Digimon Survive (Switch)

Digimon is a curious franchise, outside of Japan its popularity seems to ebb and flow over time, while never eclipsing it’s opposition it does garner quite a cult following. Digimon Survive is the latest title and has quite a stir around it so let’s find out if it is infact a Digital Champion instead of Digital Chump. 

Digimon Survive puts you into the world of High School children as they go on a school trip to a remote mountain region, because the main character wears goggles on his head, events transpire, children go missing and monsters of a mysterious origin start to roam the land. 

It takes a few hours to get into the motions but when it starts to chug along, Digimon Survive is quite a hard hitting narrative, especially for something that is attached to a seemingly child orientated franchise. 

Themes of abuse and other heavy subjects ooze throughout the narrative and offside some of the more cheesy “slice of life” interactions that you’d naturally come to expect from an “anime’ title at this point.

I’m being purposely vague in terms of the story because not only has Bandai Namco asked reviewers to not spoil the narrative but also because the game is predominantly a Visual Novel and I feel you should always experience games like that with fresh eyes, it’s a well written and hard hitting story that starts at almost glacial speeds but as long as you know what to expect it somewhat softens the blow. 

To offset some of that reading you have the odd section where you have to point and click at sections of the scenary to move the story along, you can also use your phone camera to track hidden Digimon and items, exploration is boiled down to choosing areas from a map instead of walking around. 

Because the game is based on the Digimon franchise it isn’t solely a Visual Novel, there is also a Strategy Role Playing Game battle system to break up the story and allow you to become said Digital Champion.

While it’s a serviceable system and for someone like me who admittedly doesn’t enjoy visual novels outside of the odd exception, it just doesn’t do enough to justify its existence and feels a little like an afterthought, bizarre after the fantastic Cyber Sleuth series of games. 

Digimon Survive features a negotiation system much like the Shin Megami Tensei series of games and this is your primary way of collecting the many Digimon you come across in this adventure, it feels just as random in nature but becomes second nature as you go further on in the tale.

Combat is a traditional grid based system, weakness system and directional advantage, the same kind of stuff made famous in titles such as Fire Emblem and Shining Force only it hasn’t really done anything with the system to make it its own. 

Digievolutions allow you to “evolve” your Digital friends mid battle which changes attacks and properties, it’s an interesting aspect but one that doesn’t detract from the fact that even it’s combat is a slow, middling system that doesn’t really feel any more than average at any point. 

Graphically the hand drawn images for the visual novel sections are nice, as are the various areas you’ll explore, unfortunately these are held back by really basic looking animations from the chunky, 3D but styled to look 2D models within the bland looking SRPG sections.

Digimon Survive was a title that became quite infamous for constant delays, now it’s here it pains me to say that the wait really wasn’t worth it. 

I may not be the target audience for it but I don’t remember anything advertising the game being a visual novel and I think that and hastily slapped on combat really is a detriment to a game series id finally gotten into last generation, sadly I won’t be staying to get everything Digimon Survive has to offer such as the various endings, instead I’ll be replacing Cyber Sleuth which combined great gameplay with a fantastic story.