Digimon World: Next Order Review

Digimon World: Next Order brings us back to part of our favorite monsters. Lots of action, lots of colors and lots of strategies. We’ll see if this is an adventure worthy of delving deeply into it.

Digimon World: Next Order comes at a time where it was definitely missed in the West. Since these Digimon games often come to Japan, but not on this side of the world.

Digimon World: Next Order many of you may not know, but this game was originally released for PS Vita, that’s why many of us didn’t even know, since this handheld console was very neglected and despite being such a good console, it didn’t enjoy much popularity. After this it was timidly released for PS4

We can say that Next Order is, in many ways, a tribute to the original Digimon World game. Similar to Digimon World, one of Next Order’s main goals is to explore and locate new residents for a growing city. But even then, it feels more like a cozy reimagining of the original rather than a decade-overdue sequel.

We can say that Next Order is more about raising and training Digimon than anything else. From the start, you’ll receive two Digimon companions, but the exact type of creatures you’ll breed will depend entirely on the training decisions you decide to make. There are 217 potential partners on Next Order, and you probably won’t see all of them.

Initially, players can choose from ten eggs that hatch their first pair of Digimon babies. From there, Digimon ‘Digivolves’ through six total stages, most of which offer multiple possible Digivolutions depending on how players have raised their partners and which of the six stats they have trained. If your companion does not meet the requirements for any of his possible next stages within a set amount of days, he will collapse, die, and be reborn once more in an egg of your choice, each time with a slight boost to his stats.

In this game it’s entirely possible to spend a significant amount of time alone in the Digivolution trees while more or less ignoring the rest of the game. On its own, blindly training different Digimon to unlock and discover new Digivolution routes is addictive, and sitting down with a spreadsheet and notebook to train your way to a specific powerful Digimon is doubly addictive. Especially for those who are more fans of the franchise, for the player who finds himself with this game to try his luck, it may be boring and uninteresting. Well, this game can become somewhat repetitive while you are training your beast.

Training involves choosing a category and trying to stop a spinner at a certain point to boost training effects. That’s it, and since Digivolution is partly a race against time, you’ll likely spend several in-game days doing that every time your Digimon is reborn.

Battles take place in real time and combatants unleash attacks with minimal player input, players can issue direct orders to their companions periodically during battle at the expense of order points, which are slowly accumulated during fights. I definitely don’t like this.

Both combat and Digivolution get more interesting as players progress through the different chapters of the main story arc, but honestly that’s easier said than done.

On a graphic level, the game looks quite good, it has a good amount of detail at the level of settings, as well as characters. At the performance level, as expected, the occasional drop in frames, but it’s nothing special.

In conclusion

Next Order is a game with many flaws and a bit repetitive, but even so, we can say that it is the type of game that the franchise was missing. I didn’t like the combat at all and training your Digimon requires too much time, but the game has a certain magic that I’m sure the most fans of the franchise will get caught up in.

This review was made thanks to a copy for Nintendo Switch provided by Bandai Namco.