Digimon World: Data Squad

Digimon World: Data Squad, also known as Digimon Savers: Another Mission (デジモンセイバーズ アナザーミッション Dejimon Seibāzu Anazā Misshon) in Japan, is an RPG video game for the PlayStation 2. The game was developed by Bec and published by Namco Bandai Games. It was released in Japan on November 30, 2006 and in North America on September 18, 2007.

The game is based on the anime series, Digimon Data Squad (Digimon Savers in Japan), but it is not part of the Digimon World series of games, as its localized title implies.

Plot
The game focuses on the protagonists of the anime (Masaru Daimon, Tohma H. Norstein, Yoshino Fujieda, and Ikuto Noguchi. Known as Marcus Damon, Thomas H. Norstein, Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda and Keenan Crier respectively in the dub) and their Digimon partners as they try and defeat the Seven Demon Kings to rescue a group of kidnapped children.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) Despite being based on the Digimon Savers anime, titled Digimon Data Squad in the dub, the game's story is non-canon and doesn't fit anywhere in the anime's continuity.
 * 2) Poor plot, with DATS attempting to destroy the Seven Great Demon Lords, which are Digimon based on the seven deadly sins, before they destroy the Digital World and the real world, and to save children kidnapped by said Digimon.
 * 3) Some of the terminology is inconsistent with the English dub of the anime. For example, Digisoul is called Digimon Natural Energy, or D.N.A. in the English dub. This game, however, uses the original name of Digisoul in all localizations.
 * 4) There are other issues with translation curtesy of Arksys. For example, a hint for a puzzle involving colored switches is mistranslated, incorrectly claiming that you need to turn the switches to red, green, and blue from left to right. Also, in a story segment, a reference to demon type Digimon is changed into "Mao type" with weird spelling and pronunciation, making it ambiguous if it was intentionally censored or a mistranslation.
 * 5) Atrocious loading times. Even the menus take a few seconds to load, which is inexcusable for a role-playing game, where menus are accessed constantly to perform actions such as using items and attacking.
 * 6) Interesting, but confusing and repetitive battle system. There are four types of commands your Digimon can perform, Action, Guard, Escape, and Support, with actual commands being categorized as one of the four types. The command that shows up the most is the one that that Digimon actually wants to perform, and if you use that command you would satisfy your Digimon.
 * 7) The battle system causes a lot of duplicate commands to clutter up the screen, which will even obscure the health gauges of your Digimon at the bottom of the screen, requiring a button to be pressed to put the gauges above the command elements.
 * 8) The pace of the battles is really slow due to the aforementioned loading times as well as long animations which need to load during battle on top of unnecessary panning shots.
 * 9) The random encounter rate is also pretty bad. Every few steps, you will encounter an enemy, which can get pretty annoying.
 * 10) The English voice acting is awful and annoying, especially in Masaru (Marcus) and Agumon's case.
 * 11) In the Japanese version, certain kanji have the phonetic hiragana readings next to them in parentheses during cutscenes, rather than having furigana readings above them, as you would expect. (By the way, Japanese children don't learn a substantial amount of kanji until they enter high school. As such, books, manga, and video games targeted at children include phonetic readings above each kanji. These are what are called furigana).
 * 12) Subpar graphics. Much like Super Sentai Battle Ranger Cross, much of the game's art assets and animations were recycled from an arcade game, Digimon Battle Terminal to be exact.
 * 13) Bland, samey environments, though they at least accurately model locations from the anime.
 * 14) Mediocre music.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The game isn't completely hated by the fandom, since it's probably the most friendly Digimon RPG for casual players. It's not overly grindy like Digimon World 1 and 2, doesn't have excessive random battles on large maps like Digimon World 3 and is not overly difficult like Digimon World 4. So it's a much easier game to finish compared to its predecessors and even its successors on Nintendo DS.
 * 2) It's the first Digimon RPG based on the anime to come to the west. Although Ryo's games for WonderSwan take place in the Digimon Adventure universe, they were not released outside of Asia. The first of these games (Anode Tamer and Cathode Tamer) was also one of the few WonderSwan games to be officially localized into English for for the Southeast Asian market.
 * 3) Considering the criticism of World 4's high difficulty and the inferiority of Digimon Rumble Arena 2 compared to its predecessor due to the absence of characters from the anime, Digimon World: Data Squad is probably the best Digimon game the PlayStation 2 can offer.

Reception
The game received negative scores from several major review portals, achieving a 43/100 score on Metacritic based on reviews from 12 online sources.

Videos
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