Well, it might not be a Tamer’s review, but I thought that
this might be a good intro to Digimon (my review at the moment has a lot of
backstory and it that reason why I haven’t posted it yet). For this, I’m
reviewing the Digimon Franchise and its pros and cons over its rival, the Pokémon
Franchise.
I should note, before I cover the games, I have only played
(and still working on) the DS games, Digimon World DS, Digimon World Dawn and
its counterpart Digimon World Dusk so my review might be a bit biased. That
being said, the Digimon World games haven’t held my interest like the Pokémon Games
have. The plot is pretty simple, you’re a kid who has either been sucked into
the Digital World (the world of the Digimon, they are digital monster’s after all)
or has been living in the Digital World already (these are for the before
mentioned games so intro might be different depending on the game). For World
DS, because your being sucked into the Digital World, you can choose your
partner, who are the three “In Training” forms of the partners in the, current
at the time of release, main members of DATS, the organization in Digimon Data
Squad, more on that latter. From there, you complete objectives to improve your
Digimon’s residence, collect information about other Digimon and raise your Digimon
so that they can “Digivolve”. Dawn and Dusk’s plots might be similar to the
late game as DS (again, haven’t played that much of it yet at the time of
post). You are a member of one of two organizations (depending on which version
you play) and you have to stop something from causing havoc on the Digital
World using the Digimon you already have and anymore you collect on the way.
While I haven’t played a lot of the games, I do like the evolution method the
games use. When your Digimon reaches a certain level and has a specific number
of special experience based on the species (Insect, Machine, Dragon ect) it can
Digivolve to the next level. In order, these are Baby/Newborn, In Training,
Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega and some species have the ability to go
further, but I’ll explain latter. What makes this better then Pokémon for me is
that most Digimon can Digivolve into multiple forms depending on the
circumstances. Take the “mascot” for example, while I won’t explain how, Agumon
can turn into either Greymon and from there it can turn into Metal Greymon and
then War Greymon, or it can turn into GeoGreymon, RiseGreymon and then
ShineGreymon (this is a basic toned down version but you get the point). This
gives the game a lot more replay ability because you could choose the same In
Training Digimon but get a different Mega.
For Pokémon, on the other hand, you’re a 10 year old kid who
gets either a Grass type, Fire type or Water type Pokémon as your first Pokémon
(unless you’re playing Yellow in which case you get Pikachu). You go out, get 8
gym badges from other cities, take on the Elite 4, champion, enter hall of fame
and congratulations, you’ve beaten the game, go onto post game if you wish.
While it might seem that I’m hating on the plot of the games (and I am) for
some reason, this keeps my interest unlike the Digimon Games. My guess is
because, to me, Pokémon gets to the point faster and lets me play faster than the
Digimon World games have. I prefer games that get to the actual gameplay fast
(which is why I dropped Skyrim after I left the first town…). It could also be
9 years of playing Pokémon to 2 years of Digimon but I digress. The Pokémon games
are much easier to get into unlike Digimon because all the Pokémon games assume
you don’t have prior knowledge of games (which is good until you see the “How
to catch a Pokémon Tutorial for the 50th time which often resorts to
myself saying to the game “I’ve been catching Pokémon since before you were
programed”. I guess the nutshell is, Pokémon is baby’s first RPG with Digimon
being the next phase up, they are worth a look but you have to have knowledge
of the series (for Digimon’s case anyway) to understand what you’re getting
yourself into. One of the things I like the most though in Pokémon is that it feels
a lot more like a world then the Digimon games ever did, but I’ll explain why
latter.
And now for the ne thing that people remember the most when
it comes to Digimon, the anime. I will be looking at the English Dub’s for this
so to fans, I apologies. That being said, I really enjoy the anime, it does a
lot of things that the Pokémon Anime would never do. For example
1.
Changes the main character. While Ash is STILL
the protagonist of the Pokémon anime, the Digimon anime changes its group of
lead characters at the end of almost every season and even then, the group is
generally larger than the Pokémon series. While there are 3-4 primary
characters in Pokémon every season, Ash still gets the most screen time trying
to flesh out a character that has run dry in my opinion. Granted I still like
characters like Misty, May and Dawn, its primarily due to their personalities
and how they grow as trainers. The Digimon group has 3-8 characters per season
and they all have decent air time and fleshed out characters by the end of
their series. Because of the new characters, it is understandable for them to
get information on all the Digimon, even if it is just for the viewers but for Pokémon,
it is becoming harder and harder to take ash seriously because he is using the Pokédex
on older Pokémon, THAT HE HAS ALERADY SEEN AND IN SOME CASES CAUGHT!!!
2.
Darker themes. While yes, Pokémon has gotten
away with some dark themes, a lot of those episodes have gotten banned as a
result. Remember when Ash got his 30 Tauros, I don’t. What about when Castelia
City was destroyed, nothing comes to mind…. The only dark theme that I remember
in the anime was in the first move, in the “Try not to cry, cry a lot when you
first see it” scene where Ash dies (And after almost 20 years, spoiler warnings
are thrown out the window). But in the Digimon series, they cover death quite a
lot in all the seasons. The “Digi-Destined” also have to learn how to live with
their decisions “when is it alright to kill”. Family is mentioned constantly in
the first season. Digimon Tamers has been regarded as one of the darkest
seasons to date for several reasons. In the past seasons, when Digimon “die”
their data is reconfigured and they are reborn in a special area of the Digital
World. In tamers, that is never mentioned so it is assumed that if someone dies,
their dead for good, so when one of the heroes, Leomon is killed, on camera,
uncensored (he slowly breaks down into raw data and dissolves, the equivalent
of bleeding to death) and then the famous line by the leader of the group “I’ll
make you hurt, I’LL MAKE YOU PAY”, which then leads into the final ark where the
villain uses the hero’s mental states against them…
Probably my only complaint with the Digimon anime is the
fifth season, Digimon Data Squad and its really just a personal opinion. In the
past, it has been shown that Digimon are based off of kids imaginations (hence
why you can have a giant dinosaur that fires missiles out of his chest) so it
seems weird to me to see late teenagers-early adults being Digi-Destined. While
yes, the cast of the first two seasons are shown to have matured and become adults
while still having their Digimon, they got them when they were kids so I’m
willing to let that slide. Again though, its just a personal thing to me
In conclusion, I highly recommend giving both a shot, to get
your own opinions on both franchises. I haven’t covered anything about the
other aspects of the franchises, including the toys ect and that’s just because
of a lack of experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment