In the event you assume Digimon are an inexpensive Pokémon ripoff impressed by a digital pet toy from the ’90s, you don’t know Digimon. From anime reveals, webcomics, novels, an official buying and selling card sport, and now the buzzy new RPG out of Summer season Sport Fest, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, the Digimon franchise has expanded considerably since its introduction in 1997. Even so, its progress has all the time been adopted by the shadow of Pokémon, with which the whole lot Digimon-related is wrongly in contrast, scrutinized, and ignored.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger may change that. Or it ought to, even with Pokémon Legends: Z-A looming. Based mostly on early gameplay and divulges, Bandai has at the very least aimed to supply a sport for a wider viewers that addresses previous errors. From investing in making the world of Time Stranger really feel alive with cities crammed with digimon to giving a particular consideration when placing 450 creatures within the sport by designing particular animations for every of them, it’s additionally clear the corporate has by no means overlooked how cool Digimon is.
I can’t blame anybody for seeing Digimon as a Pokémon knockoff; the primary season of the Digimon anime aired in Brazil in July 2000, six months after Pokémon debuted, and I do know we weren’t the one nation that skilled the juxtaposition. Each reveals had creatures who befriend children and develop into stronger as they struggle. However Pokémon made creature-taming a part of the worldwide zeitgeist. However the thought behind each couldn’t be extra totally different; the video games particularly mess around with the concept the true world and the DigiWorld exist in several cases. In some instances, people are transported to the world of digimon, in others the digital leaks into the true.
In 1999, Bandai launched the primary sport based mostly on the creatures: Digimon World, a RPG through which we play as Mameo, a child who finds himself in File Island and desires to assist save the place from. As a substitute of a easy journey to develop into one of the best Digimon grasp, which might make it a real Pokemon Pink/Blue rip, Mameo must develop into an equal accomplice for the Digimon. Coaching your Digimon grew to become a thrill — and a big gamble. They’d really feel hungry or must go to the toilet, which was hilariously indicated by the icon of a poop exhibiting above the creature’s head. And even after hours making ready them to digivolve, there was an enormous likelihood of getting a Numemon as an alternative of a Greymon. However studying extra about every Digimon and at last unlocking the varieties you wished probably the most made this sport the epitome of the Digimon expertise.
Picture: Bandai through Polygon
Whereas the Digimon World and subsequent Digimon Story video games are extra conventional RPGs, the franchise expanded enormously into the 2000s; the combating sport Digimon Rumble Area and Digimon Digital Card Battle, a sport based mostly on the primary Digimon TCG, each arrived in 2001. A decade later, Transfer Video games introduced the critters into the MMO area with Digimon Masters, and extra lately Hyde developed the primary Digimon Survive, a mixture of visible novel and grid-based battles. And I received’t even begin itemizing the Digimon cellular video games launched solely in sure Asian international locations.
Most Digimon video games are centered across the thought of combating utilizing the creatures, your mission is to not seize them. As a substitute, Digimon closely emphasizes the bond between people and digimon, working like companions. And even when entertaining our want to have all of the creatures, Digimon video games observe their very own logic and guidelines.
As an idea, DigiWorlds are likely to drive the boundaries between human and nonhuman, machine and natural. You’ll discover cities dominated by digimon who’re dictators; outlets owned and run by digimon. There are factions, just like the Royal Knights, who’ve inside disputes stemming from conflicting ethical views.
Picture: Bandai through Polygon
There are gems littered all through Digimon’s gaming legacy. I’ll all the time make room for Digimon World 3 on each checklist of greatest RPGs. The ever-lasting grind of the Bandai’s sport would check your persistence by forcing lengthy periods of battles in opposition to low-level enemies so you could possibly lastly see Renamon digivolve to Kyubimon. Within the meantime, gamers have been compelled to analyze each nook to determine the following step of the plot and hold taking part in, main us right into a complicated narrative, crammed with twists and turns you couldn’t anticipate. Finally, the story converged right into a climax of world-conflict scale taking you to area. The unsuspecting problem was the appeal.
Two of Bandai’s most up-to-date titles, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Story: Hacker’s Reminiscence, are among the many franchise’s greatest. Though the latter is an enchancment from the previous, they each have up to date the graphics in Digimon video games and include an intriguing narrative. Whereas having a easy fight system and an interesting progressing system, Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Reminiscence inform touching tales about childhood and accepting oneself amid a serious disaster because the boundaries between the digital world and the true one fades.
Picture: Bandai through Polygon
In Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, unlocking highly effective digivolutions requires going by means of a sequence of steps earlier than you meet the minimal transformation necessities. It’s worthwhile to prepare them in farms and feed them particular meals to extend particular attributes. The method additionally entails de-digivolving a digimon to a earlier kind, leveling it up, after which digivolving it once more to extend their stats and max stage cap. It’d appear to be a variety of work — and it’s! — however it’s enjoyable to look at your digimon getting stronger; study all the probabilities you unlock by adjusting their stats; and acknowledge how the sequence stays true to its roots. Epic plot with emotional bits added to an intricate evolution system is peak RPG.
Whereas the tales, battles, and digivolutions make these video games nice, additionally they have their points. Many Digimon video games take too many detours, too many hours to get the place the storytellers need to go. Media.Imaginative and prescient, developer behind the final two Digimon Story video games, has by no means fairly nailed a great steadiness for fight, leading to some surprising and irritating problem spikes. And sure, the entire course of to digivolve a digimon is so lengthy that I would depart Cyber Sleuth open whereas having my Swap in sleep mode so time would nonetheless run and my digimon would hold working whereas I used to be off.
All of the errors and hits from these earlier video games cleared the way in which to Digimon Story: Time Stranger. It took eight years for the Media.Imaginative and prescient group and producer Ryosuke Hara to place this sport collectively and the ultimate product appears to be adequate to shock individuals and be elected as one of the best games in 2025’s Summer Game Fest. The impression left by the demo and the dialog round it led a lot of who by no means touched different Digimon video games to go after a replica of Cyber Sleuth or Hacker’s Reminiscence. However the shock was not unjustified.
Based on Ryosuke Hara in an interview with RPG Site, there was an effort to make use of these years of growth to make the world setting for this sport extra “sturdy”. Time Stranger is bringing the Digital World: Iliad, a spot no different sport has absolutely explored, whereas giving us the possibility to satisfy a legendary group of Digimon referred to as Olympos XII. The sport’s manufacturing worth additionally is clear in beautiful visuals and attention to the systems we’ll work together with as proven in current trailers launched by Bandai. Nevertheless, all this effort is being put upon what has been discovered and developed all through the years with the older video games.
Time Stranger is the results of honoring one’s historical past whereas figuring out when to vary, and maybe the right place to start out exploring this nice franchise and studying about what it has to supply. Like all franchise, Digimon has its flaws, identical to there are nice experiences to have taking part in them. However all of it will proceed to be neglected if individuals don’t cease to attempt becoming Digimon into the mildew of Pokemon. It’s time we give the digital creatures room to indicate their very own colours.
