Digimon World: Next Order – nostalgia and improvements to the Virtual Pet style

Games in the Digimon series have always been very varied, going from a Tamagotchi-like game to turn-based rpgs, card games, top-down action rpg, visual novels, and more. In the last few years, the Digimon franchise has finally found itself in the styles of turn-based RPG with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Hackers Memory, visual novel with Digimon Survive, and now with Digimon World: Next Order, with its virtual pet style.

But what is a virtual pet game, and can it appeal to the livestream audience? Here we will talk about its unusual gameplay and how it works for streamers.

Taking care of the little creatures until the end of their lives

Virtual Pet style gameplay consists of raising your little monster from its baby form to its final form with feeding, training, medicine, resting, and even taking it to the bathroom.

In Digimon World: Next Order, we have 2 partner Digimons that need a lot of attention and care. Depending on how they are treated and trained, they will evolve into many different types of Digimon. After all, Digimon themselves have no fixed evolutionary line and can evolve into many different types of little monsters.

This may frustrate some people who are looking for their favorites at first, but as you progress through the story, you will always be able to choose the one you prefer, and this is one of the improvements over the PSX game.

Your Digimons will also start to like or dislike you depending on how you treat them. Be careful not to coddle or fight too much, after all, during combat, Digimons fight on their own and you can give them commands to use a specific power or skill, but if they don’t trust you, they will ignore you.

After some days in the game, your partner will die and be reborn as a new egg, and this new Digimon will receive all the moves they have learned and a percentage of their attributes, making them stronger with each rebirth.

Adventuring in the digital world

This game is not just about taking care of the creatures, you must explore the gigantic Digital World and its many different areas, face wild Digimon and recruit or rescue Digimon to help the main city grow. These recruits vary greatly with their demands: some want specific items, others want to fight or for you to help them with some activity, giving each one a nice personality.

Each Digimon recruited brings improvements to the main town and consequently to the game, from gaining more attributes in training, to more stores and resources. This kind of progression is very interesting for a livestream, as the streamer and his community will constantly find new features, plus some Digimon will require the player to figure out how to recruit them, which makes for a good challenge to work together to figure out.

Digimon World: Unusual gameplay is not for everyone

The fact that the Virtual Pet genre is so different may turn some players off, after all, not everyone is willing to spend time taking care of a Digimon in order to explore the world and after a while it dies and you have to repeat the process.

However, if you are interested in this style, my experience in the livestream was very positive, as it was fun to how different my monster would turn after some time. It was always a surprise, as was exploring the world and advancing its story.

The game has a certain difficulty curve that may also take some people by surprise because of its captivating appearance. The game has 3 difficulty levels and I recommend for beginners to play on the easiest until you learn the mechanics well, even common enemies in the beginning of the game can defeat you if you are not careful. This kind of challenge can also be engaging for streamers and audiences who like to overcome difficult parts of a game.

The game was tested in its STEAM version and ran smoothly and without problems. It has translation into 10 languages and dubbing in English and Japanese, be warned that the Switch version has no dubbing in Japanese.

Fezudu