Published 15/12/2025

Digimon World 1

I’ve recently been getting back into Digimon. It was something I loved as a kid; I remember watching the 4Kids dub of Digimon Adventure, getting the shit scared out of me by the clown Digimon, and thinking Meramorn was the coolest fucker on the block. I still think that, to be clear. But over the last few decades, whilst I’ve still had appreciation for it, it’s always hovered about in the background, taken up by other comparable franchises. Series like Pokemon and its contemporaries don’t quite fit the same mold as Digimon, but at the end of the day, they’re both franchises filled with a ton of cute ‘lil guys.

But when I’ve been hearing about the newest game from one of my best friends, who is a FIEND for Digimon, and with how good the newest anime series, Beatbreak, has been, I’ve decided to take a look at some of the Digimon games I always wanted to play as a kid, but never had a chance to. First on that list - Digimon World 1, because the game that dances around in my memory is one of those PS1 entries, and it’s probably best I play them in order.

Not sure what I expected, but I’m glad with what I got, because… geez, Digimon World is a LOT.

Beautiful Madness

The headliner for this review is… well, Digimon World is a mess of a game. A mess of confusing systems and lack of information, but through all that, there is a core to it that I simply couldn’t pull myself from. It is maddening, annoying, frequently frustrating, but it has an earnestness and a sense of personality that kept me hooked for over twenty hours. It’s a weird, odd, occasionally disconcerting game, and that’s what’s beautiful about it.

Sometimes, bad games can be great games. That’s not to say Digimon World is any kind of ‘objectively’ bad game - it has some bizarre design decisions, but I genuinely don’t know if I’d find it as bamboozling if I was playing it back in 1999. It’s proof that, especially amongst older, more avant garde (that is probably not the right term for Digimon World of all things, but I’m sticking with it) titles on the PS1 and earlier having a few elements that really resonate with the player outweighs a LOT of issues. Issues which can be VERY prominent from time to time in this game.

A Friend, Not A Monster

But let’s take this all one step at a time. The most important thing to know is that Digimon World isn’t remotely like its major competitors. In fact, it’s much more of an adaptation of, as crazy as it is to say, the actual Digivice toy, then it is of the anime which was airing at the time (though, they do both share the isekai premise). So, due to this focus on ‘adapting’ the Digivice experience, Digimon World stands apart from the other ‘monster collectors’ that were all the rage. Rather than resembling the genre that defines games like Pokemon or Shin Megami Tensei , instead of raising a squad of little monsters, you’re given a singular Digimon to raise. Though Digimon may age and ‘fade away’, they’ll always be by your side in one form or another, and will be a companion in a way that Pokemon never could be. When you pop into the Digital World, you’ll be asked a few benign questions, the answers to which will dictate if you’ll get Agumon or Gabumon.

I’m a Gabumon guy, by the way.

But if you don’t love Agumon or Gabumon (first of all, why?), have no fear! You’ll have access to dozens upon dozens of different Digimon… just getting to them is a touch more involved. Digimon don’t evolve and grow in a linear way like Pokemon. - Depending on how you raise each of their six stats, alongside several other parameters, each tier of Digimon can evolve and branch into a variety of different creatures.

For example, in the anime Agumon iconically Digivolves into Greymon. If you raise each of Agumon's stats above 100 via the training methods offered within the hub city, along with keeping him at a certain weight and avoiding mistakes with his care - simply put, don’t let him crap on the floor or forget to feed him - he will evolve into Greymon. But if you put more stock into raising his Brains stat, he’ll turn into Centaurumon, or if you make him lighter and a focus on defense, he’ll turn into Meramon. It’s a little confusing - confusion sometimes feeling like the bedrock of the entire experience - but within the overall loop of the game, it makes sense.

Because, eventually, your Digimon will grow too old - the exact length of which dictated by if you managed to reach Ultimate stage - and will ‘fade away’. And by fade away, turn into a pile of what I can only describe as… digital bones? Anyway, once they fade, the digital bones will be reformed into an egg, and thus a new baby Digimon, allowing you to begin the cycle once more. Digimon go through a life cycle of Baby - > In Training - > Rookie - > Champion - > Ultimate, and outside of the first form having little leeway in different evolutionary forms, you have near total control of what you want your little guy to be. So, essentially, you’ve got one Digimon throughout your time in Digimon World, looping through the stages with dozens and dozens of potential evolution paths you can take. It’s never a matter of finding ‘a’ Meramon, or ‘a’ MetalGreymon - it’s about the evolution of your sole partner, growing alongside you again and again.

The act of raising these stats aren’t in-depth or anything - you’ll get them from selecting exercise equipment at one of the Gyms scattered around the Digimon World, with each piece of equipment primarily raising one or two stats. Exercising takes time, and coupled with feeding and caring for your Digimon, you have to pick your stat targets carefully, as you can spend hours training up the perfect Digimon, only for him to pass away from old age once you’re done. You can also raise Digimon, albeit in a much slower manner, by battling rogue Digimon across the world, though usually I found battling is only really worth it when a Digimon’s evolution specifically requires a certain number of battles. When you tie together the in-game time training takes, with actually completing the game’s goals once they’re all powered up, it gives the game a time-management element that sends my fingers tingling in excitement.

Unless it's my carpal tunnel.

At its heart, I do like the training systems of Digimon World. It’s a far more personal system that really makes your Digimon feel like your partner, and the amount of control you have of the variety of Digimon they can become is astounding. But it’s also the heart of Digimon World’s biggest issue - it’s lack of information. Now, I’m willing to bet that this was partially a planned concept, to drive sales of its inevitable guide book or encourage kids to work it out with friends. But like I said, there are a LOT of Digimon you can Digivolve into, a branching web with different paths from In-Training stage onwards. But there’s very little in the game that tells you what stat parameters you need to reach for specific Digimon!

Rebuilding A Digital World

An element that draws me into pretty much any game, regardless of genre, is one that has a focus on building up a core hub, filled with the allies and results of your triumphs. And that is the bedrock of Digimon World. In a virtual land where Digimon have largely gone their own way, Jijimon has summoned you, the player, to be the connective tissue that brings all together once more. The core narrative of the game - as light as it is - is that the majority of File City-dwelling Digimon have gone nuts, and it’s up to you and your chosen Digimon to recruit them back to the town and rebuild the crumbling Digital World. Narrative is not the focus here - bits of lore are thrown in here and there, but generally what’s there isn’t particularly interesting, and I’m much more interested in the act of building up File City than why I’m doing just that.

Thus, beyond raising your Digimon, the majority of your time will be exploring the vistas of the Digimon world, looking for bespoke Digimon that require generally bespoke tasks and challenges of you, help from their various situations, or just need a brawl to set their head right. Now, the actual fun element of these tasks vary heavily. Some are simplistic battles, others requiring a puzzle or two to clear. Others are a little more in-depth, ranging from a trading questline, to a shopping minigame, to winning a round of goddamn CURLING. I said this was a weird game, no? What’s even more fun, is there is also a massive range in how frustrating some of these recruitment jobs can be. Hunting for items to trade? Nah, not too bad. Surprisingly enough, despite me doing some truly amazing chokes, curling was actually quite fun. But then there’s shite like the shopping minigame, whose RNG is rigged so far against the player that winning it without pulling out literal RNG manipulation is an exercise in frustration.

I’m not mad, I promise. MOST of the other recruitment jobs, with their little bespoke puzzles and stories, are lovely, but that shopping minigame… Thankfully, if you want to hit the credits of the game, you only need to recruit a certain amount - and a few key - Digimon, so if you find one that is driving you up the wall, don’t stress, just leave that shopkeeper to rot in purgatory!

But even the most frustrating objectives anger-inducing elements (mostly) are pacified by the results. With each successive Digimon, File City grows. New buildings are constructed, existing ones expand. Digimon will mill about, spreading rumours and giving you hints. There’s almost a survival-game sense of progression to building up the town; at first, I’m struggling to keep my Digimon fed and healthy, and it’s not until you find one of the Digimon who open a store that you get a more consistent supply chain. Sure, you can scrounge together enough food and healing, but until you recruit a Digimon who grows better food, it’s tough going.

In some ways, it gives Digimon World a reverse difficulty curve, as the act of just surviving and thriving gets easier the more Digimon you recruit. But, more importantly, File City just feels more and more like a home, a safe place to come back at, to train, or simply see the fruit of your labours. Those who play Suikoden know the feeling - by the end of the game, the decrepit File City has become a sprawling utopia.

So basically, raising and training your Digimon is the micro form of progression, an avenue to pursue the macro objective of locating Digimon to fill out File City and raise its ‘prosperity level’ to eventually unlock the final dungeon and complete the game. It’s a dual gameplay loop that feeds into itself beautifully, forming a rock solid bedrock that kept me glued to Digimon World even when its flaws rear its head, or a lack of information sends me into a brick wall.

Translation Telephone

The lack of information the game provides you with is further tempered by what appears to be a ridiculously poor translation job. At a basic level, a huge amount of conversations between the player and the various Digimon frequently devolve into various ‘mons just spouting awkward, unclear exposition - frequently about nothing at all - with the player just responding in varying forms of ‘Huh? What? Bwah?’. With how throwaway the presented story is, this isn’t a huge deal, but this translation issue rears its ugly head when major hints towards objectives are swallowed up. The prime example was in the Mansion zone, where a note indicates you need to speak to ‘the stupid one’. This stupid one, in fact, is Bakemon outside the mansion, but there is no indication that he is the one you need to speak to - and the only thing I can think of is the fact that ‘bake’ is very close to ‘baka’, the Japanese word for stupid.

Thankfully, I don’t mind just wandering the world with no idea what to do. The PS1 was a visual utopia for video games, because this was the time of pre-rendered backgrounds, and I genuinely believe Digimon World has amongst the best ‘looks’ of any game from this era. The various zones of the Digital World - lush forests, arid deserts, cozy snowdrifts and heartless factories are insanely evocative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them exist as backgrounds in no small number of ‘chill/relaxing PS1 background noise’ YouTube videos. Plus, the myriad of little dudes you’ll be training and battling in equal measure are all adorable, with just the perfect level of weird modelling that’s evergreen on the PS1. The PS1, alongside the N64, is my favourite era of how video games used to look, and Digimon World takes the cake as an almost perfect example of the artform at the turn of the millennium.

Battling, or: How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Heals

If only everything was so perfected. Battles are perhaps the most awkward, flawed element of all. Thankfully, as I said, battling isn’t super important in the moment-to-moment wanderings of the Digital World, but with a variety of recruitable Digimon - along with bosses in most zones - lurking about, you will need a pretty powerful Digimon to cope. As compared to its contemporaries, Digimon World doesn’t have you properly controlling your Digimon partner. Instead, you’ll be able to give it a variety of commands to influence his behaviour, the number of which increase as you raise your partner’s Brain stat. At first, it’ll just be your ‘Mon bashing his skull against his foes, but with a high enough brain stat, you can suggest certain behaviours or indicate certain attacks. Still, you’re totally unable to suggest movement or evasive maneuvers, leading your ‘lil guy to taking a lot of hits that’d easily be avoidable.

Plus, it didn’t matter how high I raised my stats - the game has no real sense of a difficulty curve, due to the relatively open-world format and flexibility of your multi-tiered Digimons. Some opponents you’ll devastate even as a Rookie Digimon, but some groups in the very next zone will put even Ultimate Digimon to task. So it rarely ever felt worth it to go exploring before I’d evolved my Digimon to Champion Level - unless I got adept (and I did get REAL adept) at serpentining my way through rogue Digimon, my Rookie Digimon and below are just going to get torn asunder in a way that’ll put a Mortal Kombat fatality to shame. Even worse, sometimes the seemingly random pace of attacks will cause your Digimon to have their attacks cancelled during wind-ups, draining your MP but dealing no damage.

Simply put, I don’t like the battles in this game. When you have so little control over them, even at max Brain stat, coupled with the errant difficulty curve, and the fact everything can be beaten by a healthy stock of healing items and a bunch of time… It's a huge part of the game that just undermines the entire experience. A smidge more control, and maybe I’d have a lot more positive things to say.

In Defense Of The Weird, The Poor, And The Unique

Digimon World… Digimon World is a mess of a game. But at the same time, within the twenty-odd hours I spent with it, it had a hold on me I just can’t explain.

Maybe it’s how the game looks.

Maybe it’s the training mechanics so foundational to it.

It’s certainly at least partly due to that city-building, friend-acquiring core of the game.

But ultimately, I think it’s because Digimon World is just… weird. It plays weird, it doesn’t give you the information you need to thrive. It doesn’t respect your time, with the initial slow navigation across the world, lack of control in battle, and the opaque set of requirements to evolve Digimon. It’s a game that’s coated in friction in a way that is almost never seen from, well, *anywhere* these days, indie or AAA alike. It’s a kind of jankness that can be frustrating, but never enough to push me away.

Moreso, I honestly just believe it’s just that Digimon World feels like a childhood game to me. One that, albeit, I never actually played, but brought me back to the mindset I had as a child, in multiple ways. The kind of game that I’d pick up as a seven-year old, put probably fifty hours into, and never get close to finishing. I would’ve delighted in just wandering the Digital World, seeing the variety of Digimon my starter would or could Digivolve into - even if I’d probably just end up with the fail-state, poop Digimon. Wandering this world as a near 30 year old has been delightful, but as a little kid? It would’ve felt nearly endless in scope.

The other thing is the fact I was playing Digimon World the same way I played a lot of those weird, obtuse, awkward games of my childhood. I’m not good at video games, or at the very least, inferring what I’m meant to do with little instruction. In my pre-teen years, when I was constantly playing GBA games on my emulator, I’d have huge, detailed FAQS at the ready, always there to reference when I got remotely stuck. Maybe it made me complacent, made me have such a short fuse when it comes to getting stuck in games today. But there was something satisfying about scrounging for crowd-sourced info about this or that obtuse title. Because this feels like a game designed for collective knowledge, chatting with your friends to work out how they got MetalGreymon or recruited Vadermon.

Frankly, I can’t imagine a kid taking less than a hundred hours to beat Digimon World, with its random sense of difficulty, lack of direction, and horrendously opaque Digivolve system. Even with myself having (at least I hope) a fully developed brain would struggle to beat in less than sixty without having the Evolution Calculator on hand, along with more than a few glances at what certain recruitment needed what. Undoubtedly, referencing these guides improved my view on the game - I can get very, very frustrated - but it makes me worry. Did I miss something, experiencing the game this way? Even if it did likely improve my time with it, did I lose something knowing how to hit a certain evolution for my Digimon, or not suffering through hidden walkways in my hunt for Angemon? Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t have the patience, nor the time, to suffer ‘as the kids did’, but at the same time… I don’t know.

I think beneath the jank, the obfuscations and the translation, there is something really special in Digimon World. It’s an adaptation of a digital pet toy turned into something all its own. It’s a far cry from anything else in the monster-raising space at the time, and it’s a much more interesting, albeit flawed, title as a result. Simply put, outside of a few examples, I’ve never connected with any of my Pokemon the way I connected with my Digimon, Bubbis, no matter what form he took. It’s the closest I’ve felt to being a little kid playing a weird game that I’ve been in for a long time, and I think that’s the biggest props I can give. I think if anything in this review has tempted you to give this game a try, don’t feel afraid to glance at a resource or two - there’s something truly unique at play, and I can think of little worse than this game getting in its own way of getting the appreciation it (somewhat) deserves.