Digimon World 3

"Bandai at its greatest"

When I first started playing this game, I thought it was pretty good. The gameplay was extremely fun, the soundtrack was okay, and the controls were pretty good. DW3 still is a great game to me to this day. It's different from DW2 and the original Digimon World, but in a way, that makes this game just a little bit better. It takes the series off in a new direction, and Bandai didn't do such a bad job of it. As I've mentioned before, the gameplay is great, the soundtrack is okay, and the controls are good, but there are also some flaws in this game. They might take a long time to notice, but noticed or not, they are still flaws.

Gameplay 10/10
I'll admit, this game has one of the best leveling up systems I have ever seen in my life. There are certain digimon you have to choose from to start off the game, and each digimon that you choose has the capability to turn into something else. Basically, this changing of your digimon is called "Digivolution". They change into something different, and the new digimon that you got from the digivolve has different abilities than the first. There is a truckload of digivolves that you can level your digimon into, and each one is unique and special in their own way. Maybe it's the way that they attack, or the way the move when waiting for a command. But every single digivolve that you get is fun to play around with. You can literally level up your digimon for hours on end and forget that there is a story to finish.

Story 7/10
One of the not so good parts of Digimon World 3 is its story. You start out as a young boy named Junior. He decides to play a game called "Digimon Online", which is basically an interactive reality game where he gets to train digimon and battle people with his digimon. But when Junior gets deeper and deeper into the game, he finds out that there are people who are trying to take over the world through this interactive reality game. Overall, this game's story is really cheesy, because once Junior finds out about the bad people who are trying to take over the world, he's all like, "Oh no! I've got to save the world!". And then he goes off someplace with his digimon, and battles more people. And then he remembers to save the world again. So he goes off to another place, and talks to people that don't really have anything to do with the plot, or with the evil people trying to take over the world. I mean, the story is okay, but compared to how fun the gameplay of this game is, it's absolutely nothing.

Graphics 5/10
The worst part about DW3 is its graphics. It has utterly horrible graphics, and this is one thing that Bandai could have seriously improved on. The whole game looks like a blocky cartoon, and the digimon when in battle all seem to have the same special moves. Whenever a new move is unlocked for a digivolve, usually people tend to get a little excited, and they want to know what the move looks like. But essentially, all special moves in this game are the same. Just a shiny pink sphere flying at the enemy. Some moves are different, but probably about 99% of this game's special moves are flying pink spheres. Now that is some pretty disappointing stuff.

Sound 9/10
The soundtrack is quite amazing. And so are the Special Effect noises. Whenever I enter into an inn, I always like to take a break from playing the game and just listen to the nice, lulling tune of the Inn. A lot of the songs in this game actually seem to fit the places they're played at. And the sound effects also seem to fit in nicely. Take for example; at all the beach areas, there will occasionally be the call of a seagull. And whenever you open up the main menu, there will be the mechanical "blip" whenever you move the pointer. All in all, the soundtrack and sounds of this game are something to admire.

Replay Value 8/10
With this game, it's never actually a chore to pop in the disc to battle with the digimon. Actually, with a second playthrough, this game might actually seem to make a lot more sense. All the digivolves will seem familiar, and all the places that you visited would probably bring back fond memories. This probably wouldn't be the number one game that you would want to play a second time, but it would be up there somewhere.

Play Time 9/10
It all depends on your style of gaming. If you love to level up every single digimon, it'll take you over 300 hours to beat the game. But, if you just want to whiz through it without really bothering about seeing all the digivolves, it will take you less than 50 hours. That's a great range of time!

Gameplay: 10/10
Story: 7/10
Graphics: 5/10
Sound: 9/10
Replay Value: 8/10
Play Time: 9/10

Total Score: 7.8/10 which rounds up to 8/10
Final Score: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/09

Game Release: Digimon World 3 (US, 06/05/02)