuffer is specifically always going first this doesn't seem to matter all that much if you never get an opportunity to capitalize on it.

As for story, I've complained enough and I'm not going to rehash it here. But I am going to say that I can forgive a lot when I care about the cast, and that if this game did anything poorly, it was making the main trio matter. Inori is a literal nothing character who exists solely for Aegiomon's arc, and Aegiomon isn't particularly interesting himself because all he has is "dedication to protecting Inori, who is a non-entity, so his connection feels hollow." Had she been better fleshed out as a character, more integrated into events and meaningful in her participation, I'd say I would've walked away feeling it was fine. Not great, but fine. I agree with my wife that some of the little vignettes with the gods feel like old Greek tragedy approaches you're rewriting for a positive end, but this does nothing for the core narrative that feels like it's dragging everything out forever.

It might come as a surprise that I did not in fact hate this game. In fact, from a bare mechanical level, I think it's decent. There are serious points of frustration, but most of this can be overcome. But I do think that a truly ideal system for this series lies somewhere between this and Cyber Sleuth. For every step forward (skills can be applied and removed cost free, longer durations with each stage of Digimon, more mechanical depth), they took another back (Bond is wildly more tedious than Camaraderie, Personality development and skills are obtuse and overly RNG dependent, skills cost real money since you can't easily traverse evolution paths).

[crystalelemental]

I'm starting to realize that Gallade is basically pointless when it by definition exists alongside Gardevoir. Like, great, my Adamant Kirlia has another option available to it, but that other option takes forever and a day to become available to it! Off the top of my head, it only makes sense in Sinnoh and XY, and even then that's past the Fighting Gym, so it makes more sense to use Gardevoir anyway!

Correction: only if your Adamant Kirlia is male. If your Adamant Kirlia is female she has no actual value because we arbitrarily gender-locked Gallade despite Gardevoir being unisex.

I do agree with you that access to Dawn Stone really hinders access to the thing, especially when Gardevoir is just a level up evolution, but that's also game dependent. Diamond and Pearl hated giving you the new evolutions before post-game for some reason, but Platinum has one available on Route 212, which is reasonably around level 35. A bit later, but far from excessive. Ralts doesn't naturally exist in Gen 5 games (until post-game anyway). XY and ORAS give you a Dawn Stone as part of Super Training so you can get one literally right away. Gen 7 permits it from Pokepelago, which...I can't remember it being as controlled as Super Training, and your other methods are post-game, so that's not good. Sword and Shield has one in Giant's Cap, which, while dangerous, you can run to immediately, or is naturally accessed around level 27, right on cue. ScarVi have two laying around in areas that have levels around 27-32 as well. So it's not like it's consistently out of reach by any extreme means. I think, far more critically, Gallade just isn't as cool as Gardevoir is elegant. The mega game evened the field, the cape adds a lot for Gallade, but at its base, it's a gender-locked stone evolution competing with a relatively low-level evolution that looks better.

[crystalelemental]

We all do! Literally everyone wants this! I don’t usually like gender lock by default, but Gallade in particular is the most egregious nonsense to me.

[crystalelemental]

I'm starting to realize that Gallade is basically pointless when it by definition exists alongside Gardevoir. Like, great, my Adamant Kirlia has another option available to it, but that other option takes forever and a day to become available to it! Off the top of my head, it only makes sense in Sinnoh and XY, and even then that's past the Fighting Gym, so it makes more sense to use Gardevoir anyway!

Correction: only if your Adamant Kirlia is male. If your Adamant Kirlia is female she has no actual value because we arbitrarily gender-locked Gallade despite Gardevoir being unisex.

I do agree with you that access to Dawn Stone really hinders access to the thing, especially when Gardevoir is just a level up evolution, but that's also game dependent. Diamond and Pearl hated giving you the new evolutions before post-game for some reason, but Platinum has one available on Route 212, which is reasonably around level 35. A bit later, but far from excessive. Ralts doesn't naturally exist in Gen 5 games (until post-game anyway). XY and ORAS give you a Dawn Stone as part of Super Training so you can get one literally right away. Gen 7 permits it from Pokepelago, which...I can't remember it being as controlled as Super Training, and your other methods are post-game, so that's not good. Sword and Shield has one in Giant's Cap, which, while dangerous, you can run to immediately, or is naturally accessed around level 27, right on cue. ScarVi have two laying around in areas that have levels around 27-32 as well. So it's not like it's consistently out of reach by any extreme means. I think, far more critically, Gallade just isn't as cool as Gardevoir is elegant. The mega game evened the field, the cape adds a lot for Gallade, but at its base, it's a gender-locked stone evolution competing with a relatively low-level evolution that looks better.

[crystalelemental]

Digimon Time Stranger: Day 6. In which I search my feelings.

My wife has really been enjoying this game. She's a couple chapters behind me yet, but she's really enjoyed the gameplay, is connecting well enough with some of the side characters, and commented on liking the story structure for the Olympos XII being like tragedies that you rewrite. I can't really fault her, but this is a signal of something. While my wife and I generally have different tastes, we don't disagree with each other this significantly without something being up. With games, this is almost always something I have walked into the game expecting.

Three Houses is a good example. She loves it, one of her favorite games. I consider it a bottom tier Fire Emblem. We're generally in agreement that characters are solid through supports and the outline of the plot is interesting, but where we diverge most strongly tends to be in terms of gameplay, where I find it painfully tedious and she finds it relaxing. Much of this is chalked up to her barely playing Fire Emblem before this, and me having a whole host of series experiences that inform what I expect. Things like coherent map design or streamlined class promotion experiences.

With Digimon, I think I can pinpoint the exact issue. I may have even talked about it before, but it's going to be the entire focus of this post. I cannot stand how EXP works. Agent Points either, I think it's patently absurdly that entire main story chapters will give only like 50 points, but a sidequest will pop like 80, and I do think that's ridiculous and they could've shaved like ten sidequests off the endgame to better distribute them, but I'm slightly more sympathetic to this given that they allow you to run each phase of your Digimon for longer before promotion.

In general, grinding for EXP stops mattering past like level 10. Past level 20, you may as well not even make EXP from random encounters. Bosses should be the exception to this, but until you start dealing with the time skip, even they barely give much EXP. This is reflected throughout the entire game, where some of the hardest fights will give some of the shittiest experience. For instance, I cleared the super fights Mirei asks you to deal with, and despite having an absolute bitch of a time with all of them, I persevered. Only to be rewarded with like 2k EXP, maybe 10% of a level for a level 20 creature. "This sucks" is underselling this substantially.

In the early game, the biggest problem this caused was that I couldn't revert Digimon consequence-free. My first run, I went blind, and had some big mistakes. My Gomamon went through three evolutions I didn't like before finally getting Ikkakumon, and by then it was so far behind the others that fights were challenging for it, even when it should have had advantage. The second playthrough, I knew where to aim, and had a significantly easier time of basically everything because of it, despite using nothing different than the first time.

So okay, soft reset when you get a bad evolution and ignore it. But that's...not exactly fun for a monster catcher whose core function is "You can devolve back too." In fact that's supposed to be beneficial with the blue stats. But the blue stats suck. They accumulate so little on evolution and devolution that they're really not worth discussing. You get significantly more out of your one-use stat boosters.

Which brings me to the current moment.

I have reached the endgame opening of a million quests. Admittedly, this was arguably my favorite part of the game. There's no central story to deal with, and some of them are cute character moments that come too late. This would've been a lot more engaging early on to endear these people to me, but instead it's super late after I've already been exhausted. I cleared all the quests though, using a guide for the hide and seek missions, and then had only optional stuff open.

Mirei's quests were hard as shit. I tried to fight the knights, and the first one slapped my shit open in one turn, and when I checked their stats, got to realize it was because they have 5000+ offenses. For comparison, my team, after doing everything available to me, was around 3000 offensively, stuck around level 30-ish. So okay, that's a challenge fight for later, maybe now I'll just progress the plot. Oh it's the seven deadly Digimon. Oh they also have like 5000 offenses. So okay, clearly I'm missing something. So I look at a guide for what level I'm supposed to be, because holy hell it can't be that bad the whole time right?

Recommended Level: 75.

Seventy

Five

My team is around 30.

Literally how? Random encounters in every phase of this game give like 600 EXP and my next level is tens of thousands. On of the dudes on my bench has over 60k needed to achieve the next level; you expect me to fight 100 random encounters for one (1) level? Now okay, some of my creatures do have 5000 offenses. Lilithmon is a good example; she's got that much at level 30. And paper thin defenses and no speed. So she gets blasted to powder, and these boss fights are prolonged. So...what the hell.

So I break. I start using all the resources. I start by eating all the duplicate Mega Digimon in my roster, focusing on just my core six. They reach around level 60. I decide I don't want to eat everything and opt for stat training now that I have the C-rank equipment and 1.2 million Digidollars (I know they use Yen but I think we need to grapple with the missed opportunity here). This gives nice bonuses, but they're the white numbers, not the blue, so they're impermanent in a critical sense. Oh well, not like I'll devolve at this point, right? It takes me down to 200k Digidollars, but I get my team to 5000 in their relevant offense, 5000 speed to avoid getting lapped or outpaced, and around 3-4k in relevant defensive stats. I pop the HP boosting stat items for my lowest HP options, and now we're starting to look a lot better.

For six Digimon.

In a game where type matchup does in fact matter pretty significantly, because neutral damage is also high. And as if in proof, many of the bosses still deal like 2k damage a swing on me. If I hadn't done all this, it would've been like the knight, where they deal my entire HP bar in a swing, and some of you have AoE. For SIX Digimon. I prepared like 15 throughout this game, because of the necessity of matchup. And over half are now completely left behind because the tools to reach expected values are so sharp that I couldn't afford it, even if I sold all my stuff. Which is just a really weird way to handle this in general, I think.

As for story...I also feel like I've been overly harsh in many ways, feeling it's just exhausting and not really connecting with it in any serious way. It's not like it's doing anything outlandishly bad, even if I feel their sidelining of Inori is exceptionally noticeable. But I haven't really collected my thoughts on why it bothers me before now. I think I have an answer now that I'm at the end.

The conflict at the outset of the game is a human mega robot roaming around, and then a big Digimon fist decks it and explodes space-time. Notably, the cause of all of this is stated to be Digimon in-fighting. This is revealed to the cause of what are called Titans, who are aiming to kind of break reality sort of? This is eventually revealed to be the goal of Chronomon, who realized that reality is deterministic in nature and sought rebellion through destruction.

The long-running issue has been how Titans are handled in general. Even breaking past the issue of how the hell anyone tells what is and is not a titan, the eventual explanation for their actions is simply "the curse of Chronomon." A few will note the disparity of resources, how bad the Titans had it where they were banished...but this is never the central cause of issues. This is never something truly dissected and resolved. There's plenty of "Digimon shouldn't fight each other ;_;" but never really a reconciliation about how badly the Titans have it. By the time you're reclaiming Central Town, the Titans have turned it brown and shitty, and then you kick them out and everything is fixed. And it's like. Hey, what's that about? Is this not a culture of Digimon that were unfairly generationally banished to the shitty part of reality and have legitimate reason to push back on the current system? No, they're just kind of hostile? We're really just going to say "curse" and move on?

Like, this war between Digimon has a justifiable reason, one worth examining, that really never is. And that is spills over into the human world is largely untouched. Humans react, and we have Simmons complaining about how humans are foolish because we built a weapon to fight made out of Digimon, but humanity's role in this is never truly substantial. Despite being the catalyst for reviving Chronomon, who apparently is the weapon. They also have no real agency in the decision to conduct their own grand cleansing. Is that also Chronomon's curse? That no one really has much agency in their own decisions? That this being overtly about hating/fearing Digimon for the crisis eight years ago just...doesn't really matter much?

And all of this is around a main cast that I really cannot get into. The main character is a nothing, that's not necessarily a problem. But the Operator is wildly invasive, the biggest source of extraneous dialogue, and they're apparently not even real. Aegiomon really doesn't do much despite being an emotional center of the narrative, and Inori...Inori may as well have stayed "Girl who must be protected" for all she matters. Her friend has one (1) scene chastising her for not realizing how others feel about her disappearance, but when you have a chance to really hammer that home with how her father supported building the weapon...it's a really flat scene of nothing. His reaction is severely stunted, lacking in serious emotion, and then just...calls to have her detained and we literally never see him again. Side characters sometimes land on things decently well, but only sometimes.

I know, I KNOW that Cyber Sleuth had a lot of issues, and many in similar places. The repetitiveness of side-quests, the heavy-handed dialogue that goes on too long, the odd scaling of experience. But unlike this game, Cyber Sleuth offers Tactician USBs to make grinding matter and alleviate the back and forth, its central cast is more cohesive, and its plot, while equally ridiculous, involved material decisions being made by competing factions along ideological lines.

But also...I do think I've just kinda fallen out of favor with RPGs. Someone recently pointed out they've never actually seen me rave about them, and it's strange because I consider myself someone who enjoys them, but this seems to be historical artifact at this point. I used to love them. But I find it harder and harder to connect with them in the same way anymore. So a lot of this may also just be...exhaustion with the genre. My wife has suggested it may be changes in the genre over time, and like. Maybe? But I also thing these just aren't my thing anymore. Which is a bit sad. Because I really want to enjoy this game. I really like the Digimon themselves. *remember Etemon* I like almost all of them. *remembers Vademon* Most of them. And I want to enjoy a game playing with them.

[curiooftheheart]

Politics is actually like…one of the top reasons to cut someone out of your life? Where the fuck did we get this idea it’s an invalid reason to abandon people? It’s literally your statement on how you think society should exist and what rights you think people should have and how. It ain’t fucking “My uncle Craig’s dead to me because he takes his sandwiches with the crust on” it’s “My uncle Craig has consistently stated a hatred of minorities and poor people for longer than I’ve been alive, of course I’m gonna call him a piece of shit”

[virtualshrinemaiden]

地底の太陽 by 雲丹園

[crystalelemental]

Wow. So, a few years back, the demo for the beta of Pokemon Gold leaked, which naturally got datamined to hell and back. People call it the Spaceworld demo because apparently, that was the event this demo first appeared at. Basically everything we know about Gen 2’s beta comes from this demo.

I have never once heard it called Spaceworld beta, or any reference to Spaceworld in the first place, so this is the first I've heard of that.

In any case, I will admit to being kind of a killjoy about the leaked beta stuff, in that I don't find them particularly compelling.

[crystalelemental]

You’ve never seen the Spaceworld demo of Gen 2? That’s where most of its beta stuff comes from.

I have, quite literally, no idea what you’re talking about.

[crystalelemental]

So apparenly, in the Spaceworld build of Pokemon Gold (was there a Silver version at the time? I don't think there was, but I doubt they would've moved past paired versions without the Pokemon boom), Silver would use Rhydon instead of Magneton. Knowing what we know now, I high-key hate that. I feel like he'd reject Ground-types on principle given their connection to Giovanni. But I wonder if Game Freak would give him one to show him healing in a future appearance?

What is Spaceworld?

And I don’t know if he’d have that particular aversion, but I can’t say he wouldn’t either.