To buy Digimon Survival
Digimon Survival follows the story of a young group of children who go to school camp. Players take on the role of Takuma, a nice young man with a small group of friends. Takuma and his friends eventually wander into the woods in search of a lost group of fellow students, but come across a strange tunnel. When they wander through it, they find themselves in a world that looks like like the place they just left – but it’s not. The buildings are decaying, the plant life is strange and monsters known as Kemonogami want to devour the hapless children. Takuma befriends a friendly Kemonogami named Agumon, and together the two try to find a way to survive.
Digimon Survival is an unusual mix of tones. When it starts, it looks like what you would qualify as a pretty standard Digimon adventure, with a group of teenagers who befriend monsters in a dangerous situation. It changes things; whereas a standard Digimon story can stop at some level of grimness, Survive continues. Characters not only end up in bad situations, but can also die horribly; backstories are not only grim, but occasionally pitch black. While it continues to feel like a Digimon story, there is a level of suspense and danger that we don’t see in a standard story. It is also strange to realize that “Digimon” is not pronounced once in the game, which focuses on the name Kemonogami.
For the most part, this works well. It doesn’t fall into the usual trap of, “We darken a child’s property.” The cute monsters are still cute and the plot still has the expected beats of friendship and optimism. But when things go bad, they go For real spoil. There is at least one death scene, and while I could see it coming, it really took me by surprise how horrific it was. My first ending was a mix of relentlessly grim and surprisingly optimistic in a way I wasn’t expecting either.
The biggest barrier to enjoy Digimon Survival is that the cast is intentionally unsympathetic. They fit neatly into a .’s character archetypes Digimon story but taken to certain extremes. Not every character is like that, but a few cross the line from bad to terrible. There’s at least one character who spends a significant portion of the game brutally insulting and abusing a cute little bunny creature; I really wanted him to be eaten by the nearest monster so he would go away. It doesn’t necessarily ruin the game because the bad characters are intentional, but it can get frustrating as things progress. However, it makes it more satisfying when characters evolve.
Another problem is that in the first playthrough the game is mostly on rails until the end where you pick a path. Specific events happen no matter what you do and how many precautions you take, and it’s only in a New Game+ that you have more flexibility over how the story progresses. While I understand the need to make sure the game’s moments go as intended, the game would hit harder if the player felt they were more capable of influencing the story.
The core of the game of Survive equates to about 70% visual novel and 30% strategy RPG. In the visual novel segments, you wander through different areas and talk to characters. In some cases, this can trigger special events or increase your friendship with a character, allowing them to evolve their Digimon into new forms. While there is a set core plot that follows you, there are a number of secret events or side events that you can discover during Free Time moments to earn special items, new Digimon, or influence later events in small ways.
Dialogue choices boil down to one of three types of karma: moral, harmony, and wrath. The three types of karma are set to a specific location in the dialogue option, with Moral being Left, Harmony Right, and Wrathful Up. The karma names are somewhat misleading. Wrath is not evil or cruel; they are usually choices that are simple or bold. These can be selfish decisions, but they can also be things like ‘fighting an enemy to protect someone instead of running away’. Morality is making a choice based on the greater good, which can be heroic and courageous, but also includes things like ‘running away’. Harmony is probably the most straightforward and emphasizes teamwork and communication. The negative could be an attempt to talk or understand something that turns around and tries to kill you.
These dialogue choices eventually lead to one of three different endings. The ending picks are determined by the total number of specific points you earn, rather than whichever is the highest, so you may be able to unlock the pick for all three endings in a single playthrough. This is a nice feature because it means you can pick what’s right for the moment instead of choosing one of three “moods” to force an ending. There is a fourth ending, but as mentioned, it’s locked behind a New Game+.
Between visual new segments, you’ll engage in Digimon battles, which are standard strategy RPG skirmishes. The player and enemy are both placed on a battlefield, and each side takes turns moving their Digimon based on the creature’s speed stats. The goal is to defeat your enemies before they defeat you, but a few missions have unique elements, such as protecting a human trying to escape or reaching a certain point on the map.
The Digimon fight. Each Digimon in the game can attack, perform one special move, and have a passive ability that changes the way they play. Crowmon can sacrifice his attack for a turn to move twice instead. Some Digimon do more damage with certain elemental moves or automatically guard after a turn is taken, and so on. Special moves use SP and have different elemental types, with some Digimon being strong or weak against those types. Some are buffs and healing, but most are different types of attacks. You can also equip items that allow Digimon to use new attacks, with up to three different special attacks per Digimon in addition to the standard attack.
Digimon are divided into two types: Partner and Free. Partner Digimon is the plot-mandated Digimon, and each is connected to a human. These Digimon always start at a weaker “rookie” level, but as the game progresses, they unlock the ability to evolve (and transition) into different forms. Stronger shapes deflate your MP slowly, but are naturally more robust. The advantage is that you can swap forms based on what is needed. To use the Crowmon example mentioned earlier, you can Digivolve to Crowmon for extra movement speed and switch to a more combat-heavy form once you reach the enemy. Each Partner Digimon also has the ability to have their trainer use a Talk command once per battle, which gives a temporary boost to any Partner Digimon on the field.
You will encounter Free Digimon during optional battles and you can recruit them by using the Talk command on them. They have several evolution trees from a Partner Digimon, and once they evolve (using special items), they stay evolved permanently. Once evolved, they don’t have the constant MP drain that a Partner Digimon has, and unlike Partner Digimon, they don’t need to hit certain plot beats to evolve. As long as you have an item, you can evolve those Digimon for free, making them much easier to customize and a bit stronger overall. They also stay in your company anyway, while Partner Digimon departs based on plot events.
Into the combat system Digimon Survival is standard for an SRPG. It’s nice enough for what it is, and the level of customization is good. If I had one complaint, Digimon Evolution is way too big a factor in combat. Outside of edge cases, your Digimon should be at the strongest possible level. The difference in defense and damage between a Champion-level Digimon and a Mega-level Digimon is so great that the weaker ones might as well not exist unless they have a For real good passive or skill.
visually, Digimon Survival is a pretty fun game. It uses the standard still images like a visual novel, but they are well drawn and animated, and there are some incredibly effective uses of specific images that are truly terrifying. The battle animations are done using simple sprites, most of which are very cute, but not particularly well animated. The voice acting manages to convey the character’s emotions very well, but fans should be aware that it’s subtitles only. The music is fun, if not hugely memorable, with few particularly noteworthy songs to its credit.
Digimon Survival is an interesting experiment that largely succeeds in taking a beloved children’s franchise and giving it a darker tone without completely losing what made it so beloved in the first place. The story is largely engaging and has enough twists and turns to keep things moving forward at a comfortable pace. The gameplay is fun but unobtrusive, but the story is the main draw. If you are a fan of Digimonthen Survive is absolutely worth your time. Even casual JRPG fans will probably find the story worth checking out.
Rating: 8.0/10
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