Digimon Survive

This is a visual novel first, a slow tedious game second, and a digimon game third. Don't recommend.

[i]Originally posted on [url=https://www.dragon-quill.net/digimon-survive/]Dragon Quill.[/url] Comments are enabled there.[/i] 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 ♥♥♥♥ 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 [i]also[/i] 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 [i]two whole other skills![/i] …If you neglect stat-boosting and status-resistance equipment, because they compete for the same slots (of which there are [i]two[/i], 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.

难得，这是近几年来，游戏名字带有“Survive”，却不是类吸血鬼幸存者类肉鸽玩法的作品。那可不，这可是数码宝贝，要想在数码宝贝的世界里冒险并活下来，岂不就得是Survive么。 《数码宝贝 绝境求生》又是一部粉丝向的动漫二创游戏，但这一次，却不是万代买来版权后进行开发，而是他们自己就是“数码宝贝”的创始人。由东家自己开发的自家产品的全新冒险故事！ [quote][table][tr][th][b]　评测出自： [u]网易 UU 鉴赏家培训计划[/u][/b][/th][/tr] [tr][th][b]感谢由 [u]网易 UU 鉴赏家培训计划[/u] 提供游戏[/b][/th][/tr] [tr][th][b][i]　加速 云存 领游戏，满足 热爱游戏梦！[/i][/b][/th][/tr][/table][/quote] 先说价格，我认为是比较偏贵的。 因为它是一部视觉小说（选择取向的文字冒险）与日系角色扮演（3D）相互结合的作品，以视觉小说为主，内容也是以文字叙述和过场动画较多，日系角色扮演内容仅存在于角色页面设置和战斗场面上，甚至战斗时也在叽里咕噜说个不停。剧情还原了动漫的冒险故事，但没有“被选召”的概念。 当然，主创团队在发行前也事前说明了，本作是注重文字冒险，故事叙事更多，通过动漫与视觉小说相互结合，弄出来了这种一会只用看看，一会需要点几下的玩法。也就是说，它能够当作一部《数码宝贝》系列的番外电影来看，但看一部电影需要几个钱？ 游戏采用了3D建模的方式展现数码宝贝们，战斗场面也同样是3D的，这算是填充了孩童时期没有体验到3D其它数码宝贝（只有暴龙兽、加鲁鲁和第二部的V仔兽，而后就没看过了）的遗憾。 但是，它的主要内容并未放在JRPG上，也就是战斗场面它只是有，却并没有多少反馈和意义，很纯粹的点击、过招、完事，没有花里胡哨的招式、也没有boss战的挑战，没有策略意义，那我觉得直接弄一个“跳过”键都无妨！ 唯独还能接受的就是战斗时期能够进化，有点燃起来的感觉。可进化路线却不像动漫那样有概率性，像亚古兽超进化时有概率变成不可控的丧尸暴龙兽与黑战斗暴龙兽，自家产品还出的如此单一。 如此昂贵的价格，分析了因果其实也在情理之中，只是问题出在这该不该由玩家买账。原本它只是一个小型独立游戏的项目，却因为体量不得不扩大规模，但也同时得换组制作，导致全部重来，于是乎它难产了，成本也随之增加不得不以3A的售价进行发行。也于是乎我们看到了这款游戏在视觉小说、战斗场面和过场动画的动漫，是不同的画风。 所以我觉得在夏促的二五折扣，外加一些手段再折上折以后，大概60上下的样子购买，是勉强与电影票子价格平齐，比较合适粉丝们入手的。

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!

Un aviso importante para aquellos que se quieran comprar este juego, que he visto opiniones negativas sobre esto. Este juego es una NOVELA VISUAL con un poco de RPG táctico. Estas comprando un libro con actividades de pintar y colorear. Si las novelas visuales son tu rollo y además te gusta la saga de digimon, este es tu juego. Si no te gusta leer no lo compres porque estas perdiendo el dinero.

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.

Digimon Survive excels as a Visual Novel but fails as a tactical JRPG. The outstanding narrative is mature, serious, and compelling, featuring realistic reactions, character deaths, and genuinely hard moments. It’s the antithesis of an infantilized Digimon story. However, the gameplay is weak: combat is heavy and slow. Fortunately, this is somewhat mitigated by an Auto-Battle mode available from the start. The decision system is also too simple (three easy-to-read choices). Replaying the game for multiple endings is tedious, but the process is manageable thanks to New Game+, which lets you skip past previously read text and focus on new narrative paths. If you love dark Visual Novels, this is highly recommended. If you prioritize gameplay, look elsewhere.

Conflicting gameplay styles doesn't work or isn't implemented right. Well at least for getting multiple endings. So I just got one ending. Like battles that the player already did in previous route should be skippable. Slugging through the same battles even on very easy mode is tedious. Sure there is a auto mode but with it the game still will be tedious or least would waste the players time. Well either gameplay on it own can be enjoyable but not together. And the story is interesting but not interesting enough to slug through the same battles again to get a different ending, for example a true ending.

If you like visual novels and a grid turn based battle system (like Fire Emblem) then youll like this game.