Last week, I already recorded a quick Digimon ReArise Review podcast with my initial thoughts, but now I’ve played it a bit more, it’s time for some more in-depth thoughts!

Last week, I recorded a quick Digimon ReArise Review podcast with my initial thoughts,it’s time for some more in-depth thoughts!

As of writing this, I’m level 18 and up to Act 8 of the Main Story, so let’s dive in to our full and somewhat in depth Digimon ReArise Review, now that the game has been out for over a week.

Digimon ReArise Review

More than just another tedious Free to Play App

Visual Assets

The animations also capture the perfect mix of Digimon that are scary, Digimon that are cute, and Digimon that are both. 

The in-battle animations are also beautiful, especially for main and special skills – these main and special skills are also unique for every Digimon, so each Digimon has their signature attack.

The character designs are really nice; none of the characters look too much like any existing human character in Digimon except for possibly Michi who looks just a little bit like Hikari. I love Keito’s design – while he is reminiscent of Jyou from Adventure, it’s still an entirely new character (he does look like a bit of a combination of Brady and myself though!).

Sound Assets

I don’t usually have a mobile game’s sound turned on for a variety of reasons; the main two reasons being that, firstly, I listen to podcasts and music often with my phone and secondly, free to play games tend to play music and sound effects that are both repetitive and tedious.

However, ReArise has pretty catchy music that actually motivates me to continue playing when I hear it. It’s just so exciting.

Not to mention the characters voice work is pretty impressive and the opening animation is a pretty decent song.

In addition, I was honestly surprised to hear the classic Digivice sound effect when ever a mission is completed.

The background music is varied enough to not be tedious – a rare quality in mobile phone games.

The audio in general assists the game in feeling like a polished game.

Characters

The characters are all pretty enjoyable, however, Takumi can be annoying; he fills the Digimon trope of a lone wolf with a wolf Digimon who wants to fight alone and thinks that all of the other main character are weak.

Besides the Yamato/Ruki/Thoma clone of the character roster, the characters are all likeable. In addition, I’m worried for my favourite character (Keito) as his partner Digimon evolves to Leomon.

I said this in podcast review, but I’ll say it again; it’s nice to have main characters who aren’t young children as it makes the characters easier to relate to than ten year olds.

In regards to the Digimon you can obtain, the list is currently pretty small, but this makes it easy to pick which Digimon to raise.
However, it’s sad not all Digimon have a mega form. Maybe my Infermon will evolve one day.

It maybe due to the smaller roster of Mega Digimon, but ReArise seems to have a nice focus on ‘just raise your favourites!’ – a message along these lines even gets presented in one of the loading screen trivia/tips.

I love the interaction during battle between the characters, hell, I love the interactions outside of battles! It’s just so cute!

Story

The story in ReArise is something that the player can feel involved in and care about; it was a story that made me not want to just skip the story-portion, like other free to play games that I’ve just played for the gameplay or the franchise. The story, along with the assets used, really helped the game feel so much more polished than other free to play games I’ve played.

Features

There’s less grinding than in Links and there’s much more story; it has hours of content counting all the side missions and story!

Clash battles are fun and it’s great to feel like there’s some team work, support requests give you something to do if you run out of stamina, which doesn’t happen too often when the game gives you stamina whenever you level up or if you help out your guild-mates.

Clash Battles are like the Advent Quests in Digimon Links – events where one can play for evolution items, a feature like this assists the player in getting fuel so they can obtain certain Digimon.

Although, this is the only part of evolving your Digimon that I would say can get annoying and grindy, it is made up for the fact that you don’t need stamina to respond to support requests. Otherwise, evolving isn’t that tedious, especially when comparing with Digimon Links.

DigiCare is a cute little DigiFarm-esque feature where you can increase the bond of Digimon by feeding them. Different Digimon having different favourites of food is really great – it’s better than just having one standard food like in Links, however, I do miss the meat farm.

In general, increasing bond is a lot easier than increasing Friendship in Digimon Links, so I’m increasingly grateful because of that.

Something that is fairly unique to Digimon ReArise is the Android Widget – messages and notifications will appear in this widget, so you can keep updated when you’re not even playing.

Also, there’s an upcoming Halloween event. Score.

Miscellaneous

The bits of trivia that flash up during the loading screens range from cute character facts to just nice wholesome things ‘doesn’t matter what position you put your Digimon in in battle, they’ll fight well in any’ – which is also great, because a lot of games care about where you place your characters in the battle field, this makes it more casual and fun. Your mileage may vary on that one, though.

Also, I love getting DigiEggs, the infrequency of having one makes me appreciate them even more.

Of course, there’s an ‘auto’ mode to battles, so you can just leave it open and do something else while your Digimon work hard in battle – however, your partner’s special attack cannot be executed in auto mode, so be mindful of that.

I’m also a fan of how you can change your main partner, not in terms of in the story – Herrismon stays your partner there – but in terms of the Digimon that you can call in battle to use its special attack, as well as the Digimon that is to display in your avatar, in the widget, and in DigiWalk.

Flaws

Just some weird nit-picks here.

1. ‘Claim All’ button for rewards does not actually claim all rewards -there are two tabs for rewards to separate the ‘social’ rewards received from helping friends/guildmates and being called as back up in a battle. This is mostly fine, however, if your rewards overflow into two pages, you have to press ‘Claim All’ for each page.
   
2. In addition to the above, there’s also, under missions, three different tabs you need to press ‘Claim All’ on.
   
3. Mentioned this in the podcast review, but the error in the tutorial where Herrismon and Agumon’s names are swapped.
   
4. This one is such a silly nit pick: I love how you can select recommended Digimon for your team, so the game auto picks what Digimon to use, likewise, you can have the game recommend plugins for you to sell, it’s pretty handy. However, I have no idea why the game didn’t include a ‘Recommended equiped plugins’ where the game automatically selects the best plugins to equip to your Digimon.
5. I wish I could clear my ‘social notifications’.
   
6. DigiWalk is STILL not working for Pixel 3 with Android 10. However, support for ReArise has been contacted and apparently they are working on it, so hopefully I get to use it soon, at the very least. I wanted to have used the feature prior to writing my Digimon ReArise review, but I feel at this point, the review is already pretty late.
   

Overall

Part of me is honestly surprised about how great ReArise is, honestly, if it was average I wouldn’t have taken time to collect thoughts and screenshots to write up my Digimon ReArise review and I certainly wouldn’t have set aside time to talk about it on the podcast.

I was so ready to be disappointed by this game, especially since I read a few comments from players who said the game felt like every other free-to-play game ever (something I found to be false). Comments like that is one of the reasons why I’m writing up a Digimon ReArise Review – I want people to at least give the game a chance.

The game had every feature and game mode essentially available at launch – the full story, the side missions like Clash Battles, the Battle Park, and the Underworld were all active within a week of ReArise’s launch.

ReArise itself loads pretty quickly; I have yet to experienced any lag, long load times, or crashes despite the quality of graphics used – though I do have a relatively newer phone (Pixel 3), so I wonder how older phones get on with this game, if they can at all.

I have yet to spend any real money, as I mentioned in the Digimon ReArise review on the podcast, due to the lack of any exciting bundle, but I still feel I should just to show my enjoyment and support for this game.

Digimon Links had an issue where the setting was very boring and I never quite felt immersed in it, Digimon ReArise on the other hand features both the Real World and Digital World as well as the AR Field/Digi Quartz are between the two worlds.

I was pretty impressed with Links when it first came out, but it pales in comparison to ReArise, which is a fully fleshed out game of a surprising quality for a free to play game. Part of me wants to re-visit the ranking I gave, as whatever Links does, ReArise does twice as well.

‘Summoning’ is starting to annoy me – while I love the ‘step up’ summons where the first one is cheap but the quality of the summons is low and it gradually ‘steps up’ to a guaranteed feature ‘mon, the current MetalGarurumon summon is one I’ve had two completely disappointing pulls from, which has honestly soured my ReArise gatcha experience so far.

I’ll get you soon though, MetalGarurumon!

Rating

Cost: Free! (with extras)
Music: 8/10
Sound effects: 8/10
Graphics: 10/10
Story : 9/10
Mechanics and Gameplay: 10/10
Setting: 10/10
Translation: 9.5/10
Difficulty level: Easy

Overall Score

9/10

Digimon ReArise is a free-to-play game which feels more polished than some full games thanks to its high quality assets and enjoyable story.

For comparison’s sake, you can read my review on Digimon Links here.

So what do you think about Digimon ReArise? What did you think of our Digimon ReArise Review? Let us know!

Obviously this Digimon ReArise Review is written from my own experience, your own experience may obviously be different.

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