My Digimon World 4 Review
Character Stuff
Well Digimon World 4 is out and I've played it, but I haven't acquired any new digimon other than
the original 4 that you can start off with (Agumon, Veemon, Guilmon,
and Dorumon). I had no desire to play any of the four because
Dorumon was new, and the tv show made me not want to play the other
3. I mean, Guilmon's ok (I enjoy him calling Takato, "Takatomon", and
having a love for bread and peanut butter among other things), but
the thought of me actually becoming him for a long term RPG was not
appealing to me, personally.
The good thing is, the game lets you name your digimon
anything up to 8 characters long which helped me detach the blue
character I play on the game from Veemon on the tv show. Personally,
I still don't care much for Davis's Veemon, but my blue guy is
awesome! I even enjoyed playing guilmon as well. I admit, I thought naming a digimon was rather strange,
especially since the name didn't have to end in "mon."
Difficulty
The game is extremely hard at the very beginning (at least for playing co-op), but the good thing
is, you don't loose experience points if you die on level one. The more people you play with, the more bad guys they give you to fight (at least in the beginning). Even if you die 7 times in a row, you just have to keep trying until you
level up. It gets easier on level two, but I think it wasn't until I
reached level 3 that the difficulty dramatically changed, and the
game became really fun, especially with more than one person playing (but one player was fun for me too).
The game is like Digimon Season 1 in that it goes from hard, to
possible, to mission accomplished. If you level up some more your
past foes (that once seemed impossible) become easy to beat (you can
defeat some of them multiple times to increase experience points and
tech points), but meanwhile, the game gives you an even harder task
to overcome. Sometimes you just have to level up your character more in order to win. It's just like the digimon song lyrics, "It's getting
stranger and then, it's getting harder to win, it's getting digital
land, it starts happening all over again."
Weapons + Goal + Surprise = Fun
if not, then maybe you don't want to play this game
Granted, there are puzzles you have to figure out (sort of like a zelda game) in order to reach new places and overcome certain obsticles, but the real fun factor (at least for me) is surprise or the unknown, as well as using different weapons. You never know what weapon or item you might find, and although you may acquire a new weapon you may not be able to use it right away. That's where teching up comes in (of course you have to go back to base in order to switch which 3 weapons you carry that you can use). Every weapon is linked to a certain ability and requires a certain number of tech points on that ability for use. The abilities you can tech up are stab, slash, bash, blunt, crush, shot, blast, heal, and one or two more (can't think of names at moment). Gameplay differs depending what weapon you you. Playing with weapons that have the stab and blunt skill are more difficult than the bash and slash skill. That makes it fun (at least for me) because I actually wanted the chanllenge of teching up stab and blunt to see what the weapons were like (at one point- and you get use to using the ability after a while- but as you get weapons that require more tech points, sometimes it changes). You tech up by using a weapon of that ability for a long time. Once you reach a certain number of tech points, teching up becomes faster. Two weapons is much more fun than one, or at least I think so. And of course you don't know what's going to happen next, but that's true of any rpg played the first time through without use of a players guide or other sources.
Other Gameplay
consists of collecting booster packs of 3 cards. The pictures on the cards are hard to see sometimes (mainly the ultamates and megas) because of the cards' size (maybe I just need a bigger tv screen), but you can read the digimon's name as you brose your collection.
You can pick up tons of weapons, and sell them, store them, or use them. Unfortunately, there's only limited space in the bank- 9 pages, and you only get to carry 3 pages worth of items in your folder that is with you at all times. Sometimes running out of space and choosing what to break can be frustrating if you want to keep them all, but you can give items to other players who are playing with you.
You can jump, jump and spin around, do an mp attack, do a spin attack, block, heal yourself, do an attack (a charge attack?) that I can't remember the name of that breaks rocks, etc. in your path easily, and so on...
1 player vs 2+ player
If you don't have a lot of patience, I can see how the menu system
might be frustrating with more than one player as you
have to wait for each player to save themselves, deposit bits into
the bank (if they want to), buy items (if they want to), switch
items, etc. It doesn't bother me that much, and don't think they
could have improved it that much either. Jumping from menu to menu is
quick (split-second quick) unless you are saving your character in
which you have to wait about 5 seconds at a time. What takes time is people
browsing menus, or interrupting the game play by pausing it to change
weapons (out of the 3 in their current arsenal), or pausing to look
at their stats, etc. Sometimes I think I enjoy 1 player more because of this, but letting others have their few seconds,
is just part of being a team and is worth the sacrifice. This is expecially true when it comes to battling the bosses. It is much easier to defeat the boss digimon with more than one player, and can become extremely difficult or time consuming on 1 player. Also if 3 people are playing and 2 get killed, the sole survivor can continue and bring back the other 2 by traveling to a different area (whose enterance or exit may or may not be close by). Moving to a different floor in a dungeon is one example, and then you can continue on with the game instead of
starting over when you deleted. Also two heads are better than one when it comes to solving puzzles; sometimes using a good strategy as a team is the key to success, and I think it would be hard with only one player.
Getting deleted, and bits
When you get deleted it is as if a person only hit the delete key and not shift+delete. Instead of your remaining data going to the recycle bin, part of it stays in the exact place you were deleted and the other (when everyone playing gets deleted) data goes to get reconfigured. You then can use a raise disk at the location of your missing data get your information back (like going to the recycle bin and clicking restore). You only loose some experience points and all of your bits when you get deleted. Bits are currency in Digimon World 4, used to buy weapons, armor boards, and anything else.
Returning to base, and other places
On the floor where Ophanimon is, there are a lot of digi-elves that
explain things. One thing I didn't know at first, had to do with blue
glowing arrows that are on the ground in various different places. I
knew that if I used a gate disk on that spot, I could return to the
base (as I call it- the place where you can save, heal, go to the
bank, shop, etc.) , but you can practically use a gate disk anywhere
to go to the base (even in the middle of a battle). What I
didn't know was that if you used it on the glowing blue arrow you can
directly return to that spot by returning through the emergency gate.
Lasting Impression
All in all, the game fun, but if
you don't enjoy leveling up and equipping characters to accomplish
things, or acquiring and fighting with new weapons and items, then
maybe this isn't the game for you because there is a lot of that. Also some of the tasks might be extremely difficult for just one player, once you get far in the game. You need atleast an hour or two at a time to play this game to get farther in the game (maybe eventually 3 hours, unsure). There are a few (few) minor things that only someone
familiar with the tv show could enjoy, like the way Metaletemon
speaks. If you don't think of him talking like Elvis, then he doesn't
appear to be, but if you do think of it, you can imaging it that way.
July2009- At one point in time I had no complaints, but I haven't played the game in a long time. Dieing, interuption, lack of play time, starting over a long difficult level a few times, and other interests equaled no one to continue the game with. Although it wasn't completely forgotten, I never aquired the ability to digivolve into something more powerful if that was possible. Maybe I'll play it again someday.
Digivolution Charts Back to Digimon Episode Guide
1st Week S1 Basic Info DRA2 Review