Digimon World 2 was one of my most beloved childhood games. I spent a LOT of time grinding my digimon, finding my way through the dungeons, dna digivolving to get the digimon I wanted, upgrading my digi-beetle, and generally I have a lot of fond memories of playing this during my youth. However, when I started replaying it recently, I can't say really say it's a super good-game or anything.
To get the good out of the way: the game has a lot of fun features and ideas. I like the idea of moving around dungeons, avoiding traps, and fighting and training Digimon. There are a lot of Digimon in the game and many of them are from the first two anime series so chances are if you have a favorite digimon from those it might be here. DNA Digivolution is also a fun feature that lets you get a lot different digimon (there's also a downside to it which I'll talk about shortly). You can customize your digi-beetle to your liking, all the different things you can upgrade are really neat. The game has surprisingly good music as well; it's not up there with the likes of Yoko Shimomura, but it's enjoyable and memorable.
The main problem is that the fun things are marred by how boring a lot of the game tends to be. The domains are initially pretty cool but after all this time I noticed that, while many of them have unique floor patterns and layouts, it's not really enough to not make them feel dull and samey, it's just the same boring brown floors most of the time and it gets old. The visuals in battle are also rather plain in terms of background as a result, it just feels like more effort could have been put in to make all the domains more fun and distinctive. The fact that you constantly have to DNA digivolve to get stronger Digimon isn't necessarily a terrible idea but unfortunately it means that you're going to spend a LOT of time grinding them up to usable levels because when you DNA digivolve the resulting digimon is always a rank lower. A lot of the domains also have unfair obstacles that you wouldn't be able to traverse because you don't have the proper tools at that point in time.
Overall it's a game with a lot of fun ideas and I think some people would enjoy it but I personally just find the flaws make the game too boring to play in this day and age.
Not as good as you remember
Digimon World 2 was one of my most beloved childhood games. I spent a LOT of time grinding my digimon, finding my way through the dungeons, dna digivolving to get the digimon I wanted, upgrading my digi-beetle, and generally I have a lot of fond memories of playing this during my youth. However, when I started replaying it recently, I can't say really say it's a super good-game or anything.
To get the good out of the way: the game has a lot of fun features and ideas. I like the idea of moving around dungeons, avoiding traps, and fighting and training Digimon. There are a lot of Digimon in the game and many of them are from the first two anime series so chances are if you have a favorite digimon from those it might be here. DNA Digivolution is also a fun feature that lets you get a lot different digimon (there's also a downside to it which I'll talk about shortly). You can customize your digi-beetle to your liking, all the different things you can upgrade are really neat. The game has surprisingly good music as well; it's not up there with the likes of Yoko Shimomura, but it's enjoyable and memorable.
The main problem is that the fun things are marred by how boring a lot of the game tends to be. The domains are initially pretty cool but after all this time I noticed that, while many of them have unique floor patterns and layouts, it's not really enough to not make them feel dull and samey, it's just the same boring brown floors most of the time and it gets old. The visuals in battle are also rather plain in terms of background as a result, it just feels like more effort could have been put in to make all the domains more fun and distinctive. The fact that you constantly have to DNA digivolve to get stronger Digimon isn't necessarily a terrible idea but unfortunately it means that you're going to spend a LOT of time grinding them up to usable levels because when you DNA digivolve the resulting digimon is always a rank lower. A lot of the domains also have unfair obstacles that you wouldn't be able to traverse because you don't have the proper tools at that point in time.
Overall it's a game with a lot of fun ideas and I think some people would enjoy it but I personally just find the flaws make the game too boring to play in this day and age.