Digimon World Next Order arrives on nintendo Switch and we have dived headlong into this adventure dedicated to Bandai Namco’s monsters.
DigiDestined on Nintendo Switch">
Except for Digimon Survive, whose development took much longer than expected, the franchise has not been particularly active in recent years (by the way, you are one click away from our Digimon Survive review). Waiting to be able to officially announce the next episode of the “Digimon Story” series, whose development should have begun between 2017 and 2018, Bandai Namco Entertainment has decided to dust off its sparkling intellectual property by creating a port for Nintendo Switch of Digimon World: Next Order, which only a few years ago had already landed on PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. Having tried this new edition for a long time, it’s time to deliver our final verdict on the adventure of the DigiDestined.
A new digital threat
As anyone familiar with the brand will certainly know, there is a substantial difference between the aforementioned Digimon Story series and its twin Digimon World: where the chapters of the first are mainly set in the human world and boast more complex plots, the exponents of the second – as the title suggests – are set in the digital dimension, where the player can literally breed Virtual Pets. After choosing the gender of the main protagonist, which can be male or female, he finds himself inexplicably stuck in the Digital World, which is apparently in grave danger. Once they have embraced their partners kept in the Digivice, the avatar discovers that a mysterious failure reported by the automatic cleaning system, i.e. the tool that generally makes sure to eliminate the damaged data present in the digital world, allowed the dangerous “Brain Virus Program” to illegally tamper with a series of Digimon and take control of them. Several Machinedramon infected by the VC Program then attacked the peaceful city of Floatia, forcing its protector Jijimon to engage in battle with the unstoppable Mega-level Digimon and block as many of them as possible by means of an interdimensional trap.
It is precisely at that moment that Takuto and Shiki (the two protagonists) descend on the Digital World, where they decide to investigate the bizarre evil force that threatens the existence of their Virtual Pets and stop the various Machinedramon out of control. Although the character selected by the player manages to defeat a Mega-level opponent already in the first boss fight of the campaign – which basically corresponds to the tutorial – the effort made by his valiant Digimon is so great that they regress to the state of eggs, which is why the Tamer will have to train his digital creatures from scratch that will come out of it.
If the Digimon Stories work much like the main chapters of the Pokémon series, where the little monsters are almost immortal and the team can be changed at any time, Digimon World partners have a rather limited life, which usually ends within a few weeks.
Takuto
Shiki
However, since a Digimon that has reached the end of its life cycle returns to the state of an egg, to then be reborn, the player finds himself from time to time a companion with increasingly higher parameters: although restarting punctually from level 1 can be quite annoying , raising Digimon and choosing the statistics on which to invest time and energy is a very fun activity, which opens the door to ever-changing Digivolutions (it should be noted that the title includes more than 200 Digimon specimens).
Not surprisingly, the duration of the Digimon World: Next Order campaign, which is around Approximately 40-50 hours depending on the selected difficultyis closely linked to training, which requires a lot of planning: as the creatures have a short life, the user will inevitably be called to alternate the progress of the story with long and indispensable training sessions.
Welcome back portability
Except for the inclusion of Beginner mode and for the very welcome possibility to run, which on balance speed up the overall experience considerably, the playful and role-playing component of the title has not undergone changes of any kind. To know all the details, we invite you to consult directly our review of Digimon World: Next Order for PS4.
Moving on instead to the analysis of the porting, we bluntly anticipate that this re-edition of the product could easily be considered its definitive form, as Nintendo’s hybrid machine has finally returned one of its original characteristics to Next Order, represented precisely by portability.
Where in Europe and North America the RPG arrived only on PS4, it was originally designed to run on PlayStation Vita, a version that as usual remained the exclusive preserve of the Japanese public.
Compared to the version previously published in the West, which we remember traveled steadily around 60 FPS, with a resolution of 1080p, the 60 frames per second achieved by the Nintendo Switch edition drop to 30 from time to time, especially in certain situations, while the resolution settles on 720p in portability and on 1080p when the console is in dock mode. Despite the drops, which are slightly more frequent in handheld, we are convinced that Digimon World: Next Order expresses its true potential only if enjoyed around, on the Switch screen, as the Pet Simulator play structure much desired by the developer BB Studio it lends itself very well to hit and run matches. If in the long run the mechanics related to Digimon training can be redundant, the possibility of continuing with the adventure in spare time it actually keeps at bay a basic repetitiveness that knocked on the door on the home console already after a few hours.
Digimon World Next OrderNintendo Switch Analyzed VersionBeing extremely close to the original concept, which at least in Japan was designed for the unfortunate PlayStation Vita, the hybrid nature of Nintendo Switch has returned to the product a portability that keeps boredom away and is well suited to its Pet Simulator mechanics. Among other things, since the “normal” difficulty proposed by the original version was unbalanced, in this round the developer BB Studio has introduced a new level of challenge that winks at anyone who is not particularly accustomed to the repetitive mechanics of the World series. If we add to this the possibility of running, overall Digimon World: Next Order appears more enjoyable than ever. Too bad only for Bandai Namco’s decision, in our opinion unjustifiable, to offer the title for 60 euros: a truly exaggerated admission ticket for a product that has already been circulating since 2016 and which from a graphic point of view has not received the slightest tweak .