While mostly for fans of the series, a few goes on this with 2 or more players can have you and your friends hooked.
The battles are the most revamped part of the game, except maybe for the menu layout. There are now up to four Digimon in battle at once, most can Digivolve twice now. But that still doesn't cover every evolution, which fans regret. The monsters also have 4 special moves (one one them is a charge move you can use only at higher levels) and an Ultra move, as well as the throw and basic combos. The moves are a bit more varied, some send you flying at an enemy, others can go on for ages due to repeated pressings of the button or keep the button pressed down. There's the usual Digimon Particle Beams, and Sword Slashes and Explosions and whatnot, these don't look very exciting or detailed but with so many flying around, you'll be glad. Combos are made up of three presses of X, which are executed slowly are a pretty weak. These sluggish attacks give the enemy a chance to hit back, and dodging is far better than defending, which is pretty unreliable. Characters can fly and double jump, to reach special items that can turn the tide of the battle in either way. These do help spice up the otherwise boring battles. Items such as trees can be destroyed to find items or power-ups, and there are special rigged arenas with booby traps galore. The can factory level, The Cannery, is great fun with four human players or a computer or two on Hard Mode. There is also your standard fare bottomless pit, slippery ice slopes and moving platforms at the pier levels. Sometimes the arenas are more dangerous than the players themselves!
This game doesn't have the patry mini-games from before, but there a lot of Rumble Options to spice things up. Like a Posion mode, to pass the posion on, a Collection task or trying to catch the floating Digimon, Calumon. These weave well into the main combat, but after a few rounds of each go, it is usually decided that it's back to Last One Standing, Duke It Out brawls!
The graphics on the game are okay, the backgrounds aren't bland but aren't too detailed. Each Digimon is marked cleary and look pretty cute, sometimes the wing animations goes strange under a power-up effect, but this doesn't really put you off. Digimon Rumble Arena 2 doesn't follow the trend of anime games being cell-shaded, for the anime fan, this can be either good or bad. Too be honest, I don't mind the graphics. They're nothing special, but I miss the standard Digimon Fare opening movie. Not all the voice actors from the show return, some of them do while replacements generally sound like the TV show, although the quality isn't as good. All the voice really say are their 5 attacks, grunts from attacking or being hit and their two victory shouts, "I WON!" or "I'm The King!". The menu and stage music are instantly forgettable. No sign of "Digimon, Digital Monsters, Digimon are the CHAMPIONS!" anywhere. All in all, this doesn't make a very good one player game, and the poor sound and glitches shows the effort put into this game. Once you start playing with friends, this all go out the window and hours on end will fly by.