I've beaten every route (the 3 "basic" routes and the NG+ route), and I have to say: this is a mediocre VN and an even worse SRPG. The charm of Digimon can only carry it so far (to 2 and a half stars, apparently!), but the game doesn't do what a lot of good VN does, in that it railroads you with your choices barely mattering. The basic three routes are basically the same, especially the Wrathful and Harmony. Though there is something to be said about how much better the "true" ending is, playing it after 3 playthroughs make you wish every route was as good as that one.
For this to have been a succesful macabre take on the Digimon franchise in the form of a VN (something I'm not opposed to), I'd have liked to see more bad ends, more avoidable deaths, and less hyperfixation on affection points for basically every cooperative stats like a cheap Persona knock-off, and more on actually doing something with the characters. Even more railroad-y titles like Majikoi offers a route split much earlier, and each route is different, not to mention titles with multiple bad ends like Aoi Shiro making each choice feel very tense and final.
For it to have been a good SRPG, the fights had to be way more unfair. I'd have liked to see multiple turns, more reinforcements, more weird battlefield gimmicks for chapter bosse at least. I've beaten the "true ending" with battle on the hardest difficulty, and while all the accumulated exp from the previous runs made it a lot easier, there is a sense of the fight being too fair, or even unfair to the giant bosses. In games like Super Robot Wars, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and even western games like X-Com, there's a sense of the enemy holding an advantage that makes beating the fights very rewarding. In Digimon Survive, I went and beat the hell out of a legendary digimon with 4 of my own, while it only got 1 turn with no real field gimmick to make the beatdown feel like anything but bullying.
The game tries to be both and fails at being both, and this critique invites the apologists' usual excuses of, "It's supposed to be VN!" well, I've played a lot of VNs, and I don't think a VN with basically identical 3 routes that requires you to go through tutorialization for the first 1/3 of the content per route (roughly 5 hrs or so) and is the same for 3/4 routes for the 2/3 of the game (roughly 10+ hrs or so) is very good.
I can enjoy seeing my favorite digimons (and Justimon wasn't even in the game and Dukemon never goes Crimson Mode) with better sprite animation than older Digimon World games, and I can appreciate what they were going for, but they should go back to the drawing board.
For this to have been a succesful macabre take on the Digimon franchise in the form of a VN (something I'm not opposed to), I'd have liked to see more bad ends, more avoidable deaths, and less hyperfixation on affection points for basically every cooperative stats like a cheap Persona knock-off, and more on actually doing something with the characters. Even more railroad-y titles like Majikoi offers a route split much earlier, and each route is different, not to mention titles with multiple bad ends like Aoi Shiro making each choice feel very tense and final.
For it to have been a good SRPG, the fights had to be way more unfair. I'd have liked to see multiple turns, more reinforcements, more weird battlefield gimmicks for chapter bosse at least. I've beaten the "true ending" with battle on the hardest difficulty, and while all the accumulated exp from the previous runs made it a lot easier, there is a sense of the fight being too fair, or even unfair to the giant bosses. In games like Super Robot Wars, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and even western games like X-Com, there's a sense of the enemy holding an advantage that makes beating the fights very rewarding. In Digimon Survive, I went and beat the hell out of a legendary digimon with 4 of my own, while it only got 1 turn with no real field gimmick to make the beatdown feel like anything but bullying.
The game tries to be both and fails at being both, and this critique invites the apologists' usual excuses of, "It's supposed to be VN!" well, I've played a lot of VNs, and I don't think a VN with basically identical 3 routes that requires you to go through tutorialization for the first 1/3 of the content per route (roughly 5 hrs or so) and is the same for 3/4 routes for the 2/3 of the game (roughly 10+ hrs or so) is very good.
I can enjoy seeing my favorite digimons (and Justimon wasn't even in the game and Dukemon never goes Crimson Mode) with better sprite animation than older Digimon World games, and I can appreciate what they were going for, but they should go back to the drawing board.