A look back at: Digimon World 4

Not happy. At all.

Not only is this a hack-and-slash RPG, and I don't like the former style of gameplay, but it's not balanced for just a single player. You have a standard experience system, easy to understand, but you basically have to kill, kill, kill and it takes a long time to get to the next level. Good news about level gains is that they restore all HP and MP, perhaps this game's only saving grace. But for those unlucky peeps like myself who are playing single player, the big issue is just how easy it is to get swarmed in levels, especially those who keep spawning in in Zelda-like rooms that lock you in. Some may like it but in the end it will become tedious. Techs and grinding them up are quite important as much as regular grinding, and equipping the right weapons or mods on your Digimon are also important. Only one shot weapon, several blade or blunt weapons, hey I would rather just use the special abilities that Digimon would have, you know? Feels a lot better that way. This game also is basically impossible to do low-level from what I can also notice.

Only four levels, and the enemies and dungeons can prove to be annoying, especially the further you go. It seemed like before I could enter the third world I had to get a Digivolution, and having to do at least two sidequests to get two Digivolutions, one of which involves cleaning house in one particular dungeon in a TIME LIMIT with about 279 foes, isn't that great. Later dungeons are just filled with traps and lock-in rooms, and my experience with lock-ins in Zelda or Doom have taught me they don't have any fun value the more there are.

And then we get to the main thing, the enemies. Starting out in Death Valley, things aren't bad. Bosses are challenging to start, enemies are simple mooks. But hey, one feature this game has a TON of blocking, and enemies can be known to block multiple times and easily counter back. Block rates shouldn't be the high. Dry Land's got the constantly blocking Mummymons and Tyrannomons who have a very broken flame attack. Venom Jungle's Tortomon love to use a spin attack when they are invulnerable and their breath attack comes far too quickly. And then Machine Pit, dear god. Inferimon and their multiplying, and the Raremon have a poison shield and can stop your movement. Did I mention that the poison effect in this game seems to never wear off? And then there's some bosses that are just ridiculous, probably Lucemon is the most tedious, not tough, just annoying when it comes to finally being able to hit. This has nearly all the elements of things that I outright hate, and will be one of my lowest ranked games, at least considering that I had to play this in singleplayer. If we had more characters (heck, even computer-controlled allies would be fine) on your side, this game would have been a whole lot more fun.