Digimon World 1 (Digimon World (PS))

Member Name: randomreviews

Product:	Digimon World (PS)
Date:	08/11/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: best of the Digimon World games

Disadvantages: repetitive, frustrating

Digimon World was the first 3D Digimon game for the PS1. Despite the game having some fun elements, it is overwhelmingly plagued with annoying, time consuming and repetitive activities which will frustrate players and make it difficult to fully enjoy the experience.

Digimon World is a game inspired by the popular anime series. You play as a young tamer who has been sucked into the Digital World which is in peril and in need of him to raise a powerful Digimon ally to bring order in the chaos. You raise your Digimon partner from infancy and train it in the gym, feed it when its hungry, put it to sleep, take it to the bathroom, and scold or praise it to strengthen it with hopes it'll Digivolve into a new more powerful monster. You then take your Digimon out to battle wild Digimon or to complete various events and beat bosses.

Battles are in real time but have RPG elements like parameters (HP, MP, etc). You can cheer on your Digimon or if its intelligence statistic is very high, you can have more control over its battle performance. During the fight the tamer stands out on the side and can throw items to heal his partner during a match.

The downfall is that Digimon have a very short lifespan - they only survive for a few hours before they die and are reborn as an egg - then you have to begin the entire training process all over again! Digimon can only go up to the ultimate level in this game, which is difficult enough to obtain but they leave out mega-level - I assume because at the time it came out, mega-level Digimon had not appeared in the anime series yet.

Some of the enemy Digimon are under a trance causing them to be evil and when you defeat them, you free them and they return to the main city in the game and set up various things that benefit you - like a Centaurumon clinic to treat a Digimon who's afflicted with an illness.

The game is fun but limited in that you're constantly running back and forth, retraining your partner, and most of the time is spent hoping you can actually train the Digimon properly and get it to Digivolve into something useful. Its very exhausting and item prices are ridiculous as well.

It offers a 2P versus mode where you can save Digimon partners you've had and use them to battle friends and tesk your skills.

Its a decent game and definitely one to try if you're a Digimon fan. Sadly though, despite there being so many new Digimon games, almost all of them have major flaws. You'd think the creators would learn from the past and simply improve and fix things but they always seem to try an entirely new approach which ultimately fails to provide a truly satisfying Digimon experience.

Summary: Digimon World is fun but flawed.