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Digimon Grind, Digital Dread, and the Steam-pocalypse
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In this episode, Spencer and I dive deep into the existential dread of digital-only game ownership, the impending Switch 2 cartridge dilemma, and our full-on descent into the pixelated trenches of Digimon Story: Time Stranger. We reflect on the good, the grind, and the goofy, plus a little love for physical media, 7 years of Noisy Pixel, and why Angela Anaconda might’ve scarred us more than SkullGreymon.
0:00 – Intro & Disgaea 7 Unboxing Tease
1:15 – Concerns About Switch 2 Game Keys & Digital Ownership
10:00 – The Mental Burnout of Reviewing Long Games (Digimon + Atelier)
12:40 – Digimon Fugue State: Playing Until Your Brain Melts
17:00 – Noisy Pixel Turns 7 & Relaunching Noisy Newsweek
24:00 – Digimon Movie Nostalgia, Soundtrack Talk, and Being DigiDestined
27:00 – Digimon Story Time Stranger: Plot, Operators, and Voice Acting
33:00 – Game Design Streamlining and Digivolution Mechanics
36:00 – Hitting Rank 5 and the Deep Digivolution Grid=
40:00 – Adult Life vs. Weekend-Long Game Binges
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Transcript
Introduction & Episode Kickoff
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 122 of Unqualified Game Chat. I'm your host, Azara Lopez, and with me today is the ever so bright, the ever so beautiful, the ever so bold, Spencer, the Legacy. Hello, how everybody? Hello, Spencer.
00:00:41
Speaker
um I have this box right here. It's a Disgaea 7 complete. um I'm supposed to do an unboxing. We'll see if i see if i end up getting to it.
Concerns About Digital-Only Gaming
00:00:53
Speaker
Hell You know what sucks? I'll be candid. Okay, yeah. Get real with it. I don't know if I'm a fan of this Switch 2 game key cart thing. and i know Yeah, it's weird.
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm usually i'm usually like take-what-you-can-get kind of guy in these situations. But it does... It does kind of bum me out. It's like buying the Minecraft ah game on on um Vita and then opening it up and there's just nothing in there. Just code? game code Yeah, it was kind of it was a bummer back then and it kind of stings now. and And this game, I believe, is one of those download things. Oh, yeah, that's no fun. Have the cartridge. It's so tiny.
00:01:37
Speaker
So do I yeah to i own Disguise 7 complete? I don't know. You own a license to play it. it's that' scary I think that should scare people more than it does. And I know like we ah we we very much live in the moment of things, but I'm a little nervous about what the after Steam looks like. ida You know what? i go My head goes to the extreme, like Planet of the Apes level of like fucking destruction on the Earth. But in my head, it's like, well, fucking Planet of the Apes, they didn't need their Steam library. Yeah, Planet of the Apes got things to focus on more than the Steam summer sale, for sure.
00:02:18
Speaker
But i'm sure they were still but there I'm sure there was a year period where they were really bummed out that they lost all their Steam games. they were like, I can't fucking play Half-Life 2. I have more time than ever in my whole life, and can't even play they Marvel Rivals.
00:02:32
Speaker
There is this one generation of the last surviving humans. Yeah. but tells kids You don't even know what Steam was. You don't even fucking know. 500 games, never played them. I played like 18 of them frequently.
00:02:49
Speaker
But then they have like these trading cards and you could sell them, but they were digital. people would like buy People would buy them. they I bought a game that was on sale with just trading card. right you guys don't even You guys can't even turn on a damn computer. You don't even get it.
00:03:04
Speaker
And they're like, i oh, the walls are being raided by chimps again. So again can we focus on survival? We don't know in a chimp world. So we don't, yeah we, web most of the game boys survived.
00:03:16
Speaker
I think that's the biggest ah issue of Gen 1 post-apocalypse. We can't, yeah we got as gay it's going to be tough. There's going to be, there's going to be a tough transition, but I'm betting they They won't even know what they're missing. Life finds a way.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah. they'll Gabe Newell will upload his brain into an AI. Somehow. And it will it'll in the future, he'll be like GLaDOS, but he'll make a new Steam when the world's 15.
00:03:47
Speaker
T69,000. Yeah. It'll be like Gabe-en, but spelled with big letters like GLaDOS. And you know, God willing, none of this happens in our lifetime. We don't get restricted to our Steam access in our lifetime. I'd be so sour. And apes don't take over. That would also, that would not be good.
00:04:06
Speaker
um yeah I would, I mean, i think they'd be chill with me because I i think trip like apes are really funny. And yeah I've never been mean to an ape. so I think if the if we had an ape overrun, i would I'd be one of the guys that are cool with them.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, i I'd be the the Ken Brockman, like i for one welcome our new ape overlord. like I'm fine with you guys. You can't do worse than we're doing now, apes. yeah so umm you know what?
00:04:32
Speaker
Even if it's a sideways step, it's got a new flavor. So let's try it Adaptable,
Critique of Nintendo's Policies
00:04:38
Speaker
adaptable, they say. I'll say, you know what? Sure, we're being run by apes now, but...
00:04:43
Speaker
It's something different. It's a story. you know yeah It's a good story. It's better than hanging out with the people bitching about their Steam library. Yeah. It's like, oh, they're talking about the Steam library while they're in the salt mines.
00:04:54
Speaker
At least the apes don't know what Steam is because they didn't have Steam brains when Steam was around. That's not even a topic of conversation. I think it's the the stuff that comes from water. That's all they know about Steam. And you know what? That's beautiful.
00:05:08
Speaker
And in that same breath, it sucks that Nintendo is also on board with this future. If there's an anti-consumer policy to enact, you can bet Nintendo's going to be on the ground floor. Right up there.
00:05:23
Speaker
Right up there. i I do like... Everything has like a half life, right? Like we're disintegrating every second.
00:05:33
Speaker
And sometimes sometimes you can feel it. like, ooh, it's kind of it's kind of crazy that like, I don't know, we still make games for like Game Boy and stuff like, yeah, you'll like, I made a Game Boy Color game this year. And it's like, hell yeah, you know, do what you love.
00:05:49
Speaker
um But that the at least that tells me that at least the switch won't disintegrate for probably 20, 30 years. No, I have that. drew People still make like Dreamcast games on discs. That's pretty sick. fan At least like in the 2010s, late 2010s, I remember that was a thing. so That's pretty sick.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah. Now, like ah when Limited Rent Games sold those 3DO games and just printed them on the CDR, the games that they had there. That's funny.
00:06:17
Speaker
Still making them. Yeah, CDRs. Some liberties. CDRs were a damn cheat code to little teenage Spencer with a Dreamcast because I was like I can't afford shit. But I can get Resident Evil. I can buy 10 CDRs for $2 at the dollar store at Dollarama, and I can get 10 Dreamcast games.
00:06:35
Speaker
All the shmups. Boom. I could play Shenmue part disc 1 and 2. I could play... ah Skies of Arcadia, Disc 1 and 2, Resident Evil. I could play them all.
00:06:48
Speaker
Saturn Bomberman. Yeah. Oh, man. I wish had a Saturn. I was a Saturn boy. I was thinking of the jewel casing and my head went Saturn because that's all i i wish I had a Saturn. Especially because like so a lot of my Dreamcast bootleg discs were quite ethical because I owned the games, but I had this stupid, very 2000s vibe.
00:07:08
Speaker
It was a plastic seat with like a see-through plastic blue... hard blue seat cover and you could store stuff inside. And I stored all my Dreamcast games in there and that seat was broken as hell and cracked and it would scratch all the discs and none of them would work.
00:07:22
Speaker
I don't know why I sat in that, but I'd be like, okay, well I have two copies of Sonic Adventure and neither of them work. So I'll just make a CDR copy. Yeah. Yeah. That's ethical. Yeah. That's ethical. That's, that's just me curing my like eight year old stupidity. That's fine.
00:07:37
Speaker
There's no issue with that.
Podcasting Challenges & Audience Appreciation
00:07:39
Speaker
i um I was one of those binder guys. I would throw away the entire game, the entire case, and put the... Just because it looked really cool back then.
00:07:50
Speaker
It looked really cool to have a big-ass binder, and you have the the game booklet... at my library....slid in, slid in yeah and and the CD behind it. and just Yeah, so you're going through like a for for discs page. It was cool.
00:08:04
Speaker
can but i do It kind of sucks that I lost it. It's like a cool way to be like, look at this. Look at my games like a lot. Yeah. And then you find out that you can't like make decks.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah. but taking them out of it's better to. it's Yeah, exactly. But it aesthetically can't beat it. Yeah. Can't beat it. Looks too good. Looks too good. Welcome to Unqualified Game Chat. This podcast is recorded every week on Wednesday and posted Thursdays to our Patreon. It's so funny that we say that every week.
00:08:35
Speaker
Every week we say it's recorded every week. And every week we miss another week. Every week we miss, yeah, it's bi-weekly basically, but you know what? They stick with us, so they'll believe anything. Times are tough.
00:08:46
Speaker
And I appreciate that we, that, I mean, eventually it'll probably come because everyone's going to get addicted to this podcast in due time.
00:08:56
Speaker
But, um, But I will say that I appreciate in this moment, I don't get a lot of DMs that are like, hey, you missed a week. Hey, you missed a week.
00:09:08
Speaker
Aside from like a one off Losey or like. And that's just Losey being silly. Yeah, there's there's some there's some people that will remind me, but um and that's very mean. It's like, yeah yeah, you're right. i He's not mean to us. I think as long as you're not mean, like, you're like, hey, you missed the week.
00:09:27
Speaker
I'd be like, oh yeah you're right. That is true. i so I appreciate
Balancing Work & Personal Life
00:09:30
Speaker
that. That people give us a little bit of. um because They care. ah Slack, the word slack. A little bit slack, not the work application, but no, no, no, no. That's the concept.
00:09:42
Speaker
Slack. You can get it a week early on Patreon, or you can get it for free a week later on ah Podcast Services. So, um we have stuff to talk about.
00:09:55
Speaker
do. It's been pretty busy couple weeks. It sucks, I will say, because Mark is still working on PAX videos. Mm-hmm.
00:10:06
Speaker
So I've been like taking over a lot every day for video editing ah do and it's been, it's been pretty hard to get every video edit out.
00:10:17
Speaker
Plus put in the time for these reviews. Yeah. What really fucked me up, man, was I reviewed Digimon and Atelier Resleriana back to back thats in this tu two, two 50 hour.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, dude. did It, it, It put me in like a weird headspace. I was like, I didn't want to like get on discord. I didn't want to log on. Like I spent a whole weekend just like um brain rotting out to like um reality TV and Costco trips. You know I was just like, I need to do anything other than play video It doesn't feel the same as when we were 20.
00:10:53
Speaker
Cause I was like, i did I did that with Digimon because I had two reviews before Digimon and time was ticking on Digimon. So I was like, okay, I need to do it for embargo. So the ah the weekend before this past one, both days, I just played Digimon all day, like 20 hours plus in that weekend.
Gaming Escapism & Digimon Reviews
00:11:12
Speaker
And i would like by the end of it, I was like, this is not this does not feel like it did when I was 19. I feel rotted. Yeah, can you confirm like in the moment... Okay, so while I was playing Digimon, and I think at this day I was probably already playing it for six, seven hours, but you get in this almost trance to where you can go on, you can play, but anything that happens outside of this world, say a parent calls or your girlfriend needs you to pick up something or a friend wants to hang out, you're like, fuck you, I'm playing you. Because you're in a fugue stage. Yeah, it's almost like you don't want anything to bother you and it's like you're playing a game and I, oh, so that's what Digimon did to me. And I loved it in that moment, but afterwards I was like, whoa, like I literally like just threw, I had so much responsibilities to do today. And I, I so easily, easily. and I was exhausted.
00:12:14
Speaker
I was exhausted. Like I ran, like I like i was running or... or I was too, and I wondered, but I was like, why? i haven't done any. But like, yeah, it's a weird feeling. You don't even feel like you were there.
00:12:26
Speaker
Your brain went on an adventure. It was your imagination. good i closed my eyes and I saw Digivolution charts in my eye. Like the people who play Catherine and close their eyes and see vlogs. Digimon.
00:12:37
Speaker
Digimon. Digimon. What the? What fucking digi-egg do I need for this digivolution? Oh, what digimon do I have at the digifarm? And keep in mind this is pre-release, so there's no info online. So yeah I was like trying to make Beelzemon, and I was like, okay, impmon, wizardmon, it's always this.
00:12:55
Speaker
And then you can't do it that way in this one, so I was like, how the fuck do I get Beelzemon? So I was just experimenting with everything. I was like going back and forth, digivolving, devolving. Oh man, it was madness. It was madness.
00:13:06
Speaker
And we'll we'll get into a more Digimon talk throughout this episode, but Censor and I both reviewed it, so we have actually something to talk about together this time. um i will say though,
00:13:19
Speaker
they did lock the sexier Digimon behind many hours of gameplay. You're not getting Andriomon until the 20 plus hour point. You're gonna work he's in old work for it.
00:13:34
Speaker
You need to get those agent points up if you're gonna get ultimates and megas. And those are the ones that are scantily clad anime women. So they're insane.
00:13:46
Speaker
Respect to Bandai for but that for for including all of them in. um i think the whole Digimon initiative just feels like they invested a shit ton of money. And now they're like, let's take this engine that we created. Let's take this basis and then take it further.
00:14:05
Speaker
Apparently it sold super well. and Yeah. we had I'm curious how you felt about the... In the game, you're you get you go to the digital worlds and there's different regions of the digital world that you can go to, but it all exists in this Iliad floor or level.
00:14:25
Speaker
um So what I found strange is that while you can explore all of these worlds in fast travel, to get to them is a menu yeah that you can kind of just... And to me...
00:14:38
Speaker
That was like, oh, DLC is going to build on these places. like yeah Because the dungeons were really short. Especially with how good auto battle is and how you can times five speed battles. like yeah If you don't want to grind, but you want the experience or the digi scanning or whatever, you just like go in, repeatedly hit R2 so your Digimon attack on the field, and then you don't have to do anything else. It's great.
00:15:05
Speaker
I think my my biggest time sink was um because some digivolutions require a certain personality trait. yeah um um Spent a lot of time on the farm.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, the farm was like the easiest route to go, I feel like, because I tried. expensive, quick. You're paying, yeah. you're Because you're paying 30 minutes, and then those, um you have to find a lot of those. yeah They're like 10,000 or something like that. I was better off just finding them out in the field, those like ah training things.
00:15:35
Speaker
I tried for a while because you can change it slowly by talking to them every four hours. By talking to them. Yeah, that's what I going to bring up. I ran out of patience where I was like, I kept trying to get metal graymon blue a specific to i think zealous or daring so that he could be black war graymon yeah every single time would do four battles and i would talk to him and it would never give me the option to move towards the one i wanted to move towards for like an hour and i was like we're going to the fucking farm i don't care yeah you're going on the farm i'm changing your personality by hand i don't care i i went through that and
00:16:11
Speaker
Well, I almost got it because, okay, so there's there's ah there's a grid of four. It's a rectangle, and there's four rectangles in this rectangle, and then in those rectangles are four other rectangles.
00:16:22
Speaker
So... I was trying to get like, i think trustworthy or something in the loyalty branch or something. And it was right up at the top square right there. And I just needed one more and I accidentally hit valor again. oh no. And it just shot the fuck up. It just, it just went right up and I was like, what?
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah. Why so fast? It took me like seven. Oh, dude, I was I was bummed. It's especially important because with your agent skills, you can get some really good ones where it's like if you have the same personality as the next form, it cut cuts the needed stats in like half, which is nuts.
00:17:00
Speaker
So like you're always aiming to get their personalities perfect. And that's either going to cost you a lot of time or a lot of money or a lot of frustration. So, yeah. So I know we we jumped into Digimon pretty quickly. um But is there anything else that we needed to up? Outside of Digimon? If you're still listening, we have...
Relaunch of Noisy Newsweek
00:17:22
Speaker
um This is NoisyPixels' seven-year anniversary. did Seven years? Wow.
00:17:29
Speaker
Seven years. It's pretty crazy. Yeah,
00:17:35
Speaker
yeah i was 29. when i I was 22. Well, was a meowza. i was 2018. That was only three years after I started at Monster Run. I was hungry. i was passionate.
00:17:47
Speaker
and They called me Scoops as I walked through the- I remember that we were in the IGN office at the mix and everyone said, there's Scoops Lopez. Yeah. let's ah let's let's yeah Let's gauge him for some scoops. Yeah. Let's get some scoops.
00:18:01
Speaker
And you know what? You would say, live to serve. And you would pull out some scoops. We We went right into the room. room and did the tip thing. Whatever. He said, I don't disappoint, baby.
00:18:12
Speaker
ah I definitely like to leave every person I meet with a ah ah satisfying ah good time. I give out surveys afterwards. How did you? how like total shout You have a chance at winning a $15 McDonald's card. yeah so I just want to know how I did communicating with you.
00:18:31
Speaker
ah did did i Did it flow okay? Was my jokes on point? I'm trying to be the best as RU I can be. And your input gets me there. So thank you for the time. ah We are relaunching I don't know if Spencer knows this.
00:18:46
Speaker
He might. the good We're relaunching Noisy Newsweek. Oh, I do know that. Oh, you you told me that. I feel so privileged. Yeah. Yeah, we we're relaunching it. um and We just need some diversity in our catalog of videos. And I think i think so many other YouTubers... um They really ah take our news and just read it to there's to their audience. Oh, 100%. Yeah. and That's a whole category. yeah That's cool. I see them sometimes. You might as well get a piece of that pie.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah. let me let me get Let me put my take in. I'm planning to do it more on a humorous side to show you guys some fun stuff about video games. Yeah. To really poke fun at the ah the idea that we even ever took these things seriously to begin with is already insane to me. But we're here to have fun. And I think a show like that is needed right now because everyone's just too serious in the gaming industry. And we just need to calm down a little bit. Yeah, I get it. The world's a disaster. But something's got to be fun or else everything's a disaster. You got to have a bit of fun or else like what's the point?
00:19:56
Speaker
of anything. It's a and and respect that if you want to put effort into um learning about ah
00:20:11
Speaker
issues and and and those kind of things, but Also, we can't really overshadow that like it's it's too much.
00:20:22
Speaker
it's Yeah, you got to balance. you can't If you're tuned into everything all the time, you're going to be so miserable, especially because most things we can't really do much about. That's something I struggle with lot here because I'm not even like in America. I'm Canadian.
00:20:34
Speaker
But yeah American news dominates the world. so i would love to I would love to solve world hunger. you know That's like that's what I would like to do with a billion dollars. I had magic powers billions of dollars also.
00:20:50
Speaker
I would solve a lot of problems really fast in very generous ways, I think. But unfortunately, have very little money and very little power.
Balancing Global Awareness with Personal Happiness
00:21:01
Speaker
So yeah I'm just trying to, i'm I'm keeping appraised of what's going on while also taking time to be like, okay, time to chillax a bit. Time unwind a little bit. Yeah, you can really you can really be hard on yourself to almost to.
00:21:19
Speaker
What's when you when you really put yourself, I can't think of the word right now, but. um
00:21:27
Speaker
it's It's like right on the tip of my tongue, right on the tip of my tongue. What's the way what are you trying to say? What's the definition? ah You can be to worldview. You can be to.
00:21:40
Speaker
Aware? Yeah, guy guess let's go with aware. It's the ah it something like that. you could Yeah, yeah it it gets exhausting though.
00:21:51
Speaker
That's where it comes down to. it's like a You don't have to, you can be happy. You're allowed to have fun. You're allowed to be happy. You're allowed to ah focus on your own success while also being conscious of ah movements that you the world want to be timing.
00:22:08
Speaker
But do not beat yourself up for one or the other. Like you don't need to do everything. You can be, you can, you can be. really is that middle ground of like, be aware. Like it's not good to not be aware of anything at all. Cause then you're just,
00:22:23
Speaker
missing out on the world and bad things can happen easily. Um, but it's also, if you don't want to be informed, don't force yourself to be informed. yeah Don't like, if that's like something that you don't like, you don't need it, man. You don't need it. Or at least like do it in a healthy way.
00:22:39
Speaker
Like right getting your news from social media, probably not good. it so It's probably better. is it It's probably better to like go to what you consider reputable news sites.
00:22:52
Speaker
Like, I mean, here at CBC, we have a pretty good, uh, pretty good news news organization through the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. nick I do. A lot of BBC is like where I kind of put... And it's just because if you're thinking about like unbiased, I think everyone has a bias, but at least no one who has a horse in the race. Everyone's got News bias. Yeah. like like there's there's like, oh yeah, this this story skews slightly more towards we, and then there's like, this what they're saying is that's nothing. that's That's keyboard vomit in like human form. What is going on? Yeah. It's it's all fun in doses. You gotta put your health first too.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, be equipped with what you want to be equipped with, but don't feel shamed to be one
Digimon Time Stranger Mechanics
00:23:41
Speaker
or the other. like Don't feel like... Know everything all the time. or Yeah, you can be the person in your group that changes their views. You can be um the person in the group that speaks up for something that you believe in personally because, hey, everyone's always speaking up. so you know what It's important to do that if you feel strongly about something. Right, right.
00:24:00
Speaker
And good luck out there. Good luck out there. Go play Digimon. Yeah, and I think that definitely ah leads us into the fact that Spencer and I are and have been for a very long time DigiDestined.
00:24:16
Speaker
I've been DigiDestined since I was three, for sure. I've been DigiDestined since I was two. It wasn't a year before This is not true. Which is not true because it came out when I was free. That's not possible. I heard the calling.
00:24:31
Speaker
They created it based off of me. They created it based off of me. Based off of you? They said that little boy deserves an Aguon. He went on a journey and we need to write about it.
00:24:41
Speaker
We need to write about it. um yeah We're the kids in America. You know, that was a really good. Yeah. That was a really good theme song for Digimon the movie. I had one week or one week. And I had Smash Mouth before Shrek.
00:24:59
Speaker
Before Shrek. Pre-Shrek. Yeah. Pre-Shrek it had All-Star. ah Because whenever I hear that song, I picture Wendigalmon, not Shrek. That's so sick. So psychotic. No other human being fucking does that. That's such a bad mental. Like, that's nuts.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. But no, that movie's soundtrack is so That movie in general is absurd. It has the Angela Anaconda beginning, which I didn't know anyone else outside Canada even fucking knew existed. that and That got someone on 4chan's parents divorced.
00:25:25
Speaker
It had the... It's three movies that they chopped up and put into one movie. Yeah, it has it has the Digimon Adventure movie. It has our War Games. And it has ah the Digimon Adventure 2 movie. So it's like, as a kid, I was just like, wow, this is a very wide-reaching story. But as an adult, I'm like, oh, that's because it was three stories that have no relation at all. And the the weird pacing in it is due to that because like it goes up and down. And the art style changes. Or it's like, that's a different art style.
00:25:54
Speaker
It's ah hard and tough times. it was It wasn't easy being a DigiDestined. It wasn't easy. I'm not saying that. It wasn't easy. it was bio It was a lot easier to keep your head down and say, I just like Pokemon. But you know what? When you're like Pokemon, you had to be brave about it.
00:26:10
Speaker
but You know what, though, dude? I was there when Patamon digivolved into Agemon. wo What a fucking episode. I was there as a little kid, borderline crying when Agumon turned into Skullgreymon because that wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to turn it scary. That was bad. That's what you were fucking worried about, man?
00:26:31
Speaker
I was like, Uglymon is so upset that he's turning into a scary Digimon. That's what Spaceballs turn into a Greymon. What's going Dude, that is so funny. That is the most like endearing thing.
00:26:45
Speaker
I was like, Uglymon's so sad. What's going on? Was it like Wargravemon 2? Is there Wargravemon? Wargravemon. Wargravemon.
00:26:56
Speaker
And then they come together. and Omnimon or Omegamon, depending on where you live. Depending on what region. I never remember which one's American and which one's Japanese, so I just say both.
00:27:09
Speaker
um So what did you think about the plot of Digimon story, Time Stranger? i dug it. other day And people are memeing on this one part, which is totally fair. The operator calling you every time anything happens in the plot and going, this could be related to the future.
00:27:25
Speaker
You have to stop the future from happening. By the way, your adopted father is dead. Yeah. Every single time. It's like, I get it. I appreciate that you're keeping me surprised, but I get it.
00:27:36
Speaker
I understand. The food you left out this morning or that morning eight years ago, it just went It's the to Shinjuku Inferno. And your adopted father who died would never have done that. He was the smartest he was the smartest man alive.
00:27:50
Speaker
um it It sucks that we've... You must be so sad he's dead and I keep reminding you. And please keep your pockets from happening. Thank you. I just switched screens. That's all that's happened. and Nothing has happened yet.
00:28:00
Speaker
um Other than that goofiness, um I really enjoyed it. I think... not not Not a spoiler, too, by the way. No, that within the first hour, you're getting those notifications. It's very heavy. The operator dialogue is very heavy-handed because I feel like they wanted to get you back into the game, and it's just this guy that calls you.
00:28:19
Speaker
yeah Whatever character you don't choose. So if you choose the girl character, it'll be the the guy character. Yeah, that is true. Who's fucking voiced. So they're both voiced, and they couldn't have voiced them in the game? I'm so sick of these...
00:28:34
Speaker
silent protagonist. I never once felt ah that I was the character. I will say that. And i and I've never felt that about Digimon Story. i think the last I think the last time I remember being like, this is me, and aate was like early Pokemon. like Because it's on the Game Boy, you can't see what you look like. So you're like, that's me in a baseball cap. right But like yeah as an adult, like I'm trying to think of a game where I named myself, and typically not RPGs, like maybe simulators and stuff where it's like,
00:29:03
Speaker
you're not really a character as much as it's literally just supposed to be you. But RPGs and stuff like Persona where it's like, this is very clearly a character that exists outside of my like choices. So I don't Yeah, because you definitely when you when you are playing Persona,
00:29:22
Speaker
you I feel like when that's a type of game that you play to be a version of yourself that you see. Yeah, to literally a persona. Yeah, not necessarily how the world sees you like you do like you. You make moves that you wouldn't normally make just to see the outcome kind of thing. And even that I don't think is true immersion in terms of an immersive JRPG setting.
00:29:47
Speaker
jr are like an immersive jrpg setting I don't, yeah, I don't know. The character has a canon name. me, they're not my... I think they could have i think they could have ah did without the yeah voiceless protagonist.
00:30:04
Speaker
I agree. And it's weird that they did that, because every Digimon has voice lines. Every single one. Yeah, i also and and they already recorded voice lines, because if you choose the other character, their operator has fucking voice.
00:30:15
Speaker
ah I think it's... i think It sucks too, because like the the story is decent. ben You can put it on auto mode to watch like watch it like if you're watching anime, but then the dialogue choices just come up and like but the dialogue choices do not matter in this game.
00:30:31
Speaker
They don't fucking matter. Just choose the one with the yellow icon on it, because anything you say, even if it's kind of like I was like always I try to choose like the flirty like ones just to see what would happen.
00:30:43
Speaker
Nothing ever. and know The characters like ha you're funny. Anyway, here's the information. And you're like, oh, which I get. But like, don't even if if it's not actually going to like do anything, I don't know if you need to or at least have like interesting lore flavor text behind the additional.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah. The only one that did. The only one that I found did. If you chose the other options. um was right in the beginning when the operator is talking to you, right when you start the game, if you choose those other options, that was the only one that I found that was like three or four boxes of dialogue. Yeah, and instead of just one with one line. After that, dude,
00:31:24
Speaker
After that is one line back to the story. it So it it was like they tried right in the beginning and then it's like, wait, we got to do this every time. hour game not go to happen Yeah, let's tell them the response just to progress the story, because if you notice, there's a little there's a little yellow circle next to the one. like This is the one where if you just want to skip to the to the important stuff.
00:31:47
Speaker
um it's i will say in that in that with that point being made uh it's digimon story time stranger is a very smart game yes there's a lot of really good streamlining in that game like yeah lots of times in a quest you'll go from location a to b and you'll get to b and they'll be like okay i see let's go back to a and you don't have to go it just cuts to being back and you're like thank you thank you especially for reviewers pre-release that is A lot of time where you're just like, thank you, I was not going to achieve anything by running backwards.
00:32:19
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff like that where it's like every game should be doing this. You can stand completely still and then all your Digimon will completely heal their HP and SP within like 10 seconds.
00:32:29
Speaker
And it's like, and you think that makes the game easier. it doesn't really know if the game is balanced around you being able to do that. So it's like, yeah, yeah you might as well just like because so nice I feel like without it, you would have such an unpleasant time.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, all your items will be wasted on the battle outside of battle. You would be like constantly constantly in the menus, constantly in the menus. It's so nice to have that option, especially because items are very useful in this game. Because an i always playing of a turn so when I was playing it, like the at the preview events, people were just like, it's all that that healing. It's so easy that people are going to. And I was like, no, you guys aren't understanding. It's that everything is so tedious that that has to be streamlined because the stuff you're going to be putting time into has nothing to do with the actual combat.
00:33:17
Speaker
Exactly. to It's all going to be digivolving and like yeah making your best team and doing like all. So having literally hours of menu time removed is so nice. It's so refreshing.
00:33:30
Speaker
There's a lot of things like that in this game. That's just like, thank you for doing that because that is so much more pleasant and convenient for me. It's like, i did you can digivolve anywhere. You don't have to go to the lab.
00:33:40
Speaker
You can yeah do like all sorts of things anywhere. it's It's like when Pokemon made it so you can like swap Pokemon from the box without a computer. It's like, yes, that is essential now. You can't go back from that. yeah um How did you figure how did you find about the, the balance you mentioned balance, like the difficulty balance?
00:34:00
Speaker
It was, it was, pretty cool to me how they did this game. um I texted you this, but the boss battles fucking they can be real challenge, dude.
00:34:11
Speaker
a couple of them are pretty tough. And then i got really into Digivolution. which happens in every Digimon game I play, where i was like, I need to get the Digimon I like the most right now.
00:34:23
Speaker
So I was like spending way too much time Digivolving back and forth to make them perfect. So that then it became a bit easier, but unless you're spending literal hours Digivolving back and forth, youre you're you're going to have like a nice... And even then, there's still challenging parts where there's hard content if you want to do it. So I agree. it's ah I think it's a very well-balanced game.
00:34:44
Speaker
and And the... the ah
00:34:49
Speaker
it it always felt like even when the bosses had weaknesses to stuff, it didn't really matter. They had so much goddamn HP.
00:35:01
Speaker
It's true. so fucking strong. and Man, i just loved it. I loved the forced strategy to be like, okay, you spent you just spent two and a half hours ah making this party and digivolving these characters.
00:35:18
Speaker
Let's put them to the test. Let's see let's see how well you know your yeah your group And it it fucks you up, man. It lives really low. You got to like, okay, vaccine, data, virus, like what?
00:35:31
Speaker
And then you got to swap out your team, be like, okay, if I want to do a bit more damage, I should swap all my data ones and then all my vaccine ones. It's, yeah, there's, it's, a it's a lot of fun to, uh,
00:35:43
Speaker
to play because there's like there's two layers of type advantages there's the vaccine data um virus and then there's elemental and then so you can be doing like five times damage if you nail both there's a lot of like fun ways to get really strong it's quite good yeah and And in that, it does also tell you once you've once you figure it out, the weaknesses, each post fight, yeah you can still you can still ah scan them and read and read that stuff.
00:36:13
Speaker
it's It's a very smart game. It's a very smart game. It is truly like the apex of creature collecting games, I think, right now. The dungeons are small. There are maybe four or five screens with ah with each with their own gimmick because they're not that like interesting.
00:36:30
Speaker
But like they did things in like a forest one where they hid... Yeah, and then they hid Digimon in the though the wood.
00:36:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah, the woodmon. Yeah, woodmon. And so stuff like that is cool. Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
I texted you this as well, that after rank five, which comes like 18 hours, 20 hours in, like that's where the digivolution for me, like actually opened up because before that I was just do, I was, i was able to just, you, before that I was just able to like, okay, a digivolution is ready. Okay, go. But I never cared. I never like put time into, to that until rank five where,
00:37:15
Speaker
I just felt you have a little more freedom. Yeah. Cause that's where like the spreadsheet goes from like one to three to three more. And then it's like five more. So it's like, and you know, back and forth all throughout. Like it's yeah. That's where it's like, okay, now we're in like crazy, crazy zone where you can do anything.
00:37:33
Speaker
this The smarter thing is like, let's say, so say you have Agamon, um, Agamon's max level is 25. So the way you need to be thinking about this is,
00:37:45
Speaker
ah I have 25 levels to get his personality and stats where I need them to be for this particular If i don't want to hit it. Oh, and then when the bond level fucking comes in, that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother thing. But ah you, you had, there are times where you have to D did you evolve to then retry all goon.
00:38:11
Speaker
Cause you keep a certain percentage of stats. So it's easier to, to go up and your level cap goes up if you fully level up and then did you fall? Yeah. It's a, it's, but it's fun. Yeah, it sounds overwhelming, but it's not. It's completely understandable. Because of how straightforward they fucking made the battle in the healing systems, dude. You're you're you're in these menus for just this.
00:38:29
Speaker
Okay, so I put this in my review, but I didn't like that you can't access that your Digivolution tree from the Digifarm. ah There's no other reason. i think that's a weird little convenience thing that they should have done for sure. i Yeah, i because I kept going. i had to kept going back out of Digifarm, check the Digifolution trees, go back. in um So I think that would that that it's going to have to be added at some point. sure yeah I'm guessing. Who'd you pick for stuff ah your starter? I previewed it like three times. This time, think Patamon.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Because of that Angemon line where I was like, I was raised Catholic, so I think angels look badass. I think the first time... I don't think I chose him the first time I chose that. Isn't Devimon one of the ones?
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah. I chose him when I played at the preview events. Yeah, because it's Patamon, DemiDevimon, and Gomamon, I think. Yeah. Strange starters. It is. It's kind of like Pokemon Legends, where it's like three random ones, too, where it's like, okay, Patamon and Gomamon are Adventure 1. It's like DemiDevimon's the ah a brief bad guy in adventure one. I get like, yeah, it's a weird, but it's fun. Like that's a good, they're very different.
00:39:47
Speaker
They're three very different Digimon. So you can definitely be like, Oh, I want virus or I want data or I want vaccine right off the bat. So that, in that way it works. I, I,
00:40:00
Speaker
enjoyed my entire time playing and and I know we talked about like exhaustion before but that's not the game that's just playing it that long it's just being an a it's being an adult I think it's being an adult and playing it the entire weekend and just being like oh this is now that I'm grown up this is less like wow what a treat and more like I still have to mow the fucking lawn I still have to wash my goddamn clothes yeah it's it's like none of that is on Digimon's head No, yeah, we can't put that on Digimon because it it did enough to make us forget about those responsibilities.
Conclusion & Audience Engagement
00:40:38
Speaker
is it's a It was ah is a really fun time. um I'm glad to see that a lot of people are playing it. Makes me so happy. Oh, I wanted to add that when the, I don't know why or how I forgot about it, but when the DigiEggs came into play, i was like, whoa, like this is, okay, 450 sounds about right now. And it's like,
00:40:59
Speaker
And then the ultimates come in and it's like, fuck, like it's a great it's a great time. And it doesn't it's and there's some really fun. all There's some like Digimon there where I'm like, oh, shit, I haven't seen him since like World Three on PS one.
00:41:15
Speaker
Or it's like, that's a good that's a fun thing. And the DLC is going to add more Digimon. So I can't I hope they add Mon Mon from Digimon World Three, the little monkey caveman. God, I hope they add him.
00:41:26
Speaker
And he turns into Hookmon, the pirate Digimon. I hope that... Bondi, if you watch this, please. Please. Please add Hookmon and Monmon, please. Or else.
00:41:37
Speaker
Or else this podcast just will be completely against Digimon forever. Digimon. No Digimon. um I think that's podcast. What do you think? I think that was a That was a...
00:41:50
Speaker
I was trying to make it, you know how in the show they would put digi before everything. I was trying to think of like an adjective that i put digi before, yeah but none of them sounded good. That was a, that's, that's, now that was a intense mon. See, it just gets worse after that. Yeah.
00:42:07
Speaker
That was fun mon. Um, that was digi that was digy maze Oh, digital light. I like that. Put that on the box. That on the damn box. Um,
00:42:18
Speaker
Yeah, our our levels of cleverness, definitely. we We're like a firecracker where it's really good at the beginning, but... 40 minutes in, it's over. it's it's yeah We're back to third grade reading level of wit.
00:42:31
Speaker
I do appreciate everyone ah listening, and if you have a Digimon story that you'd like to tell, tell us in the comments below. I'll be reading them as a big Digi-head. I'll be judging you.
00:42:44
Speaker
So give us good stories. Have a good day. thank everyone Take care, everybody.
00:43:01
Speaker
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