Digimon Masters Online

Digimon Masters Online Review

If you haven’t dabbled into Digimon before, you’d most likely have heard it being referred to as Pokemon’s little brother. Digimon popularity was at its peak at roughly the same time as Pokemon, the two obviously inspired by one another. The concept behind it is of humans going into this digital world, claiming a digimon (Short for “Digital Monster”), then training and fighting through them to save the digital world. The series was fairly popular for a few years and saw many console iterations, before the craze slowly died down. Digimon Masters is one such iteration, and you could almost call it a spiritual successor to Digitalic’s Digimon Battle Online. Though the craze died down a while ago, there is still enough fans to make a Digimon game. The question is; will Digimon Masters bring justice to a series that marked many gamers’ youth?

Di-Di-Digimon!

When you start up, you’re brought straight to the character creator, unfortunately without having a go through the options first. Once you’ve made your character, you actually can go check the options. This awkward intro was pretty much a preview of the kind of product this would be. The character creation is very, very simple; you choose one of three characters, then one of three digimons, and then proceed directly to the starter area. There’s not much in the way of customizing here folks, and if you were thinking of making your own highly personal trainer, you might have to wait till the next game comes around. Each trainer and digimon has stats, though you are not explained their function at this point(if ever), and even the brief tutorial that follows keeps things awkwardly simple. That said, this isn’t an exceedingly complicated game; it’s a point-and-click, for one, and the principle is very basic; get your quests, beat x number of enemies, then come back. Where Digimon Masters fails to execute this well, is when it comes to moving around. You’ll be sent back and forth between two characters that are about 10 meters away from each other, or in an adjacent area – constantly. There is simply no point to that; why not just reduce it to one talk to each? Considering the frequency with which you’re sent on these errands, this becomes a pretty significant flaw in design that is made even worse by the quality of the areas you’ll visit. Oh yeah, they also do this over long distances, and for trivial side-quests.

Catch Em… All?

Your trainer has his own skill and bar, and so does your digimon. Your digimon has the ability to “digivolve”, an ability fuelled by your trainer’s mana bar that basically gives you an entirely new, more powerful digimon for a few minutes, or as long as you can keep your MP bar up. This means that as long as you keep gulping down mana potions (Or “Vitamin A”), you can keep your super digimon out. Unfortunately, this is one of the only things you’ll use your trainer’s MP bar for. The combat itself isn’t anything special, though some abilities are very flashy, but nothing to call home about. The difficulty is pretty well measured, and you constantly meet new digimons to face, which definitely helps the grind. Your critters are in themselves the core of the game; you’re expected to collect and train them. This is also the most entertaining part of it all and it becomes addictive fairly quickly. You can get Digimons in three manners; by having an egg traded to you, by finding an egg and hatching it, or through a quest reward. Whichever way, you have to hatch it yourself. It’s not any egg that works though; you need a RARE DROP mercenary egg. Then you need a backbreaking amount of semi-rare eggs to extract DNA from so that you can put the entire thing in a hatchery, and get your digimon. Seems easy enough? Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep it so simple. For one, you need a LOT of DNA material. Two, when you try to use it and the egg together, there’s a significant chance that you might lose the material, the egg, or BOTH. And we’re talking about hours of grinding in the same area per egg. If it succeeds, you have a new Digimon. If it fails, it’s hours of your time flushed down the toilet. That is, of course, unless you’ve bought your egg from the money store.

Digital Monstrosity

The graphics and design aren’t that much more impressive. It’s cell-shaded; okay, nothing wrong with that and in essence the graphics aren’t too bad at all, apart from the clumsy interface. Once again, it’s the design where it becomes ugly. The environments are basically all the same, mostly early game. You’re sent into what are basically two identical forest zones existing in parallel, but having nothing to do with each other. They are practically mirrors, except for different digimons, and different area names. Worse, they’re basically corridors linked from town to town that you basically progress through, literally funneled towards the next area as you run back and forth for the multitude of quests, and to fuel your MP potion addiction so you can keep your cool Digimon out. You better learn to love this hole, because it’s where you’ll be grinding your soul away for the next 10 levels, and more if you want a specific digimon. You’ll also be sharing the space with about 20 other players, and since the areas are so small, you better hope you get lucky with your mobs. If you persevere, you might even get a digimon you can ride, which sort of looks like a cross between a narwhal and a purple horse (It’s still pretty cool though). You can also customize your trainer with drops and buys from vendors, with things ranging from T-shirts, to shoes, and so on, which is a nice feature if you plan on sticking around. By this point however, you’ll inevitably have crossed the elder brother of the ugly features – the play time timer. At the time of this review, there is a 3 hours time limit, after which you are knocked out to the logging screen, and must wait for the following day to play. Considering that aside from that the PvP is non-existent, the cash store is very limited and the game is generally just rough around the edges, you might not regret this time limit too much.

Final Verdict: Poor

If you love Digimon to death, go ahead and try it, but don’t expect anything crazy. Could it improve in the future? Not without some severe redesigning, and considering it’s been out for a while in Korea, it’s doubtful that this will ever come to pass. Overall, this game suffers from a plethora of issues, from small things like not letting you reach options, to flagrant design faults like the egg hatching mechanism. The fun of hatching and training digimons is by far outweighed by the flaws, and unless you’ve exhausted everything else Digimon out there and are desperately looking for more, I’d move on.

Digimon Masters Online Screenshots

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Digimon Masters Online Videos

Coming Soon

Digimon Masters Online Links

Digimon Masters Online Official Site

Digimon Masters Online System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
CPU: Pentium 4 or higher
RAM: 256 MB
HDD: 2 GB free
Graphics Card: GeForce FX5200 or higher

Recommended Specifications:
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
CPU: Pentium 4 or higher
RAM: 512 MB
HDD: 4 GB Free or more
Graphics Card: GeForce 6200 or higher