Phew! If you're wondering why I've been quiet for a bit, it's because this game took me 3 weeks to beat. It was kind of grueling at times. It definitely assumes that you played the previous 3 (or 4 if Anode and Cathode count for 2) games and does NOT baby you at the start. It definitely wasn't my favorite game in the series, but the fact that it did away with the terrible old Jogress system earned it a lot of points in my book. There are still some Wonderswan games to play, but I think that's really it for Ryo games! Thank goodness :)
Notes:
Major downgrade from D1 Tamers visually! D1 was so colorful and exploring the world was actually interesting. Brave Tamer follows the Digimon World 2 strat of making every single dungeon pretty much identical and the hub world is bland as heck as well. You don't even need to travel to get to the dungeons you just walk up to the same hole every time. Lame.
Thank God this game lets digimon level up and evolve normally. It basically follows the Pokemon style of evolution. In previous games there were bullshit level caps unless you jogressed a zillion times. This game still has that dumb mechanic where your digimon devolves into a baby. I get that that happens in the show, but it felt pretty silly in the game. They get back to normal pretty quickly after a few battles.
Digimon recruitment is limited to borrowing digimon from digidestined from the various anime series. What an awkward concept. Ryo comes out of nowhere to save the day and then each partner digimon is like "See ya partner, I'm ditching you for Ryo!" I'm just imagining the characters that are left partner-less facing certain doom after Ryo leaves lol. Maybe it's one of those situations where they're only gone for a few minutes due to dimension hopping.
The card slash system (based on the Tamers universe of course) was interesting, but kind of annoying to figure out. After I got a handful of strong cards I couldn't be arsed to keep trying new jogress combos.
Speaking of taking the lazy route, I didn't use the majority of the digimon I recruited once LOL. It's more efficient to just stick with the same digimon for the whole game unless you want to spend a lot of time grinding, so that's what I did. I ended up with only mega-level digimon at the end which is frustrating because MegaloGrowmon and Taomon were at level 30! (They upgrade to mega at 31).
The bosses were strangely easy in this game (except for one that took me like 5 tries). What made it hard were the frickin' labyrinthine dungeons (the last one is TIMED! Evil). I have a terrible sense of direction IRL and in video games so the dungeons in this game were torture for me. You have to traverse up to 5 floors and sometimes there are so many dead ends and roadblocks that it takes what feels like an eternity. Also, there are random battles every 2 seconds that increase the suffering. In the later game I planned my route ahead of time by figuring out where the boss was on YouTube and mapping backwards from there. Here's a screenshot of me and my map in MS Paint:
(By the way, I always play Wonderswan games in windowed mode or else they look wonky. This time, that really came in handy).
I had to use multiple guides to figure out some of this game because the most popular walkthrough wasn't very good. It barely gives you any instructions on getting through dungeons, which was what I really needed.
Most scandalous part of this game was when Millenniummon called Ryo his lover (koibito)? Whaaaaa...?
I didn't realize that this game is a prequel to Tamers so I kinda did things out of order, whoops! I didn't realize that Cyberdramon was supposed to be the outcome of a Monodramon/Millenniummon jogress. Makes me want to rewatch some bits of the anime...
There was so much dramatic build up for the final battle and then it was so easy? I didn't even need to use the 10 low-level healing items I stocked up on. Oh well, guess I was well prepared.
Of course there's a post-game where you can scan all the digimon you missed, but that just seems silly. They're not partners in this game, they're cards. If I can't a raise a digimon I don't really see the appeal in collecting them all. (I mean I guess I wouldn't see the appeal in raising them all either, but the cards seem like even more of a waste of time).
The Wonderswan games have always been my fave digimon games but this one felt simultaneously half-assed and overly complicated. I'd give it like a 5 or 6 out of 10. Let's call it a 5.5.
This is my 13th Digimon game completed in less than 2 years, yay me!
This game took me 10 days to play. Love me a game that doesn't overstay its welcome.
This game was fantastic! It was probably most similar to the first Digimon World gameplay-wise, but waaay less convoluted and a lot cuter. Unlike in DW I had no problem getting the digivolutions I wanted and progressing through the game at a comfortable pace. There were a few "guide dang it!" moments here and there, but the game is mostly reasonable about hinting at what you're supposed to be doing. Full thoughts below.
Notes:
I loved the meta premise of this game. Basically when you boot it up, DemiDevimon comes along and "corrupts your game file." You then get sucked into the game world, "Swan World" (geddit, cuz Wonderswan?) The rest of the game is dedicated to restoring your corrupted surroundings and returning evil digimon to their nice forms. Very satisfying.
The v-pet aspect of the game was fun. The controls for calling/releasing your digimon were very intuitive. I liked how I could release them in various places like I was putting them out to pasture. The only really annoying thing was keeping the digimon fed because you had to input 4 digits to get one meat over and over and over again.
Of course I just used a guide to figure out the right codes, but the "enter a code and get a mystery digiegg" gimmick was cute. I really liked the animation of the egg slowly generating. It was a little weird because what digiegg you started with didn't matter much in the end, but oh well.
For some reason you have the ability to praise and scold your digimon? I understand praising because maybe it raises their happiness (I never actually checked), but there is no advantage to scolding in this game as far as I could tell.
Instead of the DW1 digivolution mechanic where you need a PHD in digivolving to get the right digimon, you just raise them in a certain environment to get the desired outcome. SO much easier. I liked that I could switch from line to line going from rookie to champion to make the game go quicker.
Except for the crazy last boss, it sort of felt like the difficulty level remained the same throughout the whole game. I brought a rookie into many battles, for example, and ended up being fine.
Omg the sprites in this game are so good!! Battling was so fun to watch (you can button mash to improve accuracy, but you don't really participate). Some kind soul uploaded all the sprites for download. I thought the Kyubimon victory animation was really funny:
Once I discovered jogress/DNA evolution I was like HELL YEAH 🔥🔥🔥 cuz the animation was so badass and took up like half the screen (wish I got more screenshots). There was also a really satisfying "BOOM!" sound effect during digivolution.
Lots of colorful, fun environments (especially compared to the last game which was blah). Another quality of life complaint is you have to go all the way to the start of the map every time you need food. There should have been more shortcuts to get from place to place.
I was actually kind of grateful that digimon die in this game. They have a pretty long lifespan, which is nice, but sometimes you need to clear up storage in your PC or you want the chance to raise a different type, so mons dying wasn't as soul crushing as in previous games.
If you can't read Japanese, I think I'd still recommend this game. The visuals and gameplay are enough to carry it and the controls/menus are pretty simple.
Okay, well that was definitely a bargain bin level experience. Blandest Digimon game yet I think. The second half of this game covered all of Adventure 02 and then about 2 seconds of Tamers. I wonder if this game came out before the Tamers anime was finished because it felt very odd that they ended with the gang rescuing Culumon from a undigivolved Impmon. The Tamers part also felt kinda dumbed down and easy compared to the 02 section of the game. Quite an anti-climax.
I don't have much to add that I didn't already say in my previous post. The 2nd half of the game was just as lazily designed as the first. I did enjoy seeing Wallace in the credits and the "OWARI" looked cool at the end. Apparently there's more to unlock in this, but I can't be bothered, especially not without any guidance of how to do so. Onto the next!
Digimon Tamers: Digimon Medley - Part 1 Impressions
Another Digimon game for the Wonderswan color. This is probably the most low effort game I've played yet. Super repetitive dialogue and the dungeons are all like 8 screens of boringness with vending machines being the only thing you can interact with. The game has "episodes" and goes through all of Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 in a condensed fashion. It feels really similar to .Hack//Link. I wonder if there's a name for this sort of genre...
Anyways, I'm expecting this game to be pretty short, but I thought I'd get my thoughts in at the halfway point.
Notes:
I do enjoy playing as a different digidestined every episode, but they all play relatively the same, so it can only be so exciting.
Every single battle and boss fight have felt equally easy so far, zero challenge. I feel like they couldn't make it too challenging because there's no leveling and no equipment you can use, so everything has to stay pretty much static.
The dialogue is practically the same every episode. "X bad guy controls this area and the digimon are suffering!" and then "Mwahaha as if you could defeat me chosen children!" and then "Yay! We defeated X bad guy! The digimon in this area are free." Ground breaking stuff. If anyone wants a ridiculously easy translation project, it's free real estate lol.
The Japanese text has spaces in it, which suggests to me that the target audience for this was very very young. It kind of feels like I'm playing one of those McDonald's kids toy games at points lol.
The chibi character models are very cute. Seeing the Tamers characters crucified is also kinda hilarious.
Here's a screenshot of Piyomon calling Sora "Mimi." Oops! She calls her Sora shortly after though...
Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers - First Impressions
Woohoo! I'm so excited to get back to the Wonderswan games. I actually didn't know Anode/Cathode Tamer had sequels, but it does. For some reason I assumed "tag tamers" was going to be a fighting game lol. Also, it's a bit funny to go from color to black and white, but I guess this game came out before the Veedramon version of Anode/Cathode Tamer, so it makes sense. Initial thoughts after one hour of gameplay below.
Notes:
-Damn, why does this game get no love?? There's like one single walkthrough and every time I google "Tag Tamers," the 3rd game comes up instead. Pretty random, but oh well.
-Excited to go back to pixel graphics and old timey gaming music. Nostalgic to my childhood when I played the OG Pokemon games. Also happy to be playing a simpler, shorter game after Digital Card Battle threatened to go on and on for 100+ hours. (Some games are just too damn long!)
-Already see that they've added some quality of life features (digimon daycare) and new stuff to make things more interesting (jogress, armor). I'm glad it's still pretty simplistic though.
-They changed the battle system from that tactical style where you move your digimon around to just basic turn-based combat. I feel like this is kinda a downgrade, but also easier to turn my brain off to, so I guess it's fine...
-Sad that I have to put up with random encounters now. I don't feel like they add much to the game. If I wanted to grind I could just replay dungeons.
-Love all of the continuity nods! The game starts out during the events of Our War Game and then moves onto Ken's backstory. He meets Ryo and Wormmon, as shown in the anime. I wonder if the whole Digimon Emperor stuff will come up...? (Probably not).
-I was very excited to play as Ken for the first time since he's my fave from 02. Also good to see his early relationship with Wormmon, so cute!
-The "mirror site" concept is interesting. I like how it plays into the "digital world" theme in a clever way. I guess "tag tamers" refers to the fact that I'll be switching back and forth from Ken to Ryo. Is Gennai in both worlds though? That part's foggy at the moment...
-Felt pretty weird defeating Diaboromon with Veemon lol. Don't really get why they started the game like that.
-It's cool to see that you can buy the higher powered items from the start of the game. That really makes it feel like a continuation of Anode/Cathode Tamer.
-Millenniumon's design is hella ugly. I like his name tho lol. Very Y2K
