In case you assume Digimon are an affordable Pokémon ripoff impressed by a digital pet toy from the ’90s, you don’t know Digimon. From anime exhibits, webcomics, novels, an official buying and selling card recreation, and now the buzzy new RPG out of Summer season Recreation Fest, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, the Digimon franchise has expanded considerably since its introduction in 1997. Even so, its development has all the time been adopted by the shadow of Pokémon, with which all the pieces Digimon-related is wrongly in contrast, scrutinized, and ignored.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger might change that. Or it ought to, even with Pokémon Legends: Z-A looming. Primarily based on early gameplay and divulges, Bandai has at the very least aimed to provide a recreation for a wider viewers that addresses previous errors. From investing in making the world of Time Stranger really feel alive with cities crammed with digimon to giving a particular consideration when placing 450 creatures within the recreation by designing particular animations for every of them, it’s additionally clear the corporate has by no means overpassed how cool Digimon is.
Picture: Bandai by way of Polygon
I can’t blame anybody for seeing Digimon as a Pokémon knockoff; the primary season of the Digimon anime aired in Brazil in July 2000, six months after Pokémon debuted, and I do know we weren’t the one nation that skilled the juxtaposition. Each exhibits had creatures who befriend youngsters and turn out to be stronger as they battle. However Pokémon made creature-taming a part of the worldwide zeitgeist. However the thought behind each couldn’t be extra completely different; the video games particularly mess around with the concept that the actual world and the DigiWorld exist in numerous cases. In some circumstances, people are transported to the world of digimon, in others the digital leaks into the actual.
In 1999, Bandai launched the primary recreation based mostly on the creatures: Digimon World, a RPG during which we play as Mameo, a child who finds himself in File Island and desires to assist save the place from. As a substitute of a easy journey to turn out to be the very best Digimon grasp, which might make it a real Pokemon Purple/Blue rip, Mameo must turn out to be an equal companion for the Digimon. Coaching your Digimon turned a thrill — and a raffle. They’d really feel hungry or have to go to the toilet, which was hilariously indicated by the icon of a poop displaying above the creature’s head. And even after hours making ready them to digivolve, there was an enormous probability of getting a Numemon as an alternative of a Greymon. However studying extra about every Digimon and at last unlocking the kinds you wished essentially the most made this recreation the epitome of the Digimon expertise.
Picture: Bandai by way of Polygon
Whereas the Digimon World and subsequent Digimon Story video games are extra conventional RPGs, the franchise expanded enormously into the 2000s; the preventing recreation Digimon Rumble Area and Digimon Digital Card Battle, a recreation based mostly on the primary Digimon TCG, each arrived in 2001. A decade later, Transfer Video games introduced the critters into the MMO area with Digimon Masters, and extra just lately Hyde developed the primary Digimon Survive, a mixture of visible novel and grid-based battles. And I received’t even begin itemizing the Digimon cell video games launched solely in sure Asian nations.
Most Digimon video games are centered across the thought of preventing utilizing the creatures, your mission is to not seize them. As a substitute, Digimon closely emphasizes the bond between people and digimon, working like companions. And even when entertaining our need to have all of the creatures, Digimon video games observe their very own logic and guidelines.
As an idea, DigiWorlds are likely to drive the boundaries between human and nonhuman, machine and natural. You’ll discover cities dominated by digimon who’re dictators; retailers owned and run by digimon. There are factions, just like the Royal Knights, who’ve inside disputes stemming from conflicting ethical views.
Picture: Bandai by way of Polygon
There are gems littered all through Digimon’s gaming legacy. I’ll all the time make room for Digimon World 3 on each listing of greatest RPGs. The ever-lasting grind of the Bandai’s recreation would take a look at your persistence by forcing lengthy periods of battles towards low-level enemies so you can lastly see Renamon digivolve to Kyubimon. Within the meantime, gamers had been compelled to research each nook to determine the subsequent step of the plot and hold enjoying, main us right into a complicated narrative, crammed with twists and turns you couldn’t count on. Finally, the story converged right into a climax of world-conflict scale taking you to area. The unsuspecting issue was the appeal.
Two of Bandai’s most up-to-date titles, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Story: Hacker’s Reminiscence, are among the many franchise’s greatest. Though the latter is an enchancment from the previous, they each have up to date the graphics in Digimon video games and include an intriguing narrative. Whereas having a easy fight system and a fascinating progressing system, Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Reminiscence inform touching tales about childhood and accepting oneself amid a significant disaster because the boundaries between the digital world and the actual one fades.
Picture: Bandai by way of Polygon
In Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, unlocking highly effective digivolutions requires going via a sequence of steps earlier than you meet the minimal transformation necessities. It is advisable prepare them in farms and feed them particular meals to extend particular attributes. The method additionally entails de-digivolving a digimon to a earlier type, leveling it up, after which digivolving it once more to extend their stats and max degree cap. It would appear to be plenty of work — and it’s! — however it’s enjoyable to look at your digimon getting stronger; be taught all the chances you unlock by adjusting their stats; and acknowledge how the sequence stays true to its roots. Epic plot with emotional bits added to an intricate evolution system is peak RPG.
Whereas the tales, battles, and digivolutions make these video games nice, in addition they have their points. Many Digimon video games take too many detours, too many hours to get the place the storytellers wish to go. Media.Imaginative and prescient, developer behind the final two Digimon Story video games, has by no means fairly nailed a very good steadiness for fight, leading to some surprising and irritating issue spikes. And sure, the entire course of to digivolve a digimon is so lengthy that I would go away Cyber Sleuth open whereas having my Change in sleep mode so time would nonetheless run and my digimon would hold working whereas I used to be off.
All of the errors and hits from these earlier video games cleared the way in which to Digimon Story: Time Stranger. It took eight years for the Media.Imaginative and prescient workforce and producer Ryosuke Hara to place this recreation collectively and the ultimate product appears to be ok to shock folks and be elected as probably the greatest video games in 2025’s Summer season Recreation Fest. The impression left by the demo and the dialog round it led lots of who by no means touched different Digimon video games to go after a replica of Cyber Sleuth or Hacker’s Reminiscence. However the shock was not unjustified.
In accordance with Ryosuke Hara in an interview with RPG Website, there was an effort to make use of these years of improvement to make the world setting for this recreation extra “strong”. Time Stranger is bringing the Digital World: Iliad, a spot no different recreation has absolutely explored, whereas giving us the possibility to fulfill a legendary group of Digimon known as Olympos XII. The sport’s manufacturing worth additionally is obvious in stunning visuals and a focus to the techniques we’ll work together with as proven in current trailers launched by Bandai. Nonetheless, all this effort is being put upon what has been discovered and developed all through the years with the older video games.
Time Stranger is the results of honoring one’s historical past whereas figuring out when to alter, and maybe the proper place to start out exploring this nice franchise and studying about what it has to supply. Like several franchise, Digimon has its flaws, identical to there are nice experiences to have enjoying them. However all of it will proceed to be neglected if folks don’t cease to attempt becoming Digimon into the mildew of Pokemon. It’s time we give the digital creatures room to indicate their very own colours.