Digimon Survive

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

I just finished the wrathful route of Digimon Survive and I have no interest of playing for the "true" ending. The "game" is more 95% visual novel and 5 % gameplay. The writing in the story was targeted for people who eat glue. It's bad. The soundtracks in the game were the same 5 tracks. In the scene with Aoi dying the soundtrack used was when there was something suspicious going on instead of a tearful track WTF

Great Game !!! Love the monster design and combat feels really good but it takes some getting used to.

Fun if you're a fan of the franchise and would like to see a different take on it, otherwise, play something else... Game takes too long to get interesting and is extremely easy, playing on hard and there is simply no chalenge in this game.

Really slow, both speed the game is running wise and story wise.

Dude i spent more time clicking skip diaglog button than actually playing a game. I want to kill stuff and digivolve into cool shit. I don't want to read. This game is a skip dialog button training simulator packaged as a digimon game. PLS I wish i had gotten a refund when I had the chance. Curse my adhd and my inability to remember things and follow through on them.

I love Digimon and was really excited for this game. Unfortunately the combat system is very simple and slow, and the writing is even slower. Everything feels really padded out in the story so in 9 hours i felt I made very little progress. Wouldn't recommend.

A morale based story game with a tactical RPG battling element tossed into the mix. I love tactical games and the battle style feels very engaging and fun. I love that your decisions and choices can effect how your main Digimon digivolve.

Une ambiance folle de superbes artwork et un game play tactique super sympas. 30h sous tension dans c'est univers bien plus mature qu a l accoutumé

NOT REGRET BUYING THIS GAME FOR DIGIMON LOVER... I'LL GUARANTEE THAT YOU GONNA LIKE THIS GAME

Agumon is love Agumon is life

FUN AND EDUCATIVE EXPERIENCE:)

Unfortunately, while the game tries a lot of new game mechanics, it fails in all fronts.
The main gameplay of the grid combat lacks depth each Digimon only has 1 own special attack and 1 basic attack, using equips the can have additional 2 attacks, the main problem in this, is that best strategy is simply to camp on high ground and span the special attacks, this is the same strategy the bosses use, in this case you have slowly walk to them until the agro, then use the same strategy. The evolution mechanic as potential but again the best move is to simple use the strongest form in the beginning and use items if you get low on energy, staying in weaker forms is way too dangerous. The story starts ok, but you soon realize that the choices don’t matter at all, this story will stay mostly the same until the final chapters. The characters are a bit hit and miss, some are good, but you will have to multiple endings to get their full backstories, until then most of them are just annoying.
Getting additional endings is just a pain, the combat end story being so slow makes this annoying and tiresome.
The game simply doesn't excel in any field.

If you can make it through the exposition its a rewarding game to beat.

a great game a must for all

Took 84 hours to 100% this game (completing all 4 story routes and collecting all 117 Digimon)

I would recommend this to two types of people:

- People who love Digimon, because this game really captures the spirit of Digimon.
- People who love visual novels, even if you’re unfamiliar with Digimon. The story is essentially "the beginning" of Digimon (the opening sequence takes place in 1970 for reference) and throughout the game they aren’t even called Digimon since they aren’t defined as a species yet, except in one of the four endings

The most important thing to note about the plot is the lack of evolved partner Digimon during the written story. There are many instances where you might think, "this could have easily been prevented if they evolved here." Both the humans and Digimon have no idea how evolution works. Evolution just sort of happens randomly, even if the gameplay suggests otherwise. There are no Digivices or in-universe documentation on how to evolve at a moment's notice.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone expecting a serious SRPG. The important fights can feel fun, but are way more about eye candy than actual gameplay

Digimon Survive is a visual novel with dark horror elements mixed in, the writing is genuinely 10/10 for me. It’s hard to praise the half-baked SRPG gameplay elements. If there were a "baby's first Final Fantasy Tactics" this would be the baby's first version of baby's first Final Fantasy Tactics. I played the entire game on Hard mode and only had a single game over. I didn’t need to grind either; I just retried and won. Monster recruiting is a pain, in my opinion extremely unfun, and not very well thought out—you’re better off using a guide. Also, evolve each partner Digimon once to each of their new forms to ensure they’re added to your field guide. Garurumon and Kyubimon are examples you can easily miss

Visually, the game is beautiful. I love the character art during the story, and even though the gameplay is pretty bland, the battle sprites are nice. They aren’t super animated, but they’re fun to look at and represent each Digimon well

The soundtrack is super killer, I’ll be listening to it for years. My favorite track is the evolution theme, which shares a common motif with a few other tracks

You need to play the game at least four times to 100% it. It took me 84 hours from selecting "New Game" to finishing the fourth ending. This is one of those games you 100% once and never touch again

Got Wrathful Ending on 1st blind Playthrough

Decided to check walkthrough guide for NG+

Got curious about the path selection on Chapter 8

Check

Picking "Stay with Agumon" will lead to Wrathful Ending

I literally caused the whole world to chao because I want to stay with Agumon

Will definitely pick "Stay with Agumon" again because he is the best.

Having to click for every single half sentence and expression is the most annoying thing in the world. They could have just made all of them a cut scene and I wouldn't have minded. But sitting there click space over and over just to finish the most basic of conversations is the most brain dead thing ever.