Digimon and Pokemon: A middle of the night musing.

[DragonMasterX]

Ash is known for letting his Pokemon do whatever they want. Let's see... Didn't force Bulbasaur to evolve, left Squirtle with the pathetic mini-fire-fighting team, did that with Charizard, left his newly evolved Pidgeott with a bunch of useless Pidgey that were being sexually harrassed by Spearows, left his champion Primeape to be trained by the one he beat, left Lapras to go with its family, allowed Butterfree to go have sex for the last time in its life, and I can't really finish with this list since I stopped being a fan after Johto ended.

I'm glad Pokemon don't have emotions in the games. Darn glad they don't.

[Mute Point]

In Pokemon Yellow the starter Pikachu that followed you around showed emotion if you talked to it. And in all of the games from gold/silver/crystal onward there is a happiness rating that you can't see, but increases the power of certain moves, and causes some pokemon to evolve.

I'd also point out that the digimon in the games I've played don't show much emotion at all.

[DragonMasterX]

Yeah, point is, except those two moves and a few accounted evolutions, happiness doesn't do much in Pokemon. Doesn't cause them to run off or disobey you or maybe force you to give them up.

Ah, yes! For your info, in Digimon World, there's two exogenous extra status bars for your digimon. One of them is Happiness while the other is Discipline. They both are measured by percentages and they directly impact on your digimon's life and performance. Higher Discipline makes it take everything you give to it without objecting, and makes it a lot easier to raise not to mention it won't be a rebel in battle and do whatever it wants instead of listening to your commands, but it makes your digimon propense to dying earlier. You can boost Discipline by keeping your digimon from pooping on the floor, feeding him only when he's hungry, battling and scolding it. Scolding it when it's bad makes it both happier and more disciplined, but randomly scolding it makes discipline raise only a tiny bit and it gets pissed back at you.

Then, there's happiness, it raises when it eats, sleeps, rests, wins battles, is taken to potty and when it's praised. Praising it lowers Discipline though. Conversely, a 100% happy digimon will live a very long life, whereas a digimon that hates its tamer will even be sad and permanently lose stats as it cries, not to mention it'll be nearer to the harp than the guitar.

Digimon World rocked because of those. Taking care of a digimon was annoying at times, but I had my methods.

*Flashback*

DMX: PUSH THAT DAMNED TWO TON BOULDER YOU WORTHLESS MINIATURE LIZARD!

Agumon: I'm trying, I'm trying! Waaaah! I'm tired! I'm hungry!

DMX: RUN THAT MILE-LONG COURSE WITH THOSE PATHETIC EXCUSES FOR LEGS YOU GOT!

Agumon: Waaaaah! I'm sleepy!

DMX: KEEP GIVING THAT RETRACTABLE TRUNK HELL! AND THEN YOU'LL SLEEP!

*Several days later*

Agumon: *Gets fed and praised several times, trained another few more times and then digivolves*

Greymon: I love you.

DMX: I know.

*/Flashback*

Pixels' feelings are so abusable.

[Asesino]

I sucked at Digimon World. I could only get my digimon to evolve into some other crappy digimon that ate their poo. If I could find it again, I would beat it with my new future-knowledge for making a fool out of me ten years ago.

[DragonMasterX]

On the plus side, Numemon and Sukamon got slightly stronger each time they ate poo.

[Frisk E. Coyote]

Oh I didn't know that! X3 But I do remember the training! Ahhh~ The training~

[Flashback]

PB: Yes, YES!! AH-HAHAHAHA!! Take those punches like a MON!!

Biyomon: But- I'm- a- girl-

PB: Silence! You've died many times now, and I've erased lots, LOTS of saved data every time I ended up with a friggin' NUMEMON.

[Later]

Prowl: You still training that little bird?

PB: Huh? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the awesomeness of my GARURUMON!! With it's maximum stats and discipline and happiness and health and several moves available only to ultimates-

Prowl: ....You used AR Max again, didn't you.

PB: *shoving the CD under his bed* I don't understand a word you're saying.

[/Flashback]

*lower lip quiver, before bawling his eyes out*

[DarkChibimon]

Most of the Pokemon games are the same:
Beat 8 gym leaders
Get all the pokemon
Do it all over again

[Erethzium]

Beat 8 gym leaders
Get all the pokemon
Do it all over again

^This.

I got bored of Pokemon at Sapphire/Ruby. I mean...it's true, it's just the same game over and over again, except each time they add a few new things to try and make it seem different. (IE, those 'fashion shows' are an example)

Pokemon was good enough with 151 Pokemon.

As for the Digimon games, I've only played a little bit of Digimon World 3 (because the rom would crash if I went past a certain point very early in the game!!) and it was somewhat fun, though I don't know how they expect you to level three different Digimon to keep them all equal, besides grinding, grinding and more grinding.

[DragonMasterX]

I played only with my Agumon the whole game, lol. Just after beating the Suzaku Leader I had him as a BlackWarGreymon and by the time I was finishing Noise Desert it was 10 Evolution levels behind getting Terra Destroyer.

I never cared about leveling the rest of the party. UNTIL I decided to start looking for the extra partners, then I decided it'd be fun to have all the leaders for all the seasons in my party. Thus I began training Guilmon and Veemon after acquiring them. It was slow though, I got bored of Guilmon when I got him to Base Lv. 20. Veemon turned out to be a hassle, needing an Evo. Lv. of 40 with both Omnimon (Which in turn need Evo. Lv. 40 with MetalGarurumon and WarGreymon, which both need the MetalGreymon form at Evo Lv. 50 or something like that) and Imperialdramon Fighter Mode (That needs the Imperialdramon form at Evo Lv. 99 by the way); so I pretty much had them in my party for decoration. My Agumon's BlackWarGreymon form was more than enough.

[Asesino]

You have to admit that the Pokemon game developers did a pretty smart thing by taking something that worked well enough and slowly improving (Or at least adding) to it.

That's the problem with Digimon games in my mind. The developers create something that isn't perfect, but with a little bit of polish it could become something that brings in fans and non-fans alike. For a reason beyond me, they decided instead to create an almost entirely different game for each sequel.

You don't gain a fan-base by radically changing the formula for every game. McDonalds didn't become the most popular fast-food joint by serving hamburgers one week and bicycles the next. Sure, Pokemon made some radically different games, too. Pokemon Snap, Pokemon TCG, Pokemon Stadium, and Pokemon Pinball just to name a few, but at least they were all separate games. If Digimon games want to succeed, they need to figure out something that works and run with it for a while.