Digital Disaster | Digimon All-Star Rumble Review

If you are a fan of Digimon, you’ve surely noticed that it has been a very long time since the West has seen a new Digimon game. In fact, it has been 6 years with the last title being Nintendo DS’ Digimon World Championship. That is a long time to leave a licensed game be, and fans have been chomping at the bit to see a new game. There was a large, albeit unsuccessful, attempt to bring Eastern Digimon games, Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode and Story Cyber Sleuth, to the West but Namco Bandai was listening. Just after the campaign failed, Bandai Namco announced that Digimon All-Star Rumble was coming and it would be exclusive to the West. While this sounds great in theory, it didn’t pan out the way that fans would have hoped.

You start off the game with a very sparse and very short story mode to complete. This may excite some to get a taste of the animated series again, but it isn’t what you think it is. The story goes something like this; the digital world has finally achieved peace and while some digimon still have minor quarrels, there is a solid and lasting peace in place. However, many of the digimon became bored and decided they had more fun fighting and that is where we are. It is a paltry attempt at a story and it wasn’t even worth mentioning. It is a few lines of text and you are off to find the next opponent. The worlds you fight in are extremely limited, shallow and linear. There is no point to explore or even pay attention to the story because it is over before it begins.

While the story mode was overwhelmingly disappointing, the real crux of the game is the battle mode itself. The battle mode can be accessed from the beginning so you can just skip the story and go straight into the battle. The format is very similar to Super Smash Brothers in that it is an arena style brawler. You’ll choose from one of the twelve characters and fight against three other opponents. From here, you just mash buttons to do more damage over the time period you have. There is a combo system, but the pace of the battle basically negates any need or use for it. There are some power ups that spawn as the battle progresses and those become important to do more than a minimal amount of damage. The stages are extremely small for so many character and offer little variety. There are also very few dynamic elements which help to break up the monotony of the stage itself. This is something PlayStation All-Stars did well, but Digimon All-Star Rumble seemed to miss completely. Finally, characters have the ability to Digivolve about once per match that allow them to do massive amounts of damage.

From a visual standpoint, the game really doesn’t look that great even by PlayStation 3 standards. The textures are muddy, and while not completely unappealing, it left room for improvement. The game closer resembles a PlayStation 2 game than those worthy of the PlayStation 3. In addition, the production values of this game are sub-par at best. There are no special effects that make you want to pay attention. Everything has a rather generic feel to it and it just didn’t deliver on the promise that the Digimon series is built on. The game looks and feels like a budget title and this is certainly not what the fans wanted to see.

The game is also missing a number of features that are important to arena fighters. Normally, these types of games feature huge casts of characters that all have certain strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, Digimon All-Star Rumble features only 12 characters and they all are relatively the same. Sure, some move better and some do more damage, but none of them play much differently than any other character. However, there are a few characters that are clearly more powerful than the rest which leads to huge balance issues. While these characters handle like the rest, their pace and strength of attack make them head-and-shoulders superior in every way. Most of the characters in the game are extremely slow and almost lumbering, so any character that moves quicker than a crawl is huge advantage as well. These characteristics were not balanced well in the game and they just leave the player frustrated and wishing they played a different game.

The game also features a number of items called Digicards which give the player an additional ability or prevent the opponents from executing certain abilities. Each player can choose two cards to bring into battle. This would be a nice option for the game, but unfortunately, these cards execute completely by chance. While it is great to take advantage of a Digicard, it is infuriating when neither card can be used. This takes away any strategic value and replaces it with chance, which is never a good thing.

Finally, there is no online multiplayer for this game. There is local co-op, so if you have friends that like to come over and play video games, this is an option. However, the lack of an online functionality is jarring and almost counter intuitive for a game like this. Being able to play the game online with friends is what arena battles are all about and leaving that out feels like a huge hole to plug. While it is understandable that this game is more about testing the waters on an old and rarely used IP, this doesn’t seem like the way to get fans excited about your experiments.

Overall, Digimon All-Star Rumble is a borderline mess. The game is serviceable at best, but it lacks much of what it needs to really make a splash. An extremely limited roster, no online co-op, unbalanced battle screens, a barely existent story mode all contribute to a poorly constructed game. This is certainly not the game that fans have been expecting or deserving of, and even for its reduced price, it is hard to recommend to even the biggest Digimon fan.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation 3 version of Digimon All-Star Rumble developed and published by Bandai Namco.