That one time Digimon tried to be Phantasy Star Online - Digimon World 4

[@Syngrafer]

Wonderful deep dive! It's surprising so few know how similar this is to PSO. Hopefully this will make more people shamelessly steal this knowledge!

[@MatthewCenance]

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense just looking at the title. Randomly the Digimon wield swords and other weapons like in Phantasy Star Online!

[@JuicemanGravy]

I played both but never made thus connection

[@MilenAnessar]

I never played PSO games so I didn't know they are this similar Being honest, I don't hate DW4/X, it's fine game. I at least played it through to the end without dropping or using cheat codes (Looking at you DW2) it just didn't really catch me like DW1 or 3

[@Rylon321]

Man, this brought back memories of this old game. I remember how confused I was at seeing the digimons using weapons. I enjoyed the gameplay but I forgot the story in the midst of the grind.

[@TrappedInAWard]

Many years ago when I was playing through this game as a teenager I had to leave my PS2 on for DAYS playing in increments to unlock all the signature weapons. I really enjoyed your breakdown of this game. It mostly gets dunked on by reviews but I really loved it and still do

[@omegaXjammur]

Well, this kind of convinced me to try out Digimon World 4. I do appreciate you clarifying that this technically isn't World 4 (in Japan)

[@TheDarkZapdoss]

really cool video!! i played that game alot when i was 12 with my friend and we never knew you could dash,i would really like to see a pc port or a remake to digimon world 1-4 i also saw your tweet and really liked the idea of a souls-like digimon game

[@0_Gust]

I actually discovered PSO because i was looking for games that looked like DW4! I understand it can be considered by many as the black sheep of the franchise, but man, but it does have some depth and playing with my cousins was so fun! I still got the shop/save theme on my phone to this day. Nice video!

[@JuicemanGravy]

Digimon World 4 title music makes me want to be a hero irl

[@jakdan6598]

Yooo I remember playing this as a kid. I use to cry so much when I died in the game. But honestly I loved playing this game. I never knew there was a hard mode when I younger. I used to grind so hard in this game for levels. Never knew you could level up the magic in the game. I remember getting the angel digimon for beating time quest where you had to kill all the mummymon in the desert. Those were simpler and fun times. I might get the physical copy on gamecube for nostalgia.

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah! I unlocked Clavis Angemon for this review too! I didn't know you could level up magic until this review either, I did as much research as I could to make sure I know what I'm talking about hence why most of my Normal Mode footage doesn't involve me using magic. I did catch up my magic levels on hard mode. The game is so much fun!

[@viruschris3160]

I got this game and enjoyed it for what it is. Even though I prefer the original three more (though I replay DW1 mostly). I beat the game with the guide I had. Confusion, but it wasn’t bad. Seeing what people could do with mods and such would be cool.

[@ywjsiabvue]

5:20 this actually made me laugh pretty good 😂

[@DAMIENNATHANIEL]

This was the only Digimon Game I wasn't able to beat, but was able to enjoy alot. There was alot to do, alot to find, and quite alot to explore. I almost won with Wargreymon X.

[@Cathy5614]

Wargreymon X is so cool tho! By far my most favorite X-Antibody Digimon~

[@DAMIENNATHANIEL]

@@Cathy5614 Mine too~I had to go to that one arena area to unlock him with Agumon. Killing everything from Mummymon, Minotaurmon and finding that hidden area to unlock it.

[@Cathy5614]

Ah yes, I did it for this playthrough too but on Veemon i got Clavis Angemon instead. Still cool tho~

[@AtelierGod]

I got stuck somewhere because my English literary skill wasn’t good enough at the time so I couldn’t tell what I was supposed to be doing, but once I get the game again I plan on beating it.

[@EatMoreVitamins]

i miss these games like you wouldn’t believe!

[@TheHotAndColdDog]

Digimon & Phantasy Star Online - your two favourite things together at last. XD

[@KichiMiangra]

Me, a big digimon fan who never actually got to play World 4: "Oh? You wanna talk about Bandai being bad at selling digimon products?!?! IN THIS ESSAY I SHALL--" (I'm angry about the vital bracelet still...)

[@Cathy5614]

There is no one better to rant about Bandai's incompetence than a exhausted Digimon fan~ I recently found out about their Digital Monster X2 debacle. It's so stupid lmao. Goes to show how dedicated the fans are if the franchise can still flourish despite Bandai.

[@KichiMiangra]

@@Cathy5614 being a digimon fan feels like the Ye Olde Star Trek "Beginning of fandom as we know it" where we basically all huddle together in a corner and share news with eachother of what Bandai is doing with the property...

[@kairevant]

I like that people forgot that pso on dream cast also had that where if you die you drop your cash. So that just adds more to dw4 taking inspiration from pso.

[@travismueller8282]

Glad I was served this. The blast evolve definitely could have been PSU's Beast transformation/PSO2's Falz Form transformation. I haven't played this one, and definitely have a problem with the Digimon using weapons, but this is an interesting take. Also the dropping your weapon/money on death was a PSO v1/v2 thing, heck even GC just lost you all your carried money.

[@Cathy5614]

Forgot to check when i was recording the EP1 + 2 footage but yeah, we used to have Banks for a reason in these games~

[@travismueller8282]

@@Cathy5614 yeah, in Ep I&II you couldn't recover it but in V1/V2 you had to go recover the meseta and weapon, which always sucked when you knew you couldn't survive a boss fight. You'd have to run in and quit during the boss fight.

[@TobiGame1]

I have seen many digimon world 4 reviews and if always bothered me how fast they talk shit about the game.. I loved the game, I had so many fond memories with my brothers playing it, and I never knew it had a movie tie in. I still play the game from time to time, or listen to the ost. I don’t think there is anything I can say to show how thankful I was to find your review.

[@Cathy5614]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Yeah the movie is honestly pretty cool! It's a CGI movie that aired on Japanese Television back in 2005 and features the struggle between Digimon and the Royal Knights once Yggdrasil decided to delete 99% of the population. I recommend watching it if you've got some spare time on your hands~ it's called Digital Monster X-Evolution

[@CensoredByYoutubeAI]

5:20 Technically, you could say both DW4 and PSU were inspired by FF11 with regard to the class-swapping feature. FF11 released 2 years after PSO on PC and Console in JP and, afiak, was the first MMO to introduce this as a concept. FF11, however, took inspiration from PSO's combat. Akihiko Matsui's "Real Time Battle" (RTB) combat system did away with random encounters in place of combat with monsters that roamed. This system was later improved upon for FF12, and would become the "downfall" of FF14 1.0, due to WoW's tab-targeting GCD system. Very cool dive into console MMO history!

[@Cathy5614]

I'll be the first to admit I never played FF11 so that's very cool to know!

[@CensoredByYoutubeAI]

@@Cathy5614 I recommend giving it a try. There is retail FF11, which is subscription based. And then there are community-ran projects like HorizonXI, Eden, & CatsEye that try to capture what it felt like in 2002-2003 "era."

[@coolKevinator2]

Put hundreds hours into this game as a kid and this is how I find out the melee specializations are for the shops and not for faster leveling. This is the most comprehensive video on a game I considered a guilty pleasure childhood favorite, because the entire portion of the anglosphere that played it said it was bad. Never played PSO, but the comparisons are patently undeniable. I feel kinda gaslit by other accounts of this game, but wow this video was eye opening. Just so much information I was completely oblivious to. Legitimately, thank you, this was the payoff to randomly watching digimon videos I was fed by the algorithm. Maybe I should actually try PSO one of these days I don't know.

[@Cathy5614]

And this was honestly the main motivator for me making this video. I see so many people rip into the game and sometimes I get the impression people just do it because it's the cool thing to do. I guess it goes to show that despite being a pioneer in gaming, Phantasy Star Online is still very niche, if it took so long for someone to show up who plays both franchises to say "This is kinda cool actually". I can definitely recommend checking out the older PSO games or even the newer ones like PSO2 and NGS. The newer games make a big deal about fashion so expressing yourself through character creation is a big part of the game. My character is fully unique from NGS for example. There is no race that is redskinned tiefling race by default. And the combat is really good too! It's a online game but the netcode is so good you rarely ever notice you're playing on a server. The game only has 10 classes but you can equip subclasses to kinda create your own class. Obviously if you're min-maxing there will be 1 or 2 correct class combinations but when played for fun there is a lot of stuff to experiment with. I could yap on an on about how much I like these games but I'll leave it at a solid recommendation if you have free time to spare~

[@Shawn_Faris]

I’d love to see this game get brought to Steam/current consoles. I got this game at a thrift store when I was a kid (PS2) and it came with a trading card (I don’t think I still have it). The farthest I remember getting was this flying boss that held a boulder you had to break and I don’t think I ever beat it. Guilmon FTW

[@KhalidMoja]

A positive review of Digimon world 4 😮😮 I'm I dreaming 😄😄

[@Oishimaru]

OP Onion: When I was a bunch of years younger (probably under 14 yo), I actually tried Digimon World 4. I didn't really like it personally, but guess I was biased since I had played 1 to 3, first. However, I find this video interesting; makes me open my mind about it more 0: Back in the day I didn't really know anything about Phantasy Star Series, so it was my first time interacting with something of the like o: Not like I really progressed far enough into the game though u.u P.S: I used to like Digimon World 2 :v As an adult I like the concept, but it is grindy as hell, which is awful XD So currently from the old PSX / PS2 world series my favorites are the first one, and DW3 (to an extent >o> it was actually quite grindy too if you wanted to achieve specific things :v)

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah! Honestly they're all a bit grindy. In DW1 it can be quite jarring to be forced to spend an hour in the Gym every time your Digimon dies but that gets better over time as your Tamer rank increases~ DW2 i havent even beaten to this day. I just cant do it lol. It has a lot of elements that scream "proto-Digimon Story" but honestly it just makes me glad Digimon Story turned out the way it did on the DS and recent consoles. Digimon World 3 i like a lot. Its still grindy and the NPC dont interact with you if you become too strong (very intuitive design) but when played correctly you have a pretty solid JRPG with a fun Cardgame attached to it. Also the JP and PAL release added extra content to the game so it's a rare case of the american release being the worst. I can definitely see why people would be most nostalgic about DW1 and 3 though. With DW3, i like it a lot but I aint gonna pretend like it doesnt have issues. DW1, as long as you know what youre doing you'll have a great time. Problem is the game is really bad at teaching the player so they end up running around like headless chicken. The first fight in the game has 0 input from the player (spamming the yellow icon does nothing) which is a terrible first impression! I think Koromon does explain that leveling Intelligence is important but so many people just dont talk to the Digimon explaining stuff! Something i came to realize about DW4 as well. The command room has tons of Digi-elves just explaining every single game mechanic to you. I got Homika into Digimon by recommending Re:Digitize Decode for their 3DS and they figured out stuff really quickly there and really enjoyed the gameplay loop proving that the gameplay loop in DW1 is perfectly fine, its just how the game presents itself to people that can be an issue. Also playing one armed bandit for faster stat gaining was dumb. I much prefer Re:Digitize minigames or Next 0rder in that regard. Unfortunately Kazumass Habu isnt the director of the Digimon gaming division anymore so i fear that the upcoming games, if they ever come out, will be mid asf again. Though i hope that wont be the case...

[@Oishimaru]

@@Cathy5614 DW2 requires a lot of patience and free time to clear :v but if you know what the best "skills" are overall, it can be achieved. It is mostly about acquiring good skills through digimon DNA fusion, but it can be quite overwhelming (or underwhelming depending on the perspective xD but it requires to spend a lot of time and fights can get very boring). As for upcoming digimon games, I am aware. Habu did still have hand in the the upcoming Digimon Story game though, so we will still be able to see his stamp there somewhere; all I can say is, let's have some faith ;-; Hopefully they will be able to produce better versions of DW1 and DW3, so to speak o:

[@AkasunSasori666]

This is still one of my top fav games i played for the Digimon World. I will never stop praying for a rerelease or port to pc someday.

[@Cathy5614]

A re-release would be THE opportunity to improve a few things that are a bit rough with the game~ Though, since we arent even getting re-releases of the World 1 or 3 my hopes are small.

[@Vintasticvin]

Eyyy two things I love! Digimon and online Phantasy Star action hack n slashers

[@KabutoYakushi-bt9cr]

I was so so so addicted to this game , playing with my friends.

[@AtelierGod]

Finally remembered the OST I loved from this game.

[@EscoNitz]

I loved both this game and Digimon world 2, I will never understand why people crap on it. Also what is the romhack for Digimon world 2 that you were referencing I need to look into this.

[@Cathy5614]

Its called Digimon World 2 Alternative It re-interprets the story dialogue, changes the battle UI to show more info, rebalances Digimon, adds new recruitable Digimon and new Domains to explore among other improvements~

[@EscoNitz]

@@Cathy5614 thank you ill look into it more then.

[@KazShiro]

Me and my friends used to play this game for years and grind endlessly. I surprised me that the game was heavily disliked despite other games around that time being almost as grindy or repetitive which says a lot. Though the game really can be cryptic with its secrets and the measures it adapts the difficulty depending on how many players are on. Still kinda wished this game had online functionality.

[@Cathy5614]

That's the thing that bothers me about people complaining that the game is too difficult when playing solo. The difficulty scales with the ammount of players so playing solo is already as easy as it'll get.

[@KazShiro]

@@Cathy5614 Tbh, the only hard part of the game solo is basically the earlygame while playing blind when everyone is a damage sponge and you are figuring out the mechanics(I was veemon and settled with Crush Arms as my main weapon). Same for the fact that the first mini boss will melt your hp like butter and hits faster than you can approach it. So to say earlygame hell is in play here is an understatement but it turns into a cakewalk by the time you deal with Mammothmon and make your way to the Digilab. IMO the only part I hate about the game is the tech up system especially if you're trying to level up your magic when your resources are low. But seriously this game could've benefited with a lan mode/online mode for the ps2 version.

[@Lemonz-418]

I miss this game

[@cellgraph]

same I remember enjoying playing this game with my sister and firends we had different digimon each and then years later I got internet access and read alot of ppl hate this game

[@AvoCamilo]

So many good memories of the 4 player co-op mode with my friends, just like Resident evil 5, it's way more fun in co-op

[@NecroBanana]

I wish they'd re-release PSO. It was such an incredible title and while still playable today, it'd be cool to be able to play in my Switch :p

[@Cathy5614]

I do have the Gamecube version EP1+2 (although I never beaten it or Blue Burst, I got into the franchise with PSO2 back in 2012) but it would be really cool if they could maybe port Blue Burst to more systems. The offline mode in the console versions is still pretty good imho. Being able to play that on Switch locally with split screen or online would be great!

[@Taiknight99]

As not exciting the combat is my cousins & I grinded the heck out of this game!(specifically the desert areas with the control spire with the scorpion X virus things) On GC we discovered it was easy duplicate money infinitely by just copying the save data to a another memory card. Its a game that I love & hate all at once but my friends also think of this game fondly bc it was a rare game for use to team up on as opposed to competing with each other. So squading up for some brain dead grinding was kind of fun in itself. I never played PSO b4 so the closet comparison I have to this is like Gauntlet or Everquest, but I was WAY more into Digimon than those games. The idea of Dark Souls taking ideas from DW4 is a very neat comparison!

[@youngecujoh855]

God i wish it kept it up!

[@rockheartqueen]

Been playing old phantasy star games recently and have been having a lot more fun

[@Cathy5614]

Even the 30 minutes footage of PSO EP1-2 i recorded for this video were a lot of fun. Even if one doesnt play PSOBB on private servers the game isn't lost to time and its fun to go back~

[@rator1st]

To be fair, i personally would never have considered this was a PSO Clone, mainly because I have never played PSO. This might be one of the reasons PSO never gets brought up, most PSO players possibly didn't play this game. If any did, they didn't think much of it. I may have to agree that the flack this game gets is more out of ignorance of what a looter game was at the time than its own faults. I feel it may have benefited from a few more drafts to iron out the kinks.

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah definitely! Weapon switching specifically shouldn't be as slow as it is right now. And It really shouldn't require you go to the Digi lab to equip new weapons. Really no clue what the idea was behind that @_@

[@Weda_Bretajune]

One of the best games ever

[@ZefoniusLinestraf]

This game was my addiction on ps2 i played with all my cusins i never knew how to digivolve or could beat it i stayed untill the deseart area it was hard

[@jasperhunnicutt3542]

man, watching this make me want to replay it again

[@barbatosistheone4581]

I actually really loved this game and always hoped they revisited this gameplay with just more everything

[@ducontra666999]

damn.. digimon can really be anything, digimon pokemon, digimon smash bros, digimon chrono trigger, digimon final fantasy, digimon novel..... digimon honey select when?

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah the franchise likes to tackle a lot of genres~ Digimon honey select wouldn't even be that unthinkable with how many Digimon are just "masked well endowed women"

[@ducontra666999]

@@Cathy5614 yeah, beelstarmon never leaves my koikatsu lol

[@gregorythestallion2984]

English is not my first language. And since my parents bought me this game in english, i pretty much dropped it during the first area and got stuck in the main hub. I wanna give it a try now that I can actually read xd

[@Cathy5614]

I attribute a lot of my knowledge of English to the videogames I was playing as a kid. A lot of them would have German text but English VA so I slowly pieced things together myself~

[@Frappe2142]

Digimon souls like mechanic: if your digimon dies while its evolved it reverts to training level like in the first Digimon world.

[@Cathy5614]

Sounds like a Digimon Battle Royale lmao

[@CronoOfMana]

wow this is an nice thro back i play the ps2 version and i really like i did not know how same some stuff are too pso good times ^^

[@thealoofhermit]

this game was awesome but i was too young to understand what to do

[@MuffinHunterX]

I think this game's biggest problem was a lack of a lock on. Again as not all of the buttons were mapped this is baffling.

[@Cathy5614]

Honestly outside of ranged weapons needing it, I dont really think a Lock on would've really done much. All the melee weapons play fine without a Lock on and the ranged spells are homing~

[@Zonedragon]

I played this an unreasonable amount lmao.

[@wandererchannel9953]

YESSSS DIGIMON!!! Yes cathy. HAI 5!!

[@unlimitedslash]

See, I'm not on copium, Digimon World 4/X was a decent game, with it's flaws like many, but far from the "pile of shit" everyone makes it out to be!!! I had fun with it!!!

[@koil475]

I was never able to pass like the first enemy when I was younger, I gave up on the game. Also there is a new Digimon Story game in the works featuring the Olympus 12 as the main characters.

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah i know~ Waiting for a while for it. The PS4 was relevant when it was announced...

[@rxronaldo24]

they gotta give another chance for this game and remake it or remaster

[@knightofantimony5305]

Ah yes, the weirdest digimon game with the greatest weapon designs. If you even got far enough for a characters signature weapon they were beyond impressive.

[@Dorumon21]

I view this half expecting another one that say it going to be super bad and don't seem to understand but I glad that wasn't the case. Sure I played it, I'll admit it has its problems, much of what you already covered, but I still played it back then for like, hours. Also I can understand not going over it too much but I pretty sure most that called it bad, if they did least try it, didn't even get past the first 10 minutes cause soon as they started fighting, your starting skill level is so bad that you have enemies blocking non-stop, though once your skill finally levels, you can hit enemies more easier. As far as MP skills go, it does cause a problem of tiers when choosing a mon, if they have a certain skill set to cast, they are pretty much instantly better (buffs/debuffs especially). One of the starters for that matter is pretty much easy mode.

[@Cathy5614]

Yeah I've read that apparently Pwr Down is super OP? It scales way better than Pwr Up which is interesting. I did notice that Impact scales very generously with my stats. It matched the damage I did with melee attacks despite the stats being like 800 points apart of each other~

[@CupCakeArmy1]

Never heard of deegeemon. Gonna have to check it out!

[@lloyd011721]

what is the song at 5:00?

[@Cathy5614]

Thats the DW4 Final boss theme part 1

[@chinyang1200]

Damn it sucks that Digimon world 4 is being poorly reviewed like that . Me and my brother loved the game though we only completed the normal difficulty also we don't know how to get more spells and digivolve . So it was a corpse treadmill feast and we just bought as much revives as we can and beat Apocalypsemon in rookie forms

[@anjingbabi4468]

Iirc the easiest way to digivolve is to finish the game once. And then your digimon is reset to level 1 if you digivolve which is a chore.

[@robertjames4381]

cathy i wouldn't call digimon world 4 a copy cat it was more trying to bring it anime to life i know they should of picked any mechanic for it but at least it unique in it own way, yes i have played the game at least 20 times on gamecube and playstation 2. i still have them both to.

[@mrsora16]

Probably my favorite digimon game

[@zuziiice8907]

ngl i was a fan of this game

[@anjingbabi4468]

This game is pretty fun. But getting the evolutions are tiring.

[@Cathy5614]

Honestly I'm not sure how I'd prefer it. There are some evolutions that require you to beat side-quests with 1HP on very hard difficulty which I assume means falling off a platform at the start of the quest then finishing it without ever taking damage. And that's quite absurd tbh. The alternative would've been to just level up all the available Evolutions to a certain level and while that'd be easier it would border on tedium.