Digimon Survive is.. plainly put a bad game. A poor melding of concepts. Nowhere near enough of a game to warrant a high tier price tag. It is carried by the fact that it is Digimon and, despite Digimon being a strange illogical hodgepodge powered by friendship and adding metal to make things cooler, it is at its core lovable and filled with goofballs like Agumon. It survives by having pleasant art, bonds of companions new and old, and at the very least being generally free of bugs.

Exploration is slow and inconvenient. Scanning an area for interactables, scanning again with your phone, talking to the character you are in that location for, then immediately returning to that area to scan again in case anything new has been added. Bonus treat, return and scan again again after moving to another area and talking to a character there. Repeat after every interaction to make sure you don't miss anything. This alone pads the gameplay to double its size if you manage to put up with it. Not every item is valuable, many are small consumables. Some of course are not, and a few are special diary entries or rarer Digimon encounters. The phone scanning is extra weird given most of your time is spent in the Digital World where things should.. already be visible? It might be more interesting if one were noticing oddities in the Human World, but in general extra vision modes like this, even when stylised and well attached to a story, just obstacles.

The combat side of the game is.. fine? It's functional. It's difficult to claim that it adds much of value, and even has auto-battle system to help skip it entirely. Which perhaps enforces the idea that is not particularly good. Another inconvenience, this too is where the game likes to litter its items. While it is understandable to try give some exploration item gathering to the game, both of the ways mentioned are terribly inconvenient and it is a little more natural when given by characters or as plain combat rewards.

Which would finally leave the story and visual novel aspects. The story and characters are exactly enough for a Digimon story. There are familiar aspects in a number of them, reminiscent of the originals like Tai, Joe, Mimi, but they all have their own thing going too. Friendship is the heart of the cards and all that. Some, you want to throw into the river as soon as you meet them for how stubborn or extreme they act. By the end, of course, they grow on you. That being said, the end you can reach is limited by not actually being allowed to reach certain good outcomes on your first playthrough.
Some interactions are voiced, some are not. While this can be understandable when picking up random items, it is often jarring when games pick and choose how much to bother voicing. Which cutscenes are important enough. Some super weird noises chosen for some of the Digimon. Dialogue is often fairly slow paced, and leaving the dialogue to play automatically would take half your lifespan. To add to this, a lot of the events in the game are cut up into moving to a different location, returning to locations, selecting through characters, and a lot of ideas get repeated multiple times. Many of your dialogue choices feel arbitrary and just for the karma system that determines what kind of character you are rather than having any meaning in the actual words.

All this brought to you while auto-battling through the final battles and cutscenes.

Digimon Survive is.. plainly put a bad game. A poor melding of concepts. Nowhere near enough of a game to warrant a high tier price tag. It is carried by the fact that it is Digimon and, despite Digimon being a strange illogical hodgepodge powered by friendship and adding metal to make things cooler, it is at its core lovable and filled with goofballs like Agumon. It survives by having pleasant art, bonds of companions new and old, and at the very least being generally free of bugs. Exploration is slow and inconvenient. Scanning an area for interactables, scanning again with your phone, talking to the character you are in that location for, then immediately returning to that area to scan again in case anything new has been added. Bonus treat, return and scan again again after moving to another area and talking to a character there. Repeat after every interaction to make sure you don't miss anything. This alone pads the gameplay to double its size if you manage to put up with it. Not every item is valuable, many are small consumables. Some of course are not, and a few are special diary entries or rarer Digimon encounters. The phone scanning is extra weird given most of your time is spent in the Digital World where things should.. already be visible? It might be more interesting if one were noticing oddities in the Human World, but in general extra vision modes like this, even when stylised and well attached to a story, just obstacles. The combat side of the game is.. fine? It's functional. It's difficult to claim that it adds much of value, and even has auto-battle system to help skip it entirely. Which perhaps enforces the idea that is not particularly good. Another inconvenience, this too is where the game likes to litter its items. While it is understandable to try give some exploration item gathering to the game, both of the ways mentioned are terribly inconvenient and it is a little more natural when given by characters or as plain combat rewards. Which would finally leave the story and visual novel aspects. The story and characters are exactly enough for a Digimon story. There are familiar aspects in a number of them, reminiscent of the originals like Tai, Joe, Mimi, but they all have their own thing going too. Friendship is the heart of the cards and all that. Some, you want to throw into the river as soon as you meet them for how stubborn or extreme they act. By the end, of course, they grow on you. That being said, the end you can reach is limited by not actually being allowed to reach certain good outcomes on your first playthrough. Some interactions are voiced, some are not. While this can be understandable when picking up random items, it is often jarring when games pick and choose how much to bother voicing. Which cutscenes are important enough. Some super weird noises chosen for some of the Digimon. Dialogue is often fairly slow paced, and leaving the dialogue to play automatically would take half your lifespan. To add to this, a lot of the events in the game are cut up into moving to a different location, returning to locations, selecting through characters, and a lot of ideas get repeated multiple times. Many of your dialogue choices feel arbitrary and just for the karma system that determines what kind of character you are rather than having any meaning in the actual words. All this brought to you while auto-battling through the final battles and cutscenes.