Digimon Rumble Arena 2

Digimon Rumble Arena 2 is more enjoyable than a non-Digimon fan might think. For fans of the series, it’s bound to be a goldmine of unlockable characters, secret stages, special events, and all around fun and engaging gameplay. To clarify what type of game this is, Bandai’s Digimon Rumble Arena 2 clearly gets its inspiration from Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Melee, but it also has enough differences from that smash-hit to not be sullenly referred to as a clone.

 

At the beginning of a single-player match, you are prompted to select your digimon from an assortment of eleven characters. Naturally, there will be even more to unlock, including the mysterious dark digimon. Each digimon has their own unique moves and fighting style, and many follow the paths of the “elements”. For example, Gomamon is a fish digimon that uses water-based attacks. Tenomon is a type of insect that prefers electricity, and Black Guilmon uses the power of shadow. Once you finally do decide which digimon to choose and which difficulty level to enter—easy, medium, or hard—you enter a tree-type grid where you choose your path for each level and fight the random digimon opponents along the way. The game will indicate to you which paths are easier (for beginner players) and which ones are especially challenging (for very advanced players). When you enter a battle stage, you’ll usually be pitted against one other digimon (for the easier stages), and you both will have three lives. There is no time-limit for the default rules, so your goal is to take your time and determine the best way to eliminate your opponent three times by using your unique powers. It’s easy to control your digimon and master his/her moves, and every time you attack your opponent or vice versa blue orbs will drop from the fighters. If you go out of the way to collect as much of these blue orbs as possible, your “digimeter” will charge up. This is when events begin to get interesting. Once your digimeter is full, you can press the R button to “digivolve” into a more powerful, and substantially different, form with new moves and abilities. You can repeat this process one more time to obtain your most advanced evolutionary form, and it is in this form where you can gain access to special bonus and ultra attacks. If you have a spare moment, you can also choose to sacrifice your digimeter to restore your health. As you can see, quick punches and kicks alone aren’t going to cut it; you have to think your strategy through. This is most apparent in the hard difficulty mode. By fighting-game standards, the hard mode isn’t even that difficult; it’s the equivalent of the medium level of difficulty available in other brawlers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; because the hard mode is challenging but not overly difficult, it’s accessible to the younger crowd, and they can always switch to medium or easy if they’re having too much trouble.

 

There are also random items that appear that have various effects when collected. You might unwittingly unleash a rain of bombs, or summon a death phantom that will try to kill your opponent in one hit, or automatically digivolve everyone to their highest forms. Yes, these items can turn the tide of battle, but this factor is not as blatant and overpowering as in Super Smash Brothers Melee, so it’s fairer in this regard (or less fun, depending on your outlook).

Like other games of the fighting genre, Digimon Rumble Arena 2 is big on the unlockables. Play through stages to randomly receive challenges from dark digimon, encounter bizarre new rules, and weird new stages. For example, one random rule you may encounter as you’re working your way through the grid is “stay on top of the tree for as long as possible”. Whoever stays on the tree the longest without getting knocked off it wins the round. Gamers who successfully complete this round then unlock this rule as an option for the multiplayer mode, a self-explanatory and essential staple to any fighting game that is executed just fine here. Random unlockables like that help ensure variety and a fairly high replay factor.

 

The graphics are also quite good, about what you would expect from a colourful brawler on a GCN. They are sort of on par with Super Smash Bros. Melee. Unfortunately, the music and sound effects are just plain irritating and obnoxious, with tunes that might appeal to 7-year olds.

 

This is the true problem of Digimon Rumble Arena 2; in the end, it’s really for the fans. Yes, it is fun for people who do not like digimon…for a while. The reasons explained throughout this review are what make Digimon a decent game, but it proves to be too cheesy after a while for people who don’t like kid-anime shows like that. Thus, the score reflected in this review is in large part directed toward the digimon fan-base. Despite this, non-fans should consider giving the game a rental and, if they really do enjoy it, consider a purchase afterward, as Digimon Rumble Arena 2 is still a decent fighting game with enough twists in the gameplay to set it apart from the pack.  

   

 

 

 

Graphics……8/10

Sound………6/10

Gameplay…..8/10

Story……….9/10

Overall……..8/10Tilt……7 to 9/10