Digimon Survive

I went in expecting a more tactical jrpg type game with tons of level grinding
It's more of a visual novel with a tactical jrpg game added onto it.

While usually i'm not a big fan of visual novels the story is exactly what I would expect from any kind of digimon story.
The game is worth checking out

Well I read that the game pans out to be about 70% VN and 30% TRPG. But it turns out if you play it with skip enabled it's more like 10%VN and 90% TRPG with a much shorter total play time. I know, I know. Some of you aren't going to like that I did that. Well that's too damn bad! I still enjoyed the game without bothering with the visual novel bits!

I want to love this, the story is great(ish). The combats fun.

I like visual novels. I love digimon.

It feels like care was put into a lot of places and a lot of gaps in knowledge or planning were missed. It just doesn't flow well as a visual novel, the controls are very psvita. Some of the animations look like someone learned what the morph tool does, seeing the chins get dragged down and pngtuber style mouths added is just... its not giving love. Just a lot of clunk to charge 60$ for, even if I waited to get it at 20$.

I'll probably finish this off, and I hope digimon continues to do fun and weird things.

Played through one route all the way on switch before. Bought it again to enjoy on PC. Nuff said.

As of writing this I am only first playthrough still 24hrs in. This game is visual novel first then tactical rpg second. With that in mind even knowing I have to run through this game twice for completion, i enjoying it and want to see what happens next.

An absolutely stunning game. Beloved characters, good storyline, choices which matter (more on that below) and an unforgettable atmosphere of survival. The fights are great too, loved the mechanics. Dialogues are great, supplemented with fleshed-out characters, although understanding Ryo remains a difficult task.

Some cons though. Firstly, the game is damn slow, especially when you fight a battle where you start 3-4 turns from your enemy and then said enemy runs even further away for no reason (it will die in one hit). Secondly, the way they handled saving a certain character is absurd - nothing changes between playthroughs and yet we are to believe it somehow impacted things. Finally, the hype for the final battle in a certain route is so long it takes several chapters (not even kidding: go there, talk to them, talk again, proceed one location further and talk to everyone again to hear for the fifth time how everyone is ready).

Overall though - an insanely good game.

I tried really hard to get into this, and I still might try to finish it since I've already sunk so much time into it, but it's just not very good. The decisions don't matter, the tactical combat is very bland, and the story drags on and on and on with every character more or less parroting each other for every new topic of conversation in a cut scene. It's really droll.

The game is effectively a Visual Novel with some Tactics elements, but the tactics elements are... quite simplistic and, frankly, bad. Unless I'm crucially missing something here, you have almost no options: Digimons have 2 attacks, and you have 2 item slots. The item slots can be used either to improve their attributes or to teach a new attack. And then the tactics aspect is just selecting from these 2 attacks, and choosing when to Digivolve (which costs MP/turn). But overall it's a system way worse than pretty much any actual tactical RPG.
The 'capturing' mechanic is similar to Shin Megami Tensei (or some instalments of Persona), which is basically giving arbitrary answers to nonsensical questions entirely based on *vibes*.
Personally, I didn't think it is a good *game*, and it is also not a good *Digimon* game. Other than the playable characters being Digimons and you being stuck in the Digital World, there's so little that actually feels like Digimon.

So yeah I really wanted to like it, but I'd recommend spending your time and money either with a better game in the genre (tactics or visual novel, depending on what you actually want), or Cyber Sleuth/World Next Order for Digimon games.

too much dialog, to little battle. 3h in the game and literally had 3 battles. the way the story is told, with dialog boxes and all is a pain. Would have been better if it was all videos I can just sit back and watch.

It's very story based, but just remember to save at option screens otherwise you'll wind up lost.

for 16 hours of my time and only 1 completion... I would do it again the game had comedic elements i could relate to awe inspiring nostalgia from some of the digimon (or kenogami as they refer them as) and a heartwarming ending in some of the routes with strats i never thought of and some tips at the end of the run which made me hate my choices at times
overall a fun game to have even if you are a pokemon person i would still recommend it to you
10/10

This is 95% visual novel with no substance. There is no game here.

If you like story telling kind, this is good

good DIGIMON

Great.

Game says it supports controllers but it doesn't.

Recommended only if you're a fan of Visual Novels, and Digimon. Can drag otherwise as there's so much dialogue.

It's like an entire season of Digimon -- reminiscent of the original Adventure 01, but much darker in tone.

The tactical battle system lacks depth, but the sprites and animation are stunning. I had fun treating it like an auto-battler game, and making personal goals to collect every Mega Digimon.

This is the Divinity Dragon Commander of Digimon video games.

I regret buying this for full price on its launch. I love Digimon and visual novels, but this one was a bit of a drag for me. The visuals, designs, and atmosphere were nice but the bits of gameplay felt kind of like a cheap mobile game.

The gameplay overall felt like a Danganronpa game, being mostly visual novel aspects mixed with point and click investigations. Then the few battles that give a Fire Emblem vibe to them.

The true ending to this game also cannot be completed in the first run. It's done through a new game+ instead. It's a bit too much of a drag for me to play this over and over and over again to achieve.

Personally I am more mixed on the game, but lean to a soft negative review. There are definitely Digimon fans out there who will love this game but I personally don't find it's price point to be worth it for me.

I'm gonna start this off with a major asterisk
*IF YOU DON'T LIKE VISUAL NOVELS, DON'T BUY THIS GAME*
Now I myself LOVE VN's but they are not for everyone. That being said, OH do I love this game. My only gripe was that there wasn't enough combat but, again, this had more to do with this being a VN first and a strategy RPG second. The visuals are really cool, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and the characters are so complex and fun to get to know. As a diehard Digimon fan, I loved it, but I also think this is removed enough that even newcomers to the IP could enjoy this entry into the overall Digimon catalog.

10/10 love the game think it was great how they put a dark turn on digimon.

good game, but way too many choices and texts.

played part 1 like a year ago, then suddenly had the urge to play it again & haven't put it down since. i'm spending all my free time on survive now

I decided to finally grab this because its on the winter sale for a nice solid 15 bucks which honestly you cant beat. Im a MASSIVE digimon fan since i was young and i knew i needed to atleast try this and im glad i did. Its an adult version of digimon I would say some deaths and stuff and alot of options and different paths to choose and pick which change the story which i really enjoyed. The more i played it the more i got hooked onto the characters and the story and couldnt stop playing another hour or another. Overall for a digimon expierence its kind of like your watching an anime but you are able to make the choices. The combat was def pretty fun also. I highly reccomend for anyone who just loves digimon and is an adult now this will give you a good fix. Took around 20 -22 hrs to beat the full story. Even when you beat it can always go back and do the other options for story and achivements or whatever ur into. i give it a good solid 8/10 of digimon games i have played and i have played them all. It 100 percent kept me busy for about 2 days nonstop couldnt get away from it needed to figure out what was gonna happen and where the story went!

Plot wise, it is a good game
A little bit typical Digimon starting of how everyone gets to evolve one by one, but that's all right to me
Love how they presented the whole atmosphere

Gameplay is good, plus point on auto-battle

The game rely quite a lot on dialogues and selection choosing, and this is where I need point out that
The English translation is so localise that they are no longer translating the original meaning of the lines
That includes in distorting the characters personality and this is one of the parts that I find annoying

Changing the languages required to reset PC system's language, another extra step to do

Good story and game play so far and I am excited to see where it goes!

la verdad es un muy juego y sobre todo el ost de la pantalla de inicio es de lo mejor <3 EL juego es visualmente hermoso y con una buena historia

I just went through all 4 endings and I'd say that it's a great game! As someone who loves both VNs and the Digimon Adventure series, I enjoyed the game and storyline. It IS pretty slow-paced and can get redundant with its inefficient way to get all endings (it requires you to pretty much play the beginning/middle parts of the game twice and replay the whole game again for the true ending). There were also a lot of moments where you'd catch on to twists faster than the characters do and it may get annoying to some.

But overall, it has a solid story and a memorable cast of characters! Each characters have their own goals, arcs, and even those who seemed useless at first ended up having a great character development! I've gotten pretty attached to these characters. Also, wrathful ending best ending ngl lol

Despite all of its flaws, I genuinely like the game! I'd love to have another Digimon game like this!

The true definition of whether you hate it or love it. For me personally I love this game. Yeah you're right about first 2 hour gameplay, this game felt boring and repetitive. But after watched "Karma" thing for the first time, game felt more developed than you have imagined. I know after you finishing first playthrough you felt bad about your self, mad, and sad at same time. But please, give it a try for second playthrough especially if you're aiming for "True Ending". At the end all i can say is it totally worth your time and your money. *PS. sorry for grammatical error. I'm not so good at English, but i'm trying to write this with my heart content.

This Is The Results Of A Digimon Game Mixing Elements Of Horror, Life is Strange, And Danganronpa

8/10

Game is fucking amazing. Peak Digimon, and peak writing.

It was better than I expected. Coming from someone who has played Pokemon games it’s a nice change of pace. The darker tones are also a plus. This game already has me hooked on the universe of Digimon!

I like the gameplay and story, it's actually a good take on Digimon, but neither of these have get any breathing room from the VN-style conversations. Every conversation is just super slow with a lot of repetition and a lot of slow reactions jumping from one character to the next. There's never more than one character on screen in VN mode and the camera sluggishly pans through each person just so they can say 'auuugh!' or something. I don't mind visual novels, but they don't have to be like this.

This is my personal opinion - i thought this was the worst choice i have ever made. Even months later this game makes me furious, when i think about it. Yes i had a Bad Ending.

Let's get to the why:

Its less a "Tactical RPG" then a Visual Novel - Babysitter Simulator with pain in the Neck Characters.
- the numbers of Digimons are very limited
- the Story is - A Story! For those who came for the Tactical RPG part (The Skip button is your friend)


I really think of something good to say about this game, but even then there is nothing coming to my mind.
I cant Remember how much i paid back then, but it was definitely not worth it.

It is a story-heavy and slow game, so be prepared for that. The tactical battles are on the simpler side, but pretty fun.

If you're looking for a great Digimon story, you'll find one here, and the game looks really good too. Some people say it's too slow, but a good story needs well-developed characters, and that takes time. I believe the story wouldn't work if it weren’t a slow burn.

That said, I do agree that the game could use some quality-of-life improvements. The game has multiple endings, and the point where the main story branches out could have been handled better. So you don't have to replay like half the game to get there. Sure, you can save at that point, but there are elements you can only access in one route or that are easier to obtain in certain routes, which makes it a bit of a hassle.

To improve the gameplay experience, I would recommend save scaming your character approvals, and if you’re aiming to "catch" a Digimon, take advantage of the fight restart function to make it easier.

Regarding the T-RPG mechanics, in my experience, the best ones either don’t give you much room to grind, or the challenge lies in figuring out how to power up quickly (like in Disgaea). This game doesn’t really offer either of those options. It doesn’t even have different class types like most T-RPGs, and while there’s a damage triangle and elemental advantages, you don’t really feel compelled to think about it much.

So, battles tend to go like this: put all stat ups into main Story Digimon, use the talk movement skill on the movement digimon -> kill treasure chests -> go full power - auto fight -> grab a snack

It feels like the game just needed a little more time to become more than just a good story. Every time I see the evolution of one of the main Digimon, I wonder why one of the other evolutions isn’t the main one—it just makes more sense and looks better in terms of animation. It almost feels like some Bandai executive stepped in and made the game worse.

i bought this game knowing it was a visual novel and look, im enjoying it.

Gameplay:
+ Visual Novel with turn-based tactic
+ Capturable enemy digimon, evolve and enhance with item
+ Post game dungeon for challenge and access to unique item

Story:
+ Has multiple ending
+ Featuring relationship level and branch in digimon evolution

For achievements, you will need multiple playthrough and some of them quite a pain such as collecting all digimons as some of them locked in certain story route or rare encounter.

Personal theory for one of the ending:
Moral route ending is a timeline where "digimon" term appeared and the start of what digital monster is. Both world still split and digital medium is where human and digimon can connect with each other.

If you think this is a happy Digimon game with no consequences to your choices... you are wrong.

A tip going into the game (and probably for life)... Be there for your friends, you never know what they might be going through.

Originally posted on Dragon Quill. Comments are enabled there.

Digimon Survive is a visual novel/tactical RPG with horror elements. Despite being largely unimpressed with Digimon’s catalogue, I decided that sounded interesting enough to give it a shot.

Let me tell you, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game whose mechanics were so at odds with its narrative. This thing is a train wreck.

I am 99% certain this was not originally a Digimon game. The digimon aren’t even digital; they come from a standard fantasy spirit world that has existed for millennia, rather than the internet. The word “digimon” in fact is never used in the script (outside of one ending that awkwardly tries to justify it); they are instead referred to as “beast gods”. The whole thing honestly reads like Digimon fanfiction; they seemed inspired by many of the core elements and themes while trimming details they didn’t care about as much.

That said, I’m not sure Digimon was the first franchise they approached. Many aspects seem strongly inspired by Shin Megami Tensei, especially Devil Survivor. There’s a digimon recruitment mechanic that’s straight out of SMT, a random OOC bad ending that’s straight out of Persona, and the alignments are literally referred to as “Law”, “Neutral”, and “Chaos” in the game’s code. A whole bunch of things are weirdly similar to Devil Survivor, too: they’re not just both isometric tactical RPGs, they also both feature a world map and a time management mechanic (complete with “free battles” that don’t advance time).

This should be a good thing, because I loved Devil Survivor. Unfortunately, the developers did not understand that you can’t just transplant a game’s mechanics into a completely different narrative and have it make tonal sense. DeSu’s mechanics were extremely well-integrated into its narrative, but here they just undermine and confuse the narrative at every turn.

The ability to instantly travel across the map whenever you feel like it fundamentally does not work with a horror isekai framing. You can’t tell me it’s super important we rush to Point B to rescue Character X from certain death but also I can take all the time I like turning over every stone in the woods for secret items or fighting random encounters. Definitely the worst aspect is the tiny locations, because every single time the story needs to make a scene change you’re booted to the world map and allowed to dick around wherever you want, which atomizes the pacing. But I think what frustrates me the most is that the time management mechanics are completely inconsistent: You’re often railroaded into story-critical bottleneck events during “free time”, and sometimes you’ll have limited actions even during segments that don’t explicitly have limited activity points. The game absolutely should have kept you on rails outside of downtime segments. I suppose the issue with that would be that you couldn’t grind before boss battles, which brings me to my next issue…

This game should not have had a recruitment mechanic. It’s clearly only there because this is a mons game so you gotta catch ’em all, regardless of how little sense it makes. You can’t have a narrative where characters constantly freak out every time they see a digimon and act like it’s a mystery which ones they can and can’t trust and also let us recruit unlimited numbers of hostile digimon as a side gig. It’s even possible to recruit generic digimon that are the same species as digimon characters in the narrative, which is deeply weird. It also undermines the whole ANYONE CAN DIE thing when generics can fill in for the latest casualty — there’s no actual sense of dwindling manpower. The game really needed to be trimmed down — if the only battles were story-based and your party was limited to the main characters’ digimon, that would both be easier to design for and provide better ludonarrative synergy.

Not that it would have helped much because the battles are also garbage. DeSu was an absolute banquet of rich tactical depth and fun, interesting maps; Digimon Survive feels like Baby’s First Tactical RPG, full of empty, boring maps that are just frustrating to navigate. There are rarely useful choke points — you know, the cornerstone of all strategy in tactical RPGs — despite the game also featuring not just backstab but sidestab mechanics, so most battles feature you and your opponent dancing behind one another for backstabs, turning that mechanic into a farce. There’s also little in the way of customization (the thing responsible for DeSu’s aforementioned rich tactical banquet) — by default digimon only get a melee attack and their signature move, with the option of adding two whole other skills! …If you neglect stat-boosting and status-resistance equipment, because they compete for the same slots (of which there are two, I feel I must reiterate). This means that for the most part strategy is limited to fielding the best type matchups and throwing your strongest moves at the enemy. That’s right, despite being a tactical RPG it has about as much tactical depth as the most generic of jRPGs, but with the addition of forcing you to waste five turns crawling over to the enemy with your snail-like movement speed.

But okay, it's a visual novel, surely at least the story is good? No. Kotaku described the game as “[feeling] like reading over the shoulder of someone who’s taking too long to turn the page,” and BOY HOWDY do I second that. We have to sit through the digimon peanut gallery parroting everything the humans say followed by the idiot protagonist reiterating the entire scene in his internal narration every time the plot progresses an inch. There is so much stupid, pointless, vapid dialogue and it is exhausting. I really hope it was filler dialogue they meant to replace in a later draft, because if not… Jesus.

The story itself is unremarkable. Middle school students get isekai’d into the Digimon — sorry, “Kemonogami” — world and take ages to accomplish even the most basic tasks because they insist on spending half of each day doing nothing. Some of them die stupidly, then there’s a damsel-in-distress plot rendered incoherent by the translators’ belief our dumb American brains will explode if we see the word “miko”. (“Shinto” and “magatama” are fine though.) The other world supposedly needs to eat kids to sustain itself, but actually it just needs belief, so you’d think it should let the kids go to spread more stories about digimon, but it doesn’t, because ???. The solution to this is to spread stories of digimon on the internet, which is why they become known as “digital monsters” in this continuity even though that makes no sense.

As with so many YOUR CHOICES MATTER games, your choices do not matter. The first two deaths can only be averted on new game plus because we have to inflate this game’s playtime as much as possible. The game eventually splits into different finale routes based on the (completely nonsensical) moral choices you make throughout the game, but the results have almost nothing to do with your choices, you’re just arbitrarily railroaded into different events based on how many alignment points you have.

The game is also weird about women, unsurprisingly. It’s much, much better than previous Digimon games — the girls aren’t sexualized and there are few waifumon — but that only brings it up to baseline sexism because the bar is at the Earth’s core. The affection system shows a very shallow and dehumanizing understanding of what women want, and one of the few waifumon is given to… the sexual abuse victim. Yes, really. Her boobs jiggle.

Long as I play until end, this game good story, and nice for killing time.

7.5/10

Unfortuntaly I think the game is a bit dull and the battle system is annoying. I don't have it in me to finish the game and I really love Digimon.

The collectible search is very distracting and meaningless.
At first i thought if it is a visual novel + some tactic games it would be quite a cute thing like some visual novel mobile game.
In fact, the searching has ruin everything.
I cant help but forced to repeat that process and ultimately it strayed me from actually playing and read the story.
So I stopped playing this game.

Digimon Survive is amazing, and a wonderful addition to Digimon lore

Such an amazing game!!!! Its really worth it for those who enjoy seeing the story and characters of a game. Gotta confess that this is my favorite Digimon game at the moment. Such a beautiful artwork and music. It goes less from the digital style of Digimon, but overall its a good game from this franchise :)

This game represents the exact sort of direction the IP should move in the future. There is plenty of respect for the original premise and tone while also definitely catering to the original fans who are now approaching or entering our 30s.

Characters die, and they die in uncomfortable, brutal ways. If this were a fully realized RPG, by which I mean with animated cutscenes rather than what is already admittedly charming visual novel scenes, this game might actually be rated M.

No punches pulled, the fantasy aspects fully leaned into. Excellent characters.

The writing is so good that I felt compelled to get a legit copy after beating the Jack Sparrow Edition™

great story and fun rpg game

Just got to the first boss fight and can say that so far I am really enjoying the game! I know there are a few recent mixed reviews so I'd like to give my thoughts on the game . .

game-play:

I believe if you understand that the game is largely focused on the visual novel genre you wont be disappointed. The story is good, the point and click style exploration feels very seamless, and the tactics style battles are fun. The battles do offer lots of options for people who wants a faster experience. You can increase battle speed and turn off animations to make them go by quick. They also offer difficulty settings so you can really customize how they run to fit how you want to play yourself. I like finding hidden battles and seeing what digimon are hanging around the area, trying to collect them is challenging but will be fun

visual novel aspect:

On the visual novel aspect itself I think it is a great addition to the genre, the art is beautiful and I really like all the characters already, even ones I didn't think I would like. They add enough things to do that make the story feel immersive and fun, I don't regret getting this game at all. If you are looking for something like Pokemon or that kind of game then I would probably not completely suggest this Digimon game over Cyber Sleuth, but if you enjoy good story telling and tactic style fights you will enjoy this one

I hope this helps anyone unsure if the game is for them or not! This game goes on sale very frequently so I suggest waiting for a sale if you want to pick it up