Digimon World 2

It's as awesome as it looks

Digimon World 2, like its predecessor, was an RPG for the Play Station. However, while the first game was a Mon-raising sim with RPG Elements (and Digimon World 3 and the DS games would be a more typical Eastern RPG), Digimon World 2 tried its hand at the Roguelike formula.

Our hero Akira has just gotten his Tamer Licence and the keys to his brand new Digi-Beetle. After joining one of the three teams that guard Digital City — the Vaccine-using Gold Hawks, the Data-preferring Blue Falcons, or the Virus-loving Black Sword — he gets his first digimon and sets out to start protecting his home, patrolling various domains, battling or befriending wild digimon, and participating in the various tournaments in his free time. Of course, it doesn't take long for things to get a lot more complicated than that...

The Digi-Beetle serves as your lifeline in the dungeons; it has its own HP, EP, and various tools and weapons you can install to make exploring easier. Defeat Means Friendship is also given an odd twist; digimon are shown wandering the map, and you can shoot gifts at them to drastically raise the chances of them joining you, then kill beat them last.

Another strange quirk of the game is that digimon all have level caps (which they reach rather soon), meaning you have to repeatedly digivolve, de-digivolve, and combine them in order to build a decent team (have in mind that combining them resets the digimon level to 1).

Proceeds Digimon World, Proceeded by Digimon World 3.

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This game contains examples of:

• A Taste of Power: During the training mission, you use Zudokorn's digimon. All of which are at Ultimate level.
• Aerith and Bob: All over the place. Bertran, Damien, and Joy are all normal if uncommon names, but then we get to Zudokorn, Piyette, and Akira himself.
• Animal Theme Naming: Not only are many of the various parts you can buy for your Digi-Beetle named after different types of animals, they're sorted into different catagories, such as sea creatures for the Batteries, birds for BO Xes and insects for RAM.
• Blood Knights: Interestingly, they were named this before this trope even existed.
• Boss Room: Lampshaded in the very first mission in the game.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: One of the main tricks up the Blood Knights' sleeve: a device that drives anyone without a neutralizer insane with confusion.
  • Crimson, transforming into Neo Crimson and going back to normal once he is defeated. It seems that Overlord Gaia is the unknown force that took over his mind.
• Cool Car/Weaponized Car: The Digi-Beetle
• Chekhov's Gunman: GAIA the little robot that Kim repairs.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Anytime the computer takes control of a Digimon in battle it will ignore any checks that would stop the player from doing the same action. (This includes the MP requirement and a certain status effect.)
• Crowning Music of Awesome: First Boss Battle/Rival Battles
• Crutch Character: During an early point in the game you're given a chance to recruit a Metalgreymon. While it has decent stats at the time it's available,(except for speed) later on you can get much stronger Digimon at lower levels.
  • There is also the Digimon Center that lets you trade Digimon. Most of the early traded Digimon are Crutch Characters.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Except a few of the early bosses any fight where there's only a single enemy will likely be this.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Although bribery helps. A lot.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Immediately after the Generator Parts are stolen, Akira overhears the thief griping about who sent her to get the Parts. Akira's response indicates he only heard her mention 'Generator Parts', and wonders if she knows something. The Blood Knights are also prone to this.
• Disk One Nuke: See Crutch Character above.
• The Dragon: The three Chaos Generals to Chaos Lord. Also Damien to Crimson.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water>Fire>Nature>Machine>Darkness>Water.
  • One has to wonder how Machine beats Darkness or Darkness beats Water?
    • Torches for the former, darkened water for the latter.
  • When you think about it, Water>Machine, Fire>Machine, Fire>Darkness, Nature>Darkness would have actually made more sense.
    • Um... that's not a cycle.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Bertran suffers one after an enemy trap leaves him boggled, confused, and crying his eyes out.
• Everyone Wants Redheads: At the end, both Esteena and Kim show that they really like Akira, the latter even demanding you ask her out on a hot date. Techna-Donna also tells you she's going to give a big kiss for all your hard work.
• Foreshadowing: In the Intro FMV, there's a split second where you see Overlord Gaia's Face.
  • When Kim is repairing the miniature robot GAIA, it tends to say weird phrases that talk about destruction and GAIA becoming powerful. Later on, the robot is shown to be the main antagonist on the game.
• Grail in the Garbage: Akira finds the Ship Key this way: a Digimon found it and was using it as a toy.
• Guide Dang It
• Hello, Insert Name Here: You can name Akira, all of your partner digimon, and your Digi-Beetle.
• Inevitable Tournament: At several points, you can't continue the main storyline unless you earn a certain rank in the local tournaments.
• Improbable Age: You're a teenager or possibly preteen. You get to have monsters and drive a tank with barely any supervision. And apparently that's common place in this universe.
• Justified Tutorial: Framed as a training mission, with your mentor Zudokorn teaching you the basics of dungeon driving.
• Level Grinding: Your Digimon will eventually hit their maximum levels. When they do, you can combine two Digimon to create a new one and raise it from level 1 all over again. This requires you to constantly recruit more Digimon, only to combine them once they max out their levels. This is also how you get one Digimon to have more than 2 or 3 attacks in its moveset, and with careful planning (and a guide) players can pretty much get any Digimon in the game they want.
  • Let's try to be more expository here: Your digimons have a Max Evolution Level attribute (Max EL). Every time a digimon's level reaches the Max EL, it will hit a level cap. In order to processed, a monster Max EL can be raised by DNA-combining him with other monsters. But there are 3 downside to this: Your new monster will be back at lvl 1, meaning you will lose 2 monsters in order to gain one monster with higher Max El. The second one is that the Max EL raises very little, it becames [Strongest Monster Level + (Weakest Monster Level/5)]. The third one is that both monsters should be at the level cap, or else you'll lose Max El you've gained.
• Luck-Based Mission: if the random dungeon generator decides to spit out unavoidable traps, you're quite possibly boned. Especially the Return bugs that instantly send your Digimon back to the city. And you can't destroy them unless you have the correct weapon and the correct ammo for the weapon, either of which might not even be available by that point.
  • What makes this even worse is this doesn't happen until later in the game after 30+ hours of level grinding. Earlier in the game it's possible to buy upgrades and see all traps level B and lower but after a certain point A level traps will start appear and while most are visible some aren't.
• Meaningful Name: The dungeons are all named after computer-related terms; for example, the first dungeon in the game is called the Boot Domain.
• Mystical Waif: Esteena.
• Named by Democracy: Chaos Lord, the prince of evil, because everyone had a low opinion of him according to Angemon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Late in the storyline, your leader sends The Calvary after you. Unfortunately, none of them have any way to counter the Blood Knights' confusion traps...
  • Kim encounters a robot named GAIA, who you help fix. It turns out this is the final boss of the game, and you just helped fix it up.
• No Export for You: Never released in the PAL regions, which led to Digimon World 3 getting renamed Digimon World 2003 when it got to make the trip.
• One-Winged Angel: NeoCrimson
• Palette Swap: Many of the infamous palette swapped Digimon from World 1 return, although unlike the original they can be obtained by the player in this game.
  • A few more (mostly Rookies) were Dummied Out.
• Poor Communication Kills: Long after your Guard Team leader assigns you to locate Ben Oldman, you learn where he is from your teammate Joy Joy.
• Preexisting Encounters: Technically, they're of the avoidable kind. Many are avoidable on paper only, since they move in response to the player's movements, and many rooms aren't large enough to exit them without being reached.
  • Part of this also has to do with the fact that some groups of enemy Digimon react differently. Most of them will move one square towards you for each move you make, but a few will move twice. Some of them will even move *away* from you for every 2 squares you move.
• Shipper on Deck: Skull asks in the post-game whether you like Kim or Esteena more.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Akira catches up to Kim to ask her about the Generator Parts, she insists she didn't steal them or anything.
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Vaccine has an advantage over Virus, Data has an advantage over Vaccine, and Virus has an advantage over Data. This handicap translates in three fronts: battling, team equipment, and DNA predominance. The first one means that the Digimon with the advantage will hit for more and take hits for less damage; the second one means that, depending on which team the player chooses, they will be able to buy items that help dealing with the Digimon they already have an advantage over; the last one means that, when fusing two Digimon, the offspring will be the same attribute as the advantageous parent.
• The Rival: Bertran to Akira.
  • Unknown Rival: Akira does not know who Bertran is at first, and takes a while to grasp the concept.
• Something Only They Would Say: Used to expose the disguised Damien.
• That One Sidequest: Trading Garurumon for Magna Angemon requires either using rare (at that point in the games) and expensive gifts in order to recruit a wild one. Or training your own which is both time consuming and almost guaranteed to be powerful than the Digimon you get in return. Bonus points if you managed to get Garurumon's Palette Swapped cousin Gururumon and thought they were the same since it almost impossible to have seen a Garurumon prior to the trade offer.
• Villainous Breakdown: Damien doesn't take his repeated losses to Akira well.
• We Can Rule Together: Crimson offers Akira several chances to join the Blood Knights.