Digimon Survive Review (PS4) – Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be DigiDestined. Digimon Survive delivers this feeling. Landing in an unknown world, meeting a monster you have an instant connection with and finding your way home.

To fans of the show, this may sound like a rerun of the anime, but Digimon Survive can stand on its own. From gameplay to story, this is a unique take on a franchise that I love, and while it took some getting used to, I fell in love with it.

Digimon Survive Review (PS4) – Truly Become a Digi-Destined

The learning curve of visual novels

I will not lie; When I first jumped into Digimon Survive, I wasn’t sure what to expect. While Digimon Survive is visually stunning, I found the lack of gameplay shocking. Admittedly, I’m not used to visual novels or tactical role-playing games. Because of this, the format of Digimon Survive has taken some time to grow on me, and thankfully it has.

The moment you start up the game, you are confronted with stunning visuals that put you in the anime. From fully animated cutscenes to talking animations, not a single frame of this game is low quality.

This helps a lot to keep you engaged at the start of the game before entering the digital world and getting acquainted with the combat system.

You will spend most of the game chatting with friends and fellow Digimon and maintaining relationships with everyone. Increasing affinity with friends and their Digimon will aid in combat and influence how the characters see you in the game.

As you progress, you will encounter stages that allow the player to explore, advance the story, or grow relationships. As in many other games like Persona, you have phases to strengthen your relationships before the story progresses.

In the relative phases, you are only allowed so many interactions with characters before you are cut off and the story continues. This forces the players to choose who they want to be close to and how much.

The closer you get, the closer your digital companions get. For me this was the most challenging part of the game.

Talking to everyone was a little annoying at first, but I soon started looking forward to my time with the characters. These moments of rest are how you get to know everyone around you and when you can explore to find items in battle. However, exploration is limited.

Explore Digimon Survive is presented with a scene, look around and interact with everything, then grab your phone to decode scrambled data for items and sometimes surprise Digimon attacks. However, your phone’s capacity doesn’t stop there.

Much of the game is spent using the phone, which doubles as your map, Digimon logs, item management and locator, and your Digivice. From there, you can access new areas, permanent Digivolve squad members you’ve added to your party, or even sign up for free battles.

A combat system that is as deep or shallow as you want

In these free battles, you can talk to the attacking Digimon, and if you answer three questions correctly, you’ll have the option of getting them to your team or giving you an item.

I found myself jumping into these battles less to train my team and more to acquire Digimon which I liked.

A personal quest of mine is to have a whole team from the original anime. As a result, I jumped into battle after battle, trying to learn each Digimon’s favorite answers.

If the answer is answered incorrectly, the Digimon will become angry and enraged. But even if you answer questions correctly, there’s a chance they won’t join your team.

Luckily, there’s an auto-battle option for cases where the Digimon you’re looking for wasn’t the one you encountered or if you answered the question incorrectly. I often used the automatic battle until I learned the correct answers for each Digimon.

Acquiring Digimon is not the only reason to compete. It’s also recommended that you level up your Digimon to progress through the story and break some of the game’s long conversation parts.

Within battles, each Digimon has their own set of attacks, an amount of area they can move and types that are strong or weak to opposing types. Most of it is surprisingly simple. However, the complexity comes from the SP bar.

Each Digimon has a limited amount of SP that will decrease during battle after using larger, more powerful attacks.

In the case of the Digimon associated with the story, they lose SP if they Digivolve in battle. Once at zero, that Digimon will de-Digivolve back to its previous form.

This added layer of systems forces the player to choose the best option for Digivolve. In some cases it can be for the defense, in others for a larger area to move, but most of the time it’s for a higher attack power.

While you can permanently evolve additional Digimon you acquire with items, the partner story Digimon will reach new Digivolutions through the main campaign.

A story destined for Digi in the first place

I hope you enjoy a story game as Digimon Survive is an emotional, gripping, action packed adventure with real stakes.

While the combat takes up most of the gameplay, the story is the true heart of Digimon Survives, and it doesn’t shy away from it.

The game isn’t short and, as in anime, it doesn’t shy away from building relationships with character development slowly rather than just quickly advancing the plot.

From the moment you meet your partner Agumon, you must discover why you are in the strange land and who these creatures are.

For fans of Digimon Adventure like me, this game is a dream come true, and the game capitalizes on this.

From the stories and plots of the original show, I found myself taking action and forming opinions about characters based on what I had already experienced.

Digimon Survive’s characters match what I thought their counterparts in the show were, something many fans probably will too.

However, throughout the game there were twists and turns that I didn’t see coming or instances of no Digivolution when I felt there should be.

While this may seem negative, the changes are really refreshing. It’s a great feeling to see something I thought I knew so well.

The twists and turns and the possibility of a different ending make me ready to return to the digital world.

Digimon Survive is out now on PS4.

Review code kindly provided by Bandi Namco Games