Digimon World is one of the strangest, most obtuse, most fascinating games ever.

[RelaxItsJustMe]

I too played this as a young child and never really got very far. Back then I hated the prospect of losing your Digimon through old age and starting all over again with the egg. So for some reason I just tried to go as far as possible with the first Digimon I got, then he'd eventually die and I'd quit and I'd try again like a few weeks later.

Needless to say I didn't get very far into the game. But yet I played that game for hundreds of hours in total and it's still a fond memory of my childhood. Including using the rage thing nonstop at the Numemon you get and pretty much having him be permanently mad at you (I swear I'm against animal cruelty).

 

[Oliver James]

I played this as a kid and beat it as an adult. Loved it.

Digimon World > all the Pokemon games

 

[Escaflow]

I know you have put alot of efforts in writing it OP and its easy to google screenshots or footage , but I think it would be more interesting if you include those in your thread .

 

[Taker34]

This is hands down the best game I've played on PS1. Thanks to the graphics style which relies on pre rendered backgrounds it also holds up really well. This is one of those games which doesn't hold your hand, it has so many myths and respects the time and effort you put into it. They just don't make games like this anymore.

You absolutely had to use a guide for this unfortunately in order to get some of the better Digimons. I actually ended up buying the official (German) guide a few years ago for 50€. Still, to this day Digimon World seems to have a cult following and that's completely deserved.

 

[KushalaDaora]

If you like Digimon World but get Numemon, you could try Next Order, they show what the requirement are for each digivolutions in-game iirc so you won't need to google them or risk getting Numemon again.
Next Order is pretty much a Digimon World 1 sequel.

Click to shrink...

I enjoyed Next Order, but I really miss the more 'bleak' atmosphere from the first Digimon World. And NO Digital World lacks the more obstuse and mysterious feel of the OG Digital World.

Also hoping the next installment will have bigger budget. It's really dissapointing Next Order looks much worse than Cyber Sleuth.

 

[AzureFlame]

I really loved this game, amazing memories with it, also the newest Next Order was great too.

 

[sirap]

Imagine playing this as a kid with your friends and having 0 access to the internet or strategy guides.

Digimon World was our Demon/Dark Souls. Felt like we were discovering something new every day. We had a blast comparing notes at the school canteen.

 

[Slayven]

The PSone games seemed to want to be something different with each new one

 

[Professor Beef]

Digimon World has had a *rough* lineage until the DS games. I like the games in their own way, but they're pretty awful on consoles until recently.

 

[Phellps]

It's an incredibly mediocre game that had enough charm to make me play it for quite a lot of hours, both back when I was a kid and then again some years ago.
It's also completely crushed by its sequels, DW3 specifically.

 

[Kcannon]

DW 1 and 2 were both so obtuse. 3 was a more traditional RPG, so I ended gravitating to that one.

 

[Pasokon Deacon]

DW3 made a lot more sense to me, but I'm with OP on how much more interesting and tempting the original is. It's good that we finally have reliable guides that make Ultimates achievable, among other things, but it's impressive how, in the first place, the developers failed so hard at making Digivolutions intuitive. At least the newest game's fixed things overall, even if it's lost of the appealing jank and mystery of DW1.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

One of the first games I got when my family got a PS2 for Christmas, I was 10 years old and confused as fuck. Good thing I got Final Fantasy VIII as well, ended up playing that instead.

 

[salary0n]

I really love this game, I heard a rumour that you can digivolve it into Wargreymon when I was a kid, tried plenty times with no results. I have a good time too using GameShark codes to spawn digivolution item that normally I can't access, That's where I learned of cut contents, where we supposed to get weregarurumon and some other Digimon.

 

[Glass Arrows]

I know you have put alot of efforts in writing it OP and its easy to google screenshots or footage , but I think it would be more interesting if you include those in your thread .

Click to shrink...

Oh i know, trust me i would have liked to add some footage/screens and write a little more but unfortunately im stuck on mobile for a while without access to a PC, and it makes a lot more inconvenient to do anything more in-depth. Figured i might as well post what i had before my pc died on me.

 

[Alphonse]

DW1 was one of the first games to make me realize that aiming for 100% completion was somewhat infeasible due to Monochromon's shopkeeping minigame RNG. I hard gave up trying to get that guy, which was frustrating because it goes back to File City as a shopkeeper.

 

[IzzyRX]

Man, I love this game. I still remember how hard it was to get that fucking Piximon.
I was only 8 when I played it, but I remember that I tried find him FOR DAYS(with a guide) and for a 8 years old, that's a lot of time. I was so obsessed with him, that my digimon ended up turning into a Sukamon.
First time I found him, my Sukamon lost, I had to evolve it into Etemon to stand a chance and had to use all my items to survive the battle.

 

[Deleted member 51306]

I loved this game as a kid and the sequel to it that was released on ps4 a few years back was tons of fun

 

[Jawmuncher]

I just remember all the poop.

So much poop.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Could never get far. Game explained jack

 

[Deleted member 721]

I just remember all the poop.

So much poop.

Click to shrink...

and later cleaning the poop with your sukamon eating the shit

 

[IzzyRX]

I just remember all the poop.

So much poop.

Click to shrink...

Digivolve your digimon into Poopmon and make him eat it.

I'm serious.

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

This is illustrated in a common anecdote shared by players: "I tried to play this game, but I got pissed off because I got a Numemon every single time." Numemon is the champion digimon you get from a rookie if you fail to meet any of the criteria for other digivolution. He is part of the "filth" trinity of Digimon, which are all gross, unappealing, and pathetically weak. Your Digimon's stats actually take a hit when they digivolve into it.

Click to shrink...

And this is precisely why I never beat the game as a kid. Fucking loved getting lost in the world, but every time i got Numemon or Sukamon, I just rage quit.

 

[Glass Arrows]

On the subject of the other dw games:

There are a number of aspects about dw2 and 3 that I greatly enjoy.

I love the core concept and game design ideas of 2. Building a party of digimon and exploring labyrinthine dungeons is great. As a kid I loved it as much as dw1. The soundtrack is great.

Dw3 has some fantastic overworld sprites and music and is probably the easiest to understand how to play, by virtue of being the most traditional.

However over time I have come to view them as not only very flawed in their own rights, but in specific ways that make me prefer the first game by a good margin.

Dw1 can be very tedious and grindy. However that pales in comparison to the slog thst dw2 often is. Because of how the level cap and dna digivolution systems work, along with how slow paced the game is thanks to its overly long battle transitions and animations, makes it possibly the grindiest rpg ive ever played.

It doesnt help that the dungeons are not nearly as cool as i remember them being. For a long time every dungeon has the same boring brown hallways, its several hours before you see anything different.

It's a game that could have been great but suffers immensely from a lack of polish.

3 has a very obnoxious encounter rate and is extremely unforgiving when it comes to exploration. This is because you can get punked really easily if you step into the wrong place, some areas have digimon much stronger than your party with little warning. Unlile dw1 where you can run or avoid visible enemies, this is not the case here making it much more difficult to avoid these situations.

However the real problem for me with both games is that while they are both more intuitive to play, they are not nearly as unique or interesting as dw1. This especially applies to 3, which is basically like every other b to c-tier jrpg released for the playstation.

That's not to say these two other games dont have their merits or that I don't understand why people might prefer them. It's just that as ive gotten older i feel like they are all very flawed anyways but even with that, dw1 is still by far the most worthwhile because of all the reasons ive spoken about already. I cannot bring myself to revisit 2 or 3, they are way too long. Dw1 is not only more compelling but can be beaten in a far shorter amount of time, which makes it easier to replay.

I have no opinion on dw4. I heard it was bad, but i have not played it

 

[Brazil]

I loved this game so much. My English was awful when I first played it, so everything was even more confusing for me.

I still must've played it for hundreds of hours, simply trying stuff out.

 

[GangWarily]

Oh man this brings me back memories. This was the last game my parents purchased for me before we moved from Japan to the US.

 

[NightOnyx]

I have such fond memories of this. Seeing how complex it is now, it amazes me that I beat it as a kid, but somehow I did. I think I was such a big Digimon fan that I just kept with it. I remember thinking that CG movie at the beginning looked incredible. I also remember the curling mini-game, which I loved at the time, but I have no clue how it holds up. Oh, and I don't know what the trick was now, but I remember the Haunted Mansion was a pain to figure out how to get into.

 

[Professor Beef]

The PSone games seemed to want to be something different with each new one

Click to shrink...

ain't that the truth

you went from a PS1 version of the keychains, to a weird randomized dungeon crawler, to a pokemon clone that was somehow less advanced than the game boy games, and then the 4th game turned out to be a very poor x-men legends clone

 

[RockmanBN]

I actually didn't get around to playing this until a couple years ago. I only grew up with 2, 3, and Card Battle. I found it so much more better with speedup. I loved how File City would improve as you recruited more 'mons.

 

[Baccus]

The game had a fake ending too, and it was kinda scary.

Very good, mysterious game.

 

[Pokémon]

To my understanding, the bugs/broken shit are mostly in the european and north american copies. The japanese release has some stuff but not nearly to the same extent.

Click to shrink...

iirc the Agumon bug only exists in the German PAL version because they forgot to translate Agumon's text into German therefor there is no text it could appear on screen.

This game in general is one big glitch. It's so messy that it rivals Pokémon Red/Blue in terms of glitches and I love it lol. It's like a mine field where you have to be careful where step on otherwise the game might crash.

EDIT: After doing some research I found out that the Agumon bug actually exists in every PAL version but the UK (it's in the German, French, Spanish and Italian version). Looks like Bandai fixed the bug but you would only get the fixed version of the game if you got in touch with Bandai.

 

[Refrain]

I love this game. I used to beat the fina boss using just agumon with the basic scratch attack. The final boss couldn't attack me at all because his attack animations are slow and he couldn't react against fast basic attack at all

 

[Glass Arrows]

I have such fond memories of this. Seeing how complex it is now, it amazes me that I beat it as a kid, but somehow I did. I think I was such a big Digimon fan that I just kept with it. I remember thinking that CG movie at the beginning looked incredible. I also remember the curling mini-game, which I loved at the time, but I have no clue how it holds up. Oh, and I don't know what the trick was now, but I remember the Haunted Mansion was a pain to figure out how to get into.

Click to shrink...

The trick to getting into the mansion is pretty simple: you need a virus type digimon.

For most players i think the issue is that having a good virus type while also thinking to go the mansion is not common and i do not think anything in the game tells you about it. I mean, you can go in there with numemon or sukamon but thats a horrible idea lol

 

[Tizoc]

Cat in business suit.jpeg

I should play digimon world 1.

 

[Sioul]

One of my favorites PS1 games. I still remember when I evolved my first Ultimate

Spoiler

it died like an hour later :(

 

[Slayven]

ain't that the truth

you went from a PS1 version of the keychains, to a weird randomized dungeon crawler, to a pokemon clone that was somehow less advanced than the game boy games, and then the 4th game turned out to be a very poor x-men legends clone

Click to shrink...

Did you play the ps2 DATS game? The one with load time measured in phases of the moon

 

[NightOnyx]

The trick to getting into the mansion is pretty simple: you need a virus type digimon.

For most players i think the issue is that having a good virus type while also thinking to go the mansion is not common and i do not think anything in the game tells you about it. I mean, you can go in there with numemon or sukamon but thats a horrible idea lol

Click to shrink...

Gotcha, yeah I remember getting in finally, so I must have got a virus type at some point, but I was confused by how I did it.

 

[Refrain]

I remember being mad getting numemon and then reached the place with a bear suit to evolve him into Monzaemon. Good shit

 

[J_Atlas]

I have a lot of fond memories of this game, but I would never call it a good game to be honest, its sheer obtuseness as a child left me baffled with my love of digimon being the only thing keeping me through it. I never beat it, but I had a lot of fun.

 

[Professor Beef]

Did you play the ps2 DATS game? The one with load time measured in phases of the moon

Click to shrink...

my roommate at the time, who had put me on data squad, convinced me to pass on it and I think I ended up getting Persona 3 FES instead

 

[Slayven]

my roommate at the time, who had put me on data squad, convinced me to pass on it and I think I ended up getting Persona 3 FES instead

Click to shrink...

powered through that shit, it had a similar digilution system to the DS games. It was fun except you had to backtrack a lot

 

[BrunOz]

I was obsessed with this game and it's sequels during my childhood, so many moments of frustration, joy and most importantly moments of discovery through exploration. Discussing the game and all the "misteries" around it with my other friends was so good at the time.

I miss those days, where you could expect the unexpected playing an videogame. Few titles nail that spot for me nowadays (Thanks God for Yoko Taro, Miyazaki and Kojima lol)

I need to mention some of the OST, damn these really do bring me back so many memories :)

Digimon World 2 had TOUGH dungeons and leveling system, and if you died at the middle or the end of the dungeon it was game over, I just can't forget the Boss theme at the end of the Dungeon *memories of being pretty nervous and excited when this tune kicked in*



...aaand on Digimon World 1, the File City night theme, the fear about thinking "will my digimon digivolve or die after waking up?" lol, this could be the last song you've heard with that digimon you had at the time or just a relaxing background music while you browse the city features.



Plus, I really loved the DW1 spinoff Digimon: Digital Card Battle. Ok and finally (I'm almost in tears making this post, it's just too many memories from my childhood lol), the intro for DW2 was so sick at the time for a Digimon loving kid :)

 

[RockmanBN]

I was obsessed with this game and it's sequels during my childhood, so many moments of frustration, joy and most importantly moments of discovery through exploration. Discussing the game and all the "misteries" around it with my other friends was so good at the time.

I miss those days, where you could expect the unexpected playing an videogame. Few titles nail that spot for me nowadays (Thanks God for Yoko Taro, Miyazaki and Kojima lol)

I need to mention some of the OST, damn these really do bring me back so many memories :)

Digimon World 2 had TOUGH dungeons and leveling system, and if you died at the middle or the end of the dungeon it was game over, I just can't forget the Boss theme at the end of the Dungeon *memories of being pretty nervous and excited when this tune kicked in*



...aaand on Digimon World 1, the File City night theme, the fear about thinking "will my digimon digivolve or die after waking up?" lol, this could be the last song you've heard with that digimon you had at the time or just a relaxing background music while you browse the city features.



Plus, I really loved the DW1 spinoff Digimon: Digital Card Battle. Ok and finally (I'm almost in tears making this post, it's just too many memories from my childhood lol), the intro for DW2 was so sick at the time for a Digimon loving kid :)

Click to shrink...

Digimon World 2 did have the better battle system, problem was that it and leveling was slow af. Getting 20DP to get Omnimon or Diaboromon takes ages.

 

[Murlin]

I've found the main reason a lot of people ended up with Numemon was that they trained their Rookie to have balanced stats rather than just focusing on one or two. You can get better Champions with a well-balanced Rookie, (like Greymon) but with an un-upgraded gym and no other training boosts it is very hard to pull off before the Rookie runs out of time and becomes a Champion, at which point it will become a Numemon since no stat is high enough to qualify for anything.

The worst is if you get a Tyranomon in the early game before you have good access to Giant Meat or other food sources. That thing eats so goddamn much.

 

[Laguna]

I have very good memories, specially of when I was able to beat the game, such an achievement for a 8 years old kid (I will never forget my andromon). Also the versus mode was very popular in my neighborhood.

 

[P-Tux7]

Stupid question, but how was it legal for the PAL version to he released not being able to be completed?

 

[Pokémon]

Stupid question, but how was it legal for the PAL version to he released not being able to be completed?

Click to shrink...

You can beat the game but you can't complete the game on 100%.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

i never knew how to do anything besides getting shitmon

 

[Deleted member 2172]

I remember having that when I was a kid... Then learning the PAL version had a glitch in it that made the game unbeatable because you couldn't enter the Ogre Fortress.

Click to shrink...

holy shit you just tapped into a memory that must be like 17 years old by now. that shit confused the fuck out of me as a kid.

 

[P-Tux7]

You can beat the game but you can't complete the game on 100%.

Click to shrink...

Oh, I mistook the Ogre Fortress as mandatory. Thanks