Nice try... good idea... but not quite as expected... It's Digimon meets Pokemon Ranger meets Monster Rancher
First Impression:
Hmm.. Digimon as an actual virtual pet. I think it sounds like an interesting idea.
Gameplay:
Everything here is stylus controlled and you see the world from a top view. Interesting. Now the fact that the game actually said "Login" rather than press start made me think of an online game. Makes sense, too.
Now the game starts you off with a digi-egg which you use through the tutorial phase of the game. The egg eventually hatches and you have two In Training digimon in your cage thing. Much like the tamagotchi people were lugging around in the old days, these Digimon get hungry, poop and get injured. Apart from feeding them and cleaning up their poop, you get to go out into the field and catch MORE digimon to feed and clean up after.
Sounds ok... So far.
These digimon have to be trained as well and eventually, they grow strong enough to be used in battle. Unfortunately, you have NO IDEA how to evolve them just right. Unlike the past Digimon games where you had the option to look up a digimon's stats and check it's evolutionary tree, you... don't have the option to this time around. It's more of a hit and miss thing unless you've managed to memorize every single prerequisite for evolution in each game.
The battle system is quite... interesting.
You choose your team and they slug it out with your opponents UNASSISTED. What they choose to do in the battle is all up to them.
The game was interesting to begin with but as Gamespot has said before me, this is a bit of a disappointment. It seems to me that the player is allowed little freedom apart from training and caring for the Digimon. Random. Hit and miss. Yuss.
Last words:
This is a great training tool for a kid who wants a pet. If they can manage to clean and feed their digimon for a long period of time without going stark raving mad... they deserve that dog. :/