For the last few days I’ve been replaying a video game from shortly after the time of the pandemic called Digimon Survive. As for why I’ve been replaying this game, I mainly did so to get some inspiration for part of a fanfic I’ve been working on. Anyway, I just finished the game’s true ending for the second time, so I thought I’d share my thoughts about this game in the form of a review. I will of course avoid spoilers as much as possible. Here's a trailer for the game from about three years ago.
The game’s story should be a familiar one to anyone who watched the original Digimon Adventure anime back at the dawn of this current century. A bunch of middle school kids go on a camping trip and end up getting spirited away to a world full of talking monsters. Our hero is a kid with goggles who ends up getting partnered with the dinosaur-like Digimon, Agumon. Yet while this game’s story starts out using the same formula as Digimon Adventure, it takes things in a dark direction by killing off some of its main characters. It should be noted however that which characters die (or if any die at all) depends largely on the actions of the player.
Digimon Survive is mostly a visual novel game where the choices the player makes dictate how the overall story unfolds. Now, I have actually played a handful of visual novel games in the past, and honestly a lot of them didn’t do much for me. It seemed like all I did during most of them was press the A button to advance the text. My attitude here is, if I just want to read a story, I’ll read an actual book (or my Amazon Kindle). For me, a game should be something that’s way more interactive.
All of this being said however, Digimon Survive is a notable exception to my view of visual novels. There are several points throughout each chapter of the story where the player makes choices that influence the evolution of the main character’s Agumon, affect the main character’s affinity with the other characters in the story, and of course dictate what ending the player ultimately gets. These choices also dictate which of the other characters get killed off. I should also probably mention here that the game has four possible endings, which includes a true ending where every single one of the characters survives. Of course this only seems to unlock after playing through at least one of the other three possible endings.
It’s also worth mentioning that Digimon Survive drops the whole “digital monster” concept, at least to a certain extent, and puts more of a Japanese folklore spin on the creatures. In this story, Digimon are referred to as “Kemonogami”. Speaking for myself, I neither like nor dislike them dropping the “digital monster” concept for this game’s story. Actually, the whole Japanese folklore aspect works pretty well with the game’s true ending route, which focuses on a group of Digimon known as the Four Sovereigns, who are based on the concept of the Four Symbols. This group of Digimon played a small but significant role in Digimon Adventure 02, had a major role in Digimon Tamers, and then just sort of disappeared from the later entries in the franchise. As a fan of the older Digimon anime shows, it was nice seeing a story where the Four Sovereigns were once again front and center.
While Digimon Survive is partly a visual novel game, it does have battles that use a Fire Emblem style strategy format. In other words, you just move your Digimon around on an almost game board like battle field and have them take out enemy Digimon. In certain battles, you can also recruit some of the enemy Digimon to bolster your own army. For any wile Digimon you do manage to recruit from these battles, you can train and even evolve them using certain items that you collect throughout the course of the game. So while this game is mostly a visual novel, it does have the whole creature raising aspect that one would expect from a title like Digimon.
Now this wouldn’t be a true review if I didn’t talk about the game’s flaws, and there are some glaring ones. For one thing, there’s an incredibly small number of Digimon available for players to recruit for their army. Also, the battles in this game aren’t the most challenging, though if you’re mainly playing for the story, that may not be much of an issue. Besides, some of the later battles in the game’s true ending route are a little difficult, or at least I thought they were. Experiences may vary.
Turning back to the visual novel aspect of this game, there are quite a few dialogue heavy scenes that sort of turn the game into a major time suck and make it hard to get to a good save point. This makes the process of replaying the game to get all of the different endings a rather tedious process. There is one other small flaw related to the game’s true ending that I feel is worth mentioning. Upon clearing the true ending, the player becomes able to evolve the main protagonist’s Agumon into Huanglongmon, the leader of Four Sovereigns. Now this is a cool prize, but at the same time… what the hell is even the point?
Unlocking Agumon’s evolution into Huanglongmon would be a good clear reward for a game that had an actual postgame or a feature where you could battle other players online, but all you can do in Digimon Survive is replay the story over again from the beginning as a New Game Plus. Now, I suppose having this evolution unlocked would be a nice advantage to have when trying to play one of the endings you hadn’t played through, but even if you had the time and patience to play through all four of the game’s possible endings, wouldn’t you logically do the true ending last? It is a cool reward for clearing the game, but it really serves no purpose. I hate to mention a Pokémon game in a post about Digimon, but this whole Huanglongmon thing is kind of like how they waited to add Mega Garchomp Z to Legends: Z-A on Pokemon Day earlier this year. By that point, practically everyone who had bought the game back in November had most likely cleared the main story, cleared the DLC and captured every single Pokémon available in Lumiose City and in Hyperspace. Once those goals are accomplished, there’s not much point left in continuing to play, except to battle other players online.
Getting back to Digimon Survive, while it may be a flawed game, but it’s one I still recommend. In spite the game’s flaws, it does have a pretty good story. Full disclosure, I have only played through three of the four game’s possible ends as of this post, but the three endings I did see felt fairly satisfying. Actually, the true ending could’ve used a better epilogue, but it was still pretty good. So if you were a fan of Digimon back at the recent turn of the century and like visual novels and/or strategy games, you should give this game a try. Speaking for myself, I don’t think I’m ever going to attempt trying to unlock all four endings using a single save file, but this is one game I can see myself replaying from scratch every couple of years or so. It’s sort of like rereading an old book.
I'd like to close this post with a couple of links to some helpful game guides for anyone who might like to try tackling this game.
Digimon Survive: Guide and Walkthrough
The first guide should he helpful to anyone trying to get the game's true ending, or just to any specific ending they want to unlock. My advice to first time players though is to just make your choices based on whatever answer you feel is right at the time. It might be interesting to see what sort of ending you get by playing blind.
