Digimon Survive

.story

I loved Digimon Adventure way more than Pokemon back in the day and I suffer to seewhat they did to this franchise between games and anime. Digimon Survive is a fraud. Everyone who watched the trailers was expecting something entirely different than this graphic novel with uber slow pacing dialogues. Japanese games are known to be prolix but here we are talking about hours and hours of text with no point at all. Characters development is actually well done and the cast is as interesting as Digimon Adventure was 20 years ago. Thing is this should have been an anime. Not a game. Most of the choices are barred behing a classic point karma system and to develop most of these choices in good evolutions and game paths you will need a new game plus. Digimon Survive is a great combination of Digimon Adventure meets Higurashi. The more adult tones are was original fans needed to be honest but not in this very cheap and low cost vessel.

.gameplay

Digimon Survive is a streategic RPG. No, it's a graphic novel. You will actully play barely 20% of the game where the rest is just a novel. Point is the game is generally not developed. Most of the combat is a pretty basic strategic RPG with very little depth and most of the evolutions require lot of karma points awhich require mutiple playthroughts. The game features a nagivation system with fixed points like a classic graphic novel and combat is a side-feature totally. Trailers fools us all.

.sound

The soundtrack composition is out of this world for this kind of production. I don't think this game remotely deserved what they have accomplished. Digimon Survive might be tedious to play or to read after hours of plain dialogues mixed with great emotional sequences but the soundtrack never disappoints. It is basically the only upside. It is also almost fully dubbed and in japanese is a great anime.

.graphics

Sprites are in very high quality on PC and the cast's original characterization is on par with Digimon Adventure. Better sometimes even if our survivors looks a bit too similar to their anime counterparts. Everything else is just low res corridors and mixed quality location visited x times during the game.

.verdict

Digimon Survive could have been many things but it is definitely not a videogame. Gameplay sucks and the story although Very interesting is so slow paced you will lose interest and not want to keep going until the end.

While I may not be a hardcore Digimon fan, I do admire the risks and new direction this game takes from its child freindly counter parts like the original series.

This reminds me on how I felt on Tamers. A more mature storyline with dark twists and turns and grave consequences for bad choices.

The fact that the game features elements of death, depression and loss really set the game apart from the rest. How the game plans out is left up to the player on what they prioritize most, do you prioritize your freinds, the world or just simply staying alive is left up to you.

The gameplay is very simple and easy to understand. Their are also no penalties for lowering the difficulty of fights which to me is good because this game prioritises its story more then its tactical gameplay.

I recommend this game to anyone who is unfamiliar with Digimon and to any gamer who likes a good storyline with likeable characters and sub par gameplay.