Greymon wins every time. Every time!
Do you remember Digimon Rumble Arena? You probably don't, it was this little 1 on 1 2-D fighting game starring Digimon on the PS1. Well, Bandai took a completely unrelated Digimon game and localized it as a sequel, which is rather fitting since it's sorta similar... even if it's more of a Smash Clone.As previously stated this is a Smash Bros. clone, meaning that battles include up to four different combatants, taking place on relatively large, 2-D environments, featuring stage hazards as well as a few power-ups to change the tide of battle in your favor. Although, to be fair, there aren't many different power ups in this game. There're only three different modes: Arcade, a 8-stage ladder where you'll unlock every character, stage and ruleset, VS, in which you can battle up to three other players, CPUs or a mix of both under a decent variety of rules(Basic Timed matches, KO matches, to more bizarre rules like collecting the most digi eggs or capturing Culumon for points.) and lastly a Practice mode.
Digimon on the Wild West. I guess that makes sense.
There were a few short sighted decisions when it came to designing the game. For instance, you can't have mirror matches since no two player can play as the same Digimon, which is very lame. And for as many quirky rulests that you can play under, there's no way to play in teams, it's always a free for all in here. Your mileage may vary on the character roster, you get all 8 classic Digimon from Adventure 01, but only Veemon represents Adventure 02 and only Guilmon represents Tamers. There're a few Frontier Digimon, the series that was on TV at the time, as well as an unlockable Omnimon and Duskmon from the movie, lastly, we get Black versions of Guilmon, Agumon and Gabumon, each having at least a single different attack from their normal counterparts. Most characters get two Digievolutions, starting on their Rookie form, to their Champion form and then their Mega.. or Ultimate if they didn't have a Mega on their show. Character balance is a bit iffy, particularly since most unlockable characters stay on their Mega form, but you can tinker with handicaps to even the odds.First thing to take into account is that like most Smash Clones... it feels a bit cheap. Physics don't feel quite right, as if everything lacked weight. The game isn't the most beautiful thing either, featuring some rather ugly animations. Regardless, you get a normal attack button, with X, that can be couple with different directions to produce different attacks, and a special attack button, Square, that can produce three different special moves. You can also grab enemies with Circle, jump with X or block with R1. Landing hits makes enemies drop digi-eggs which, when collected, increase your digivolution gauge, fill it to the top and you can press R1 to digivolve and get an entirely different moveset. Once you get to your final Digivolution, filling the gauge is done to perform an Ultra attack. Be careful, if you lose a life you drop a digivolution stage back.
Your mileage may vary on the character roster. Hopefully you enjoyed season 01!
It's not the best Smash clone around nor the best Digimon game out there, but if you enjoy the franchise you'll probably get a kick out of it. It's kinda sad that they decided to focus on adding quirky rulesets that nobody will ever play instead of giving us basics such as team battles or mirror matches, c'mon, everyone wants to have a Palmon VS Palmon VS Palmon VS Palmon! All in all, it's far from perfect, and it fails to get the physics just quite right, but most of the basic gameplay feels relatively well, if a bit low-budget-y.
6.5 out of 10
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