Was Digimon Survive Worth It?

Another group of kids teams up with their monster partners to take on a threat to the Digital World. Was Digimon Survive worth it?

Background

Digimon Survive is a visual novel game with some horror elements and a basic Strategy RPG attached. It’s the most basic Digimon premise: kids are in an unfamiliar world and have to fight their way back home with their new Digimon. As you may have guessed by the title, there is some character death, which raises the stakes.

Fair warning, this is not a JRPG like the Cyber Sleuth series. If you can’t stand visual novels, then this game isn’t for you. If you can’t stand SRPGS, it’s not so bad – there’s an autobattle feature that seems pretty competent.

What does Digimon Survive do well?

The game does a good job of keeping tension high. I found myself going into each new story beat with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

Most of the characters are written well, and the game does a good job of showing how the stress of the situation wears on the kids (and their Digimon). Unlike, say, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I genuinely looked forward to seeing interactions between villains.

New Game Plus is when the game really shines, as you’re actually able to make the changes to keep certain characters from going off the deep end.

The Digimon selection is pretty small, but features some uncommon picks, and it’s great to see some canon evolutions (by this game’s standards) subvert expectations.

Imitation done well

Much in the same way that Cyber Sleuth was a Megaten game in all but name, this ratchets it up by literally using the same alignment system. The routes in this game are Moral (red, neutral, vaccine-types), Harmony (green, law, data-types), and Wrathful (yellow, chaos, virus-types). The dialogue options will change color to indicate which is which. There’s also a true route that is available on subsequent playthroughs.

The game tells you exactly when the routes split, and even encourages you to save your game. No guesswork for routes is great! You can also see your progress with building character affinity and route points in the menu at any time. Don’t be afraid to savescum for the correct dialogue choices. Keep in mind that your final evolution is tied to the route that you choose, not your moral/wrathful/harmony scores.

What could Digimon Survive do better?

There aren’t a ton of different areas, so the background music gets stale.

Much of the game feels like it’s on rails, and has the issue of “say the same thing three different ways for the same result.” You do gain the ability to change some events in New Game+, but I can understand not wanting to sit through a lot of the same dialogue more than once.

Building an Army

Recruiting Digimon isn’t terribly difficult. You can restart battles if negotiations go south, and species responses are set in stone. However, simply finding some Digimon is an incredible pain. If you’re looking to complete your pokedex, then prepare to be annoyed at hunting for some of the more iconic rookies, like Gabumon. Overall availability of certain mons is random, and certain mons only show up during certain chapters or routes.

Item Issues

The Digimon partners will evolve as part of the story, but realistically you’ll be relying on the free Digimon a lot. There were many battles during the campaign where I only had Agumon and my free mons, and I was glad I’d taken the time to train them.

However, the free mons need specific items to evolve, and those are in pretty short supply. You’ll find yourself looking for certain mons to shake down for evolution items. I stocked up on items to evolve to the perfect/ultimate level pretty easily when I ran into a bunch of Zudomon, but I couldn’t readily source other evolution items until after the route split.

The additional skill items are also a pain to track down. My general suggestion is always take a chance to talk to friendly digimon during exploration sessions, and open all the chests in battle. Some of these additional skills are quite good, and it’s the only way to add to your moveset.

Bad End Bummer

At the route split, you have a bad end option. It’s not much of an end, as it doesn’t lead to a new game plus, just a game over screen.

Translation and Dialogue Polish

There are consistent spelling and grammatical errors. Some of the dialogue options for building affinity are borderline nonsensical, which makes me wonder if they were haphazardly translated. Character pronouns will flipflop between successive lines of dialogue. At one point, you have an option to interact with a wild Digimon, and the wrong name is displayed on screen. This isn’t anything new for Western fans, as Cyber Sleuth was also rife with translation errors.

The Guilmon DLC Debacle

The original Cyber Sleuth had some great mons (BlackWarGreymon and Kerpymon Black) locked behind limited access DLC. This game goes one step above that and locks the Guilmon line behind early access/preorder availability.

If you preordered this game, you should have gotten Guilmon. However, it wasn’t that simple. Retailers didn’t send out codes. I spent the better part of a week communicating with Gamestop and Bandai until I finally got a code.

The Tacked-on SRPG

Here’s the elephantmon in the room. The strategy RPG aspect of this game is incredibly basic. It’s boring at the best of times, and mildly annoying for the rest of it. There’s no talk-no-jutsu in this game, you absolutely have to fight. I’ve played scores of SRPGs, and have even reviewed quite a few. Here are my principal gripes:

• Digimon only have two attacks
• You have to choose between stat stick equip items or additional attacks
• Most Digimon have pitiful move speeds
• Most enemy Digimon are content to let you slowly walk up to them, which means you get to tank attacks for a few turns.
• Friendly evolved Digimon have an upkeep cost – thematic but annoying

Was Digimon Survive fun?

For all its faults, I enjoyed Digimon Survive, but take that with a grain of salt since I’ve been a fan of the franchise for 20 years.

Is Digimon Survive good value?

Aside from the preorder DLC, there’s no additional content. The base game is a lengthy experience with a lot of replayability depending on how much you want to collect, and how invested you are in the different routes.

Who is this game for?

Digimon fans who are looking for a more grim take on the series will enjoy this, if they can accept the janky fusion between the Visual Novel and SRPG aspects.

Was Digimon Survive worth it?

Sometimes you can mash two ingredients together and the result is greater than the sum of its parts. This isn’t the case for Digimon Survive. I appreciate the effort in trying to craft a darker, more mature story, but not at the expense of the monster collecting/raising/battling features that the franchise is explicitly known for.

As a Visual Novel, Digimon Survive is fine, interesting even.

As an SRPG, Digimon Survive is awful.

Think of Digimon Survive as being one of the failed fusion dance results from Dragon Ball Z. This game spent way too long in the oven to come out being this underdone. It’s sad to see this IP get mismanaged. Digimon Survive was not worth it, at least not at full price. Even if you’re a huge Digimon fan, wait for this game to go on sale.

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