Looking back on the history of the Digimon and Pokemon franchises, I think Digimon wins out with a cooler mythology and more interesting creatures. The last Digimon game I played, which just so happened to appear on the DS as well, was a decent RPG adventure. So you build onto that formula and create something amazing the next time…right? Normally…yes, but if you're Bandai Namco you do the complete opposite and instead make a frustrating game that will please hardly anyone.

Yank That Ogre

Digimon World Championship doesn't have a single-player story adventure. Instead of trekking out to save the world against some menace, players are instead tasked with winning the Digimon World Championship and that's it. No rival trainers. No plot points and twists. Once the premise is in place that's the entire story you'll get throughout the game. Since the game is lacking in the story department, the game really needs to astound in the gameplay department in order to compensate for its other shortcomings. Sadly, the gameplay is just as poorly conceived.

Players are given a plot of training space, where you can place cages you buy that will raise the stats of your digimon, such as increasing hit points, while yet reducing something too. The further along you advance through the trainer levels the more cages open up to your purchasing ability. With a brand-new digimon ready for your attention, you're able to grab the digimon and drag them into the cage of your choice, instantly raising and decreasing whatever stats are associated to that cage. Training is tiring work, however, so you'll be feeding them food in no time, which then leads to poop cleaning (displayed as sparkling bits of data). Digimon can also get injured after a battle or become stressed out, so you'll have to use bandages and medicine in order to make your digimon happy and keep it alive.

It's possible to win some matches with one digimon, but generally it's always best to have three digimon in your training room at one time. In order to fill your training area out, you'll have to head to the world and go hunting for digimon, which consists of scrolling across a stage until you find one you want to try and catch. At first you only have a simple piece of rope and a quick stun gun, but it's enough for the youngest, most immature digimon. In order to capture a digimon, simply select the rope, draw a lasso around it, and then once hooked pull the digimon backwards until its health reaches zero. Once the digimon is dazed and unconscious, use the hand tool to pick it up – tadda, you've just added a digimon to your roster. As you advance through the trainer levels, you'll open up stronger ropes, better guns, and things such as blockades to help you capture better digimon.

After you have your digimon trained and ready to go, it's time to try your hands at the Title Matches, which will help improve your tamer ranking if you win. Title Matches are everything from 1-on-1, 1-on-3, 3-on-1, or 3-on-3. You just can't throw any digimon into any fight, as some have restrictions, such as Champion level digimon only. Before the digimon start battling, you can set them to attack normally, attack with special attacks, or help with their support abilities.

This is what it's all led up to…the moment of battle. It's time to prove your worth and show your competitors the door. Are the battles turn-based? Do they play like Final Fantasy Tactics? Nope, instead, you control your digimon in battle by doing absolutely nothing! Yep, that's right, you don't fight or even get to help your digimon out. Are you wondering why your giant chicken isn't using its eye laser? Too bad, you have no control. Do you see the perfect opportunity to attack or run to heal up? Tough, because your digimon thinks this is Bizarro's hometown and thus do the opposite. It feels good to win – if only because at least you got lucky – but it sucks to lose. It's not your fault you lost. You didn't tell them to run straight at the giant whale, but when your team loses – and it will – you'll feel like you did something wrong and it is your fault.

Okay, it's time to regroup, heal up, and train some more. Shoot, but you're running out of money trying to keep your digimon healthy and alive, and you need to win some battles to get money. You think to yourself that things will be different once your giant chicken digivolves to its next form, but then it happens. The screen goes black, the camera zooms in on your chicken, and then without warning it changes into an egg. What the hell? Why did it change into an egg? Who knows? There isn't any rhyme or reason behind it either…it just happens. Of course, then two more digimon change into eggs for no reason, and the next thing you know your once pretty good team is now a bunch of losers and it's time to start over.

Battle My Monsters

Also, don't get me started when out of nowhere your digimon just dies. Were they sick? Nope. Lost in battle? Nope. So why did they die? I don't know and it would've been great had the game actually told me…before he died! Seriously, the game sends me an email to tell me why it died after the fact. It's fun to see your tiny blob of a digimon turn into a fox, but when all your hard work and hours leads to a death that would've been prevented had the game told me what to do, it leads to frustration and an urge never to pick the game up again. In fact, it seemed like every time I was starting to have fun and managed to digivolve a new digimon, it was only moments later all that hard work was erased with them changing into an egg. It's also not fun to constantly click on a digimon to move them to a new cage or tap incessantly trying to clean digital poop up when the touch controls are so poorly done.

Digimon World Championship also features a very ugly looking 2D sprite based graphic system. I love well-done sprites, but these look worse than something the SNES was able to produce back in the day. Also, until they get big enough, it's often hard to make out what it is you're looking at in the first place. The game is also severely lacking any quality sound effects or background music.

The only thing I can really give the game credit for is its online battle system, which lets you battle your team of digimon against other trainers using the Wi-Fi system. It doesn't help make the game any better, but if you should enjoy the frustrating gameplay and want to see how other people are doing or test your talents against them, you'll always be able to jump online and find an opponent.

Digimon World Championship is simply too lackadaisical in every way, feeling as if the game was haphazardly thrown together, rushed, and with little thought given to the game in the process. Hardcore digimon fans might enjoy the game, but for all intents and purposes, the game feels like a moderately enhanced version of the old Tamagotchi eggs that were once the craze back in the day.

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