Digimon Survive Review – Friends of Tooth and Claw

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Genre – SRPG, Adventure, Sci-Fi Play Time – 23 hours Developer - HYDE, Inc. and Witchcraft VNDB Steam

Of Harmony, Morality And Wrath

As a long standing franchise Digimon is no stranger to having games in all genres imaginable made for it and so the choice of a hybrid visual novel and SRPG should come as no surprise. For Digimon Survive the most important part is clearly the visual novel aspect of the game given the overwhelming amount of time spent on it and the way the game heavily leans into narrative to drive player engagement. Much like the original Digimon series the game follows a band of children who are whisked away to the world where digimon live while on a trip. However, rather than a heartfelt journey with their new digimon friends, the cast of Survive are faced with the reality of digimon as monsters covered with claws and possessing magical powers which can easily kill a human. Their tale is one of clinging on against a world that is out to get them. The SRPG battle systems are how the game choose to emphasise this conflict and their results are mixed to say the least. Does this package come together to create the intense and engaging experience it is clearly aiming for or does it take the concept too far and drive straight into the ditch of unintentional absurdity? Let’s meet our destined partner and find out.

Tale of Lost Souls – Narrative and Themes

It is easy to forget with all the cute plushes and key chains that digimon are by their nature monsters. Many of them are larger than the children who are often the protagonists of these tales and have claws and fangs which can easily kill a man. The potential danger they pose and human reactions to them have historically been played on from time to time by the franchise such as with Digimon Tamers, but there has been a lack of such self-awareness in recent years. Enter Digimon Survive, as it deliberately steps into this void and frames the world of Digimon as not only a place of adventure but also danger. From Fangmon to Arukenimon, a whole suite of threats are brought out against the cast with each one of them offering a different avenue of challenge. Some engage in trickery and must be outsmarted while others simple aim to overpower through brute strength. Complimenting this is the sense that the world itself does not want the cast there as a mysterious fog slowly spreads and consumes anything in its wake. All this lends Survive a sense of excitement and tension which helps sell the arcs of the characters and provides a feeling of weight to the player’s decisions knowing they may well result in the death of someone they have grown to like.

It is a strange world out there

If there is on weakness in Survive’s approach it can be found in their handling of rookie digimon. In order to provide a sense of escalating threat Survive works its way through the evolution stages of digimon and the rookie level they chose to start with was Gotsumon. Unfortunately there is nothing nothing remotely scary about this child-like creature and having the cast screaming at them like they are some sort of big threat comes across as somewhat silly. This hurts the player suspension of disbelief very early on and may result in them losing interest as they cannot give the game the emotional investment it wants. Fortunately it quickly moves on from Gotsumon and onto champion level digimon who better suit the tone which the game is aiming for and prevents this poor choice in digimon from having a lasting impact.

Sitting alongside the danger of this new world is the sense of mystery it builds up about the nature of the place the characters are trapped within. This is mostly achieved through taking aspects of our own familiar world and perverting them into a slightly uncomfortable form that stands out against the otherwise green land. The main alternation made here is to place buildings in a state of decay as if they are being reclaimed by the world around them, but still maintaining their core form and identity. In doing so the game raises a lot of questions in the player’s mind about the origins of these familiar structures and why they seem to be related to the cast somehow. By placing this seed in their minds Survive can add a motivation to engage with the narrative mysteries surrounding what the antagonistic digimon want and their connection to all the strange phenomena. Having established a feeling of danger, it is utilised here to give a pressing concern that demands the mystery be solved and a consequence for failure. Adding excitement to even the most minor world building and exposition is the name of the game and this merger of these two elements does wonders to secure player engagement.

Are you Red, Green or Blue?

Throughout the story the player is given choices with three options which adhere to three alignment, Moral, Harmony and Wrathful. Based on which of these alignment you favour over the course of the game it will present you with a unique path which makes up the last quarter of the title. This alteration is quite significant and has a major impact on how events play out, who survives and the type of ending awaiting the heroes. All of this creates a strong sense that the player’s choices matter, but only on the macro level rather than each individual choice. This changes the emphasis to be on how the player behaves overall and avoids the potential of an inconsistent portrayal of the protagonist by encouraging the player to commit to a single alignment for the best results rather the jumping between them depending on their mood. Beyond the three alignment paths there is also a true route which is unlocked on new game plus that wraps up the remaining lose threads and acts as a way to tie the character arcs together to leave the player satisfied.

Look who cannot get along again

On a side note, the translation has some odd quirks to it as you might have noticed from the odd choices for the names of the three alignments. They are not really three sides of a triangle and they do not really express the nature of the choices, for example the Wrathful choices are more selfish than filled with anger as the name seems to suggests. Other minor issues are also present such as many of the digimon being referred to as ‘he’ despite having female voice actors and being matched up with a female human or otherwise depicted in a feminine manner. This causes you to pause, interrupts the flow of your experience and it is exceptionally distracting from what is otherwise a strong narrative. Overall these oddities are infrequent enough to not completely destroy the story, but it is something to note if you are sensitive to this kind of thing.

Bonds Beyond Our World – Characters

Digimon is a franchise which lives and dies on the strength of its core cast and their digimon companions even more so than other similar titles. This mostly comes down the way it places a key importance on bonds and how they can be formed between people who at first seem like they might never get along. On this front Survive performs admirably and even add its own spice through the use of some character's failure to achieve the desired bonds and the consequences. The main digimon and human pairing reflect each-others weakness and together they grow and form a bond of trust that serves to help them stay alive. Survive mostly avoids being nostalgia bait with the partner digimon being some of the less well known monsters which adds some much need freshness to the characters dynamics. Human relationships share this variety as the group do not always see eye to eye on many issues and resolving these conflict has a high stakes given the dangerous situation they find themselves in. There is a slight subversion to the normal formula between digimon and humans with some characters failing to form bonds with their partners. They take the wrong lessons from what is happening to them and cannot see beyond their monstrous appearances to the delicate person within. As such they suffer the dire consequences of that weakness which shakes the other characters and pushes forward their own arcs in interesting and exciting ways.

Ah repressed trauma

The plot is by far the greatest enemy of characterisation for Digimon Survive. Having the need for specific events to play out in a certain manner often leads to characters behaving oddly just to make sure the narrative reaches its desired ending. The multiple path structure is responsible for this issue as it needs to make each of them distinct from the others and the game’s favourite way to do this is for a different member of the cast become the focal point for the narrative conflict. So in order to provide a sense of escalation towards a climax the emotions of the focus character are also amplified to keep up with the story. However, this often pushes the character into be caricatures of themselves were much of their depth is lost which is the core of their appeal. It is not an even change with only some of the cast being overemphasised at a time meaning that there are still balanced characters to counteract those who have broken away from their original identities and they prevent this acting out of character from being too overbearing through a contrast of personalities.

Forgotten Gameplay – Visuals, Audio and Technical

If there is one word which describes the SRPG systems in Digimon Survive it is uninspired. Not for lack of trying, but instead from an unwillingness to commit to its unique ideas and make them a meaningful part of a player’s strategies. The main way it try to differentiate itself other games in the genre is through the inclusion of the digivolving mechanic. At the start of a battle all partner digimon are rookie level but as the game goes on they unlock more powerful stages of evolution from Champion to Mega and they can change into them at any point. The down side to this is that being digivolved causes the digimon to continually lose SP until they run out at which point they return to being a rookie level. SP is the resource also used for skills and the higher the digimon’s evolution, the more SP is consumed per turn. The intention here is clearly that the player should vary the stage of digivolution they use to match the threat and hold the higher stages for key enemies. However, in reality there is never any reason not to just choose the highest stage of evolution the moment the battle starts. This is due to the poor handling of the SP economy where the drain is too small to be meaningful due to the short length of battles and the SP total available increasing with each digimon’s level making the cost so insignificant as to be forgettable. On top of this there are plenty of SP recovery options available to render the cost a mere footnote in the gameplay and remove the only unique element of the game’s systems.

Agumon has the largest number of options yet it does not lead to interesting choices

Artistic style is a difficult thing to make your own in a pre-established franchise and there is always the temptation to just copy what has come before. You can feel Survive being constrained by the leash of series obligations with its visuals. Nothing here is particularly out there in terms of aesthetics and the digimon themselves are exactly as they have always been in a clear move to be respectful to their history. Instead Survive prides itself on the smaller details of its world and characters. The decay of its human buildings preserves their identity while smothering them in a greenery of this lush world and leaving the impression they are only held together by threads. Each character has a clean and distinctive design making them instantly recognisable and providing a good base model to facilitated their dynamics expression changes and movements. None of these elements immediately pop out to the player but leave a strong sense of quality in the mind and do not bring attention away from the important core narrative. The weakest element is definitely the music due to the rather limited number of tracks when compared to the game’s duration and it can become quite grating to hear the same few over and over again. Each track has a good audio design which sells the emotional state of the cast and the danger they are in, but there just needed to be more of them.

Conclusion

Having such a diverse franchise history can be as much of a blessing as it is a curse and Digimon Survive perfectly encapsulates this duality. It carves out an identity of its own through its reviving of the monstrous nature of digimon and the mystery and wonder of the world they inhabit. This is reinforced by a core cast of flawed and interesting humans paired with their digimon companions and their clean and expressive character designs. Choice is then given to the player through an alignment system which put them on diverging paths to round out the package. However, it often struggles against the visual limitations of what is expected of a Digimon game and often contorts characters in order to meet the needs of its divergent paths. Add it this the lacking SRPG systems which try and fail to differentiate themselves from their peers and there are moments the game can seem underwhelming. It is only in its totality that it becomes clear as to the entertaining and pulse pounding ride Survive manages to achieve.

Verdict –

Digimon Survive successfully manages to reinvigorate the sense of danger and mystery in the digital world. Even if the SRPG elements are decidedly under-baked.