Digimon World (デジモンワールド Dejimon Wārudo?) is a role-playing, adventure, and digital pet video game developed by Bandai released at January 28, 1999 in Japan, North America at May 23, 2000, and PAL at July 6, 2001 for the PlayStation. It is the first game in the Digimon World series. The storyline focuses on a human brought to File City on File Island by Jijimon to save the island. Digimon have been losing their memories and becoming feral and the city has fallen into disarray. The goal of Mameo is to save the island by helping Digimon recover their memory and return to the city.

As it came before the anime in Japan, it is very strictly based on the Virtual Pets. The game play revolves around raising a single Digimon from its Digitama form, hatching into a Fresh, up through In-Training, Rookie, Champion, and with work, Ultimate. A Digimon partner will die with age, and return to an egg eventually, so the player has to raise it again.

Fans of the anime will be familiar with the sixth stage, Mega; however this game was made only shortly after the Pendulum series of pets, which introduced Mega level.

To raise a Digimon partner, the player must train it, feed it, let it rest, and take it to the bathroom.

The other main aspect of gameplay is battle. The player's partner Digimon fight the Digimon that have become aggressive due to a crisis on File Island. Partner Digimon begin the game with a few basic skills but acquire more as they progress in levels through the game.

The PAL region's variant cover art features the seven initial Partner Digimon from Digimon Adventure. The group includes Tentomon which isn't obtainable but does however appear in Beetle Land and Gomamon, who is otherwise completely absent from this game

Gameplay

Digimon World's game play utilizes two major aspects: Raising and battling. The element of monster raising consists of feeding your Digimon, allowing it to rest, and leading it to the bathroom. As a Digimon grows and trains, it can digivolve into a stronger form; there are 5 stages of digivolution in total including the desirable Ultimate form. Raising a Digimon carefully and properly helps progress through the game, and improper treatment can lead to dire consequences. The second element of the game, battling, composes the other major aspect of the game. Digimon World's battle system heavily relies on options that a player can command, such as "Your Call" and "Retreat".[3] As a player ventures in the wild, Digimon may engage in battle when touching each others paths. Battles are usually inevitable while adventuring, and they are a reliable source of techniques that a Digimon can learn and money. Training a partner Digimon enhances its parameters, enabling it to fight with better ease and digivolve to powerful forms. Digimon World also provides various mini-games for the player, including fishing, arena tournaments, and curling. Sub-quests are also available, mainly for new recruiting Digimon and other hidden surprises.

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    • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Digimon World is fun vibes when things are actually going, but a huge part of the game is training your digimon, which involves sitting and just watching them do repetitive stuff for long periods of time (getting punched by a gigantic boxing glove to level defense, sitting under a waterfall to level focus or whatever the stats were, etc).

      You might be doing that for a very long while, only for your digimon to evolve into a literal giant turd.

      If you get a good champion evolution you can start breaking out into the broader world, which is actually pretty fun. The game has great vibes, and a fun gameplay loop of journeying out of the main village to find lost villagers and send them back, which in turn upgrades the village (residents return and open up shops or provide special services).

      But it always suffers from having to go back to that damn training grounds for long stretches. Maybe if there's a modded PC version that solves that problem, that would be best.

      • Redcuban1959 [any]
        ·
        2 months ago

        You might be doing that for a very long while, only for your digimon to evolve into a literal giant turd.

        I remember that lol

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        You know the turd digivolution thing has incredibly survived into the modern digimon games. I feel every few years I'll pick up a digimon game and go "why do i always give up on these" then discover you need both good planning and the RNG gods to get decent evolution paths.

      • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Adding to people mentioning World 1 being cool, I remember liking World 3 as a kid but idk if it holds up. It's pretty much a SNES era JRPG on the PS1 that was trying to be a Pokemon game with pretty overworld spritework and Pokemon Stadium-esque battle system. It's probably not great but I remember thinking it was really charming

        • OrionsMask [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 months ago

          I loved DW3 as a kid. When I returned to it when I was a little older, I realised I loved it because I had a lot of time as a child. The game is fun and nostalgic for me, and has the makings of a great Digimon experience, but it's a huuuuuge grind fest. It simply does not respect your time at all. Large portions of the game are traversing a dungeon with random battles literally every 2 steps to find an NPC, only to retrace your steps to talk to another NPC, ONLY TO THEN BE TOLD TO RETURN TO THE FIRST. And there's literally no fast travel. I know it sounds on paper like standard 90's JRPG fare but even Pokémon had Fly... and Repels. You just waste so much time on unavoidable random battles, and they're slow because it's PS1 era stuff.

          So yeah, I love it... in theory. The Digivolution mechanics are cool - every Digimon can evolve into every other Digimon, I literally printed out spreadsheets as a kid of digivolution conditions, but this aspect is also absurdly grindy. I don't think I could ever actually properly play it again with everything that entails as an adult.