Digimon Story Lost Evolution is the third series of the Digimon Story series of games, released after Digimon World DS and Digimon World Dawn/Dusk (Yes, despite the subtitle of 'Digimon World', they're both 'Digimon Story' games and are called such in Japan), released on the Nintendo DS in July of 2010. In a lot of ways it's a perfect missing link between the DS Digimon Story games and Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory, including a lot of changes and improvements that would continue into CS but keeping a lot of the gameplay quirks of the DS games that CS lacks. Due to it's title as a Digimon Story game, I will be comparing aspects of it to Dawn/Dusk and Cyber Sleuth in particular, to compare and contrast aspects of them to help give a better idea to other Digimon fans who might be wondering what it was like.
Since this game never got a proper localization and is completely in Japanese, I'm writing this review less as a plea to get people to play it, and more as a general, 'how I felt about the game/what to look forward to when the english patch comes out' for other Digimon fans. I don't think this game will appeal much to people who don't know about the franchise to begin with/have some history with it, and is a lot less beginner friendly than Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory. That, plus some incredibly frustrating gameplay design makes it a hard game to recommend unless you're already a Digimon fan. Then, I think, the pros of this game will vastly outnumber the cons. Because of this, I won't explain too much about Digimon lore since I assume you probably already know the basics if you're reading this.
Lost Evolution starts off with a summer festival, where the MC (either a boy named Shuu or a girl named Kizuna, but you can rename them), and their friends were watching some fireworks. Hiroyuki (a care-free and kinda careless 11 yr old boy) and the MC spotted something fall behind the mountains, and they go to investigate, dragging Asuka (a tomboyish, responsible 11yr old girl) Takuya (a too-serious 8 yr old boy) and Yui (Hiroyuki's sweet, 8 yr old younger sister) into it. During investigating they find an Agumon who came into the Real World in the hopes of finding a Tamer, because they were disappearing for unknown reasons in the Digital World.
But they soon find out that the object they were investigating was a digiship which Agumon sneaked into to get to the Real World, owned by a group of 3 "Bad Tamers", Uno, Dos and Tres, collectively known as the Bandits. Agumon rejects them as potential Tamers, partners up with the MC, and after a series of events involving a Numemon and Hiroyuki pressing a button he really wasn't supposed to, everyone ends up crash landing into the Digital World, disoriented and separated.
While there is a general threat of 'Tamers are disappearing and no one knows why', a bulk of the story revolves around goals closer to the main character's motivations. Shuu/Kizuna and the others didn't go into the Digital World to save it from the start, they weren't chosen ones. They just happened to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. They don't explore to find out what's wrong with the world, but to find Takuto and Yui, who get separated from them. A lot of the MC's accomplishments only really happen because someone else ended up guiding them on that path, whether it be the Digimon of the Digibase who serve as your mission control, or a man named Kernel who eventually ropes you into participating in a Tamer Championship League.
Likewise, the Bandits aren't really 'villains' and only end up as such because their actions were suspicious to the Digimon, and because they knew so much. They only conflict with the protagonists due to circumstances out of their control, and even from the beginning, it's made clear that there's more to them then they and the digimon let on, when they drop information about a group of beings called "Selectors"
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If this sounds like the plot of the Digimon X-Evolution movie you'd be completely right! |
Lost Evolution has a plot that I really liked, with characters that are really endearing and quickly grows on you. It's far and above better than Dawn/Dusk in that regard, with a plot that feels almost down-to-earth because it's so centered on the protagonist's minor goals vs the cosmic. In that regard the pacing might feel a little frustrating, due to the threat of the Selectors constantly looming while you end up doing minor fetch quests for a Digimon, but when it does pay off, it REALLY pays off.
The characters especially are surprisingly fun to interact with, with your friends, the digibase's Digimon, and minor NPCs all feeling like solid, realized beings with a place in this world. One of my favourite side-story of this game involved a Demidevimon you meet early on who lashes out to humans because he believed his Tamer abandoned him, and after Asuka convinced him to try and find him, they end up meeting again way later into the game. Digimon who you've done quests for will hang out around the plains surrounding the digibase, and almost ALL npc dialogue will change after certain events in the game's plot. It's fun talking to everyone after every story beat because I genuinely WANT to know more about this world and the people/digimon that live in it.
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Also almost everyone drags Hiroyuki at all times |
Gameplay-wise it keeps the 5-grid battle set-up of the DS Digimon Story games, where every enemy is on a battlefield with 5 spots, with every move having specific orientation. Some moves can only hit one spot but is incredibly powerful, some moves can hit 3 spots but is much weaker, and some moves have a fixed location you can't move. You have to balance the pro-cons of each move as you learn them, since any Digimon can only ever learn 4 moves, and figure out how to utilize them as the layout of enemies on the map will always be different.
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Some boss digimon also take up more than one space |
It also keeps the stat system of those games, where your stats will stay the same as you evolve, your stats will lower if you de-evolve but keep most of the gains, and you'll be reverted to level 1 to bump up your stats all over again. There's no cap like in Cyber Sleuth, so theoretically you can raise any single Digimon to be a powerhouse. UNLIKE, the DS Story Games though (where you could just evolve your party to it's highest levels and get through the main plot just fine), you really do have to actually utilize this system, and constantly evolve-deevolve your team as you rotate your fighting party to get through the main story. Luckily the game gives you a lot of incentives to do this because of...
Digiplates. By far one of my favourite addition to this game, the "Lost Evolution" refers to this. In the Selector's attempts to restart the world, they also damaged the "Evolution Tree", and part of your goal is to repair the missing links of different evolution lines by finding digiplates that get dropped from wild digimon and repairing them through a touch screen minigame segment. You can't evolve your Digimon until you find the missing links, so it encourages you to fight the random encounters and go through different evolution lines until you get what you need or want.
For example, I had a Hagurumon I wanted to evolve into a Crusadermon eventually. Due to the fact that I didn't have the plate for the evolution I needed to get to it (Clockmon), I went with Guardromon's line until I did. I couldn't evolve it into a Hi-Andromon when it was beyond it's prime, so I went with Boltmon until I could, and as I collected the plates, I eventually ended up with a Crusadermon knowing several skills from those other lines' movepools.
This is also the other strength of this game, and that is really good, transparent evolution lines. Dawn/Dusk had the issue of a lot of Digimon ending at dead-end evolutions, where the line would just end at Champion or Ultimate stage, and Cyber Sleuth had every digimon evolution a complete unknown unless you've seen them or had them at some point. Lost Evolution allows you to check the Digimon you're evolving into's learned skills, weaknesses, and abilities. In fact, you can check those facts for any digiplates you revive perfectly, which is INCREDIBLY helpful to me as someone who likes to plan out what I want my Digimon to learn.
The digiplate repairing minigame I also found to be pretty fun and satisfying, though also really difficult at times. Buying the ludicrously expensive updates to your repairing tools is almost mandatory to perfectly repair the high-evolution digiplates, so you won't really be able to work on or upgrade your digifarm (yes that's also in this game but I've honestly barely used it because your farm digimon will really quickly be outclassed).
One thing I really didn't like about this game, and it falls under the pacing issues as well, is that the dungeons (ESPECIALLY IN THE LATTER HALF) are all incredibly, incredibly long. Like Dawn/Dusk they're labyrinths with a lot of dead ends, but unlike Dawn/Dusk they all connect different areas. You can fly to them immediately once you unlock each individual area's digiport, but the areas in the later half are all two-port mazes that take a ridiculous amount of wandering and backtracking to figure where to go. It's made even worse because the encounter rate is incredibly high and there's no way to alleviate this whatsoever, making the entire thing even more atrociously painful to deal with. If you've played the DS Story Games, you'd know what to expect, but it doesn't make it any less easier to deal with. This game really REALLY needs some kind of encounter modifying item or ability or SOMETHING, because it can cut the pacing of the game to a halt.
There's also a LOT of reused environments and assets in this game, with areas that are just complete copies of areas in Dawn/Dusk with new maze structures but with the exact same name, the same design with the same music. There's... an actual reason for this, but it does feel kinda unimpressive when there's maybe 4 or 5 completely new dungeons and the rest are just retooled dungeons from a previous game.
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Hello Log-in Mountain it's good to see you again |
Overall I'd rate Digimon Story Lost Evolution as one of my favourite Digimon games, because despite the flaws, I think it kept a lot of what I really liked about Dawn/Dusk (the cute artstyle, the sheer variety of Digimon you can use, and the ability to make any one of them incredibly powerful) with things I found it really lacked, with a unique and satisfying way to unlock evolutions, and endearing characters. The story itself also hit WAY harder than I expected and has a lot to unpack and talk about in regards to it's themes and some of it's characters (which I'll refrain from elaborating in the interest of trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible).
Also what other Digimon game can you have Chronomon HM, Crusadermon, ZeedMilleniummon, AncientWisemon, Gigaseadramon and Quinglongmon all in your party? Didn't think so
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