Digimon World 2003

I remember Digimon World 2003 -or Digimon World 3- being one of my last games for the Sony PlayStation that I got in my child years. I was a raging Digimon fan back in the day, I knew every last Digimon’s name from the first and second seasons, all the theme songs, and I even had some trading cards and action figures. When I got this game for my tenth birthday, I couldn’t believe my luck. I never really came far though. It was just that hard of a children’s game. I remember searching through a few cities, and as a result, beating a few bosses just like that. After, I think, a few months I never looked at Digimon World 2003 again…

 

Until just recently when I bought a Sony PlayStation at an internet auction complete with a set of games, DW 2003 just happened to be between that set of games. At first, I was happy. As if being the owner of my youth console wasn’t enough, I was once again reunited with one of my childhood video games. Naturally, it was the first game I tried out on the PlayStation. But now, with my Digimon fanboy-ism having decreased drastically, and with more common sense in its place, I could only bring out a “meh”.

 

The Graphics

When you start the game, (not only the first time, it plays right after the Bandai commercial logo) you’re being presented with a quite pretty-looking CGI movie with lots of actions and explosions. I remember even realizing as a child that this was one good-looking animation. The moans the Agumon, Guilmon and Kumamon make sound like arse, but I’ll get back on that. Anyway, the CGI Is really flashy, but that’s but a small part of what the game has to offer in terms of visuals. When you start a New Game at the main menu, you’ll instantly start out on the streets. Suddenly, the CGI graphics are traded in for colourful sprites. Not necessarily a bad thing and it looks good overall, but it startled me a bit at first. It’s… odd. Anyway, that’s not all. Because not long after that, I had my first battle. This didn’t startle me, it almost gave me a heart attack. The battlefields are generic pixelated messes, the Digimon are often unrecognizable, and the menus are awkward to navigate through. The biggest problem I have with the battle screen is when you transform Agumon into Greymon. Trust me, you won’t like it.

 

The Sound

The music is forgettable. The soundtrack is a mixture of upbeat orchestras, mellow bell sounds, and heavy techno rhythms. I’m a sucker for variety in music (if you’ve read my review for the A Bug’s Life game), but the music in DM 2003 misses the board more often than it hits. Sometimes the music design is even lazy, such as in the lab-areas. There the “music” just consists of bloops and bleeps. I guess that’s done intentionally to capture the feel and atmosphere of computers and data, but somehow… This just isn’t the way to do it. It gets repetitive. It’s actually the reason why I tend to just skip the entire tutorial in the Asuka lab. The sound effects aren’t to be proud of either. Agumon’s Pepper Breath and Guilmon’s Pyro Sphere sound like low-resolution cannons going off, and then there’s the ‘wind’ sound effect you hear after Patamon’s Boom Bubble which… well, just be glad you can’t use headphones on the Sony PlayStation.

 

The Addictiveness

Even though this game is only decent, it still has that certain charm that causes me to keep coming back to this game (every now and then), to keep playing. Aside from regular Digimon battles, you can play card battles, which I found actually a lot more fun. I actually got so hooked to it that I stuck to the first part of the game, just to play card battles with other people, instead of making progress by actually playing the game.

 

The Story

I’ll admit, I haven’t played through the entire game yet, but the plot goes something like this: The Digital World is all but an online game grid (very Pokémon-like), where players get their own partner Digimon, battle others and challenging leaders and becoming the ultimate hot-shot digimon-tamer/fighter. You play as Junior (don’t worry, you can name him whatever you want in the Digital World), a boy who is just about to create an account for himself. But throughout his playtime, Junior discovers that an evil group of people have been tampering with the servers, and now every player who’s currently playing the game, can’t quit (and go home for that matter. Yikes, my mom would freak out if that ever were to happen). So, summarized, you’re playing a game, you beat the baddies, but you learn that this is a lot more than just some game.  It’s pretty standard stuff, but it works.

 

The Depth

Even though the card battles are good fun, I personally can’t find a lot to love in the entire game. The regular battles are the regular turn-based RPG standard; You make your Digimon attack the opposing Digimon, and get their HP gauge to zero.  You can digivolve your Digimon, or make them start out in their digivolved form whenever they start the battle. There’s another gauge, however, that fills up respectively when you hit -or get hit by- the opponent. This is called the BLAST gauge. Whenever it is completely filled up, your Digimon goes berserk, and digivolves into a tremendously powerful form. This is on itself awesome, however… There is one massive flaw. This could happen in ANY battle, whether a random battle in the field against some low-level Digimon, or a boss battle. So, if you’ve been filling your drive gauge before a difficult boss battle, but then encounter one too many random battles… well, you’re screwed, because you’ll BLAST digivolve before the boss. After you used the BLAST digivolved, the gauge will be depleted… entirely… Oh well. At least you’ll be sure to win that random encounter. The standard items are all here. You have HP recoveries, MP recoveries, status enhancers and armour your Digimon can wear to have an advantage in battle. There isn’t much to be found outside of battles. The only thing worth mentioning is that there’s this special Digimon called “Cardmon” which drops trading cards when he’s defeated, but you have to do all kinds of crazy stuff in order to ever find it.

 

The Difficulty

Yikes. Okay, the game starts out fairly easy, and the first battles simple. But quickly ever, the enemies rise in level, and you’ll want to start grinding levels a LOT. At a point somewhere in the middle of the game where you have to switch servers, the enemies just get so strong all of a sudden that it almost caused me to stop playing altogether out of frustration. Luckily I don’t give up that easy. In my opinion, there aren’t enough places to save, either. You don’t save from the pause menu, but by talking to a certain Digimon. Namely Guardromon. He is only found in a handful of places throughout the entire game, mostly in inns in cities and in the middle of nowhere. Accidentally screwing up in a battle and getting defeated and realizing you haven’t saved in a while is very frustrating.

 

By all means, Digimon World 2003 isn’t a bad game. It’s just that I didn’t nearly enjoy it as much as I used to when I was younger. I think it’s mostly because I’ve outgrown Digimon and as such, I’m inclined to treat this game just like I would any other game. Digimon World is a decent game, with the only mediocre thing going for it being its in-game visuals. If you’re still a Digimon fan, or feel like trying out a classic, try out Digimon World 2003.

 

Pros:

-          The basic RPG battle system probably won’t disappoint

-          BLAST digivolution is a ‘blast’, if it happens at the right time

-          A lot of Digimon to fight with

 

Cons:

-          Most of the music is forgettable

-          Digimon and environment textures are butt-ugly

-          The game gets a massive difficulty raise way too suddenly

Hello there, man. .. How are you? .. I'm great! .

This was actually a tremendous review in my opinion, I haven't quite read anything like it. You could say, I'm impressed. I found it really enjoyable to read, it was easy to understand what you were getting at because of all the details and vivid descriptions. You justified your points well and give great evidence to support your points, which I am very glad to see. It reminds me of my method: P.E.E. Point. Evidence. Explain.

I like the fact that you included an introduction, it was descriptive and informative. You gave us memories and experiences in it, buying action figures, getting the game for your birthday etc. However, this is not really needed at the very beginning of a review. A 40-50 word introduction is fine for me, I can easily read that and understand what you're going to review. But, you went into detail of these experiences straight away, it's not really needed, yet it's effective.

I've never seen a review that goes into detail about the animations featured at the start of the game - the title screen and creators of the game. It's always good to see something new and different, I love surprises and thrill, you definitely provided me with this. Thanks! Also, you talked about the battlefields which was brilliant and informative. I actually LOLed at the heart attack sentence. I love comedy in a review.

I love how you used huge words in your review, especially in sound about the atmosphere and feel. I love reading this. How you felt, why you felt like this. It's great to see that in a review! Thanks for adding that in, you definitely earned credit in doing that.

Maybe a little more detail in addictiveness would have been great but it's nothing to get in a fuss about. I won't comment on the story and depth because I'm sure it's going to be similar in every review, but I can say you added a lot of detail and descriptive words in those particular sections, especially depth which should be deep. <- See what I did there?

Your reviews remind me of mine in a way, you build up suspense which is great to see, that is why I use this technique in my reviews, particularly my older reviews of Pokémon games.

Overall, great review, thanks for making it. You should continue making reviews and improve on what I said also. GOOD LUCK!

Dean2k13 : Thanks for the great reply. I'll be sure to keep improving, and I'm sure your criticism will help.

OrdannonsX : Wow, thats a very big review! Very well detailed and easy to read! Keep up the great work!

Great review dude well written too. You went deeply into detail, and it had great depth added on to it. I understood what you meant in the intro as well. I was wondering though. You said it was a good game. Why in the world did you give it a low rating. You don't have to tell me I was just curious that is all. Anyways, it got really interesting when you started the review. I enjoyed reading it. You evan included some background info. I usually look for that in reviews, but most time never find it. Grand job I want to see a lot more  reviews from you.

linkmaster99 : I'll tell you why anyway. I think Digimon World 2003 is a 'decent' game. Not good, not bad either. If you ask me, an overall rating of 6 would still mean the game is fairly good. It's like the lowest of the good scores.

Thanks for the reply.