Too Soon: Digimon Digital Card Battle

Digimon Digital Card Battle
Trading Card Game
1-2 Players
System: Playstation
Developer: Bandai
Year of Release: 2001

This is one of those games that I'm putting a bit of time into, but I'm worried that it'll either vanish into the ether soon (read: Breath of the Wild is less than a week away!). It's just the kind of game that while I really enjoy my time with it, I fear I'll just forget about it. Luckily it's simple enough that whenever I do remember it I will be able to dive right back in.

I don't think there's ever been a better time to talk about a Playstation era video game adaptation Digimon themed card game. Actually, I'm not sure if it's an adaptation or not. I actually own a decent amount of old Digimon trading cards, but only played it once or twice when I was young so I'm not sure how accurate this game is. Integrity be damned if not though because Digimon Card Battle is a really fun, if simple and semi-random time. I mean, randomness kind of comes with the territory to some degree though.

The player wanders around the digital world, and instead of the digital equivalent of cock fighting they just card battle here, for some reason. I always love the idea of a world consumed by this card game that some franchises try to act like is normal. I guess being in a digital world makes a little more sense as who knows how that kind of place is programmed. Anyway, you'll run into characters and Digimon in Battle Cafe's and by talking to everyone you will unlock the Battle Arena. This is the meat of the game, you'll play through a handful of matches and by winning you'll earn the right to head to the next city. Each win earns you a three card booster pack, and you'll also earn specific boosters, or just cards, for achieving certain goals.

Weirdly, you start the game by picking one of the three main Digimon Adventure 02 (basically season two of the anime) Digimon (Veemon, Hawkmon, Armadillomon), and instead of just dictating the style of your starter deck they will level up as well. As you win battles their HP, and various attack strengths will increase. You'll even unlock "digi-parts" which act as accessories for your partner Digimon as they call them, three of which can be equipped at once. Eventually they will even gain the option to Armor digivolve (an Adventure 02 thing) allowing you to summon, essentially, a champion level Digimon with no drawbacks.

I'm going to go ahead and describe how a card battle actually plays out, but it might be a little dry. You flip a coin to see who goes first, that player will draw four cards. First they will have to put a Digimon out, rookie is the ideal, but a higher level Digimon can be put out at a 50% disadvantage for champions and a 75% for ultimates. From there you can basically turn any other Digimon from your hand into digivolution points (DP), these are needed for digivolving and the amount needed is listed on the card. If you have forty, and you use one with a cost of thirty you will lose those extra ten points, so be sure to plan ahead. After gathering DP you'll get the chance to digivolve if you have enough points, or have a card that lets you bypass the cost. If not the battle phase starts, if for whatever reason your opponent has no Digimon this bit is skipped over.

The battle phase itself is fairly simple. Both players will pick their attack at the same time, without it being revealed. Each Digimon have three moves with shapes to differentiate them, a triangle, a circle and an X attack. Usually, one attack will be the strongest, one will deal okay damage, and then X will be the weakest, but offer a special ability. On top of that you will have the option to use one of your cards as a support, items are almost all supports, and even Digimon have support abilities you can use. You can even blindly use the top card of your deck if you have nothing to use and want to take a chance. These abilities are what makes the game interesting. You're never sure which attack the opponent is using, and if they have an ability to negate your strongest attack should you risk using it? Maybe they have a counter ability which will not only cancel your attack entirely, but deal that much damage back onto you. But only if it's the right attack. You can see each other's hands as well as each Digimon's attack. So it becomes an, admittedly simple, game of risk assessment. I'm always paranoid in games like this that the AI can cheat, but the computer makes dumb decisions fairly often, and doesn't consistently counter your attacks. The goal is to reduce three of the opponent's Digimon to zero HP, whoever does so first wins.

I did some research (read: looked at the relevant Wikipedia entry) and saw that almost every game reviewer at the time gave Digimon Digital Card Battle middling reviews. While I think the game is worth more praise than that, I get it. The whole game is menu driven, exploring the world is just selecting a choice in a list and mashing X to get through conversations. The battle screen is kind of cluttered, but everything is clear to read at any given time. There's really not a lot of substance here, especially if only given a cursory glance by people who have no interest in Digimon. Really the only flashy feature is one of the more annoying. During battle there's an option to have a little 3D animation play out wherein the two cards fighting actually attack each other, get knocked out, and celebrate their victory. This of course makes the card battles last longer than they need to, but I haven't yet deactivated it because I just like seeing their 3D models.

Personally, this game rises above being completely mediocre (or bad if you go by typical video game review metrics). It's simple, sure, but I don't think it's so simple that it's insulting. The over reliance on luck is my biggest issue. You can have a great deck set up to take out a specific enemy, and just not get the cards you need when you need them. Anyone who plays Magic the Gathering, or any other card game, will understand this pain. I'm used to that though, and while annoying I can see past it and have been really enjoying delving into this fairly interesting world. It doesn't hurt that my interest in Digimon has been rekindled in recent years thanks to the translation of Re:Digitize, and Next Order coming out. The World series of Digimon games are amazing and as soon as I finish Next Order I'll talk about that some more. But we're all here for, I'd argue, obscure PS1 card game versions of a questionably popular, at least now, franchise. And that game is worth checking out if you somehow have access to it still and haven't already tried it.