#and old sol needs to stop sucking their dick so much

[moirailsupport]

You know, Sym always came off a bit..wrong for me. Just with the whole "grown manthing meeting with a couple of kids, making them keep him a secret, and then, oh yeah, leading one to commit domestic terrorism." Not big on him, but I do like the idea of a sympathetic Gardener love interest.

So! My solution to this is for the Overseer to see Dys and Sol sneaking out, notice that they're younger and more impressionable than the adults, and creating a Gardener, or running a preexisting one, as a child. That's it! Give Sym the intellectual knowledge of the whole Gardener program, but have him be a child mentally. Have the other Gardeners look down on him a bit, and make him just as curious about humans as they are about him. Let him be the trap the Overseer sets for the children, but don't have him be acting of his own volition.

(Also imagine child!Sym sprites <3 maybe starting out looking super monstrous but then gradually growing more human as he ages?)

[turqrambles]

Digimon World - Midgame - Some Assorted Thoughts

At the time of writing this post, I’m sitting at around 31 Prosperity for the first Digimon World game for the PS1, which I could consider pretty mid-game for this type of game, so I just want to write down what I think about this little adventure.

For the record, I am talking about the original Playstation version of the game. The one with the T-rating (which feels way too high for this game since there’s no swear words and the battle damage is fantasy-level at best - is it because of all the poop in this game?) and the one with the CGI Metalgreymon on the cover for the NTSC versions of the game.

I’m playing this game on a physical copy that somehow survived like five moves on my PS3, just for reference. 

(Yes that’s that actual price I paid for it. That was a big price for little kid me.)

The Past Trials of My Schoolchild Self

First thing’s first - as a kid, I actually did not like this game very much!

For starters, I didn’t get very far in the game. My Digimon would keep pooping all over the place for one since I don’t think I fully understood the timing of this mechanic. I stopped playing the game when my Airdramon was one poop away from turning into a Sukamon and I found myself unable to stop it because I saved right before my Airdramon would make the final poop, thus trapping me in an unwinnable game loop. If I turned the game back on, I could only watch as my beautiful flying feathered snake transformed into a poop with eyeballs as I was powerless to stop it.

My Digimon had to suffer for my mistakes.

But besides that, I just found the game far too cryptic to figure out just what was going on, and my Digimon would never turn into anything cool. My Airdramon really was the coolest thing my Digimon ever evolved into, so the yellow turd Digimon really was like salt on a wound.

But, to add insult to injury, one time I hatched a baby Botamon and talked to the old man, only to have this giant dinosaur run up to me and blast the literal infant into smithereens.

Greymon is a dick.

What I remember from kid me’s file of this game - I finished the Drill Tunnel, I got to the dinosaur world one time, and I’m pretty sure I entered Myotismon’s mansion one time because out of sheer luck, my Agumon digivolved into a Bakemon one time.

I know what I didn’t do - I never recruited any of the shopkeeper Digimon so I was doing an itemless run as a kid. A big mistake, considering how important items are in this game!

A Brutal Beginning

Playing this game in 2020 when I’m an adult and have a better concept in how these types of games work is making this playthrough a lot easier for me, but don’t be fooled. This game is still pretty difficult.

I’m going to be real. One of the main turn offs for this game for a lot of players, especially little kids in the year 2000 with dial-up internet and no strategy guide like myself, is that this is one of those games where the beginning starts out slow. Real slow.

Sure, most great RPGs give you a real sense of power and accomplishment once you figure out the mechanics and get stronger as you progress through the game, but in this game, you have less options at the start because, as it turns out, the shopkeepers, the superior meat farmers, the air taxi service, and all those fun little options typically available to you in other RPGs have all turned feral as a result of A Bad Thing That Happened on File Island and it’s up to you and your plucky partner Digimon to explore the wilds and beat them up one by one until they gain a little humanity (...digitanity) and expand the town. 

While it is really cool to see the town expand through the course of the game - buildings are built and lights are gradually installed - but man, the fact that you go for a long time without having a shop if you don’t know what to do kinda sucks. A lot. I kept thinking to myself about how Pokemon is a lot more generous with the item drops and, while the shop inventories at Viridian City and Pewter City aren’t great, they’re there from the beginning.

Note: To get this guy, you have to chase a rumor from a Baby Digimon that there’s a fish that shows up after a certain time on a certain map. Then you have to progress through the jungle enough that you find the one Betamon that isn’t an enemy. There. Now the shop’s open. What, are you saying that’s super convoluted? Why yes it is. Welcome to Digimon World.

Not only that, but this game’s biggest flaw comes from one tiny feature it omits from the game - Digimon World doesn’t have a world map.

See this artwork? This is the most you’re ever going to get.

You know how a lot of RPGs - your Pokemon, your Final Fantasy, etc etc - have a world map that’s easy to access from the start menu? Yeah, this game doesn’t have that. It instead prints a rather rudimentary map in both the instruction manual and on the design of the actual disc. You know what that means? You’re SOL if you ever bought this game used.

I didn’t of course, but physically cracking open my disc case just to be like “ah okay I need to go north” was more annoying than anything. Maybe if the instruction manual came with an actual physical map you can unfold would’ve been better?

The Starter Dilemma

Like most monster collecting games, you have a choice of starters at the beginning of the game. Depending on how you answer the questions at the beginning of the game (all two of them, with only one of them truly mattering), you can start with either an Agumon or a Gabumon. Cool, right?

Well, it starts the fall apart the moment you fight the first boss in the game - a wild Agumon with weaker stats than your partner. And that’s when you realize that one of the starters starts out with a major battle disadvantage at the very start.

Agumon’s starting move is a little ranged attack that it can shoot at enemies. It can hit the enemy from pretty far away so he can evade a lot of close up attacks.

Gabumon’s starting move is an ineffective little flailing of his arms that requires him to get up super close to the other Digimon in order to hit them.

Did I mention this attack is weaker than Agumon’s starting move? This type of starter set-up is utterly baffling to me. Why would you intentionally hobble one of the choices?

So if you were a kid hoping to go on a grand adventure with your happy little dog lizard (instead of doing what a lot of people recommend, which is train your dog lizard for several in-game days until he evolves into something better) expect to see a lot of battles where the enemy Digimon just casually moves out of the way as your dog lizard yells “PWAH”.

Luckily this problem ceases to exist once you start digivolving and learning new techniques, but it’s still a major bummer to start the game on.

On top of that, unlike Pokemon, your Digimon can die. It can only faint three times in battle before he crumbles into a pile of bits and data in a rather brutal cutscene involving the flesh being ripped off your partner’s wire frame while the old man Digimon just kinda glumly stands off to the side and is like “lol he ded”.

So uh, have fun with that, children who accidentally run into a boss Digimon while trying to figure out where the hell anything is.

Sometimes Being Cryptic Is Good

That being said, in an age where I can just peek at my phone if I’m stuck, this game is kinda refreshing in a “playing your first Pokemon game” kind of way.

With no in-game maps and only vague hints of what to do next purely by talking to the villagers, you’re just kinda...left to your own digivices (see what I did there) as you explore this vast, uncharted world and slowly figure out what you’re supposed to do next and, since the world is arranged in a circle around the town, you can go in multiple directions and progress in any way you want.

There’s no set progression, with the story advancing based on how many Digimon you befriend rather than what places you’ve beaten. There’s no pressing incentive to go beyond the Native Forest if you don’t feel ready for that yet. Sure, the town won’t expand if you don’t, but you can still go at things at your own pace until you get a better feel for the environment. You’re just left to experiment as you gradually figure out how to make your Digimon evolve into cooler things.

And honestly, it’s kinda fun playing a game where I don’t know the exact numbers off the top of my head in terms of how to get a certain Digimon so a lot of times I’m genuinely surprised at the evolutions I get.

You just, you know, need a lot of patience. Especially when this game’s English translation is...not great. (which is common with a lot of PS1 games)

The land changed after the land changes happened.

Current Consensus

You need a bit of patience to play this game, but it’s definitely rewarding if you stick by it. I’m certainly having fun playing this game, but I will say out loud that I’m also playing this game while watching a couple let’s plays and having GameFAQs open.

I will say that, as an adult, I actually find myself appreciate this game more than when I did as a child.  It has its flaws, but after a pretty intense learning curve, it becomes pretty rewarding. You know, when it’s not requiring me to fish The Lake Guardian at 9 am with a piece of meat attached to my fishing rod in order to improve my gym.

I give it a “It’s Fun When It’s Not Being Bullshit” out of 10.

Quick Bullet Points

This game has some bangers in the soundtrack so at least it’s pleasant to listen to.

I do like that you can evade the enemy Digimon on screen so you can reasonably enter some places with a lower leveled Digimon than what that area requires. This is just not advisable since most of the Digimon are befriended with a boss fight. That being said, item management is a big thing in this game so enemy dodging is still a useful trait.

You can buy portapotties to keep your Digimon from shitting on the ground but since your Digimon has only one use animation, it uses it by eating it.

 Cherrymon has a radically different design in this game than any other piece of Digimon media and it’s kinda funny how creepy he looks in this game.

The Monochromon Shop minigame earned the reputation that it has - it truly does suck ass and leave you at the mercy of RNG.

It’s been proven by hacking the game that the Bonus Try in the Gym exercises is rigged so never use it.

I like how this game creates recolors to make sure you can tell the difference between the recruitable Digimon and the Digimon that are just meant to be fought against....only for the series to then make these recolors recruitable, defeating their original purpose. I guess I should be glad they’re all considered proper Digimon now.

Poop is an element. You can have creatures of the Poop type.

No seriously Monochromon’s Shop minigame has given me a hatred for Veggiemon and I don’t think I can ever recover.