Digimon Anode/Cathode Tamer: Veedramon Edition - 5 hours in
Another long-ass title I have to type out. Also, another name that only sounds cool to Japanese people, but to English speakers it’s just like “wtf am I looking at?”
Anyway! I started playing the Wonderswan Digimon game! I think this game was an attempt to use the Pokémon model of having two versions of pretty much the same games with a different variety of mons in each. (Only ever seen Pokémon and Yokai Watch do that). I honestly can’t remember which version I selected, but I’m only going to do one of them. Judging by the walkthrough I’m using, it seems like this will be a short one. That’s already a plus in my book. I’m enjoying myself so far.
Notes:
-First impressions of this game were very much a mixed bag. On the one hand, I really like the art/graphics, but I was very frustrated to not be told wtf was going on, like with Digimon World 1. I did end up picking things up pretty quickly, but I don’t think a newer kid’s game would ever be this vague. Also, the music is very annoying and repetitive.
-I didn’t expect poor Ryo to get so ripped off! Gennai calls him a “chosen child,” but then is immediately like “here, have this hand-me-down digivice and Agumon.” Lame! I get they’re trying to tie it into the anime, but they still could have given Ryo his own stuff. Oh well, maybe that changes later.
-Plot-wise we have a similar issue to Digimon Adventure 02, why can’t the OG kids just help? -big shrug-
-I groaned when Gennai welcomed me to the digital world lol. Hate that dude.
-Now that I’ve gotten used to the battle system I’m having a lot of fun. I haven’t played a ton of tactical RPGs (I briefly played but didn’t finish Disgaea) so seeing that that was the play style made me a little nervous.
-Already some improvements over Digimon World 2 (even though this game is older): taming digimon is less painful, when you lose in a dungeon you can just try again instead of getting a game over screen, very easy to fast forward through things and the battles aren’t as painfully slow, and I haven’t hit any annoying storage limits (yet). Earning money, skills, and stat increases come pretty quickly so grinding is satisfying too.
-There’s a lot of extra stuff in this game I’ll probably just ignore. It seems they wanted this game to be very social, but I don’t have anyone to play with, so I obviously won’t be exploring the multiplayer features. No clue what the analyzer does.
-I’m 4 dungeons in and there are only 13 of them. It’s still kinda tricky for me to predict how long this game will be though because I’m assuming future dungeons might take many tries.
-Sooo this game was officially released in English by Bandai Asia, but I don’t think the US ever got the Wonderswan, so I guess it was for English speakers in the East only. Weirdly I was watching an anime the other day and they suddenly mentioned the handheld. I was like “what are the odds!?” (Anime is Haiyoru! Nyaruani: Remember My Lovecraft-sensei. It’s really bad, don’t watch it lol)
