In 1999, Bandai broke Digimon into the mainstream with the release of its first video game title: Digimon World for the PlayStation. Digimon World was, by any objective measure, a terrible game. The mechanics were incredibly convoluted, punishing, and poorly-explained, glitches abounded, and everything was filtered through a poor translation that just made everything even more confusing. Even with the official strategy guide, we were barely able to muddle our way through to the end.

I loved it anyway, because it was also an incredibly unique game. It was a fascinating blend of open world, town sim, monster-raising sim, and RPG. You were given free reign to explore a huge, fascinating world with tons of secrets and interconnecting parts, and every digimon you recruited contributed to the central city in some way. At the beginning of the story, the city is totally abandoned, with nothing but a sad empty market square; by the end, it is a booming community with a variety of incredible services. Even the digimon that provided only minor or aesthetic additions delighted me; I loved seeing how all of them contributed in their own way.

Unfortunately, this was to be a one-off. The sequels in the series were completely different genres, adopting much more standard RPG mechanics. I’m not sure what they were thinking, because this is Digimon, so it’s not like it has anything going for it but the monster-raising aspect.

So imagine my surprise when I heard there was a spiritual successor to the original Digimon World, using the same mechanics! It was called Digimon World Re:Digitize and though it was never released outside of Japan, a fan translation was made. I decided to try it out on a whim.

I discovered they made Digimon World into a functional game — but at what cost?

From a gameplay perspective, Re:Digitize is an improvement on all fronts. There is an actual tutorial. The complex gameplay mechanics are actually explained properly. NPCs tell you the services certain digimon provide and hints for where to find them, allowing you to actually plan out your route and city development. Digivolutions at least tell you how you got them after you get them once. Training is a lot easier, and the bonus challenges are now based on skill rather than luck. Battling gives you more stat ups, making it a much more viable use of your time. You get access to several key services, such as the clinic, from the very start of the game, making the early game much easier.

But in all other respects, Re:Digitize is bland and forgettable. All the charm of the first game has disappeared, to the point I wonder if anyone involved had ever actually seen it.

To demonstrate what I mean, compare these pictures:

This is a picture of File City at the start of the game in Digimon World.

This is a picture of a fully upgraded File City in Digimon World. (In-game it’s even more lively, as all the digimon you’ve recruited are present in the city; at the start of the game, there are only a few baby digimon around Jijimon’s house.)

Now, here’s a picture of File City in Re:Digitize:

This is from the very beginning of the game. As you can see, the city is already fully developed. Recruiting digimon only reopens existing buildings that are closed, rather than constructing new ones. Even existing industries such as the farm and shop do not visually change when upgraded. There is no immediate, visual sense of how the digimons’ efforts or mine are improving the city. In many cases, I had no idea what contribution the digimon made, if any at all. (There are way too many digimon that do absolutely nothing, not even cosmetic contributions; in Digimon World, that was only Bakemon, as I recall.)

Additionally, the digimons’ contributions to the city are largely completely random. In Digimon World, there was a sense to it. Plant digimon upgraded the farm. Subterranean digimon opened the treasure hunting shop. Aggressive beast digimon contribute to the arena. The digimon that runs a shop upgrades the city’s shop when you recruit him. Devimon opens a shady black market. Elecmon provides city lighting. You can look at a given digimon in the wild and make a reasonable guess at what they’re going to give you. This is not the case in Re:Digitize. The upgrade to Angemon’s clinic is Impmon, of all people? The black market is opened by… Growlmon, the Greymon expy hero digimon? BlackGatomon is a restaurant chef??? And that’s not even counting the many digimon who, like I said, do nothing at all. About the only ones that make sense are the ones they kept from Digimon World (Palmon as a farmer, Meramon as a chef, Birdramon as fast travel). It makes the whole game feel random and slapdash, like the designers just wanted to cram in their favorite digimon and didn’t care where.

The last nail in the coffin is that the recruitment narratives don’t even make any sense. Despite the beginning of the game being similar, with Jijimon ominously saying that tons of digimon have gone mad and abandoned the city for no reason, you will quickly discover that plenty of digimon were actually just out on walks or routine scouting jobs and are perfectly happy to come back if you do a fetch quest or even just talk to them. So there’s no actual problem, why do you need me for this??? In the original Digimon World, the digimon had actually gone mad and had to be fought before they would snap out of it; there was teeth, and tension, and a real feeling of relief and camaraderie when you managed to turn them to the good side. There is nothing like that here; nearly every digimon is totally reasonable and can be recruited extremely easily. Nor is there any sense to how hard they are to recruit; in Digimon World, you gained more prosperity points for higher-stage digimon because recruiting them was actually more difficult and often required a battle. Here, even Megas will politely trot off to the city after just a short chat. There is no personality, no character arcs, no reason to feel attached to this digital world.

What the plot is about is a bunch of other human characters who get sucked in with you and who I could not care less about. This is a Digimon game, I am here for the digimon, why are you making me listen to humans whine about their daddy issues.

You will also notice from the screenshot that your partner digimon talks in this version. While this is standard for Digimon canon, it notably was not the case in Digimon World. While that did create the plot hole of why your partner alone among all digimon was nonsapient, it did go a long way towards justifying the gameplay that treats your partner like a dumb animal totally incapable of doing anything for itself. Now, the fact that a fellow talking person is incapable of finding a toilet on his own lest he poop on the floor in front of me is… even more awkward than it was before.

The whole game feels like it was written as a standard RPG first, and they only threw in the Digimon World mechanics at the last minute. They are not incorporated into the story, tone, or atmosphere at all. This is what happens when you get art designed by committees trying to artificially recapture a breakout hit.

(More than anything, this really just convinced me that Pokemon and Digimon have their mechanics completely backwards. The franchise where you collect ‘mons like trophies to make them fight endless battles is the one where they’re living creates in a natural world, while the one where you have to dote on a single partner’s every need is the one where they’re computer programs. How did they get this so backwards.)