Digimon World is a role playing adventure game developed and published by ‘Bandai Namco‘. It came out 1999 on the PlayStation 1. If you mention this game, a good number of people would know this game. Digimon World is a serious game that clearly wasn’t developed for children even though it said 3 and over on the game case. Why? It’s definitely one of the most difficult and cryptic games. Let’s take a look.
Let’s start of by saying we really like this game and spent many hours back in the day playing it. It’s fun and brings back memories. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s cryptic and difficult. The story of Digimon World is… well they don’t really tell you much. Let’s be honest, who was playing this game when they were a child and knew what was going on? What you do get told is that the island is in danger, Digimon have lost their memory and that you have been pulled into the Digimon world by Jijimon to help. So you must go around and bring Digimon back to the city, File city. That’s it. Get to it. We don’t know who the villain is and you won’t find out more information until way, way later in the game. So even the story is sort of cryptic.
You start off with either a Argumon or Gabumon depending on whether you selected day or night as a preference. You have an empty backpack and your one Digimon. What we will say is that Digimon World was ahead of it’s time. It basically was open world. You can literally go almost any in the game from the start of the game. You could reach the dino region, grand canyon area, the beach and more bit once you get over a special bring in the canyon you can truly access almost everywhere. What you do end up doing is going to the gym next door. This gym is the place you’ll spend most of your time really and is the most essential place as it’s here where you can train your Digimon. Your Digimon like enemy Digimon have stats: HP, MP, offense, defense, speed, brain. It’s quite obvious what these stats do, except for defense. Does defense determine how likely your digimon will block attacks or reduce damage from enemy attacks? That was never explained. Each time you do a training your Digimon’s respective stat will go up by a set amount and will cost you 1 hour of in-game time. We remember spending all day in the gym just boosting our stats to get a strong Digimon. Eventually when enough time passes your rookie digimon will digivolve into a champion. Yes there are five classes: baby, in training, rookie, champion and ultimate. sSo simply, train, digivolve be strong enough to explore the island, find digimon to bring back to the city and win your battles. Now let’s get to the complex stuff.
The most complex thing is the digivolution and the mechanics surrounding it. You get a few clues but ultimately you don’t know what to do. Numerous gamers have admitted that they didn’t know what to do either. In the official booklet you get some information on how to get argument to merman, monochromon and greymon but that information doesn’t feel accurate at all as we tried but never got a greymon. You always get a champion digmon but not always an ultimate digimon. Ee remember seeing our champion digimon die and fade away so many times and not know why. They were healthy, no virus, good stats and little to no care mistakes. Turns out the other factors are number of battles and your digimon’s weight. How are kids suppose to know and get strategic with all this information. For example to get let’s say Megadramon, you firstly need all your stats to be high, battle many times we think 15 times minimum (again not sure) weight must be around 50-55. Some digmon is said to require care mistakes. This doesn’t make sense since the whole game trains you to avoid making care mistakes but you’re suppose to know to have a few for certain digimon. Not fair. Even when you met the criteria for an ultimate (well you think you do) at times your digimon still just fades away. You don’t even get to know why. Just try again and hit the gym. Now that X35 Earthwalker is older he has gotten ultimates far more consistently like 3/5 times but that’s because of additional information and what we learnt online which wasn’t really a thing back then.
Another complicated thing is why does your champion sometimes digivolve into Numemon. Now yes we know you can get him with care mistakes but we remember times when we didn’t get care mistakes but still got him. Maybe we are mistaken since that was years ago. Numemon is disgusting, weak, gains less from training and everyone hates it and doesn’t want it. It serves no purpose… or does it? We know there’s a suit that if you bring Numemon to, he and only he can slip into it, instantly becoming an ultimate digimon with some serious power and you need that digimon to enter the toy mansion. So even trash has it’s use and this trash digimon has a completing game essential use but what kid would know to do that? You avoid getting numemon. Numemon can become Sukamon who is also trash poop digimon and even shaped like poop. It’s also weak but get this. Sukamon can become etemon only if it has high stats like 400 offense and speed. It also must have a weight within 10-20 and battled more than 40 times. Remember that sukamon is naturally very weak and has a lame starting move, so naturally players avoided fighting with him as he struggles badly. How is a kid suppose to figure the out and know to battle with it 40 TIMES! In defence of the two trash digimon, if you get their stats high and give it certain filth techniques like quick poop throw and the giant poop technique, they can actually be quite tough and fast enough to interrupt the attacks of stronger digimon. Remember that. They are trash but aren’t complete trash.
Next is the techniques. You start off with either ‘spit fire’ for Argumon or ‘sonic jab’ for gabumon. Both honestly good moves. The game does tell you that you can learn new moves through training the brain and battling but that’s it. When raising the Digimon brain stat, you have a small chance of learning a move when you pass 50. For example when you raise your brain to pass 150, 250, 350, 450, 550 etc, there is a SMALL chance you’ll learn a random move that your digimon can perform. It’s basically random, you may not learn anything at all from 0-950. The easier way to learn is to battle. This also isn’t explained. We don’t exactly know what determines if you learn the move or not. It’s random really. Do you learn the move when you get hit by the attack, block the attack or they just do it, do it a certain number of times it’s not clear nor explained. We have had matches were we successfully block a move three times or more and still not get a move. Twice we learnt a move from the enemy even though that enemy never got to do the move. They just about started the process or animation for the smallest fraction of second but got hit. Literally, Tyrannomon learnt red inferno and Leomon learnt war cry first time even though the enemy never got to do the move. We didn’t even know they did the move during the match we just saw “red inferno learnt” at the end and was like “wait what? How? Oh well we’ll take it”. We once with Leomon first and then carried over with Andromon faced the ice ogremon in freehand near the top where there’s three of them many many times in a row to learn the move buster dive. We faced them individually over 20 times! We got hit by buster dive countless times, blocked it many times and still didn’t learn it. We eventually did but took forever. So look at this, it took us over 20 battles and getting hit numerous times to learn buster dive but learnt red inferno and war cry instantly, first try even though the enemy didn’t get to do the move once.
Next is how you get certain digimon to join the city. This is probably the most cryptic for sure. Don’t listen to those who lie online saying they beat Digimon World when they were 8 or 9 etc. They are being stupid and lying. Some of these digmon are cryptic. You have some like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon who only show up in specific rooms and no one tells you where they are. So just look around and explore right? Not that simple as they only have a 3-5% (We think 5) to spawn in that room when you enter it. This means if you never knew they were there in the first place you will walk past an area that already has digimon in it thinking nothing of that area. It’s literally based on chance. Hows a kid suppose to know that you have to go to this specific place and keep entering and leaving until they show up. When you first play the game you don’t even know they exist. X35 Earthwalker remembers the first time encountering Pixiemon. He was intrigued and surprised as he never saw it before. Talked to it and said it’s an ultimate digimon. He knew it must be strong but wanted to give it a try with his champion digimon and recovery items. Pixiemon destroyed his digimon easily. It wasn’t even a fight… it was abuse. He did get revenge on pixiemon though. Another cryptic digimon is fridgimon which will only show up if your digimon is sick and in a certain room in freezeland. Not only that but your digimon needs to either be a baby, in training or specific fire type digimon like greymon, tyrannomon, argumon etc. How are you suppose to figure that out? First of all Digimon World teaches you to never let your digimon get sick and if it does, you cure it straight away with the medicine item or head back to file city quick with autopilot to go to centarumon. If your digimon stays sick for too long, it will literally die and lose a life. If anyone says found it by chance… we don’t believe you. That means you are saying you happen to have a baby or in training digimon in freezeland which if dull of powerful and dangerous digimon who would destroy you so there’s no reason to bring them. Or you had a digimon, went to freezeland just happened to get sick in the right room and that digimon happens to be a fire type and the right specific fire type? Nope don’t believe you. Digimon don’t get sick naturally really, unless they consume an item that warns you that it could cause sickness , so normal players avoid those items. Second when sick you cure them immediately or auto pilot back to file city so you wouldn’t be there for a while to trigger the event. We skeptical today. There are many digimon to get that are cryptic.
Lastly let’s talk about difficulty. Digimon World is a very hard game. The first digimon you encounter in native forest aren’t strong at all and you can beat most of them comfortably with your first digimon. When you get to the jungle, dino region and mount panorama they get tough and require a strong digimon to beta. When you get to freezeland, misty trees and especially factorial town the digimon there are extremely strong and should be avoided. There was a platinum sukamon (or silver) which had over 4000 HP! Wow! There are many digimon with over 3000HP with some brutal attacks. You need an ultimate digimon at some point to really make it far or a very strong champion with good moves and lots of healing items. Some battles are to get digimon back to the city are brutal. Facing ultimate digimon like Pixiemon, mamemon and metalmamemon are terribly hard fights as they have over 5000 HP and even moves that can do over 1000 damage. Then you have didigmon like Greymon, Airdramon and etemon who surprise attack you without warning and either catch you off guard with a few items or a baby digimon or deal unpreventable damage upon ambush. You have no warning that they are coming. Some digimon like ogremon forces you to fight three on one. Gururamon fights you twice. It ain’t easy out here. Your best bet is to have an ultimate digimon. We’ll too bad to those who played this game back in the day as kids because we couldn’t get ultimates unless by pure chance. We use to try avoiding every digimon we came across to prevent using recovery items. There also wasn’t a well known way of making money in Digimon world. You got money from battle or selling items. Now there are good strategies. You can bring your digimushroom to the trading moyjamon in freezeland to get medium recoveries which you can trade with another to get s def discs which can be sold for 2000 each. So 15 mushrooms = 15 medium recoveries which = 15 s def discs which when sold = 30000. Or you could sell your cards to that giant frog creature in the gecko swamps and use your points to get super recovery for 20 points which sells for 1250 each.
Overall we enjoyed Digimon World. It’s a game from the childhood days. Even before having a memory card for the PS1, seeing how far we could get in a Saturday. Learning the techniques to see what’s out there. This was difficult and unfair in a number of ways but was a to of fun too with lots to do. This game was RPG, open world, adventure and very deep and detailed and it was released back in 1999. It was ahead of it’s time. We have seen some people do a whole play through but clearly are using online guides and all always go to start of with greymon to get metal greymon to get skullgreymon which is boring and not relatable. Too much copying. We have the most fun playing it ourselves. This game is available still and we suggest you give it a try. Just know that training in the gym is a grind but there are ways to speed up training like hawk radish, training manual and certain digimon you invite to the city. No two playthroughs are the same so try it and have fun. Now Digimon World may have bee fun and ahead of it’s time but even it is nothing special when compared to… the ‘Earth Walk!’
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