Wow, another game that took me exactly a week to beat, how punctual of me! So that's another 10-15 hours in the bucket, not bad at all. This game is ~special~ because it's the first digimon game to ever be released (not including v-pets). It came out in 1998 for the Sega Saturn and was never translated. As such, it's really not that popular and I couldn't find a ton of guidance on how to beat it. To make matters worse, Sega Saturn games do not emulate well. If you look closely, you'll see that all of my screenshots have ugly lines on them. The sound was also hit-or-miss, sometimes cutting out or making terrible screechy noises. None of that was disruptive enough for me to give up though. I persevered and ended up having a lot of fun!
The best guide for this game (as far as I know) is in Japanese. Google translate + some Japanese knowledge are recommended to fully benefit from it.
Notes:
-This gave me some Digimon World 1 flashbacks. I ended up with Numemon as my first champion and for awhile there it felt like I would never get a good digimon. The way to the success in this game (just like in DW1) ended up being gym upgrades which made digimon rearing a LOT less painful. Unfortunately, I didn't really stick around to get the coolest digimon. My best efforts yielded me: Vademon, Birdramon, Leomon, and a Devimon at the end there.
-The main objective in this game, earning 5 medals from the different arenas, ended up being pretty easy. You can definitely get by with a champion level, which is what I did for 3 out of 5 medals. Of course I also did some save scumming, because this is another RNG-rather-than-skill based game. If you don't cheat a lil, you're just meaninglessly prolonging the game imo. Sometimes I ended up winning against big bosses without even needing save states, so yeah. Not super challenging.
-The "bonus" objective, I guess, would be to tame all possible digimon in the game (70 in total) which involves some jogress-ing too? I ain't doing that for multiple reasons. Number 1: I already did it in Digimon World and it took a million years WITH a guide. Number 2: I couldn't find a guide on how to trigger certain digivolutions for this one. I know it follows the v-pet logic, but I'm really not sure how the care mistakes/training rules work. Number 3: It doesn't seem like it would be very rewarding. There's really not much going on post-final boss in this one. Same as with Anode/Cathode, why should I care that I have these cool digimon if there's nothing I can do with them?
-The best part of this game was definitely the UI! So nostalgic, so 90s, so immersive! I especially loved the "Net" portion with email and the little Botamon mini-game. I love email replying mechanics. Very Dot Hack. Also, the Japanese was very easy to understand which is a plus.
-The digimon are so cute in this game. The little squeaky noise they make when they're happy, their different sleep animations (the plant digimon go underground or sleep in pots!), the joy when you give them their favorite food. So many great little touches. I guess the one thing that would be nice about taming them all would be seeing all the different animations. Maybe I'll just look those up lol.
-Definitely some frustration with digimon dying abruptly and digimon not digivolving as I expected. I worked hard getting my Leomon to 15 battles (the requirement for Ultimate level) and he still died! I honestly have no idea why and feel cheated out of a Megadramon.
-The final boss was legitimately a LadyDevimon named "Nice Body" and my reward for defeating her was a "sexy" wallpaper (displayed in one of the screenshots above). Lol
-The internet and shopping tracks were very nice. The internet one almost sounds like lofi
-I can see how this game would seem amazing if you're coming from the v-pet. You can raise 4 digimon at once, which feels super efficient, even compared to DW1. Between this and the Wonderswan ver. I'm feeling less motivated to buy a v-pet because it's basically the same thing but lower quality. (Although that might be kinda fun).
-I felt bad about abandoning my remaining digis (like my Neopets and my Nintendogs lol), but I left them with robots to take care of them, so at least there's that.
Honestly with the context of this game being so old and having the goal of being an enhanced v-pet, I think it achieved that mission very nicely. I'm wavering between a 6 and a 7, so I'll give this a 6.5 out of 10.
How to collect and play Sega Saturn gems advantageously
How to collect and play Sega Saturn gems advantageously
Retro-game collecting can be an expensive hobby, especially when collecting for the SEGA Saturn, particularly its NTSC releases. Whereas North American Saturn consoles typically sell around $50 used on Amazon and Ebay, NTSC game releases, such as Burning Rangers, Magic Knight Rayearth or Panzer Dragoon Saga can range anywhere from $400 to $600 used. Why are these gems so pricey you might ask?…
So, I think I'm out of luck with this one, but I can't get this game to work very well. I've had sound issues (sound missing or screeching white noise) and display issues (black lines across the screen). The display issues only showed up after about an hour of gameplay, everything was fine before then! I'm using the Yabause emulator. I googled my problems and apparently Sega Saturn emulation is just bad? Not willing to purchase the console, so any tips? Has anyone ever played this before?
I think I can get past the sound problems but the black lines on the screen are definitely distracting :( Might need to skip this one. Maybe watch a Let's Play.
Yabause makes things pretty.... if you don't mind ugly sound! I can't imagine playing Panzer Dragoon Saga with ugly sound 🙁
That may be true if you want ugly sound, but I'm trying to avoid looking ugly and it's not the point of the game! It's supposed to be "I don't have time to look pretty, I have to get this done as quickly as possible"
#SEGA #Saturn emulator Yabause has a new update. Check out the new features!
There are many emulators that keep the SEGA spirit alive on the web, and the SEGA Saturn emulator Yabause is one of the best. The emulator has recently gotten a brand new update, which fixes some of the issues and builds upon the previous iterations. From Yabause: “Arguably, the most notable features of this release are: – Low-level CD Block emulation – CloneCD file format support – High…
