Review of Digimon Survival: Can Digimon Dream of AVG?

The unlucky Digimon Survival was finally released on July 28th of this year.

In the three years from release to postponement and release, the main IP of Digimon, which changed its production team, has undergone many changes. We have also written related articles. After completing the true ending of Digimon Survival, I once again confirmed my previous doubts. To some extent, Digimon Survival is a tribute to the classic anime Digimon Adventure.

From a planning perspective, if this work can be released last year, it will have a good synergy with the animated reboot Digimon Adventure:.

However, as a review, we will leave these speculations behind for now. Let's focus on all aspects of the game "Survive in Despair" for comments.

*Digimon Adventure: is a reboot of Digimon Adventure and the eighth installment in the Digimon TV anime series.

*This review involves minor spoilers.

The Digimon Story of "Black and Deep Disabled"

As the game creator mentioned before its release, the proportion of gameplay in PlayerUnknown is 7:3 for AVG and SRPG, respectively. After the replacement, the game production team was the HYDE studio that produced "The Square Root Book". In addition, there were many dark scenes that appeared during the game promotion, so even if we don't touch "Survive in Desolation", many players can have a basic understanding of this game - it is a dark tone AVG.

This may not seem very consistent with the main theme of Digimon, but upon reflection, in the series of animations, there seem to be frequent scenes of erroneous evolution - zombie tyrannosaurus and apocalyptic dragon - which I believe those who have watched the animation will have some impression of. In addition, Digimon Adventure also has similar scenes, so it is not impossible to create AVG with such a tone.

The story roughly tells the story of 8 people on a study trip who, for some reason, travel to another world and meet their respective digital beasts, surviving together in the other world. And the direction of the story is no different from traditional Japanese AVG, accumulating points for each route based on the "key options" in the plot dialogue, and this point is hidden.

When players choose, they can stay in the options for a period of time and see various colors that appear in the options. Among them, red represents the moral route, yellow represents the passionate route, and green represents the harmonious route.

As players accumulate their options, key choices will appear in Chapter 8, and the final outcome will be determined based on the accumulation of previous choices made by the player. In order to achieve the true ending, players must ensure that key characters do not die in the second week.

Yes, "die". In the third chapter of the game, there will be a "killing" of a fixed member of the eight main characters, and in the fifth chapter, there will be another one. As the three routes advance, some characters will exit each. The cruel and dark atmosphere is almost filled with the three routes that are not true endings.

In terms of performance tone, the game is full of terrifying elements such as "enclosed space" and "Jump Scare", and each character's exit is meticulously portrayed. As for how they exited, readers are advised to experience it on their own.

In addition to choosing a route, the game also has a mechanism of "favorability". In the game's "free time" and "exploration time" settings, players can take on the role of the protagonist and communicate with various characters. There are also options for communication, and choosing the correct option can improve their favorability. These favoritisms have some combat assistance effects, but more importantly, the level of favoritism can affect the evolutionary level of digital beasts.

After all, this is a derivative game of the Digimon series, so the evolution of Digimon must be an unavoidable part. In addition to the protagonist's ancient beast, the remaining seven characters have a fixed stage from their "growth" to "maturity" forms, but the subsequent "perfect body" and "ultimate body" require a certain level of friendship value to evolve.

In addition to conventional evolution, the Digimon of the main character group also has a highly related evolutionary branch to the plot. However, as the specific content involves spoilers, I suggest that players personally experience the game content.

On the Yagu Beast side, it evolves at a fixed position based on the player's highest proportion of morality, passion, and harmony. The Dragon Beast in the PV demonstration is a harmony line, while the traditional Tyrannosaurus Rex is a morality line, and the rest is for the player to experience. After the true ending, the ancient beasts also unlocked new ultimate evolutionary forms.

Therefore, the main plot atmosphere of "Survival in Despair" is still "dark and incomplete", and the unique "evolution" of the "Digimon" series is also closely related to AVG content. The plot experience varies from person to person, but personally I am quite satisfied with it. Each route has its own characteristics.

After finishing the AVG section, let's talk about the remaining 30% - SRPG.

A SRPG that is better than nothing?

For the SRPG section of "Survival in Despair", simply list some traditional elements: the XYZ axis grid, fixed action sequence in a single turn, and skill settings such as individual attacks, range attacks, buffs, and healing - all of which are very common in the SRPG field. The most interesting part of "Survive in Despair" is still the highly related evolutionary system to "Digimon".

Digimon Survival can be divided into two major evolution systems. One is the protagonist team of eight people. In each regular battle, the eight Digimons in the protagonist team appear in a "growth period" form. During the battle, players can freely control the evolution and degradation of these Digimons.

For example, players can unlock the Agu beast all the way to the Ultimate Body, but the Agu beast still appears at the beginning of the battle. Players can evolve into the "Ultimate Body" battle tyrannosaurus in the turn of the ancient beast, which greatly improves their combat power. However, the cost is to lose 15 points of SP used to release skills each turn, 5 points in maturity, and 10 points in complete body damage. If all SPs are damaged, Digimon will return to its "growth period". On the contrary, if the player consistently presents a "growth period", SP will be restored every turn. Therefore, how to control SP in combat is a very important point.

I believe many Digimon enthusiasts are well aware that this system is similar to the Digimon settings in animations, as they automatically return to their "growth" state after battles. Except for Digimon Adventure on PSP, there are few game series with similar mechanisms.

Because in each battle, the protagonist's Digimon appears in a "growth stage" state, and in the later stages where "ultimate bodies" are everywhere, these growth stage Digimons generally move in a later order. Based on my own observation, game AI is very fond of "bullying the weak". If there are low evolution level Digimons in their attack range, AI will prioritize attacking them, and the normal difficulty level is basically a flash kill. Therefore, choosing the right timing for evolution in combat is one of the pleasures of this combat system.

The second system is the Free Digimon, which is a Digimon that players have a certain probability of obtaining through the negotiation system in free combat. The negotiation process itself is somewhat similar to the True Goddess Reincarnation series. This type of digital beast will consume evolutionary items to evolve into a corresponding form and maintain that form continuously. This is no different from the RPG games in the previous Digimon series.

But for an SRPG, the emergence of these two evolutionary systems has led to the "machine warfare paradox", even more serious. "Machine War Paradox" is a term I coined, roughly meaning SRPG, especially in the Super Robot Wars series where players can choose from dozens of combat units. Therefore, "who to train but not who to train" is a must consider factor in the game process.

Why would I say that in Digimon Survival, this problem becomes even more serious? Because there are too few Digimon players available in the main battle levels of the game. Except for free combat, which is a level where players actively choose to fight and level up, there are basically no more than 5 levels.

Imagine a level with only 5 playing units. Excluding the free Digimon, there are only 8 Digimons in the main character group, and some levels even have fixed units to play. If the system requires that the strength of the Digimon to play is not enough, it is pure cannon fodder. Think about it this way, may I have a headache?

This is not over yet. In the later stages of the game, you must cultivate some free digital beasts well. If players give all their resources to the Digimon of the main character team in the early stage, then a certain battle in the future will become extremely difficult. In this terrible situation, there is no other way but to set the difficulty system to "simple" or "very simple" before the battle begins.

Therefore, when I finished my first week and started my second week to prepare for the real ending, I wrote "A little is better than nothing" in the SRPG section, but the more I played, the more I thought "it's better not to have anything". Although the evolution mode of the game is very emotional, I really don't want to rack my brains on resource management due to the "machine war paradox". I just want to quickly leave the plot and see how the game unfolds in the later stages.

Of course, this is also a multiple-choice question for designers: if there are too many characters appearing, the number of enemies must also increase accordingly, making the boring battles longer; Thinking about it this way, perhaps the gaming experience will fall into a more serious "machine warfare paradox" -

Anyway, there will be problems with how to choose, right?

Distinctive and emotional, but

I believe that through the separate reviews of AVG and SRPG, many fans of Digimon have already felt a certain sense of "nostalgia" in "Survive in Despair". For example, a group of 8 protagonists who travel to a different world and have unique mechanisms of evolution and degradation.

In addition, during the main storyline of Digimon Adventure, the eight growth stage Digimons - Agu, Gabu, Picchu, Beetle, Baru, Goma, Bada, and Dilu - have mostly appeared. In addition, the plot repeatedly implies "the chosen children", and the pre ending print also implies that there were eight people and eight juvenile Digimons (although one juvenile was changed to a hooked claw beast, it cannot be too similar). In addition, there are many details.

These contents easily remind me of "Digimon Adventure" and "Digimon Adventure: If this game could be released on a predetermined date, it would be able to launch a collaborative game." However, in reality, there is always no "if". There is also the Digimon that appears at the end of the true ending, and I am not a spoiler, but I think if you reach the true ending, you will feel some kind of "respect" or "emotion".

After the release at this point in time, we will remember the animation that accompanied our childhood through Digimon Survival, but that's it. After being replaced by HYDE Studio, which produces "The Root of the World", the story of "Digimon Survives in Despair" also incorporates elements of Shintoism and Japanese folk mythology, just like "The Root of the World", which makes the word "digital" somewhat out of place. The lack of clarity in the combat mechanism also makes "Survival in Despair" appear to require further refinement. Moreover, apart from the special edition, there are only 113 Digimon, which is a bit less for Digimon games.

Therefore, when we summarize "Digimon Survive", it seems that one sentence is enough: "Digimon" can be made into an AVG, and the creativity of going through battles and degradation is also very good.

But this couldn't help but make me daydream that if "Survive in Despair" were to be released in 2021, as a planning enthusiast, I would interpret the commercial linkage well; But now it's 2022, and Digimon Adventure is almost over for a year... That's all I can say.