Developer: Bandai & B.B. Studio
Publisher: Bandai
Genre: Role Playing Game
Platform: PlayStation
Release Date: 27 July 2000
Hmn... What to say about this game.
So... I decided to go back to my PS1 and play a few games from back in the day and the first one I played was this one... Digimon World 2.
It's really not as good as child me remembers if I'm honest but we'll get to why as we continue.
Let's start with the setting and the story because it's the easiest to get out of the way first.
It's set in a world where both Digimon and Humans live and the Humans battle bad Digimon with their own tamed Digimon.
The Humans have created a base of operations where they train up and deploy tamers to destroy bad Digimon throughout the world.
Yeah, you actually Destroy them. You go out into the field, looking for boss Digimon and their henchmen and then just straight up kill them all with your own Digimon...
Other than that there really isn't much else to the story.
The tutorial is set around you being a Tamer in training and you're being taken through your last mission before you receive a license and can accept missions.
After that, you're on your own.
But since they saved money on an intricate story line, surely the game play would be more flushed out, right?
Nope... it's more primitive than it's predecessor.
Like, a lot more primitive.
In Digimon World you had the ability to free roam the island and dig into the game at your own pace. You got to explore and find things as well as failing a lot and learning about the game and the island.
In Digimon World 2 However, you only have to learn about what your Digimon does, what elements opponents have and what your Digi-Beetle can do.
The exploration is as basic as it can get and the way you navigate to and from places is very similar to how Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale's navigation works.
You have a home hub which gives you access to 7 places, two of which become locked after you choose which faction/team you want to be a part of.
The other 4 are the Coliseum, the Tamer's Club, The Digimon Center and the Main Gate. You can wander around these places once inside but there isn't really much to do.
It's mostly just small buildings with store hubs and NPC's which offer various services and sometimes nothing.
I didn't really do much in any of the places because I didn't have access to a lot of the game but the place I spent most of my time in the Hub was the Main Gate, which is the place you set out on missions from.
This is the part which really drove in how bad this game is in my opinion.
You set out by talking to the woman at the hub and she'll prepare your Digi-Beetle to head out into the field.
You choose the location you want to go to and then a randomly generated layout of linear tunnels and connected rooms forms for you to explore.
You then traverse this maze in your Digi-Beetle, navigating a grid based layout in which you can only move one tile at a time. Enemy Digimon follow this same grid and move when you do in an attempt to cut you off and force you into a battle.
The battles then become a turn based RPG like battle in which you face off against a maximum of three enemy Digimon, using your preparation phase to select items and moves to use.
And then an immensely slow and tedious series of battle animations take place where each Digimon, one by one, takes a turn which can also be countered which stops your attack and lets an enemy take his turn.
There's also something called Interrupt which allows the defending Digimon to interrupt your attack with a debuff skill and then you attack afterwards, it's basically a 30 second fight dragged out by the boring cut scenes which lose their appeal very very quickly.
it's not the only thing that is slow though. moving around in general is quite slow since you can only move on space at a time and each space has a start and stop animation and the grid is even in the hubs buildings where you move as your character.
It's just so slow!
The game isn't even interesting enough to counteract that.
It feels clunky and very tedious to get anything done and just to pour salt into my wounds, the Digi-Beetle has a fuel supply and when it runs out you're automatically teleported to the hub again...
I forgot about this after the tutorial because I wasn't paying attention but I had to buy a fuel upgrade to get through the first dungeon and it was only 500 bits but when I failed my first mission, the commander took 1000 bits off of me to repair something I didn't even know the Digi-Beetle had!
She left me flat broke and tried doing this every time I failed, so I had to grind money up to 500 bits then buy it before I hit 1000 bits since she won't take it if you don't have enough.
This has just become more of a rant now, hasn't it?
I don't know what else to say though, the game infuriates me. And my mind always told me I was fond of it but I feel like I may have just been suppressing some dark memories.
It's so basic that even a child could understand the mechanics without actually understanding the words, Albeit children were probably their targeted audience but if it's going to take about a minute per battle phase then what child is going to sit round long enough to even see the next turn?
Again, I rant... But I can't help it, the game hurt me, okay.
If you attack an enemy with two Digimon and the first attack kills the enemy and the second attack just misses... there isn't even any correction in the AI.
Oh yeah, there's also a couple of other rookies who say hello to you and out of nowhere one just starts being mean to you.
No reason for it, he just does it, and then his little follower girl tells you he's just being like that because you're his Rival, as if that makes it fine for him to be mean to me. And then that's that.
Yay... Story(?)
I think that about wraps that up though...
I'm sorry if this is your favorite game of all time and I've hurt you with my words but your favorite game has hurt me with it's existence.
This should not exist between Digimon World and Digimon World 3.
They should have scrapped it and just tried to copy the first one again. It wouldn't have been as disappointing.
See you all next time.
Rhiyous
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