Video Game / Digimon World 2

It's as awesome as it looks

Digimon World 2, like its predecessor, was an RPG for the PlayStation. However, while the first game was a Mon-raising sim with RPG Elements (and Digimon World 3 and the DS games would be a more typical Eastern RPG), Digimon World 2 tried its hand at the Roguelike formula.

Our hero Akira has just gotten his Tamer License and the keys to his brand new Digi-Beetle. After joining one of the three teams that guard Digital City — the Vaccine-using Gold Hawks, the Data-preferring Blue Falcons, or the Virus-loving Black Sword — he gets his first Digimon and sets out to start protecting his home, patrolling various domains, battling or befriending wild Digimon, and participating in the various tournaments in his free time. Of course, it doesn't take long for things to get a lot more complicated than that...

The Digi-Beetle serves as your lifeline in the dungeons; it has its own HP, EP, and various tools and weapons you can install to make exploring easier. Defeat Means Friendship is also given an odd twist; Digimon are shown wandering the map, and you can shoot gifts at them to drastically raise the chances of them joining you, then kill beat them last.

Another strange quirk of the game is that digimon all have level caps (which they reach rather soon), meaning you have to repeatedly digivolve, de-digivolve, and combine them in order to build a decent team (have in mind that combining them resets the Digimon level to 1).

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This game contains examples of:

• Ability Required to Proceed: There are various points in the game where you'll have to upgrade your Digi-Beetle to a certain level to get past certain domains.
  • Drive Domain is the first example. There's no way to beat it without a Missile Gun, as there are unavoidable Electro-Spores that can only be destroyed with Magnetic Missiles. Even with a Missile Gun, some later Domains have Electro-Spores and Big Rocks whose corresponding missiles aren't even obtainable by that point, and you won't be able to pass them until they become available.
  • Much later on, just before the fight against the Chaos Lord, you have to pass several unavoidable corridors full of Acid Swamps of varying levels. If you don't have Tires to protect against them, your Digi-Beetle doesn't stand a chance of survival from the constant damage. And even if you do have them, you'll still be forced to take damage from the red ones, as the strongest Tires aren't even available yet.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: Zig-zagged. Every Digimon has a level cap that gets reached rather quickly. The cap can be raised by digivolving your Digimon as they reach the correct level, then DNA digivolving them with other Digimon once they reach the cap, but even that does not do much to raise the cap, and you'll still reach it almost as quickly. And if you DNA digivolve too early, the level cap will actually be lowered.
• Aerith and Bob: All over the place. Bertran, Damien, and Joy are all normal if uncommon names, but then we get to Zudokorn and Piyotte.
• Animal Theme Naming: Not only are many of the various parts you can buy for your Digi-Beetle named after different types of animals, they're sorted into different categories, such as sea creatures for the Batteries, birds for toolboxes, mythological creatures for DB-Engines and insects for RAM.
• Anime Chinese Girl: Joy-Joy, whose japanese name is Lin Lin Shao.
• Anti-Frustration Features: At one point in the game, you will be tasked with recruiting certain Digimon. Most notable among them are Ikkakumon, who only hangs out in a group with the hard-to-capture Birdramon, and Tankmon, who requires large amounts of the gifts you would have available to you at the point you first encounter him (especially if you're not with the Blue Falcon team). Alternatively, you can instead capture a Penguinmon and a Candlemon, who respectively digivolve to Ikkakumon and Tankmon, and they'll still be accepted, which will save yourself a lot of rage.
  • Early bosses that inflict status aliments on your digimon team like Kugawamon and Kokatorimon are also programmed to use their respective rookie attacks, giving you enough time to do damage to them before their attacks give you much trouble.
  • Early on you will get a chance to recruit a MetalGreymon with a single Toy Plane that is given to you in the start of your mission. Should you use it on another Digimon, there is another NPC that gives you a Toy Plane during the same mission period in the Digimon Center.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Electro-Shocker and Horn Buster are Interrupt techs that reduce the power of current attack (meaning: next turn, the attack must be interrupted to get its power reduced). Unfortunately, the AI always interrupts your first move (be it Attack or Assist), and it becomes pointless if the AI interrupts you when you're using Assist to buff/heal your Digimon.
  • Crimson's dreaded SkullMammothmon can sometimes use the Assist skill Hyper Flashing in order to weaken your Vaccine Digimon and cause them to receive even more damage from his main tech, Spiral Bone Crusher. The thing is, SkullMammothmon is a Vaccine-type himself, so he's inadvertently weakening himself at the same time. It is entirely possible for him to use Hyper Flashing even when you have no Vaccine-types in your Digi-Line, greatly lowering the difficulty of an otherwise very frustrating boss.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Overlord GAIA. It looks underwhelming at first - just one opponent - and can be taken out fairly quickly... but then it wakes back up and it extends its arms from its body. Cue the real final battle.
• Blood Knights: Interestingly, they were named this before this trope even existed.
• Boss Room: On any domain's final floor, there will always be a long hallway, followed by a wide-open space where the boss is encountered. Additionally, the hall and room will have floors coded to the boss's element, giving them an advantage. Lampshaded by Zudokorn in the very first mission in the game.
• Boss Rush: The tournaments that you're required to participate in if you want to progress through the game. You have to win three battles in a row, without any items, in order to move up a rank, and some of the higher ranks can be outright brutal. The highest rank, Chief, requires you to beat each of the three Guard Team leaders in succession.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: One of the main tricks up the Blood Knights' sleeve: a device that drives anyone without a neutralizer insane with confusion.
  • Later on in the game, several of your fellow Guard Tamers are sent to File Island to back you up, only to be attacked and confused by a gang of Gekomon.
  • Crimson, transforming into NeoCrimson and going back to normal once he is defeated. It seems that Overlord Gaia is the unknown force that took over his mind.
• Brick Joke: Bertran's Digi-Beetle runs out of EP after his Embarrassing Rescue in Modem Domain. When you rescue him a second time after he is confused by Gekomon and ShogunGekomon in Data Domain, his EP runs dry again, and Akira lampshades it after he is warped out.
• Calling Your Attacks: As usual. However, because each technique's call uses a predetermined voice no matter what Digimon is using it, it can lead to some amusing Vocal Dissonance, most noticeable with Mega level Digimon using Rookie level skills.
• Chekhov's Gunman: GAIA, the little robot that Kim repairs.
• Child Soldier: The Guard Teams are clearly Digimon-taming paramilitary organizations, given the way they walk and give salutation are unambiguously military-like. Yet, their members include children like Akira, Bertran, Joy Joy, Lucky Luis, etc.
• Cognizant Limbs: During the second half of Overlord GAIA's fight, its hands act as separate entities. One hand lowers attack power, and the other lowers defense.
• Color Animal Codename: The three Guard Teams which most of the characters are a part of, and the player character must choose to join one of them at the beginning of the game. Two of the teams are named Gold Hawk and Blue Falcon, with the third one - Black Sword - being the odd one out. However, the Gold Hawks in Japan are actually called Silver Cross, thus making the Blue Falcons the only true example of this trope in the game.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Anytime the computer takes control of a Digimon in battle it will ignore any checks that would stop the player from doing the same action. (This includes the MP requirement of skills, as well as the "Demotivation" effect which otherwise disables enemy skills.)
• Crutch Character:
  • During an early point in the game you're given a chance to recruit a MetalGreymon. While it has decent stats at the time it's available (except for speed), later on you can get much stronger Digimon at lower levels. What makes this MetalGreymon especially notable is that the opportunity to recruit him comes at just about the point where your first Digimon should be reaching their level cap and thus will need to be DNA-Digivolved back down to Rookie; having an Ultimate to compensate for that is a huge bonus.
  • There is also the Digimon Center that lets you trade Digimon. Most of the early traded Digimon, notably the Wizardmon you can get by trading Crabmon and the Megadramon you can get by trading Numemon, are Crutch Characters.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Except a few of the early bosses, any fight where there's only a single enemy will likely be this.
• Defeat Means Friendship: If given enough gifts, a Digimon may join your team after being defeated. However, some Digimon may require a lot of gifts to even remotely consider joining you, and it may be particularly difficult to give gifts to others before they catch up to you.
• Degraded Boss: All of the wild boss Digimon can later be found and captured later on. This excludes tamer boss Digimon (who have their own unique stats and attacks) and unique bosses.
• Diagonal Speed Boost: You can save energy points by moving diagonally whenever you can. This also comes in handy when trying to escape wild Digimon, who cannot move diagonally.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Immediately after the Generator Parts are stolen, Akira overhears the thief griping about who sent her to get the Parts. Akira's response indicates he only heard her mention 'Generator Parts', and wonders if she knows something. The Blood Knights are also prone to this.
• Disk One Nuke:
  • The MetalGreymon in BIOS Domain. Not only does it have good stats, but it also knows a highly useful Interrupt skill, Horn Buster, which heavily reduces the damage of its target's attack.
  • Kunemon can be obtained very early and digivolves into Kuwagamon, who learns the powerful Scissor Claw technique that lowers your opponent's defense and can stack this debuff twice. When combined with its high attack and speed, it makes quick work of most enemies. Even if you did not pick Black Sword to have access to virus type gifts, you can find Toy Cars in treasure chests in BIOS Domain that will work on any digimon type.
  • Betamon can be found even earlier than Kunemon, and digivolves into DarkTyrannomon, whose primary skill, Fire Blast, is a decently powered, albeit fairly costly, group attack for the early stages of the game.
  • After the first sighting of the Blood Knights, you can trade a Numemon for a Megadramon. Not only does he come packing decent attack and speed ratings, but he also knows Garudamon's Wing Blade skill, which will prove highly useful not only for the first fight against Damien, but also later down the line.
• The Dragon: The three Chaos Generals to Chaos Lord. Also Damien to Crimson.
• Dung Fu: The attacks "Party Time" and "Junk Chunker" involve the attacker throwing a large turd at their target.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water>Fire>Nature>Machine>Darkness>Water.
  • Also Virus>Data>Vaccine>Virus. This applies in both damage calculation and the result of DNA Digivolving.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Bertran suffers this not once, but twice, first in Modem Domain after an enemy trap leaves him boggled, confused, and crying his eyes out, and again in Data Domain when the Gekomon attack and confuse him.
• The Faceless: Unnamed tamers have their face partially concealed. Gold Hawk tamers wear helmet that is similar with Angemon's or Angewomon's (fitting as they are Vaccine type), while Blue Falcon and Black Sword tamers wear goggles.
• Faceless Goons: All Blood Knight "officers" and "commanders" are these. Crimson and Damien are the only Blood Knight individuals whose face are shown. Not counting the time when Damien disguised himself, however.
• Fiery Redhead: Akira is redheaded and just like many of The Hero of Digimon franchise, he is Hot-Blooded.
• Fighting Your Friend: Bertran and Joy Joy are driven crazy by the Blood Knights' traps, and you have to defeat them to snap them out of it. It happens again when they, along with Mark Shultz, Debbie, and Chris Connor, become confused by the Gekomon in Data Domain.
• Forced Level-Grinding: Your Digimon have a Max Evolution Level attribute (Max EL). Every time a Digimon's level reaches the Max EL, it will hit a level cap. In order to get past it, a Digimon's Max EL can be raised by DNA-combining him with other Digimon. But there are 3 downsides to this: Your new Digimon will be at a much lower level than its parents, meaning you will lose 2 monsters in order to gain one monster with higher Max El. The second one is that the Max EL raises very little, it becomes [Strongest Monster Level + (Weakest Monster Level/5)]. The third one is that both monsters should be at the level cap, or else you'll lose Max El you've gained. In practice, this means you have to constantly grind Digimon from early levels in order to keep getting stronger and make progress.
• Foreshadowing: In the Intro FMV, there's a split second where you see Overlord Gaia's Face.◊
  • When Kim is repairing the miniature robot GAIA, it tends to say weird phrases that talk about destruction and GAIA becoming powerful. Later on, the robot is shown to be the main antagonist of the game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: When you meet MasterTyrannomon during the story, Akira has no idea what he is at first, being surprised he's even a Digimon. Ignoring the fact that he looks just like a bigger, dark version of the Tyrannomon that you've certainly fought by now, it's entirely possible to have raised your own MasterTyrannomon by this point.
• Genre Shift: From a combination between Virtual Pet and Action RPG to a standard JRPG.
• Grail in the Garbage: Akira finds the Ship Key this way: an Agumon found it and was using it as a toy.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can name Akira, all of your partner Digimon, and your Digi-Beetle.
• Inevitable Tournament: At several points, you can't continue the main storyline unless you earn a certain rank in the local tournaments. Near the end of the game, you have to achieve the highest rank, Chief, which entails winning three battles in a row against the Guard Team leaders.
• Improbable Age: You're a teenager or possibly preteen. You get to have monsters and drive a tank with barely any supervision. And apparently that's common place in this universe. See also Child Soldier.
• Justified Tutorial: Framed as a training mission, with your mentor Zudokorn teaching you the basics of dungeon driving.
• Kamehame Hadoken: When some humanoid Digimon (Meramon, Leomon, WereGarurumon) use ranged attacks, the animation looks like this.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Levelling up fully recovers the Digimon's HP and MP.
• Luck-Based Mission: The various traps in the Domains. If the random dungeon generator decides to generate them in areas where you cannot avoid hitting them, you could potentially be out of luck if you don't have the means to destroy them. Destroying a trap requires a specific part or type of ammo, and in many cases, the required parts/ammo may not even be available at that point in the game. For instance, you can't buy the strongest Arm (used to destroy Land Mines) until near the end of the game.
  • Most notable among these traps are Return Bugs, who kick Digimon out of your Digi-Beetle at random and send them back to the Server, forcing you to abort the mission, recover your Digimon, and restart the Domain from the beginning.
  • What makes this even worse is this doesn't happen until later in the game after 30+ hours of level grinding. Earlier in the game it's possible to buy upgrades and see all traps level B (purple) and lower but after a certain point A level (red) traps will start appear and while most are visible some aren't.
• Mystical Waif: Esteena.
• Mythology Gag: The entirety of File Island, which contains a bunch of references to Digimon World 1 (which took place there). It's not very clear if the two take place in the same world or not.
• Named by Democracy: Chaos Lord, the prince of evil, because everyone had a low opinion of him according to Angemon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Late in the storyline, your leader sends The Cavalry after you. Unfortunately, none of them have any way to counter the Blood Knights' confusion traps or the Gekomon living in the area...
  • Subverted when Kim encounters a robot named GAIA, who you help fix. It turns out the final boss of the game is Overlord GAIA... which the robot is a backup copy of in case Overlord GAIA went rogue, but the Overlord's creators underestimated how cunning it was, and that it would break its replacement in advance.
• No Item Use for You:
  • If one of your Digi-Beetle's cannons gets damaged, you cannot use the item associated with that cannon in battle. For instance, if your Shooter Gun is damaged, you can't use any healing items.
  • You can't use your items at all in the tournament fights. Granted, you're not in your Digi-Beetle for these fights, so it at least makes some sense.
• Not Completely Useless: Tsukaimon's "Friendly Fire" attack is only useful for two things: immediately triggers counter attack from an allied Digimon (unless they're already triggered by enemy Digimon) and cures Confusion if you had no other way to cure it.
• One-Winged Angel: NeoCrimson
• Palette Swap: Many of the palette swapped Digimon from World 1 return, although unlike the original, they can be obtained by the player in this game.
  • A few more (mostly Rookies) were Dummied Out.
  • The Chaos Generals are recolors of their respective Digimon, while the Chaos Lord is pretty much just a red Machinedramon.
  • NeoCrimson appears as a recolor of the already recolored ChaosBlackWarGreymon. This is justified by the fact that he took on the aspect of all the Chaos Generals and the Chaos Lord, with ChaosBlackWarGreymon being the basis for his body.
  • In the Japanese version, allowing the intro cinematic to replay shows a black version of WarGreymon where it initially showed the normal variety. It has a different color scheme from both ChaosGreymon, a boss from the game and BlackWarGreymon, who at that point had already appeared in the D-3 v-pet and a promo card. This alternate version of the scene doesn't appear in the English version.
• Percent Damage Attack:
  • Ninja Knife Throw and Beast King Fist are both counter attacks that deal 150% of any damage received to the attacker. For instance, if you take 30 damage, you'll deal 45 damage back.
  • If you side with the Blue Falcon team, the Data Guardian encountered near the end of the game knows a technique that halves one of your Digimon's HP.
• Poor Communication Kills: Long after your Guard Team leader assigns you to locate Ben Oldman, you learn where he is from your teammate Joy Joy.
• Pre Existing Encounters: Technically, they're of the avoidable kind. Many are avoidable in theory only, since they move in response to the player's movements, and many rooms aren't large enough for the player to be able to exit them without having to face the encounter.
  • Part of this also has to do with the fact that some groups of enemy Digimon react differently. Most of them will move one square towards you for each move you make, but a few may move twice, and others still may move only once for every other move you make. Some of them may even move away from you instead of towards you.
• Redheads Are Ravishing: Akira. At the end of the game, both Esteena and Kim show that they really like him, the latter even demanding that he take her out on a hot date outside of the Digital World. Even Techna-Donna is eager to give Akira a big kiss for his heroism.
• Running Gag: Leomon dying somehow is a common element in the series. In this game, Akira's first mission is to "Destroy the Leomon at Boot Domain".
• Shipper on Deck: Skull asks in the post-game whether you like Kim or Esteena more.
• Something Only They Would Say: Used to expose the disguised Damien.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Akira catches up to Kim to ask her about the Generator Parts, she insists she didn't steal them or anything.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Vaccine has an advantage over Virus, Data has an advantage over Vaccine, and Virus has an advantage over Data. This handicap translates in three fronts: battling, team equipment, and DNA predominance. The first one means that the Digimon with the advantage will hit for more and take hits for less damage; the second one means that, depending on which team the player chooses, they will be able to buy items that help dealing with the Digimon they already have an advantage over; the last one means that, when fusing two Digimon, the offspring will be the same attribute as the advantageous parent.
• Tank Goodness: The Digi-Beetles used to explore Domains. Akira's Digi-Beetle is weak at first, but gradually improves as you buy new parts for it.
• A Taste of Power: During the training mission, you use Zudokorn's Digimon, all of which are at Ultimate level.
• The Battle Didn't Count: Once you defeat Overlord GAIA for the first time, it extends its arms from its body and immediately fights you a second time at full strength.
• Theme Naming: The dungeons are all named after computer-related terms; for example, the first dungeon in the game is called the Boot Domain.
• Unknown Rival: Bertran to Akira. Akira does not know who he is at first, and takes a while to grasp the concept.
• Useless Useful Spell: MP-draining skills like Evil Touch are near-useless on AI-controlled Digimon because they have infinte MP. Similarly, demotivation does practically nothing to the AI.
• Vocal Dissonance: Played with. The voice used for each technique's specific call always remains the same no matter which Digimon uses it. Thus, it can lead to amusing situations such as Mega level Digimon using Rookie voices, or feminine Digimon (like Angewomon) using masculine voices.
• We Can Rule Together: Crimson offers Akira several chances to join the Blood Knights. Also right before fighting the Final Boss, GAIA, he/it offers(demands) a We Can Rule Together A God Am I pitch to fuse with you and become the "Ultimate Digital Lifeform" and rule over both the Digital World and Real World.
• What a Piece of Junk: Some time after building GAIA, Kim complains about the robot doing nothing but mumbling something weird, and she even calls it a hunk of junk. Later in the game, she turns out to be very wrong about it.

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