It is hard to understate how excited I was for Pokémon Blue on the Game Boy. I had been watching the Pokémon craze spread through my school faster than the plague swept across London, but was forced to wait for my birthday to join in on the fun. I could hardly sleep the night before as thoughts of what Pokémon I would encounter buzzed in my head.
That first Pokémon game pulled me deep into the world of training and battling monsters like nothing else. I played and replayed my copy of the game, collected and traded cards (even though I had no idea how to play the actual game), and saw Pokémon the Movie at least three times in theaters. If Pokémania was a real thing, I had a terminal case and loved every second.
Being so young and not yet in tune with gaming media, I wasn’t aware of Gen 2 until it was already out and a friend had a copy. You’re telling me there are more Pokémon? Sign me up! The same trick didn’t work so well with Gen 3, and when Gen 4 promised more of the same, more or less, I checked out. I thought maybe I had grown out of Pokémon, but that isn’t quite right. I just grew out of GameFreak’s steadfast commitment to the core formula, only willing to experiment in the margins. It turns out that a rival franchise I once considered a cheap knockoff was the one actually evolving. That’s the game I’m way more excited to be playing this October.
Not just a knockoff
As a kid fully captured by Pokémon fever, I scoffed at anything Digimon related. I completely bought into the narrative that it was a cheap and uninspired knockoff just trying to steal Pokémon’s thunder. I never watched the anime, didn’t even look at the cards, and wasn’t aware of the video games until long after I had even stopped playing Pokémon. By then, I was still under the impression that Pokémon was just something I grew out of.
A few months ago, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory was added to PlayStation Plus. It was a slow time for new releases, and I was craving a simple turn-based RPG anyway, so I decided to fire it up. Knowing nothing about Digimon aside from a few names and that they were “digital monsters,” I went in expecting a straight Pokémon clone.
Boy was I wrong.
Yes, Digimon is about catching and battling monsters in turn-based combat with various elemental types, moves, and evolutions, but Digimon has made several impactful changes. The most notable two revolve around Digimon and combat. Instead of bloating the monster list with over 1,000 Pokémon as of Gen 9, Digimon games stick to around 350 monsters at most from what I’ve seen. Not all of them will be winning designs with a number that high, but it makes the idea of catching them all still seem plausible and adds value to each one. Battles are done in teams of 3 using a timeline system where I always know what monster’s move is next in the lineup. There’s no huge revelation in what actions I can take — attack, skill, guard, etc — but the Cross Combos system, where attacking when two of my Digimon are next to one another on the timeline has a chance of triggering one, adds a nice wrinkle of depth on top of it all.
Balancing a team’s skills, attributes, and types wasn’t just rewarding, but necessary. Unlike in some Pokémon games, I didn’t feel like I could grind any team up to a high enough level to brute force my way through challenges.
All that is nice, but I won’t say it was such a revelation in gameplay that it swayed me back into the genre. The story, world, and characters did that. To be fair, I am a total mark for anime tropes. I love the aesthetic, character archetypes, and melodramatic plot twists. If that isn’t you, maybe it won’t land as well as it did for me, but I think most people will agree that it is miles above the narratives Pokémon games have been pushing. It isn’t afraid to take its world seriously and dive into serious topics just because there are colorful monsters running around.
This October will see Digimon Story Time Stranger and Pokémon Legends: Z-A launch within just a few weeks of one another. I don’t want to jump the gun since I haven’t gotten my hands on either yet, but based on my experience with the last Digimon game and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, I have way more confidence that Digimon will give me a better experience. The trailer promises a mature and gripping narrative with a healthy dose of local and global stakes. Having a stronger hook than being the best, taking down a gang of goons, or winning a tournament does a lot of heavy lifting in getting me invested in the actual monster catching and fighting. It also helps that the world is internally consistent. Z-A hints at fleshing out a world where humans and Pokémon live together, but that’s a few decades too late. That’s not even mentioning how the whole ball thing works. It might sound like a nitpick, but it goes a long way when a series cares enough about its lore to justify how capturing, storing, and summoning its creatures works and what that means for that society and culture.
I won’t go over all the new customization and battle systems Time Stranger has shown off so far, but it opens the doors for a ton of build possibilities and freedom I always felt lacking in its rival. That isn’t to say Pokémon Legends: Z-A isn’t shaking things up in its own way, but it does feel a lot like the last Legends game in a new setting with Mega Evolutions added on top. The more active-time battles feel like I would have less control over the flow of battle, and swapping moves from costing PP to using cooldown timers also seems like it would be less tactical. I could be wrong, but that’s just my initial impression. Plus, we all have to be a little cautious about performance here, even on the Switch 2.
My excitement isn’t burning as bright as it was for Blue and Red for Time Stranger, but having a new world to explore, monsters to befriend, and a story that takes itself a bit more seriously has me itching to plug into Digimon way more than my once beloved Pokémon.
