Digimon World 4

It has a wholly unsatisfying single-player game, made worse by a clunky camera and overly cheap enemies. It's also unbalanced, leaving players without any compatriots out in the cold.

A frustrating slog of an action RPG for solo gamers, Digimon World 4 gains a little pep in four-way multiplayer mode. But only just. [Nov 2005, p.129]

A poor imitation of a solid RPG. It plays like a knock off. On one hand I'm glad to see that Digimon is changing its direction but on the other hand I have a finger that can't wait to press the Off button.

This may please whatever contingency there is of fans who still keep up with Bandai's answer to Pokémon, but for everyone else this is just a slapdash action RPG that seems more intent on punishing players with clumsy, tedious gameplay than actually engaging, or maybe even entertaining, them.

The difficulty curve does level off after a while, but the sheer boredom of the endless hit-and-run battles does not. [Sept 2005, p.75]

Where the colorful Pokemon games are finely polished and well-oiled machines, Digimon World 4 feels like a junker thrown together out of rusty spare parts.

I really tried to understand the appeal of Digimon, but the bland little scamps just rub me the wrong way. Digimon World 4 won't convert anyone who doesn't already get it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Digimon World 4 is a strange departure from the slower RPGs that came before it. A action oriented dungeon crawler, rather than a Tamagotchi or a Turn based RPG, it's gameplay is faster paced, but rather repetitive. On a positive note, each weapon type has unique properties, such as their ranges, attack speed and damage output. This makes experimenting with them and finding your favorite type fun. Some of the areas look nice and have decent music. On the negative side most encounters are overwhelming and feel incredibly cheap if you play by yourself. Enemies damage you by attacking and touching you. So at times, when you fight alone against 5 - 10 enemies, you may just get rushed and have no way to fight back. However, I am willing to give this game a higher score due to the fact that I have very fond memories of playing it with up to four people, at which point it become absolute chaos, but also a lot of fun. If you want to play the game to completion, I recommend bringing a buddy along and choosing weapon types that complement one another. This way the game's difficulty becomes manageable and quite fun. If no one is willing to play with you, only approach this game if you are a glutton for punishment or don't mind a game that was clearly not designed with single player in mind, including every frustrating trope associated with that. Also the load times rival Sonic 06. Have a handheld on standby.

Digimon World 4 is a bad hack and slash game, bad levels designs, with overpower bosses and bad story, this is one of the worst digimon game, and one of the worst game I've played.

Digimon World 4 is a bad hack and slash game, bad levels designs, with overpower bosses and bad story, this is one of the worst digimon game, and one of the worst game I've played.

A horrendously bad game. I haven't played any other Digimon World games, but I don't think I want to. There is a lot of information needed to be known by the player in terms of stats, equipment, spells, etc. However, the game does an atrocious job of teaching it to you. Learning the rules of the game is optional and forces you to talk to rooms filled of tutorial-elves. Combat is ridiculous. Your character swings your sword with the same animation over and over, causing sword-fighting to look goofy and ineffective. Level structure is abominable. There are no save points, meaning every time you die you have restart from the main hub. This presents forced back-tracking, making traversing through the world repetitive. If the game was easy, this wouldn't be such a big problem. The enemies take a massive amount of hits, barely drop health-restoring items, are more agile than you, and respawn constantly. The game is designed to be played with four people, but more often than not you'll be playing alone or with one other person. One could rationalize that you can buy healing items, but they are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, but whenever you die you loose all of your money. You can revive your past-self to regain your money, but reviving requires an item that is rarely dropped by enemies. Digimon World 4 is a giant mess of missed-direction, confusion, and frustration. The story is non-existent, the gameplay is shallow and poorly executed, the mechanics are unexplained and confusing. It could possibly be the worst game I've ever played.