I normally don't do intro paragraphs for these anymore, but since I haven't done one of these since December I feel like I have to. When I reformatted the text version of game time to be shorter and more concise I was and still am happy with it. The issue ended up being that now Matt and I do a bi-weekly podcast, so I felt far less motivated to write a monthly thing about the games I was playing. I had originally planned to retroactively go back and write something for all the months I had missed, but now I have come too far to do that.
I am going to try my best to get back into writing. This is becoming a bummer, because it's something I tend to say every year. "Oh yeah, next year I'll do all kinds of stuff on my blog. New features and just a ton more quality writing." It never ends up happening, but I would like it to. So here it goes, from this moment on I'm going to try my best and do more writing, which will start here with the April 2019 edition of Game Time. Ready, GO!
Every time a new NetherRealm Studio game comes out I buy it in the hopes that I will enjoy it. Ever since Mortal Kombat 9 they have made quality fighting games that are filled to the brim with single player content for people who aren't looking to become professional players. What isn't so great is that I just don't enjoy playing their games. For me the stiff animations and dial-a-combos with an emphasis on long juggles just doesn't feel right. I can never really get into a groove with NetherRealm games and Mortal Kombat 11 is no different.
This isn't to say that I think the game is bad or anything, but it certainly isn't for me. As usual the story mode is an amazing feat that no other studio has been able to replicate in a fighting game. This time the god of time Kronika (of course with a K) is unhappy that Raiden is ruining her vision for a perfectly balanced world. In an attempt to erase him from existence she opens a bunch of time portals and brings old versions of characters to the future. It's a really dumb premise that works in the Mortal Kombat universe and lets everyone know that they can do literally anything with the plot now.
The customization options the studio developed for Injustice 2 are still in play, so expect to be collecting nine million cosmetic bobbles for every character. This is arguably my favorite aspect of the game, but they goofed up the currency you use to unlock everything. Originally it was giving out super low amounts, but supposedly that was rectified today with a patch. I think that Mortal Kombat is a cool game with tons of content for casual fans, but it just doesn't give me the tingly feelings it gives everyone else.
Game: Katana Zero Developer: Akiisoft Platform: PC
I first saw a Katana Zero trailer while watching a fighting game tournament and immediately knew it would be my jam. It is a 2D sidescroller where you play as a samurai with a katana. Recently I've been trying to avoid describing games by saying the names of other games, but it's basically Hotline Miami mixed with Super Hot. Each stage is approached like a puzzle where enemies die in one hit, but so do you. The only tools you have are objects in the environment you can throw, your katana, and a time slow down power.
Katana Zero is hyper stylish and makes you feel like a badass whenever you beat a level. Slowing down time allows you to deflect bullets easier and act out a series of actions with more precision. When you clear an entire screen the game lets you watch a replay of your actions without the slowdown just like Super Hot.
The plot drew me in far more than I thought it would, but sadly it ends on a cliffhanger. The studio has started work on free DLC, so hopefully it expands the story. I can't say a lot about it without spoiling things, but it is reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino film. Even though it took me less than 5 hours to beat I had an absolute blast and would gladly play it all over again.
Game: SteamWorld Quest Developer: Image & Form Games Platform: Switch
Historically I do not really enjoy digital card games. The issue I run into is that I never end up wanting to change my deck, because the thought of remaking a large set of cards from scratch that need to have synergy overwhelms me. Despite my aversion to card based games, when I saw SteamWorld Quest it won me over and I picked it up day one.
Image & Form games have made several games of different genres. Personally I hadn't connected with any of them, but the charm of the characters in SteamWorld Quest combined with it being a turn based RPG I was immediately drawn in. What really drew me in to the game was the fact that you don't need to recreate huge decks. You take three characters into battle at a time who each only have a deck of 8 cards. With such a limited set of options it becomes very easy to swap things out and try different strategies.
The main thing that SteamWorld Quest does right is that it doesn't overwhelm you. It's a 10-15 hour experience that doles out new cards and upgrades at a steady pace. The story is a little thin, but the gameplay is definitely the main focus as you'll be card battling most of the time.
Game: Ni No Kuni 2 Developer: Level-5 Platform: PS4
Ni No Kuni 2 is one of the first games in a long time that has made me feel like I'm crazy. It reviewed super positively, and pretty much everyone was singing its praises. I did beat it, but I didn't enjoy it very much. The combat never got much more exciting and it certainly never got any deeper. I was hoping that by the end of the game any of the characters would get worthwhile or meaningful development. That didn't come to pass either. It's weird, because on the surface it is a great game. It starts strong, and introduces tons of systems that seem interesting. However, like I said last month it's a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. There is a lot going on, but no one thing is focused on and almost all of it fell flat for me.
This isn't to say I think it's a bad game, I just don't understand the effusive praise and everyone treating it like it's the best thing to happen to JRPGs in a decade. It's fine. One of the things that I couldn't get over was just how easy it was. I saw all kinds of things online about people suggesting to use weaker characters, don't level, and pretty much don't use the tools available to you and it'll be a much more "fun" experience. I'm going to come right out and say that if your game is so easy that I have to actively try to handicap myself and not interact with all of its systems then it was poorly balanced.
In the end Ni No Kuni 2 just didn't grab me like the original. To me it was noticeable that Studio Ghibli was no longer involved. The game borrowed the Ghibli style, but when it came to voice acting and animation it just didn't feel right to me. The original game built an interesting world that felt like there was a lot of thought put into it. This game flies through everything and TWO of the continents don't even have anything on them aside from monsters. I don't like being that guy that dunks on the thing everyone is happy about, but I just don't get the praise. It's fine.
Game: Yakuza 6
Developer: Sega
Platform: PS4
At this point I have played every Yakuza game except for Yakuza 2, and the non-canon Yakuza Dead Souls. So I know a thing or two about Kazuma Kiryu and his crazy antics. It's wild that all he ever wants to do is leave the Yakuza, but somehow he just gets roped back in over and over. Lucky for Kiryu, Yakuza 6 will bring his saga to a close. I have greatly enjoyed my time with it so far.
Last year the excellent Yakuza 0 came out, which got a lot of people on board in the West. In my opinion this caused a few problems, mainly with the character of Goro Majima. He's essentially a different person in 0, but at the end they give context to how he acts for literally every other game in the franchise. I also feel like 0 does a poor job of making people like Kiryu, which is a shame because he is the protagonist of every other Yakuza game. However, the roughest part is that people will most likely have played Yazkua 0, and the remake of 1 and then jump right to 6. This sucks, because so far there have been a ton of callbacks and characters from the rest of the series. Hell, even some of the main characters from Yakuza 4 and 5 wouldn't even be known.
Yakuza 6 may also leave a bad first impression, because it's running on a different engine than every game prior to it. It's vastly improved, but as with all things moving over to a brand new engine it loses some of the complexity it had built over time. While Yakuza 0 and Kiwami introduced multiple fighting styles and a myriad of moves, Yakuza 6 only has one style and it plays more like a standard beat-em-up. There are a few moves to learn, but you can get away with mashing like an idiot. I really like Yakuza 6 so far, but I have a feeling that it may fall flat for people who weren't there for the rest of the series.
Game: God of War
Developer: SIE Santa Monica Studio
Platform: PS4
I borrowed the first God of War from a friend around the time it came out, and got about halfway through before dropping it. The gratuitous violence felt unnecessary and I didn't find Kratos to be an interesting character. I tried again with God of War 2 and similarly dropped it. God of War just wasn't for me, but when Sony showed they were releasing a new God of War based around Norse mythology it piqued my interest. Something about Norse mythology has always interested me.
I didn't really know what to expect of this game going in, but I ended up absolutely loving it. The combat was more fun to me, the violence was toned down a bit, and Kratos was actually an interesting character. It's been interesting to see video games grow up as a medium. A lot of the people who were there at the beginning have kids now and that's been showing up more and more in recent releases. The crux of the new plot is that Kratos moved far to the north after he killed the Greek pantheon and ended up having a child. The game opens shortly after his new wife's death where Kratos and his son Atreus are setting off to scatter her ashes from the tallest mountain in all the realms. It's a simple enough premise that quickly turns into a much more daunting task than it seems.
As is to be expected you're going to come into contact with all sorts of creatures and gods. This time around though the plot is less about murdering everything and more about Kratos and his son bonding. It becomes clear early on that Kratos wasn't around much and his son resents him for that. There is a lot of conversation and most of it is very well done. The combat is much more my speed too. It's a little more deliberate than the older games. Kratos now wields a magical ice ax that he can throw and recall at will. At first blush the combat seems simple, but as you learn more moves it gets quite a bit deeper. In the end I had dozens of moves, but only was using a handful I liked. It offers a lot of depth for those who are looking to use it, but you can get by with the basics if you need to. I absolutely loved this game, and am excited to see where the take the franchise next.
For the first few months of the year I tried to focus on playing one game at a time. Everything was going well, but then 2017 showed me that it had no intention of slowing down. Tons of good games are coming out at a rapid pace and now I have buried myself alive in video games. Right now I have started six different games, and finished none of them. Now I don't really know what to do. A few of them I'm not particularly fond of, but I find myself not wanting to really drop anything. It's quite the dilemma. Today I am here to tell you about two of those six games, and one of the rare few games I have actually finished this year. Surprisingly it was a 96 hour journey that I managed to finish... Other than spending a ludicrous amount of time on Persona I played a little bit of Flinthook and Yooka-Laylee as well. Flinthook
I feel like I've been seeing GIFs of Flinthook forever, but it only just came out a few weeks ago. It's a rogue-like in which you play as a little pirate man with a grappling hook. You run around pirate ships in space and shoot a ton of enemies. It's a very familiar game, except that you can use a sweet grappling hook. This is the "hook" of the game. The ships are split up into rooms, and each room is filled up with a bunch of grappling points. It's hard to describe, but the grappling hook is just straight up fun to use. It feels good to hook onto things. Everything is so fluid, and just feels right. I often find myself getting into a flow of grappling around and shooting.
Grappling hooks have never felt this good!
Like most modern rogue-likes you gain things that carry over after each run. In this you level up and get booster packs. Instead of cards they net you a bunch of powerups that you can equip to help you out. It works very well to keep you going. The powerups help, but so far I haven't found anything that negates the fact that you need to be good at the game. Like most games of this style it is quite difficult, but that's what makes them appealing to most people. Yooka-Laylee
As a kid I was a big fan of Banjo-Kazooie. It's one of the few demos I remember playing as a kid at Target and being absolutely blown away. I managed to play through most of it again within recent years with the release of the Rare Replay Collection on the Xbox One. It's a whimsical platformer where you control the animal duo of Banjo the Bear and Kazooie the Bird. They worked in tandem to do cool moves and collect a whole lot of stuff. In recent years games like Banjo-Kazooie have become known as collect-athon games. It's an apt title, because you're really just collecting a whole bunch of stuff. In the years following the games release many other people partook in the genre, but it eventually faded out. However, now here we are many years later with a new one called Yooka-Laylee.
It sure looks a lot like Banjo-Kazooie...
If you're thinking that Yooka-Laylee looks and sounds similar to Banjo-Kazooie, you're absolutely right. Some of the original developers who worked at Rare on the original Banjo got together to make their own studio called Playtonic games. Their goal was to make a new collect-athon game in the vein of Banjo. They took to Kickstarter and the game was funded. It's out now and they certainly delivered on their promise of a Banjo-like game, but I'm personally not feeling it. It's one thing to pay homage to something you love, but it's another thing entirely to try and literally be what you love. Yooka-Laylee is trying to be Banjo-Kazooie in almost every way, but the downside is that it's not as good.
I don't want to say that our new Chameleon and Bat combo aren't fun to play as, but they're just not as fun as the Bear and Bird duo of yesteryear. It's a bummer, because I often find myself frustrated in this new game. The camera isn't great, the controls aren't tight enough, and the level design is so open that I often get lost. It's a game trying to be Banjo-Kazooie, but I feel like it doesn't have the same charm. I played Banjo within the past year and it still made me feel good. This game does not. It certainly delivered on its premise of being a new game in the collect-athon pantheon, but it's just not doing it for me at all. Persona 5
Turn based RPGs are my jam, and it's not so often that they come around anymore. It's even more rare that they have a huge budget to work with, but that's what we got with Persona 5. Originally the game was slated for a Winter 2014 release in Japan, but a shift to the PS4 caused quite a few delays. Normally excessive delays cause me to worry, but with Persona I knew that I would be happy with the final product regardless of how long it took. This was one of the rare cases where I saw the original trailer and instantly knew that I was getting exactly what I wanted. I waited patiently until April 4th, and then pretty much just played the game for 96 hours. Sure, that was over the course of three weeks, but I did little else with my time. My takeaway from my time with Persona 5 is that I absolutely love it.
This game has a ridiculous amount of style.
The Persona series started as a spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It focused on high school kids who were given the ability to summon their true selves from within, otherwise known as Personas. With that power they took on evil demons and saved the world. It was a traditional turn based RPG, but in the third game it morphed into something a little more. It was still a turn based game, but it added in social elements as well. This formula carried over to Persona 4 and 5 as well. Now you go into dungeons and fight monsters, but afterwards you can hang out with your friends and get to know them on a much deeper level. On the surface it sounds simple, but the game revolves around you doing a multitude of different tasks while on a time constraint. There's only so much you can do in a day, so you have to choose how you spend your time very wisely. It's stressful at first, but very rewarding in the end.
Persona 5 focuses once again on a group of high school students, but this time they're a group of thieves. They call themselves the Phantom Thieves, and their goal is to steal the twisted desires of adults and make them atone for their crimes. They do this by using a special phone app to enter a person's mind, where they will steal their most prized treasure. It's definitely a weird concept, but one that the Persona team pulls off with a ridiculous amount of style. Persona is known for its stylish nature, but Persona 5 takes that style to a whole new level. If you're interested in hearing a bit more about my time with Persona, then you'll want to check out this month's podcast, which you can find here. 2B or not 2B
Instead of digging into my stupidly large backlog I decided to start Nier: Automata. So now I am playing through that and having a blast. Having played the original Nier I kind of knew what to expect, but man is Automata a weird game. The director Yoko Taro somehow manages to out crazy himself with this one. Also you have to play through it like five times to see the whole story, which is extra insane.
Lucky for me the only new game I'll be getting in May is Injustice 2, so maybe I can catch up on my backlog. So next month I'll definitely talk about Nier, and Injustice 2. See you then!
It's official, I'm playing too many video games at once. I am continuing to play Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Inazuma Eleven GO 2 Chrono Stones. I play Inazuma Eleven on stream every Wednesday. If you want to catch that head on over to www.twitch.tv/drac96
I am also continuing to play Bloodborne, but my feelings on it have shifted drastically. I am not having very much fun with it in the later sections of the game. I find it to be much more punishing in a bullshit way than the previous games in the Souls franchise. I'll end up doing a Game Time ID when I finish it. I'm still plucking away at it, but it will probably take me another month. I've been getting angry at it and have had to put it down several times...
I'm also playing Ori and the Blind Forest at a very slow pace, but that's not one of the games I'm going to talk about this month. The main "new" game I played was Mortal Kombat X. I played it very heavily the first few days after its release, but have not played it for at least a week as of this writing. It's a good fighting game with not enough content outside of the fighting to hold it down.
I've wanted to play Shovel Knight since its release and now I've finally done it. Never mind the fact that I bought it on the Wii-U and played twenty minutes of it. I don't count that. It was just released on the PS4 , Vita, PS3, and Xbox One. I purchased the Sony version and this time I actually played it! In fact, I liked it so much I did it in about three sittings. Man, Shovel Knight is a dope game.
The final game I'll be talking about this month is actually quite old. For some reason I started to think about the original Digimon World and determined that I needed to play it again. As a child I played it for a few hours and had no idea what was going on. The game seemed super lame at the time, but I now realize that it was actually super deep, unique, and original. It's insanely complex, but I'm having a blast figuring it out. I need to get back to playing it, so it's game time!
Mortal Kombat X
Note: Yes I realize most words are spelled with a K in this. That's how it's done in Mortal Kombat.
I've never been the worlds largest Mortal Kombat fan. Sure I've played almost all of them, but the series has never quite grabbed me like other fighting game franchises have. Well, that was until Mortal Kombat 9. That reboot brought me in and I played it a whole lot. It helped that I was living in college suite with friends who also played it a lot, because it was the time of the huge PSN outage. Outside of that though it had a ton of content to interact with. The story mode was a ridiculously well made retelling of MK 1-3, The challenge tower had hundreds of unique challenges, and there was a ton to unlock. Mortal Kombat X seems to have scaled that back quite a bit.
First I'll talk about the story. Once again the Mortal Kombat team has shown that they know how to make a fighting game story. You advance from one fight to the next with almost seamless transitions. Although they have now added in quick time events for absolutely no reason. So when you want to just be watching the story sequences you have to be constantly on the lookout for quick time events or you'll die. It detracts from the experience quite a bit, because you can never really feel at ease with paying full attention to the story. Now, I think the story of MKX was okay, but it was definitely not on par with MK9. I realize that MK9 was the retelling of three games, but the story of MKX feels super flat and by the end i was asking myself what the purpose of it all was? Not a whole lot happens. Sure, you get introduced to the new characters, but it all feels very low key. You get to learn all about Kenshi's son, Jax's daughter, Sonya and Johnny Cage's Daughter, and Kung Lao's descendant. They're all surprisingly well developed. There are a few other new characters was well, but most of them are overshadowed by the returning cast.
Everyone still picks Scorpion online...
In MK9 when I finished the story I went right into the challenge tower and started testing my luck. I was able to do that for a long time, but in MKX there was almost immediately nothing left for me to do. Well that;s not true. There is just nothing that I actually want to do. Instead of set challenges in a tower there are now multiple towers with varying objectives. The game throws random "Kombat Modifiers" at you and you have to persevere. There's never any rhyme or reason behind any of it, it's just a bunch of random toggles that the game is turning on and off. In one of the more frustrating towers I played the screen would flash black every few seconds like a strobe light. That's not challenging it's just super annoying. What really sucks is that the towers are truly random, because they cycle out on a daily and weekly basis.
Outside of that though you still have a ton of unlockables in the krypt, but it takes forever to earn any Koins. I have absolutely no desire to grind for koins and I'm certainly not going to pay an extra $20 to unlock everything. It almost feels as if the lack of koins you get was done on purpose to push the micro transaction aspect of the game. Hell, you can even buy tokens to do "easy" fatalities. You can pay real money to hold R2 and Square to do a fatality. Let me tell you, fatalities aren't that hard to do. I main Kenshi and his basic fatality is back, back, forward, back. I can literally push back and forth on the d-pad and it will come out. If you need to pay for a token to do that then you probably shouldn't be playing a video game in the first place.
The fatalities are brutal and easy to pull off.
With the rage out of the way I will say that the core fighting of the game is great. It feels much faster than MK9. For me faster fighting games tend to be more fun, so I enjoy the fighting quite a bit. What's even cooler is that each character has three variations. Each variation has a few of the same basic moves, but outside of that they have exclusive moves. This means that technically each character is viable, because if they're outmatched in a match-up one of their variations should be able to handle it. So now you don't have to stop using your favorite character if you're getting schooled and it makes everyone viable. That would be the case in an idea world if the game was balanced perfectly. As far as I've seen it seems to be fine, but I don't necessarily know how it actually is in competitive play.
So I played this game a few times and don't know if I will continue to do so. As you probably know by now I never really stick with fighting games long enough to get good at them. In this case no one I know other than my brother likes this game enough to keep playing it. That means that I don't really have anyone to play with locally who is around the same skill level as me. MK9 just seemed like a much more complete product for people who don't want to get super competitive.
Shovel Knight
Shovel Knight is a testament to what KickStarter games can be. A group of guys set out to make a love letter to 8-Bit platformers and they succeeded. I've seen numerous kick started games fail to live up to their original promise. Shovel Knight delivers exactly what it promised and it's incredible. The easiest way for me to describe Shovel Knight is that it's like Mega Man, Duck Tales, and Zelda all rolled into one. You play as the aforementioned Shovel Knight. He is a blue knight who weilds a shovel as a weapon! His best friend/girlfriend Shield Knight is taken from him while they are on a quest. She is believed to have been killed by an evil amulet. Crushed by the loss Shovel Knight decides to stop adventuring. During his absence the Evil Enchantress and her Order of no Quarter rise to power and are terrorizing the land. Shovel Knight decides that he must come out of retirement and defeat the evil that has overtaken his land!
You start the game and are immediately put into a stage. Shovel Knight has all the basic abilities you'd expect. He can run, jump, and kill enemies. As you may have guessed his shovel acts as his weapon. You can use it to hurt enemies and dig into the ground or walls. This is helpful for finding treasure and hidden areas. While jumping you can push down to have Shovel Knight pogo like Scrooge McDuck in Duck Tales. You can use the pogo attack to bounce on enemies and hurt them repeatedly, but it can also be used to make tough jumps as well. Other than that you can get special items similar to the powers from Mega Man that use magic to use. These items are not necessary, but you can buy them to help you out and complete optional levels.
This is the track from the first level of the game. It's amazing on every level!
Once you beat the first level the world map is opened up to you. It's a Super Mario World style map, so you can pick which level you want to go to. There are tons of optional levels, a few towns, and the Order of no Quarter levels. The town is useful for upgrading your health, magic, and buying items. There are also a few extra things you can do like turning in the collectible music sheets to the bard in order to get money. Other than that there are just a bunch of NPCs who will say random things to you. Later in the game there is also a town that sells armor and shovel upgrades, so you want to be collecting as much as possible.
The Order of no Quarter levels are where you'll be spending most of your time. They are similar to Mega Man levels in that they are themed around their boss. In addition they all have knight at the end of their names, just as all Mega Man bosses end with man. For example one of the early levels is King Knight and his level is themed around a castle filled with gold. One thing I like about these levels it that they're super long and quite challenging. They're not frustrating, but you do need a certain amount of skill to make your way through them. In order to ease the burden of dying there are various checkpoints throughout the levels. If you do die you'll go back to the last checkpoint you passed. Instead of losing a life as a penalty for death you'll lose a fraction of your money, which you can make your way back to and pick up if you want. However, if you want to prove how much of a badass you are then you can shatter the checkpoints for money. That means you won't be able to use it anymore.
The pogo attack is super handy.
Shovel Knight is the kind of game that needs to be experienced. If you have pretty much any modern console, or PC you owe it to yourself to play this game. The pixel art style and music mesh seamlessly to create a one of a kind throwback to the 8-bit games I used to love. I spent a majority of my time playing Shovel Knight with a stupid grin on my face that is coming back as I type this. I'm super excited that there is going to be DLC where you can play as Plague Knight coming out in the near future. I will definitely be down to play more Shovel Knight. Yacht Club games hit it out of the park with this one!
Digimon World
Recently I watched a video where someone was raving about how the original Digimon World was an amazing and original game. I did not remember the game quite as fondly as the madman in the video I was watching. Sadly I can't find the video I saw, but it did pique my interest, so I began looking up more on the game. What I found blew my mind. I guess Digimon World was a lot deeper than my childhood self could handle, so I decided it was time to give it another shot. Turns out Digimon World is an amazing game and I might need to make my own ranting and raving video about it!
The thing that upset me the most as a kid was that the game didn't follow the show. It was more based around the Digivice toys that were popular in Japan at the time. They came out in the U.S. as well, but were not nearly as popular. The intro shows two kids playing with their electronic Digimon toys and you as the main character look on in amazement. Later when he's home alone his Digivice glows and transports him to the digital world where he gets his very own Digimon. With very little explanation you're told that everything is not going super hot and you need to rebuild File City. That's pretty much the only stuff you're given to go on. Coming at this game now I have no idea how the hell anyone figured it out. Sure, some of the stuff is easy enough to figure out, but most of it is insane. I literally have a FAQ opened at all times while playing and I'll need to refer to it at least once every half hour!
Welcome to File City!
I know I'm talking this up, but it really is obtuse to start off with. So yeah, you've got your Digimon. Now what? Well, you need to train it so that it can take on enemies and you can explore the island. However, you have to worry about feeding it. In the beginning food is hard to come by. You get three pieces of meat a day in town, but other than that you need to forage for mushrooms outside the city. When your Digimon is hungry it will get a little bubble above its head with meat in it. After your Digimon has eaten it will eventually need to poop, which will be indicated by a thought bubble with poop in it. You then need to take your Digimon to a toilet so it can relieve itself. There are toilets scattered throughout the island. If you don't make it in time your Digimon will poop right on the ground, which isn't good. We'll get into why that isn't good later though.
The beginning of the game is super tedious, because all you can really do is train and scrounge for food. If you don't have a lot of food you can't venture very far and without training the enemies will trounce you. If you get beaten in battle three times your Digimon will literally die and you'll have to start training a new one from scratch. It's actually pretty brutal. In order to train the Digimon you take them to the Green Gym, which is on the outskirts of File City. There will be all kinds of signs, and each one if meant to boost a specific stat. You have Offense, Defense, Brains, Speed, HP, and MP to worry about. Each stat is self explanatory, except for brains. When your Digimon has high brains it will be more likely to learn new attacks in battle and will be able to accept more orders. When training you need to be careful that you don't make your Digimon too tired, because it can have negative consequences. So you need to rest every so often. Oh yeah, by the way there's an in game clock and a day night cycle. Each training session takes an hour, and each rest session takes an hour. At some point your Digimon will want to go to sleep, which passes six hours. When your Digimon goes to sleep is the only time you can save your game!
You need to feed your Digimon!
The purpose of training your Digimon is to get them strong, but you also want them to Digivolve so they look cool and get even stronger. This is where the game gets even more obtuse than it already is. In order to Digivolve into specific Digimon your Digimon must have certain stats and weight. Training, and pooping make them lose weight, while eating makes them gain weight. For example the other night I wanted to get the chamption level Digimon Leomon. In that case the Elecmon I was using needed to have at least 100 in Offense, Speed, and Brains. That sounds easy, but takes a crazy amount of training. On top of that you are only allowed one care mistake. That means can't miss feeding your Digimon, can't have them poop on the ground, can't train them too hard, and can't make them become sleep deprived. He also needed to be 20 pounds. The weight limit goes five pounds in either direction, so if my Elecmon had the stats, but weighed 14 or 26 pounds then I would get a terrible Digimon. See, because if you don't meet any requirements you get the terrible Numemon who has bad stats and eats poop (That's a real thing)! HOW WOULD YOU EVER KNOW THAT WITHOUT A FAQ!?
So once you figure out how the hell to digivolve your Digimon into something other than the terrible Numemon you then need to recruit people for File City. Out in the world you'll come into contact with Digimon who will fight you and then join the city, or join once you complete a quest for them. Once in the city they will serve a function such as an item shop clerk. You need to scour the land looking for these specific Digimon in order to bring prosperity to File City. You'd think that would be easy with a good Digimon, but much to my dismay your Digimon will eventually die of old age and then you need to train up another one. On top of that the game gives you no direction and you can explore anywhere at any time! It's a super fun game that has a lot of stuff you need to learn. With that said it's a highly original game that deserves more attention that it got.
The Hunt Begins Again?
I guess I'm going to keep playing Digimon World, because I have to see it through to its conclusion. Other than that the only full retail release I'll be purchasing in May is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Judging from the stuff I've seen on the game so far it seems like it's going to be a billion hours long. Hopefully I don't get tired of it like I did with Dragon Age Inquisition.
Well, it's been another month and I hope you enjoyed hearing me rave about Digimon World. I will see you all next month!
