Normally, this review would begin with
various comments on the originality (or lack thereof) of the Digimon
property. However, time is short and other matters press, and so Digimon World 2 must receive a somewhat more businesslike assessment.
The first thing to recognize about Digimon World 2 is that it is in fact
very little like the original Digimon World. The first game had much
more in common with Bandai's last monster-raising phenomenon, Tamagotchi
-- raising, nurturing, and looking after your little beasts took up the
lion's share of your time. Digimon World 2, in contrast, features far
more self-sufficient monsters, and presents more traditional RPG
challenges: exploration, combat, character development, and so on.
But is this a good RPG? If you're of the Famitsoid coterie that
considers the Mysterious Dungeon series one of God's finest gifts to
videogaming, yes. If you're anyone else, probably not. Digimon World 2
doesn't take any remarkable advantage of the console it's appearing on,
and in fact lacks any of the speed and portability that makes the
handheld specimens of this genre so appealing.
Gameplay
If you've played something like Chocobo's Dungeon 2 or Torneko: The Last
Hope (or Nethack, for that matter), Digimon World 2's structure should
be fairly familiar to you. As an aspiring Digimon Tamer, you travel the
world in your Digi-Beetle and adventure through simple dungeons,
subduing wild Digimon and ending their depredations. You begin the game
with a single Digimon, but as you progress you can find and tame more
monsters, trade them, and merge them. It's also possible to upgrade and
customize your Digi-Beetle with better defense and support
capabilities.
There's a certain amount of plot and quest structure that arises as the
game progresses, but the vast majority of the game consists of wandering
through the dungeons and fighting other Digimon. Fighting a lot. If
you want to watch middling-quality 3D monster models wave at each other
and fall over amid mostly black backgrounds, this is the game for you,
because there's a LOT of that sort of thing in Digimon World 2. There's
close to 30 dungeon quests, plus a gigantic bonus dungeon, and yowza,
but do they get dull after a while. Progression through the dungeons is
limited by your Beetle's slow pace and limited energy (get careless and
run out of movement power and you're kicked back to the beginning of
the quest), and the game eventually becomes ridiculously hard in the
later levels. Unless you've got an awful lot of patience for the rigors
of Digimon taming, you're likely to grow a little bored.
Graphics
Digimon World 2 uses a mix of realtime and pre-rendered backgrounds,
populated almost entirely with 3D characters. The game's no technical
marvel, but here and there it's given a hand up by the bright cartoon
colors -- there are lots of bright blues and greens and oranges and
yellows, sort of like a slightly lightened sentai show.
The battles and dungeons have very lackluster graphics, though. Many of
the series' less attractive monster designs aren't helped by the
transition to 3D, and the dungeons would probably look better if Bandai had sacked the polygons and made everything isometric 2D -- it would have been in higher resolution that way.
Sound
Not much to speak of in this category. The music is catchy, but that's
about all, and the sound effects offer little aside from the 32-bit
equivalent of bleeps and bloops. Many monsters have some rather amusing
voice-like sound clips that accompany their attacks, though, which are
at least good for the occasional chuckle (like the monsters' shouts in
Persona 2).
Digimon World 2
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