This is one of those games I still popped in once and a while after getting a PS2.
So, you'd think this game was nothing for me. Wrong. I don't know what it is. I do like raising things. Might explain why I like the Sims. Anyway, for it's time, Digimon had some pretty slick looks. The sound might seem o.k. when you first hear it... until you notice that it's just a fragment of a few seconds that keeps looping. If it were actual songs, looping might not have been so bad, but this really is just a couple of seconds, and it's just annoying.
The main part of Digimon is to restore File City to it's former glory. There has been some event which gave a lot of Digimon amnesia, and lose the ability of speech. You'll have to wander the island to try and find Digimon that will join the city, which are usually easily found, as they're not standard or anything. They stand out. And in order to make them join your city, you'll usually have to fight it. And here it gets awkward, especially if you've got a young Digimon. Instead of giving it specific orders such as in Pokémon, you can only provide your Digimon with a strategy. At first, the only two commands you've got are to let the Digimon decide what to do, or flee. But through training, you can learn new commands.
Which brings me to the training part. Almost every civilized area in the game has a training ground. Here you can train for intelligence, speed, defense, health or attack. Depending on the Digimon you've got at the moment, every area of training gives different ammounts of results. For instance, say you've got a huge Digimon. It's attack will then be raised a lot quicker than it's speed. True to the series, your Digimon can Digivolve. This usually happens after a set period of time. However, though in the series he can, your Digimon won't Digivolve back into it's first form. It will keep it's new form. And instead of an Agumon naturally changing into a Greymon, they can now Digivolve into any given specie, depending on it's statistics. For those expecting to receive a Greymon out of their Agumon it is of course a bummer, but on the other hand, it does make you (or is it just me?) a bit nervous at every Digivolvement. In this game... your Digimon can actually die. And there's no revival item to bring him back when he does. He's got three lives, and if he loses those in combat, you can wave your Digimon goodbye, however, he can also just die out of old age, or a disease. This puts some pressure on you. Do you keep training your Digimon in order to get this awesome fighting machine, or already go out there and show the others who's boss, because you don't know how much longer you've got left? But the problem I've got with this entire thing, is the loss of the stats of your old Digimon. You may have spent hours training your Digimon, it'll all be gone if he dies. Although the game states that it's egg will inherit it's predecessor's stat's, you'll hardly notice. And I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Most of my new Digimon's life would be made up of training to become as good as my previous. Imagine the disappointment after I got yet another Numemon, right after my beloved Centauromon died and left me an egg. All Numemon was good for was cleaning, as he can eat poo, and I did miss the potty a few times with some other Digimon. Of course, him taking care of a pile of (beep) can be useful at times, but you REALLY don't want your Digimon to change into a Numemon, for the simple fact that training him, no matter what area, will have little effect. In the end, Digimon is a game I do look back at with a smile on my face. This is one of those games I still popped in once and a while after getting a PS2. The only other game I did that for was the Tekken trilogy, Soul Calibur, and Final Fantasy VIII. So that's saying something.