Reviews VideoGame / Digimon Survive

Thing is that this game is trying to go for a demography as wide as possible and not everybody likes bittersweet endings. And seeing how, unlike Gundam, Digimon isn't known for having sad conclusions, they were trying to hit that hard-but-sattisfaying to get Happy ending.

Disgaea is a niche franchise for a reason. Not everybody has the willpower/time to go through such a grinding session. Remember that this game was trying to hit the casual market as well.

On the point of "Digimon isn't known for sad conclusions", Adventure and Tamers do end on bittersweet notes considering there isn't the immediate assurance that the kids and their partners would be reunited (and to this day Tamers has nothing canon against this reading despite the Hope Spot as I recall). I'd have preferred that the Moral ending had killed off both Minoru and Akiharu, the latter possibly as a demonstration of how powerful digimon could maintain their partner's ghost to tie into the Truth route since the Omnimon evolution is even beyond the Sovereigns. Renamon's "death" felt very cheap by contrast, even if this is a valuable thing to teach the cast in concept. This would let Truth be the "Best" ending with no contest, for those of us who really want to work for our happy ending, while letting Moral have its own pros and cons like the others since it's currently Truth-route-lite.

If they wanted more casual players I'd have infinitely rathered they gave a chapter select option on NG+ to make getting the other four endings (and say, the associated hidden memories) easier on players than simply having the "skip dialog" feature. Even just having more mega-level Digimon to strive to obtain and improve would have helped gameplay a lot I feel, since the evolution lines feel really narrowed down at that stage making the roster seem smaller.

- Adventure: The ending with the sound of the Digivice is a literal cliffhanger that let the door open for a sequel.

Also, there's no reason to call this ending Bittersweet. Yeah, they separate, yet all the children are fine and the didn't really need to commit major sacrifices to beat Apocallymon.

- Tamers: Same as above, with the added fact that there are some audio dramas that tell us what happened to the characters down the line.

And even then, those were done years ago, the most recent products do try to give more of a happy ending, instead of a sad one.

This sounds like needeless darkness and drama for me.

I mean, prefer how it is right now. Not every game that has a karma meter needs to make its usage complex. This would be Digimon's first foray into the VN realm, is best to make it a simple entry to not scare consumers and potentially incite more players to test other V Ns.

Why not both?.

I actually like this version, not only it feels more streamlined and organized, but also reminds me to how the anime does things by only having one path, with side-evolutions being rare and special.

If the audio dramas are considered canon my bad, my point was that Digimon is a more dramatic series than some folks give it credit for due to being a 'mon based series, particularly with how common killing off partners can be. (Unsure where to put the newer films on his "happy" ending front with how needless their darker elements could be, given Ghost Game's ending remains to be seen as well, but I digress.)

You already said your preferences, and ultimately there wasn't arguing against the actual happiest ending of the game (Truth) staying the way it was. It's more about giving some point to Moral, since it's not as happy and comes to the detriment of the other karmic paths. Another alternative would have been for the Moral route to be the required choice to start the Truth ending, to justify why no one else major dies on only this route and make the presence of a choice less pointless after saving Ryo and Shuuji, opening alternative versions of Wrath and Harmony where things still go south but we could be encouraged to look at them to see how/if that changed anything. The deaths picked were so Minoru would get more material to show his depths like the others all do, and build on Omnimon being important only on this path. If they really didn't want to scare casual folks off V Ns they wouldn't have had alternate endings at all, like say losing Wrath and Harmony entirely, given how the biggest ambassadors of the genre like Ace Attorney or Dangan Ronpa have a clear endpoint they work towards with token bad endings at best that can be quickly checked and moved past.

Both would be fair, I just feel bad for a visual novel that seems to consider reading it to be a slog for its own players.

For the partner digimon I mostly agree, though Wendigomon feels rather pointless as a side champion with how quickly we can get Antylamon for Shuuji, and I do feel a bit bad for him, Ryo, and Kaito being left out when we acquire the sovereigns. My issue is how the small list of megas really limits how many free Digimon you "need" to have at the endgame, since some evolution lines only have two megas to strive for from a set of three ultimates. I definitely appreciate their choice to avoid recolor-based Digimon, like the blackgreymon line to give Agumon's virus types more variety, but when I started having duplicates I felt I had to start releasing the weaker of whatever I had despite having already had a lot of extra space anyway. Compared to Digimon Story games you could have boxes upon boxes of unique End Tier Digimon. I do adore this method of acquiring free teammates too, just since that hasn't been mentioned here. This is a delightful way to distinguish the fighting formula from the Digimon Story or World-based games even if it can be a bit save-scummy in practice, and really show off the difference between "natural" evolutions and what partner Digimon are capable of.

- Darkness in Digimon: I just feel that the newer entries (both in the anime and game departments) have strived to go for a Sweet ending. I mean, just to give you but one example, Cyber Sleuth ended with the prota managing to return to the Real World when him/her dying wouldn't have worsened the ending at all (if anything, would have made it stronger).

- Moral route: Lets agree to disagree here. I just feel that said path is as strong as it can be and that it doesn't need to differentiate this much from the Truth path. However, there's something I wanna clear up...

Popular V Ns like Doki Doki Literature Club have managed to become quite popular with the casual fanbase even if they have multiple endings.

Now, being honest, seeing how one of the major criticism Survive gets is how wordy it is, I would say that they were right to fear this.

- Partner Digimon: Don't see the problem. I only tend to get the Digimon I require to have a full collection of 1 per Ultimate (Mega). So I simply cannot agree here because this didn't change how I play, at all.

I wouldn't have wanted to bring that one up as a "positive" ending example considering not only that it did have Digimon's standard sad "these two worlds must go back to being separate, leaving interspecies friends likely to never see each other again unless we sequel hook it, because full coexistence is too dangerous to be the new status quo" framework and where its sibling entry Hacker's Memory's ending chose to go even further in terms of Bittersweet endings, particularly where its female lead was concerned to Unfortunate Implications levels. For games, if there's only one ending the story's building up to I'll never complain about it being a heavily positively leaning one so going back to it never feels less enjoyable for knowing where this story goes, and I don't need anyone to die for it to still be sad/bittersweet.

I'd say Doki Doki's example is a very different beast as it was pitched as a Dating Sim, where different endings are required for each romantic target for the sub-genre to exist, rather than a more generically labeled Visual Novel which then benefited greatly by subverting the expectations of that particular style of game. I genuinely can't tell if "like DDLC" is referring to popular Dating Sim rooted franchises (Like Fate and the spin-offs), deconstructions of the genre, or what for that reason.

- Bittersweet endings: I think we may have different opinions on what makes an ending bittersweet. Simply because the worlds are separating doesn't meant that the ending is bittersweet. Everybody is still alive, they can continue their lives as normal and can grow up. I cannot understand how this isn't a typical happy ending.

It was pitched as both. The Dark side of it wasn't promoted at all (for obvious reasons).

Visual Novels in general. We were talking about V Ns, weren't we?. I just brought it up as an example of a VN with multiple paths that became mainstream, my argument being that casuals can take a certain level of complexity, is just that hitting said level is hard.

My standard of bittersweet verses happy is a sliding scale: If the characters are all alive and happy at a state equal to or better than they were when the story started then it's a happy ending, see Truth as our gold standard. If anyone in-universe is sobbing or deeply conflicted by the resolution but most of the major players are breathing or things are explicitly hopeful it's still bittersweet, ratio depending on how badly the characters we follow are taking it, and the more that negatives pile up (deaths, traumas, things generally being more worse off than they were at the start) then we're going from stressing the "bitter" to a tragedy. Moral is still a bittersweet ending, but far sweeter than its tragic companions making it the worst of both worlds for me in this case. So similarly, Cyber Sleuth for me is hopeful but bittersweet (even the protag being "reunited" with Kyoko is laced with Alphamon's memory, because they aren't there anymore) and Hacker's Memory's treatment of Erika goes from that bittersweet required endpoint to a tragedy by reaffirming to a disabled teenage girl that everyone she loves really would have been better off had she never existed at all, because she is very much dead to Earth in every way that matters (to the detriment of everything we've experienced with her) and stuck in a brand new world by herself with average powers at best to be less dead than she could have been otherwise.

I'm blanking on examples of dating sims that aren't using a Visual Novel format with how that's far and away the most common means of presenting them. Using any Dating Sim as being "pitched as both" feels off to me I guess, even more so when a game's popularity is so heavily based on subverting expectations of a particular sub-genre. Like I wouldn't consider a bunch of the deck-building games, like Inscryption, to technically be tabletop simulator games. What made that example popular is not why people like digitized board/card games in general. And you could say when reaching a level of complexity is hard, that's admitting that the easier pitch to an unsure audience would be the one more focused on telling one or two stories.

- Bittersweet endings: Agree to disagree. We have different standards so we cannot reach a compromise.

Why? Being pitched as one of the two categories doesn't disallowed from being pitched as the other. Games can be this complex, just see Katamari Damacy.

But it still is one. It doesn't matter if it was popular for it or not, it still uses the same rules and tropes a lot of other tabletop sims use.

No, am not. Why are you going for the extremes? I am saying that a compromise could be reached. There's no reason to make this a matter of extremes.

No worries, conversations shouldn't result in "compromises" anyway and definitely not where opinions on emotional impacts are concerned. It's about understanding other viewpoints, so now you see why I was taken aback by the claim Digimon didn't already have a long and well embraced history of bittersweet endings and I see why you saw it that way.

That's just how my mind works, I dislike comparing apples and oranges on the premise they're both fruits so I prefer to avoid redundancy when employing labels. Labels should help narrow things down when they are applicable to make finding things easier, so something as broad as "visual novel" is a lot less relevant than "dating sim" is for that purpose. Katamari games are unique and aren't immediately comparable to anything else so bringing it up is pointless, especially when the game the review is about is easy to accurately label. That is why I consider why a work's reasons for its popularity to be very important for generalizing that game.

You seem to be taking that with more hostility than I intended. If something is "hard" that means there has to be an easier alternative to still be receptive for a generalized audience, this doesn't say either approach is wrong or that easier would have been better. Reducing a game's scope to prioritize their efforts on what is most important for their intent is one of a number of compromises that can fit the situation, not an "extreme". When a game has multiple ways to see its story told the pressure is on to make all of the ways you can experience it satisfying, and this isn't just a VN thing, which takes a lot of your naturally limited resources to mutally exculsive areas. Another compromise could have been making fewer members of this cast plot important, to make character deaths less of a case of story progression and more based on how you played to add ways replaying it could still show you new content, which worked for things like Fire Emblem. Another could have been tweaking the karma system so if you had enough points you could see all three choices, or give the karma system some other benefits to it for achieving certain values. These are just pointless hypotheticals that don't change anything about the game we got.

I brought it up as an example of how complex games can really be and how trying to describe them with simple labels might be a disservice to said games.

And no, you wouldn't be able to fully describe DDLC with only one label, unless you ignore the other parts of the game were the other labels would appear. Describing it as a "dating-sim" ignores both its V Ns tropes it certainly uses and also ignores the entirety of acts 2 and 3. You would only be describing act 1 at best. And if you try to describe it using the "Psychological Horror" tag, then you would be ignoring the entirety of act 1 that is, indeed, going for more of a "Dating-sim" approach. This is why I say that the approach you are taking is a fallible one.

How? This game has not too many characters to begin with. And there's not even one character, in my opinion, that doesn't either evolve or becomes important at some point in the game.

Uff, you shouldn't have brought up said franchise. If anything, said franchise being more of a niche franchise till a way to turn off permadeath was added shows that making permadeath connected to gameplay simply doesn't resonate well with the casual crowd.

Oh, and no, it couldn't have been optional either, not without the fanbase making a fuss about, as can be seen with the FE fanbase and how they are still divided, to this day, about if making permadeath optional was either a good idea or an insult to the franchise.

Wouldn't that make said endings less impactful because you can decide which one to get? Weren't you against this?.

I didn't say it only had to be one label, just that having largely overlapping labels is redundant and makes the broader one less useful. I'd label DDLC as a "dark meta deconstruction of Dating Sims" first and foremost, "Psychological Horror" being added in this context only serves to make the intent behind it clearer. But labeling that game doesn't matter for this review's subject because of how little in common with Survive it has, so I don't know why you're making a big thing about my mind's quirks rather than bring up some more fitting comparisons if we have to hash this out at all.

Because, as per issues this review pointed out, the "Survive" element of the title can feel cheap with it being a linear story. How important is Minoru to the Truth arc, or any specific route? His biggest plot is his falling out with Falcomon before that split, which feels very awkward in Truth's version of those events due to lacking the real trigger moment but instead of giving these two new content it feels like they want to weakly retread the beats we've already seen play out instead of giving the two something new to explore with them based on Truth's changes. Minoru doesn't get the build-up any of the other Chosen have, since the dark endings do serve to explore the characters of those who suffer the most during them, which was why he was the one to be pointed out as character who's plot armor feels out of place by both the review and myself. Truth was for Ryo and Shuuji, Wrath for Saki and Aoi, Harmony for Kaito and Miu, Giving up expands on Takuma, but Moral doesn't have this sense of character-building focus. You could argue Moral is technically for the Minase siblings due to Omnimon's evolution and her survival, but they are always important and this still leaves Minoru out for no apparent reason. Even him getting a Digimon Sovereign has nothing to do with him and his growth specifically, as all of the cases are handled the same with Takuma doing the convincing rather than giving each Sovereign a bond to the partnerships they're empowering.

It feels very ironic for you to get an attitude towards this suggestion when you kept getting sidetracked by bringing up DDLC up multiple times for the sole reason that it's a popular game with a VN format and multiple endings rather than any direct parallels to Survive or the review in question, which FE (Three Houses in particular) has more in common with than that game does in terms of gameplay and storytelling elements. Having permadeath in this case tied to a difficulty type rather than an across-the-board requirement could definitely be an option to allow for less linear storytelling, which in Survive's format case could provide an interesting balance with the recruitable Digimon system and even when it was "optional" Three Houses does still let major characters die if they weren't on your team which can let you see more sides to them that you wouldn't see if you were overprotective of them all so my point isn't lost there either. You say they are divided, but the series is going very strong so that seems to be more of an old guard vs. new fans issue which isn't as relevant for a game trying to make a new identity for itself like Survive is.

What I'm against is having three equally presented decisions giving you results that can feel needlessly rewarding or punishing, rather than balancing them by giving each fitting pros and cons, and anything that amends this is a solution in my eyes. Taking away player agency doesn't help "impact" in the context of cutting off endings, it reduces the amount of comparing a work to itself if it's already compromised itself to appeal to as broad an audience as it can so it can tell this "safest" set of storylines as strongly as it can.

I really dislike the decision to arbitrarily lock you out of karmic endings your current karma scores should have given you in favor of the "highest rank and the runner up" system for similarly being "unfair", especially since the current format means you could have had your karmas largely tied at the decision point only to be barred the ability to see all the choices the game will otherwise acknowledge as "suiting" the way you've been playing for seemingly no reason. If you play like a karmic wild card with near even scores you should have a wild card's assortment of options, while if you only invested heavily in one Karma why should you have far weaker Karma's ending open too? Making a decision based on what you've built up to during the entire game has more impact, due to being the payoff for this mild amount of agency you're being given and it can feel nice to have an ending that accurately expresses the values you've followed throughout your game. Part of my dislike of the Moral route as it is and in comparison with the others is how the Moral alignment suddenly prioritizes your friends over everything else doesn't make sense to me when that's been the purpose of the majority of Harmony's responses throughout the game, while "Saving the world" is the most heroic sounding goal akin to Moral's reactions often being more concerned with the big picture, so the two feel to me like their names/purposes were switched last minute so players who are just looking forward to the fan-favorite Omnimon (who would need to be the Moral exclusive option, needing Wargreymon and all) wouldn't have to go through a "bummer" ending in the process. I understand if I'm alone in that regard.

Yeah, at this point, we have both said everything we could about this. Simply put, we cannot agree, so it would be best to agree to disagree.

Yeah, but that only happens during an story segment. If characters will sie during gameplay, the game will let you undo all your actions that lead to said outcome.

1.-) No, casual vs. veterans have being an on-going fight that can be dated all the way back to the GBA era (if not further back), with fans being either for or against changes that made the franchise more accessible to new players.

2.-) My point was that, even if this was the first time Digimon did such a game, this kind of hatred could still arrive. I mean, I think it that FE fans would quickly decide to try this game and that could lead to the war to continue in a new fanbase.

With the rest of your comment I either agree or am neutral about it.

Three Houses rewind system isn't that powerful, so in Revive's context it wouldn't be that much different than how the game makes restarting any fight easy, which is currently most useful for recruiting wild Digimon. Being forced to kill kids from the other classes wasn't always avoidable, Lorenz comes to mind even though he's not a major player for the storyline, and others could be fought without it being a win condition. Apologies if my memory is off, because I did specify it happening had you not recruited them.

Them dying in combat sections due to actions you make could've built on the mid-fight combat lines, rather then everything having been cutscene based. For a specific example, making Shuuji's darkest moment one going on the battlefield alongside your characters rather than cutscene moments to give the sense that he is, to make it easier for players to think that you could have been able to avoid what happened, like the cast struggles with in the aftermath. Either by making a character physically reach him calm him down during the fight (but only Ryo would be capable of it, so this is something you'd have to set up instead of automatically done on NG+ if Ryo's fine) or had beaten the boss quickly enough to get that pressure off of him (which would be just a Hope Spot because Shuiji's too far gone to stop). It wouldn't even had needed to be specific to certain fights feature, but something you always needed to keep an eye on as a his issues got worse. An element to balance a kid's health/safety, possibly needing to keep track of them in fights like how in your very first fight (using Renamon and Gabumon) you see Miyuki and Haru there. Kids who don't have a "talk" option available being at higher risk of going south in fights, including cases like Minoru when you can use Falcomon during their break up moment. As said, this being suggested as a way for deaths to be less linear and have felt more based actions/mistakes you made, so some could still technically be unavoidable depending on your path.

If that helped push a fandom as big as FE's to try the game right out the gates I'd say the sales boost makes that risk worth it! That's why it's trying to stay appealing to casual players, to increase the audience size, yeah? You don't need to interact with fans who are just looking for something to fight about, and I personally haven't encountered these "wars" much when I've interactted with FETH fans. I don't see it that much differently than "fans" who'll get mad that a game's easier difficulties or accessibility options exist.

If you do have something that helps Minoru read as equally developed as the rest of the kids I would be open to hearing it though.

It lets you undo the last 20 or so moves you made, that should be more than enough to be able to save any unit. It is too powerful (and a typical downside brought up by the "Old coat" as you called them).

All of these is way too complex. The casual crowd could not understand what to do here, get frustrated and drop the game. This is actually a major reason why FE was for a long while niche, because it did do complex things like this for a living. Bandai needs to enter both the VN and Tactical RPG realm slowly to avoid alienating its fans.

The difference being that FE not only started as a Tactical RPG but it also already had a fanbase established to begin with, so the risk was lower. Digimon, meanwhile, is a different beast altogether. Not only did Digimon start as V-Pets, but its most popular game incarnations are Turn-based RP Gs, so this would be their first time creating either a Tactical RPG or a VN, a lot could go wrong for them. The reward, in my opinion, doesn't outdo the risk.

What if he is the backbone of all the endings? Instead of giving him one, he could be used to strengthen all the endings by showcasing how he tries to help (but fails) and how this marks him for the rest of the endings.

It's not hard to lay things out, especially if the first time we see a character get this bad it's given a type of tutorial or have characters talk about different sub-objectives as their mid-battle lines. And I think you meant to say why FE was niche, not "Cliche" which is a very different word. Point being it as a suggestion in regards to how to add a bit more "survival" tension in the Survive game with its desired genres.

I said it was worth the risk if, as you put it "that FE fans would quickly decide to try this game", unless you missed an important "if" in that sentence.

I'm not seeing it the way he is now, but that definitely would have been a solid option for him! He is kinda filling the "Main character's best friend" slot which is prime for getting protagonist-like perks or focus, even if we don't need him to be Takuma's mouthpiece the way most of those work. Though if we were able to build him up bit by bit it would have made giving him an active role in getting the most hostile of the four sovereigns to agree to help even better when Truth rolled around. Aoi's determination and kind hand bringing the young buck Baihumon to heel, Saki expressing her gratitude for this world giving her more time living as she is now and how it's helped her grow despite her worries about her future getting Ebonwumon's sympathies as the eldest of the four, Miu showing she's ready to face the world again and doesn't need to let Kaito fight her battles for her to prove herself to Azulongmon, and Minoru not only standing his ground against Zhuqiaomon but showing complete faith in Falcomon's ability to stay true to himself even if he took on this virus type's form. Ryo and Shuuji already have a good moment proving themselves to their partners despite their early failings with Zhuqiaomon's introduction, so it'd be more a culmination of every chosen child's lessons than just having Takuma rally them together as Fanglongmon's successor.

Complex doesn't always mean hard. My point was that it would be just too complex for a casual crowd that haven't dealt with this kind of gameplay prior.

And mine is that this kind of complexity should be found in a sequel. The first game of anything shouldn't be the most complex, instead it should be the simplest so it can create a fanbase and set things up to be improved in further sequels.

You see?And I didn't need to make his story overly bleak or anything. There's beauty in the simplicity, after all.

Complex does mean complicated, which can't be simple/easy, but the system isn't any more complex gameplay wise than the "talk to free digimon" or "rules of fighting" stuff the game has. I don't want to leave all the interesting heavy lifting to a sequel that would be entirely dependent on if this as it is is popular enough to warrant one, especially not with so many complaints in regards to how it handles the VN part of this VN sRPG.

I mean, if it's building on him having considered himself a failure on three other roots instead that is needing to give him some more bleak material for this to pay-off. And the thing I had asked of you was an example of how he currently isn't the weakest written character in the cast, because you had stated "And there's not even one character, in my opinion, that doesn't either evolve or becomes important at some point in the game." and when I had pointed to him as being that one flat minor character in every iteration you chose to not address that at all. The closest he does have to "evolution" or "importance" is his falling out with Falcomon subplot, which is fairly minor (since Ryo and Shuuji cover what they're trying there much more effectively and this break-up is short-lived with little repercussions) and out of place on a Truth path since the conflict feels out of place with the new circumstances. His most interesting aspect, as the one person here with some wilderness survival education and recognizing how he can apply it despite how different this world is, is dropped relatively early in favor of him being a childish goofball trying to overcome his self-professed "cowardice" to match his heroic ideals. Him having perform some sort of sacrifice to prove to himself he's brave enough to be worthy of his friends and fulfill his sense of justice would be equally fitting on a darker route, particularly if one would've shown us why he thinks so little of himself or something more to him in his own flashback moment, which tend to be reserved for characters who are about to go through the wringer.

And here I thought we were finally reaching an understanding. Alas, that was not the case.

Thing is that if Bandai goes all out with the complexity for this reason then the game will indeed fail. Again, go in slow increments and you can create a fanbase out of anything.

However, it doesn't need to be as bleak as your alternative.

Welp, I got that wrong. He's the weak link. That still doesn't change my overall opinion.

Nope, brains still work very diffently and neither these stances are right or wrong, just opinions.

If this is popular enough to get increments, which will remain to be seen. I hope it does, and if it follows the old video game logic of "First was okay but the second is superior in every way" good for it. Going in increments doesn't make a fanbase, a base needs to be there and be supporting enough to let you improve.

The game's called "Survive", Minoru being spared the darker elements is what contributes to him being the weak link, and it was pitched as a darker/bleaker take on Adventure's premise so while I see your issue I can't agree with it not "needing" to be a feature. Golden Endings shine the brightest the harder you feel you need to work for 'em, for everyone's sake. The best I could give Minoru aside from indulging harder in what the game indicates what he needs to grow out of (or into) are would have been to go a bit further in making him foil past Tamers, like going further in making him the team's Izzy. For example, if it's not too bleak for you which would defeat my intentions here, if his insecurities had ties to him having been similarly adopted but it's been a known facet of his life rather than a secret. If anyone appears in a sequel, it being Minoru could help his Plot Armor feel less weird and to his detriment after the fact, regardless of if it just wants to build on the Golden Ending for the Demiveemon kid to be our new protag or surprises us, but until then he's got what he's got.

The fanbase still needs to come from somewhere. It wont be made by itself like if it was magic. A "first product" is still needed to create this fanbase.

Thing is that you can go so far prior you start to alienate both the casual audience and the newcomers alike. And when you are trying to set a fanbase the last mistake you want to commit is alienating possible fans.

Yeah, which is why the first entry should strive to be as strong as it can be, not put itself in a situation where it'll take sequels to give it an interesting identity. Development with thinking like "We can't go in too hard just yet, we need to save that sort of thing for sequels" is setting itself up for failure unless it has a built-in DLC plan or the like, so developing a sequel is based on how it's received and how to improve it based on feedback and a fresh take on what they've done.

Then sorry more consistency would be alienating for you, but I don't see making Minoru on par with everyone else as being the straw that would break the camel's back, especially with how often the game would tell the players "There had to be something we could have done to save Ryo/Shuuji" and that you only need one ending to get access to the True ending when other V Ns often make getting every relevant ending be required to open that option up. When a perfect ending is this relatively early, and a blind playthrough has one-out-of-three odds (ignoring how odds work with the "can only see 2 of the 3 system" and the fourth Obviously Bad Ending) at picking the "least alienating ending" as you're now trying to treat it, I don't see having more faith in an audience accepting post-Ryo/Shuuji darkness as a given for those three options as a bad thing.

If it wanted to be the least alienating option, since we are only talking about achieving one ending to let them try for an ending that would guarantee an ending that will have everything they'd hope for and ignores that "choice" to give a splitting point that alludes to all three other paths for every possible way they could have gotten here, it should have been unmissable or had suggestions around it to encourage that type of newbie. In a game where Truth wasn't this easy to reach I would see your point, and this is likely why those VN-style games are more niche, but after you get your Karmic and True endings everything else is entirely based on if the player wants to see the other stories it has to tell, and not wanting to see those isn't a negative on either the game and the player since the perks past that are either to give more toys to the battle system or for invested players/completionists to pursue, neither being the realm of a "casual/new player's interest" anymore.

A player who sees Harmony/Wrathful first is equally unlikely to continue on to Truth if Moral was in any way different and their given level of darkness was too much for them, but since the game gave hope even before it explicitly gives you the directions on how to unlock Truth I have confidence most would try again. Regardless of if you tried to save that ending for last or pursued the other two after it, the game has told you in no uncertain terms there is a perfect happy ending for this cast, so it can't really be accused of pushing players away for being too "Grimmdark" or however you'd phrase it.

As is developing a game thinking "we have to go all out, no stops, no matter what". A game like that will alienate players (just see Dark Souls for an example). With this kind of thinking all you will do is create a niche franchise at best. If you do want your franchise to become popular and mainstream you do need to think of the casual fanbase and slow down if needed.

I mean, lets take back Fire Emblem as an example: For a long time it was a niche franchise and that was because they stuck to their guns and continued to develop their games in the same way. But after both of Ike's gmes didn't sell well they stopped and thought things through and then changed everything with Awakening, making the game less Grimmdark, making supports more character and pairing oriented, gave players the ability to grind, made permadeath optional and changed the art-style to be more anime-like. All of this decisions were controvertial with their old fanbase, yet Intelligent Systems stuck with them because it did brought in a casual playerbase. If IS though than slowing down wasn't a bad idea, then why shouldn't Bandai do the same as well?.

And neither do I, as can be seen with the fact that this is not what I was talking about. I was talking about making the requirements for the Golden Ending way too complex. What I was saying was that you can go so far in complexity prior you losing the casual crowd thanks to them losing interesting in fully beating the game.

Using Dark Souls is a terrible example, because it's been so well vindicated by history. Even Demons Souls is a bad example due to Fromsoft having done so well for itself. You'd need to point to a genuine failure of a game, and there are plenty, but by being failures most of these names won't be common knowledge. Even Sierra games, and how they could be buggy unwinnable games, did do well enough to stay a name we can use and be understood. There's nothing wrong with intentionally making niche games, ALL of Digimon's games are within this "niche" of Digimon and because it has fans of this brand even the sub-game types among them can thrive. Digimon hasn't cared about being genuinely mainstream in a long time, and the lack of dubs is part of the proof of that. Fire Emblem's success story is in favor of "be a game that isn't afraid to be what it wants, rather than what it thinks will be most likely to catch on" because it let itself change so much over time to suit what new things they wanted to do and we can't pretend it's not a success. Zero Escape is a puzzle VN series that is so very niche but it still did well enough for itself that it could not only concistantly afford dubs but Spike Chunsoft as a whole is a brand comfortable making darker games with clear VN roots. Every game has its own situation, but we've seen enough success stories we can say games can be what they want to be and still find the audiences who appreciate them for what they are rather than what they will be.

It sure sounded like you were taking issue with the darkness of the story, not mechanical complexity, there to me. "Harder" when I said it was in terms of emotionally driving players, like "if no other ending lets everyone be happy I have to find the one where they will", as that was the entire point of that wall of text paragraph. I had been pretty good about not bringing the topic of gameplay complexity into the topic of the storytelling's tone, which was part of why I didn't separate that into smaller segments at the time. I wasn't considering that these two topics had to be going on in the same breath, so I wasn't. Though I appreciate you now agreeing on the front that Minoru's story could have benefitted from darker elements instead of keeping Moral's ending exactly the same.

Doesn't matter. My point is that this kind of games aren't casual-oriented and expect you to be already part of the fanbase to understand not only the plot, but the gameplay as well. No franchise can thrive as best as it can with this mentality. Yeah, From Soft keeps making games, but none of those games can be recomended to casuals or newbies, they can only be recommended to hardcore players that are ready to wast 50+ hours on a game sorely to beat the first level. Yeah, no, that fanbase wont be big.

True, however, why wouldn't you strive for something more? Why wouldn't you, as a company, strive to become as popular and as big as possible? Don't you have some ambition?.

Nope, if anything, this is proof of how a terrible job Bandai is doing of maintaining their franchise. Why would dubbing their products be bad? If anything, it opens new markets for them to take advantage of and can let them expand further.

Actually, Awakening would be the reverse of your argument. "It was afraid of failure so it became what was most likely to catch on". Why else would they had added Casual mode? Or changed the beloved realistic art-style for an anime-like one? Or given supports more of a shipping-tangent to them? Or lowered the darkness other games had with a more "monster of the week" kinda plot? Or made grinding not only possible anywhere (when grinding in prior games was not only restricted to arenas, but you were rsiking your character during said grinding section) but both easier and with zero danger at all? All of these changes were done with a casual crowd in mind because Nintendo had told Intelligent Systems that if Awakening didn't sold 1M units, the franchise was dead. And most of those changes have stuck, showcasing that IS have learned to fear what FE was back then.

Oh no, ZE failed, big time. ZE is an example of a franchise that tried way too hard and crashed and burned. 999 barely managed to hit the west market, with the east market not being interested at all. Virtue's Last Reward didn't fare any better (when it came to sales, it did receive better scores). Zero Time Dilemma had to cut a lot of corners to be released, to the point were Uchikoshi himself has stated that the game was released sorely to not leave the franchise incomplete, but that he would have wished to be able to make a better game because he knows he left a lot of plot points without explanations and some of those he did touch had contrived coincidences as the reason why they happened.

And you want Survive to possibly face a similar destiny?.

Yeah, I didn't understand why that paragraph was there when that's not what I am talking about.

No, I didn't. I just ignored it because it became obvious to me that this is a topic we wont be agreeing on any time soon because we have different ideas on what makes a good story.

Elden Ring would beg to differ hard on the "not mainstream" front, and the rave reviews despite the lack of guidance for various quests clearly didn't hurt its sales much. Every time a new game of theirs comes out it's been a big deal since the later Dark Souls games. Even if their games are hard to master, if the quality there has proven to audiences it'll be worth their time it can and will still draw in new blood particularly since most of the games can be enjoyed on their own. You could even try to argue that Elden Ring did "change" itself to be more mainstream (open world so it's easier to change gears if you hit something too hard, crafting systems, etc.) but it is still a Soulsborne and not many are willing to argue their take on these elements were "selling out for a casual crowd". They saw the gaming space change and wanted to see how their stories would fair with it, and it again did great. Elden Ring is definitely trying harder (and again, massively succeeding) to have more mainstream appeal than Survive is from premises alone, so why knock what they're doing?

Because sometimes you want to make a game that's telling a specific story, like how this one is trying to tell one for the specific niche of older/mature fans of the original Digimon Adventure instead of it being another more child-friendly (in-concept) Digimon-based game. Ambition is fine if it doesn't start to get at odds with your intention, that's why Executive Meddling is a thing: They are the ones who most often come with this "ambition" sometimes at odds with the creative team. Those execs aren't always wrong, but this is the basic conflict we're talking about.

You've said my point for me: Having a dub isn't bad. Not having one is, for the exact reasons you mention. I'm kinda confused why you're talking as if Bandai has allowed any game since Next 0rder to have one, even after Cyber Sleuth succeeded enough to have a combined re-release on the Switch. The first of those even initially had dubbed some lines for a trailer that it had to point out wasn't game accurate, because they recognized Kyoko's lines being subtitled would have hurt the purpose of the ad. This is what I mean as it being a sign that Bandai's actual hopes for Survive aren't as high or far-reaching as you'd like to make them sound, since dubs are always a big help for international markets.

If that suited the story they were telling, as you point out the story these mechanics supported was now meant to be lighter and less serious than it's predecessors, then why shouldn't it be fine? Changing despite a work's established fanbase can be its own risky move and in this case it did pay off. If the complaint is Fire Emblem "selling out" to survive then it did so in a way that let it stay in its gameplay niche and give others like it something to point to as a way to justify their own efforts. If this was a remake of those older, darker, more serious games that made these changes then I'd understand as these elements don't seem in line with that. But it sounds like the creatives behind the brand took Nintendo's request to heart and made changes in accordance with what then interested them most to tell with that broad directive. They could have let the franchise die so we'd just have those older games as its legacy to look back on to inspire future works, but I don't think the newer entries "suck" based on their own merits as their own games. It's okay to mourn changes, but attacking the new is just rude if they really didn't have an alternative initially and then enjoyed creating in their new space.

And yet, all three of the trilogy got made and on top of that got over here enough to be the major market. Its story was told to completion, more than plenty of other games can say, and in a way that reached more than just a Japanese-focused audience. If you're saying the costs of a dub cast was needed for it to make any overseas money then that speaks even worse for Bandai's treatment of Digimon games including Survive, because that indicates they are banking on the established Digimon fanbase, who has already proven even undubbed games can do well enough for multiple exports, instead of genuinely hoping for any new interest to be drawn in. As I see games the biggest failure is to be an utterly forgotten bomb, followed by if it failed to tell a complete (or if it was an intended one-off, comprehensible) story, then mechanics (unless it's more about this element than story, then swap these priorities), then financials as that's the most complicated barometer. I see the value of cult hits, and I get if that's not everyone's thing, but if a game has to do bonkers good to be "good" then clearly you wouldn't have the bone to pick with FE that you do either. Games are art, and art all has its own spaces it belongs in. Spike Chunsoft is still around, as is Uchikoshi in particular with the recent AI games, so this wasn't some sort of a career-ending "failure" and given Dangan Ronpa is possibly the biggest franchise currently under its banner its still big in the VN genre too. I do feel bad the last entry wasn't what he hoped it'd be, and honestly I'm not sure he learned any lessons from this "failure" for either of the AI games (which is why I had assumed it wasn't a failure in SC's eyes: They haven't fired, transferred, or reigned him in yet so how much can he have cost them?), but at least it's not something he will regret leaving only partly done. That's what I wouldn't want for any game, and why I don't want games to rely on the hopes of sequels to build them up into household names rather than each entry exist as best they can in the present.

If you don't get something, then either you say that to ask for why I brought up a particular line or leave my words in their context instead of trying to apply to something they weren't a part of as that's fairly rude. I'm sorry I had done the same to you by expanding on you agreeing with me on Minoru being the weakest member of the cast to be an acknowledgment Moral had left him notably untapped. If you want to only talk mechanics then say that upfront, as you had when you'd explicitly agree to disagree on smaller subjects. We have come to various common grounds or understandings where our lines in the sand are. If you don't think there are any others worthy to be found or relevant to the review, as mechanics is far harder to play "what ifs", "what could improve" or other things relevant to the original complaints when you want to talk things as complex as markets and the like we can call this closed.

You know? You are right, Elder Scrolls is trying to be more casual of a game. That still doesn't take away from how all the prior games were so anti-casual because of if overly high difficulty rate, how long and tedious they would be and their bleak stories.

Then we are talking of different things. You are taking a micro perspective, caring sorely for one game of the entire franchise and trying to make it the best it can be. I am taking a macro perspective, caring more for the franchise as a whole than sorely one game; if a game being weaker and slower than its potential sequels can help create a fanbase and setup a lot of mechanics to be improved in follow-up games, then that is the approach I would take.

Basically, you preffer to take the risky approach because you believe that potential should be exploited to its fullest meanwhile I preffer to take the safe route to not only secure a fanbase but also the possibility of creating more products.

I am not. My entire argument is that Bandai not dubbing more of their Digimon products into other languages (not just English, but also both Spanish dubs, French, Italian, Portuguese, Deutsch between so many other) shows that they are doing a terrible job handling Digimon in general.

Because it is now basically an entire different franchise. Besides, some of those mechanics were put into the games without paying attention to their effects. An easy example would be the "Child" mechanic (the ability to recruit the children of the pairings you created): Added to Awakening and explained in the story; brought back in Fates yet there is no reason given for them to even exist, the story never refers to them and all of them are literally extra characters. They were only added because Awakening had them and Awakening sold like hot bread.

You are exactly right. Echoes is one such remake done during the "Modern" era and does have a good amount of this changes (like the anime artstyle, being more casual-oriented and creating Phoenix-mode [basically, death characters revive next turn with full HP]). It, like the rest of the modern era games, is quite divissive.

I agree. I am just parroting other's opinions because their opinions are as valid as ours.

Umm, "major market"? No, the trilogy barely sold. Zero Time Dilemma (the last game in the franchise) barely sold around 3ooK copies worldwide, with basically no market in Japan. America wasn't ZE's major market, it was its only market. It failed to catch a fanbase.

And the franchise even ended in a cliffhanger. The last game introduced a psychotic fanatic whose attack would eradicate 90% of humanity and the 9 players from ZTD resolve to stop said fanatic. Said fanatic didn't appear in ZTD at all, we don't even know who he/she is. The franchise didn't manage to end.

You are confused. ZE lacks a Japanese audience. The first game simply didn't sold in Japan and the last two were made with the American market as its main target.

Where are you getting this from?.

Never said it was. What I said was that the franchise itself was a failure, something even Uchikoshi agrees with.

Again, you have a risky approach. Your games could either turn into massive sucesses or into failures.

When did I do something like this? All I said was that I thought that we were going in a circle so it was best to agree to disagree on that topic.

It's not like Elden Ring is that much happier than previous options you could fight towards in Soulsborne games, and despite being so "anti-casual" they still became a mainstream game developer who've made waves even when releasing stand-alone titles. They haven't gotten any "kinder", but the audience willing to stay with them and games eager to apply lessons these "Soulsborne" games taught for their own projects feels beyond niche. Even if Demons' Souls had "failed", we can't act like they're a failure when it's easy to see they've never had to give up on it to make what they want.

Yes, I care about the micro because I feel the micro for Survive is more important given it's a single entry in a new branch of a franchise owned by a media giant. Focusing on a "Macro" for a game that's clearly not getting that much support for going into uncharted waters feels wrong to me since the worst-case scenario for this game's release doesn't seem like it'd be that bad. Survive won't be doing anything that major for Digimon as a Franchise, or Bandai on that grander scale, because it wanted to be part of a genre even more niche than the sufficiently popular Stories line of games. If it can get "big", good for it and I'd love to see more stories told this way, but if it had genuinely failed the fallout from that wasn't going to be that big a deal compared to if this hadn't had any ties at all to Digimon's existing brand. The biggest addition to Digimon overall Survive has given us is Fanglongmon Ruin Mode and appealing to fans of part of the Digimon (Adventure) mythos that didn't leave Japan. I'm not even seeing Falcomon's old design coming back as that big a deal since we've already seen this with how they backtracked Savers having given minor tweaks to Agumon. It's not even that big a departure from Digimon's ongoing focus on retreading Adventure based content instead of wholly original material, which can bring in new merch or other post-content-release forms of revenue. I'd love to eat those words with a Kunemon plush, but this is what I mean by focusing on the Micro here: This game feels like a case where the Micro matters the most to it and why it's here, because it's part of something even bigger than most Video Games development do and corporate stuff is just a pain to think about. If you don't see these two stances as valid approaches to game development or analysis then that's all there is to say about this, because I feel we're both simplifying too many things to be talking in terms of the Macro here.

Spike Chunsoft is a Japanese Company, and the games they make don't stop being released on their home turf even if they don't sell as well there. A Japanese company seeing the overseas market as one worth pursuing despite local disinterest is its own success, even more so since if the first game had "failed" by your measure they had no reason to let it be a series. 999 was a perfectly fine entry to leave on its own if they saw no value in pursuing it, and they did it anyway. Last I checked there is no ZE game that only has an English dub on it, if we want to use that as the farthest-reaching western language, which means that no matter how little it sold in Japan they still saw the reason to pay for making these two dubs for each entry. Dubs aren't cheap, especially when the first release of 999 was on a system that could easily justify barely having one, so their presence or absence is something to take note of where a games cost of production vs. sales come in if we have to be Macro about this.

If Uchikoshi believed the franchise was a failure, he wouldn't still have every game he has a hand in make reference to it. AI's sequel even remade part of the first chapter of 999 as a bonus Somnium, which is who knows how many man hours worth of material on what's at best an advertisement for a PS 4 or computer port that's already been out for a while. He's obviously still proud of his creation, and his superiors see fit to indulge him in this on top of his writing in general, just like they let one of ZTD's endings have yet another hook. It sounds like you're trying to present him acknowledging the weakest entry of the three is the third and parts of why this happened as bleakly as possible so you can call it a "failure". Failures typically need to fail, not just "do poorly", and they certainly don't get remastered rereleases because their story hinged on being on a literally hinged console. When something fails, like when it's canceled or scrapped like this sequel hook seems to be, it's done and that's it unless something proves it's not a failure in some regard enough to pick it back up. I'll agree on the hook having failed, it should have been cut if it was already decided this was the end and pressure was on him to wrap it up. But I can't even justify calling this a Cult Classic given how many resources the series as a whole received when so many other 3Ds games did just die with the system, as plenty of games have and will continue to. I wouldn't even call all of those "failures" either, because games are an art form and it takes a lot of missteps for this art to fail in its purpose of getting an audience engaged with its story or gameplay. You can't convince me any other metrics really matter; I love video games too much to treat them as pure capitalistic ventures for making massive amounts of money and more of themselves.

Risk versus reward is the basis of all large-scale projects, and both sides have their pros and cons. Your phrasing like my approach doesn't have a middle ground feels very disingenuous when it obviously does. You can make the product you want and make enough to stay above water, maybe even enough to continue making completely different games, that's not a "massive success" but it sure isn't a failure either. It's just being a business making the product you want to make instead of what you think audiences will want, and general audiences can be hard to guess. Your interpretation of "Macro" and what it needs feels equally flawed to me in a world where the game industry can take risks without collapsing due to a bad call, as your examples of "Failures" prove. Both approaches can easily get mediocre results, and mediocre isn't the bad thing it feels like you want it to be, because that says nobody's losing their livelihoods from it. I just prefer it happens by intent rather than making compromises that didn't have to happen for it to succeed.

When you took "Golden Endings shine the brightest the harder you feel you need to work for 'em, for everyone's sake" out of its context about the tone of the story and tried to instead use it to be about my unrelated previous suggestions adding more gameplay complexity, and left us both confused by the result and needed to talk about a complete digression. You using it, despite being from a paragraph regarding tone you later said you didn't want to engage with, made me assume the complaint you were making about my phrasing was also a storytelling one which you then clarified was not your intent. If you had wanted to further discuss my previous suggestions of adding more complexity to the games' ending system you could have said so with your own words or paraphrased mine from when that was more the topic. I mostly react to online discussions point-by-point until the topics feel settled, so if you don't want me to act accordingly don't cherry-pick a line out of a topic you're done with.

Then I think we are over here. I think our viewpoints are simply too different to continue on with this point and a compromisse is not attainable.

Things aren't as simple as you would want them to be. 999 failed in the Japanese market, this is an undeniable fact (and a weird one at that because 999 was the perfect japanese game that had all the tropes that were popular in the japanese market), Spike Chunsoft just decided to try the american market to see if it was a complete failure. After doing so the total amount of copies sold was a mere 350K units, way too little. However, Spike must have felt generous, because they let Uchikoshi make a sequel, even with these low numbers, however (I had to check the sales records again) VLR also was a failure, only selling a measly 70K units (am not joking). That is why ZTD barely had a budget, had a lot of cut corners (including story, gameplay, voice acting and animation departments) and nearly didn't release at one point. And even then it only managed to sale 23K units (yeah, got my numbers wrong prior). For a franchise, to not manage to break the 1M units milestone or much less the 500K units milestone (by it either by specific game or the overall amount of units the franchise sold) by the third game is a sign of failure. Those are the cold facts am afraid.

The former has nothing to do with the latter. Uchikoshi doesn't need for ZE to be a success for him to love it and want to reference it in future projects of his. I mean, Nintendo themselves keep referencing the Virtual Boy (the 3D console that can only show red and black colors and that could give you headaches) yet everybody knows that said console was a failure.

Thing is that it couldn't be cut. This is the main motivation behind why Delta (the final boss of ZTD) did all he did in this game, to create a team that would help him stop the fanatic. Cut it and you lack an story.

You see? This is one of those "cut corners" I mentioned earlier. Uchikoshi simply had no other choice.

Then we reach an impasse. If you will be this close-minded and deny yourself a different point of view, then I might as well be wasting my time here because no matter what I say you wont agree.

True. However, you are taking too many risks with your approach, making the rewards not managing to compensate for said risks. The way you want to make games alienates a good amount of players and only counts on the specific kind of player that would buy your game.

That's what fads and demographies are for!. Just check what kind of games are mainstream and decide from there what could benefit your game to improve its chances of reaching an even bigger demography.

I think this is not only the longest review section conversation on the site, but the only one that\'s gotten this long because of 2 people alone.

@Very Melon Sure is a good thing the reactions to individual reviews are hidden by default yeah? Apologies if this is in genuinely bad form and this is you trying to tell us this is done. I've seen similar things happen on other sites and don't have much experience dealing with the less editing-focused areas of Tv Tropes.

@megagutsman Compromises still aren't the point of conversations because we aren't making decisions here, these are just exchanges of ideas to see why we each feel the way we do, so don't know why you're talking like that's ever been a goal. If it's your goal, even after I pointed out it's weird to phrase it this way, that's a you problem buddy. Also I just noticed you had misspelled Elden Ring as Elder Scrolls in regards to being less "anti-casual" and I found it very funny given Skyrim's history.

But they let the games release with the bells and whistles they did, not as bare bones as they could to recoup their losses, and continue to shill it when they can. With those facts, I can only imagine these numbers really didn't hurt SC the way that they "should" have with how you stress them, due to how kind they have been to it and keeping it updated to show to newer audiences. And are clearly continuing to be, as AI's sequel with the segment I mentioned just came out this year. You don't treat something you consider to be a failure, and the ones responsible for it, this well for so long so I can only assume they're not using your values here regardless of how true and accurate they are. Using "Failure" as an absolute feels wrong because if your points were all that mattered, we wouldn't be hearing about it anymore and certainly not in any positive light.

Yeah, I see no value in prioritizing a view that just feels bland and lifeless when we're choosing to talk about games that are trying to be or say something beyond being fun. There's a place for these too, but as I said your take on Macro feels like it's too broad-scoped to be an accurate judge on what any of the forces making major decisions are actually concerned by. Games have multiple objectives when being made, making a lot of money is just one so I'm not going to give it more value than that. It's most important for continuing to be made, but media doesn't exist in a vacuum and can continue to influence other works once they exist. Some games can take a while to find their feet, like Among Us had in the most bizarre fashion, the same way books and movies can but they don't need to become smash hits to matter. I hate labeling pieces of media as a whole as "failures" for similar reasons, though they all have very different metrics for financially failing.

If you take anything to an extreme that can be true, look at your own stances, but the act of making a game at all, or any product, is a "risk". I don't want to make them "alienate" anything, I want them to be what they want regardless of how broad or narrow that scope is so if people are interested in a concept it can exist to be found. I don't care if games like 13 Sentinals are considered "failures" by your metrics as long as they get to exist and make their unique impacts on those that play or become aware of them, I just hope for their success beyond individual efforts for the livelihoods of those involved. It's great when games take notes from each other (as long as it's respectfully and legally not infringing on anything) to further grow a concept of game design. There's no one specific player for any genre mash-up, and nothing rules out a franchise shifting into new demographics if that's what it wants to try nor should that be treated as a bad thing. Any rule can have exceptions because it's hard to guess how types of games intersecting might change how they both feel.

Focusing on specific demographics is exactly the type of thing I'm aiming for though, and you just treated that as "alienating players"! Dark Souls being what it wanted (a challenging game reimagining how "deaths" should hurt/teach a player, rife with subtle storytelling, drawing in fans ranging from those seeking rewarding challenges to less gameplay-focused lore hunters) and then becoming mainstream led to an influx of soulslike games, which then led to games like Hollow Knight, which in turn helped fan the existing itch for more metroidvanias. "Games" are too broad without knowing who you want your audience to be, so aiming for "everyone" is a fool's errand unless you set limits on it. "Fads" are at times too temperamental for things as slow going as game development outside of broad strokes, like how meta content became popular and zombies were the big thing a while back, but when you make a game designed to appeal to X and Y, maybe even Z, demographics specifically you don't need to waste time or resources on trying to expand it to A, B or C "just to be safe". Survive's target is "Older Digimon fans" first and foremost, with "sRPG fans" as a secondary, and it wanted to tell an anime-like story with a more dire tone and variety within it than we've had from the Stories entries that V Ns have an easier time actualizing. Making compromises for "casuals" there doesn't make sense to me because why do they matter, in what way are they "casual"? "Casuals" to the sRPG space are getting a taste of if sRPGs are something they enjoy, but it wouldn't have hurt the game to do more with it or have more types of units when the difficulty is so easy to change on the fly, since challenges can appeal to largely sRPG fans who might have an interest. Newcomers to the darker tone already have other avenues for Digimon Content to enjoy, especially if they had a minimum of one ending with all 8 kids as a true Adventure parallel to scratch their itch, so indulging this new territory for the fans who enjoy Digimon's flirting with mature topics doesn't feel like a mistake. Newcomers to two or more of these elements are the least likely thing to account for because there's no firm draw for them. It didn't need to be a big hit, didn't want to be, and they didn't care enough to give more than the basic needs of translation to ship it out. It wanted to be a solid darker Visual Novel with an sRPG battle system, and didn't need to cater outside its zones to be that. Fans who wish they let themselves go a bit farther in any of the game's desired directions aren't wrong when framing this desire constructively, because that was the pitch and talking about it can help players find more of what worked for them in this game, and there's nothing wrong with liking what it is either.

Very Melon: I have seen longer. And also, I have seen ones to devolve into \"whose bigger?\"-like arguments faster.

Loreilie: Fully agree to disagree. I notice that we are simply dead-set in our own opinions and wont budge from them. I still disagree with everything you said in your last comment but, as Very Melon said, this is getting way too long. So lets call it quits. Armistice?.

Alrighty! Hope the exchange of ideas was enjoyable for both sides, even if it didn't accomplish what you were hoping for, and not too much of a bother for everyone else.

I don\'t think this extended argument broke any rules, but I feel that given both its length and how little it has to do with the review heading it, it would have been better on the forums.

Yeah, I don\'t use the forums. And had Lorealie either wanted to move this into P Ms or end things earlier I would have understood.

I like that someone else agrees with me that the bias for the Moral Route is a serious issue with the game.

Said this, I admit that I actually enjoyed the grind of the game a bit. But some extra degree of customization of Digimon could\'ve nice.

Also, Data Digimon are screwed for the game. They\'re practically weak to everything except for two boss battles near the Mid Game.