Digimon World: Next Order feels like a dream, more specifically, the dream of the creators of the original Digimon World and those that enjoyed it. Digimon is already arguably a mess of a series, mashing a whole bunch of ideas together, and Next Order tries to contain all of them that it can. Raising Digimon, making new Digifriends, battling Digirivals, exploring the Digital World and trying to save it, and bringing Digimon together to a village where they can make use of their unique talents.

That said, I don't actually recommend Next Order for most people - though I could be wrong. Perhaps new souls could start their journey here. It may be a bit of a strange one, Next Order and the original Digimon World follow their own rhythm of gameplay and don't properly explain a lot of it. Next Order is a lot easier in that regard. More things explained, more supplies available. Not suddenly having a Greymon camping outside your front door.

A lot of time is spent looking after your Digimon companions like tamagotchi. Feeding them, training them, taking them to the bathroom. This gets easier over time, and you get a better grasp of how far and where you can explore with your Digifrens before age gets them and you start raising them again from egg form. There are a bunch of Digimon cameos from the various series and games, some just want to fight strong opponents, some are there to make friends.

I don't even know if Digimon World and Next Order are particularly good games or what optimal Digimon games would look like. A bunch of inconvenient menus making you trade for certain items one at a time, training and losing your friends can be a strange and tiresome loop. It can be difficult to get Digimon you might want, and then you might not get them for long. Face-checking Digimon strength to find out you couldn't possibly fight that right now. I do however know that it feels like a proper Digimon Adventure.

While the other Digimon World games likely have their own merits, when I had the opportunity to eventually try one years later I was immediately put off by how dissimilar it was to the original - this is the sequel I was looking for. Years late, later still to PC, with many flaws, charging far more than it should relative to the rest of the game market, and looking like it was developed for the PS2; but a very specific beauty to some.

Digimon World: Next Order feels like a dream, more specifically, the dream of the creators of the original Digimon World and those that enjoyed it. Digimon is already arguably a mess of a series, mashing a whole bunch of ideas together, and Next Order tries to contain all of them that it can. Raising Digimon, making new Digifriends, battling Digirivals, exploring the Digital World and trying to save it, and bringing Digimon together to a village where they can make use of their unique talents. That said, I don't actually recommend Next Order for most people - though I could be wrong. Perhaps new souls could start their journey here. It may be a bit of a strange one, Next Order and the original Digimon World follow their own rhythm of gameplay and don't properly explain a lot of it. Next Order is a lot easier in that regard. More things explained, more supplies available. Not suddenly having a Greymon camping outside your front door. A lot of time is spent looking after your Digimon companions like tamagotchi. Feeding them, training them, taking them to the bathroom. This gets easier over time, and you get a better grasp of how far and where you can explore with your Digifrens before age gets them and you start raising them again from egg form. There are a bunch of Digimon cameos from the various series and games, some just want to fight strong opponents, some are there to make friends. I don't even know if Digimon World and Next Order are particularly good games or what optimal Digimon games would look like. A bunch of inconvenient menus making you trade for certain items one at a time, training and losing your friends can be a strange and tiresome loop. It can be difficult to get Digimon you might want, and then you might not get them for long. Face-checking Digimon strength to find out you couldn't possibly fight that right now. I do however know that it feels like a proper Digimon Adventure. While the other Digimon World games likely have their own merits, when I had the opportunity to eventually try one years later I was immediately put off by how dissimilar it was to the original - this is the sequel I was looking for. Years late, later still to PC, with many flaws, charging far more than it should relative to the rest of the game market, and looking like it was developed for the PS2; but a very specific beauty to some.