Whew, put a ton of hours into this, and I did take nearly a month to finally finish it and well I'm not too happy with things. Even the gameplay time maxed out at 99:59 and I'm 100% certain that I took longer.
It's great that Digimon World as a series tries different approaches to gameplay, with the first combining virtual pet with RPG elements which was relatively lukewarm. This game goes for the Mystery Dungeon-esque route, combined with traditional turn-based gameplay and a little dice of that convincing Digimon to join a la Pokemon. Of course, things aren't going to be perfect. The battles in this game are really sluggish to go through. You can certainly not have too much trouble with them, particularly with good strategies, but each attack takes a long time to go from one to the next, and seeing "Attack Missed" is annoying since you don't get to see what happens. Oh yeah, and this goes by the "first Final Fantasy" targeting mechanic, you defeat one Digimon and another that targeted it will always miss the target. So yeah, battles, slow-paced but still requires some strategy.
And then the whole navigating randomized dungeons. I'm okay with this on the whole due to being familiar with some mechanics already. What I'm not okay is the amount of preparation needed for many places you'll be going to. You won't know for sure if you need to have the right equipment to tackle electrical fences, landmines, or bugs that you won't see unless you pressed X for what's in front of you, and it can cost a dungeon run and force you to head back. And just so we're clear, you can only hold so much in your tank for supplies, so even treasure chests can become not useful later on. Early game is the worst at this due to having a measly 8 spaces in your inventory. Sure, it gets better, but that's early game hell for you.
The Digivolution system is also hard for me to even describe, though better than the last game thankfully. I hated the fact that some Digimon essentially cap out, and had to be spliced with other Digimon as something that starts weak, yes, this means of course you have to train new guys up at your own pace, and this adds to the overall time spent and exhaustion I felt at the end of it all. Was it worth it? Eh, I've done this kind of thing lots of times, so probably not. And then this game's plot is really just "get assigned mission, battle boss at end of dungeon, rinse, repeat". Not much in things until the Blood Knights start being invaders and some truths get revealed at the very end of things.
All of this really does amount to an RPG that is so not worth it...but then you get the music, and it's kickass. Seriously, this is some good, good music. Technological, of course, but it keeps the adrenaline working. Early dungeons sound tame, but things get much better. All battle themes are great, the main one is repetitive but not bad, and the boss themes are really gone. The soundtrack saved this game from being worse than mediocre.
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