Digimon World Data Squad

"Disappointment screams all over this game"

INTRODUCTION
Digimon World Data Squad(US), or Digimon Savers: Another Mission(JP) is the latest game of the franchise in the Playstation 2 platform. This game is the first of the “World” series of the platform to finally use anime characters of the same title – with a few additions.

STORY
As usual, just like the anime and in the previous games, you'll fight a bunch of wild digimons. At the early part, you'll be rescuing missing children in various areas and discover the mysteries behind it. As the game progresses, you'll face tougher adversaries and more plot twists. The story generally revolves around the “Seven” guys.

GAMEPLAY
The game has a turn-based battle scheme, typical for an RPG. Add some annoying and frustrating elements and boom! You have this game! This game is somewhat similar to the dungeon crawling game, Digimon World 2 minus the digi-beetle. Although it's more like a hybrid of World 2 and 3.

Wild digimon encounters are way too high! You engage in battle, more battles and another freakin' battle – fulfilling your digimon's digivolution requirements along the way. Loading times are long – the transition time in the field and in the battle, coupled with the insane encounter rate equals the path of true happiness. Thus, the annoying and frustrating factors.

Your digimons' emotions greatly affect what moves/skills they can use. Your digimons will also favor a particular move/skill and if you don't use it often, you will have a terrible relationship with your digimon(s). And it also means that you'll have more difficulty fulfilling certain digivolutions. And sometimes that favored move/skill is pathetically weak and impractical in a particular situation. Enjoy paradise! This isn't like previous games where you'll just practically choose the move you want to use in the list and punish the enemy like there's no tomorrow, not quite with this game. You could still choose but as I mentioned earlier, it depends mainly on your digimons' emotions. The higher the amount a particular emotion is, the higher amount of skills (based on the same particular emotion) present in your TV screen in a hexagon form – ginormous amounts of hexagons. No worries though, you can alter your digimons' emotions by using certain commands accessible during battle. Digimons here are a bunch of emos!

Horrible, pointless and missing digimons! Some digivolutions are just meant to fulfill another digivolution's requirements and making a lot of them useless. Some digimons in previous titles and anime aren't present here. I wonder why? Some mega-leveled digivolution requirements are difficult to fulfill. Not that you need them; heck you could even finish the game without difficulty just by using the natural forms of the protagonists. Digivolution/digi-soul charge in battles is a joke! Could you imagine a mega-leveled digimon “digivolve” into a rookie-leveled one during a boss/crucial battle? In this game, yes you could.

SOUNDS
Average. Not that good, not that bad; just average. It's fine by its own but because of the insane and repetitive encounter rate, you would want to put your TV to mute.

Voices. Pretty much the same guys(dubbers in the anime). And I'm not exactly a fan of digimon US dubbing. The voices barely have any emotions! As if they're just saying it for the sake of saying it. Digimon voices are limited only with their natural forms. Like ShineGreymon line for example. Wonder far away from the line and you won't hear any more voiceovers.

GRAPHICS
An OK graphics. Not too shabby, not too flashy; but OK. Want to know more? Well, look at the screenshots in gamefaqs. Pretty much self-explanatory.

OVERALL
Nothing to do but level up and kill. The bread and butter of this game: leveling and battling. Nothing more, nothing less. Side quests revolve around the same principles. No mini-games whatsoever. What else? No more.

Missing digimons and digimon voices. Veemon is in the game. But wait! His armor/champion/ultimate/mega forms are missing! I mean, what the hell? What's the point putting Veemon in the game if they won't add its more powerful forms? No one, I mean, no one will use the lone Veemon form during the latter parts of the game. What's the point of its existence in the game anyway? A cameo perhaps? The MetalGreymon form is also missing. Greymon is here, so is WarGreymon and WarGreymon X. But why are Numemons here? No, not just one green ugly non-fighting machine, there's a whole clan of them! They have one use: to fulfill certain “required” amounts of digivolutions. But hey, they could just add the more famous/cute ones instead, no? Instead, they add a whole clan of Numemons that probably no one will use. The voices are also a disappointment. If the developers want to add voices to digimons, they should do it to all digimons not just for a select few.

This game isn't synonymous with monster raising. If you're looking for one, don't look here. The franchise's days of monster raising is long gone. There is also an overabundance of consumable items that probably no one will ever need or use.

No references. The “race” and attack property of the digimons are confusing, even for veterans. If this was your first time playing a digimon game though, would you know what DR means? Or maybe NSo? How about NSp? WG? DS? They don't even have references in the game! I myself got confused what those meant. I found out what it means while surfin' the net.

This is the worst? Or maybe not? It depends on you. This game isn't even fun to play, it was for me during the early stages of the game. But as it progressed, it looked like more of like a struggle of some sort, a pain the neck and a stress inducing game.

BUY OR RENT?
I can't recommend you this game. Disappointment screams all over this game. I suggest you look into other titles if you want a monster raising game or another digimon game. If you're a collector of some sort or just a die hard fan, might as well give it a shot. I suggest you try it first and see it for yourself before obtaining a copy.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/26/08, Updated 11/10/08

Game Release: Digimon World Data Squad (US, 09/18/07)