A Digimon is a “digital monster,” created in the late nineties, riding the coattails of the genius Pokйmon pocket monsters. Their digital world is made up of different servers where various evil monsters are creating havoc for our good guys and obviously breaking routing tables that allow us to travel. It is up to you to choose the best looking popular Digimon to play, and advance its skills in a way that makes you look dashing as you swashbuckle through the game.

It is your mission to find card-carrying bad guys (much like government workers do every day). However, in the digital world you are forced to kill them and take their ID cards to open doors that access different areas of the game. To help you on your journey, you will acquire weapons both melee and ranged, armor, and what amount to magical spells. It is too bad that this is not enough. Unless you are playing on a team, you are going to have a difficult time of killing those unintelligent bad guys, as they chop down your health quickly. Health power-ups are hard to find, so you will be making frequent trips back to the home server to heal.

People have told me that the previous three Digimon World games were quite refreshing and enjoyable. This one seemed to me like a well rehearsed hack-and-slash dungeon adventure with nothing truly inspiring to offer. Every time a newer and bigger bad guy was introduced to my adventure, I did feel a little excitement hoping that the game would take an interesting turn. However my hopes were soon dashed each time, much like the keel of the U.S.S. One Last Hope smashing apart on the Reef of Despair over and over again. Was this my Groundhog Day?

The home server is where you, as a Digital Security Guard, are introduced to the support staff of bankers, arms dealers, potion merchants and some lady who offers to change your weapons and teases you with an upgrade you cannot get for quite some time. Also, the chief in charge of the realm tells you how his toughest champion went outside the home server into the real world and never came back. In fact, while you are out there trying to put the known world back together, please keep an eye out for the champion.

Neither my nine-year-old son nor I ever made it far enough to find the champion.

The game is difficult at the best. Level advancement is slow. You can almost count the experience points on your fingers as they increase. Getting a shot at trying out new weapons is almost impossible. The weapons you will find are the basic training pieces, the alpha models, and the beta models. You can forget even trying a beta model weapon until you have a level 30 skill in bash, slash, or stab.

The controls for switching weapons around in your inventory are painstaking, and trying to add new computer chips to your armor is a confusing process. And why must I return to the home server every time I want to arm myself with a new weapon? I don’t know what the creators were doing, but it is completely illogical.

The battles go well at first, in the Digimon World enhanced battle system. They are quick and fairly easy. The monsters have no skills to mention and are extremely predictable, offering no unique tactics. After a few hits, it is easy to predict their next move so you know when to strike. Considering the tiny amount of damage your Digimon is delivering, this makes battles with bosses long, tiring and monotonous. Don’t expect smooth sailing for long, though. The enemy is tireless and has unlimited reinforcements.

I was never able to unlock special Digi-evolved Digimon in this game because, quite frankly, it was horribly written, had a lame story line, and had controls that just don’t make for a family game that you would enjoy playing without a massive load of cheat codes.

In fact, that was the last thing my son every said to me during our final game of Digimon World 4.

“Dad, can we get some cheat codes off the internet?”

I turned the game off and put in something else.