Digimon World 2

It's as awesome as it looks

Digimon World 2, like its predecessor, was an RPG for the PlayStation. However, while the first game was a Mon-raising sim with RPG Elements (and Digimon World 3 and the DS games would be a more typical Eastern RPG), Digimon World 2 tried its hand at the Roguelike formula.

Our hero Akira has just gotten his Tamer Licence and the keys to his brand new Digi-Beetle. After joining one of the three teams that guard Digital City -- the Vaccine-using Gold Hawks, the Data-preferring Blue Falcons, or the Virus-loving Black Sword -- he gets his first digimon and sets out to start protecting his home, patrolling various domains, battling or befriending wild digimon, and participating in the various tournaments in his free time. Of course, it doesn't take long for things to get a lot more complicated than that...

The Digi-Beetle serves as your lifeline in the dungeons; it has its own HP, EP, and various tools and weapons you can install to make exploring easier. Defeat Means Friendship is also given an odd twist; digimon are shown wandering the map, and you can shoot gifts at them to drastically raise the chances of them joining you, then kill beat them last.

Another strange quirk of the game is that Digimon all have level caps (which they reach rather soon), meaning you have to repeatedly digivolve, de-digivolve, and combine them in order to build a decent team (have in mind that combining them resets the Digimon level to 1).

Preceded by Digimon World, Precedes Digimon World 3.

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Tropes used in Digimon World 2 include:

• Aerith and Bob: All over the place. Bertran, Damien, and Joy are all normal if uncommon names, but then we get to Zudokorn, Piyette, and Akira himself.
• Animal Theme Naming: Not only are many of the various parts you can buy for your Digi-Beetle named after different types of animals, they're sorted into different catagories, such as sea creatures for the Batteries, birds for BOXes and insects for RAM.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Two main story missions task the player to capture certain Digimon. The first one concerns Ikkakumon, Yanmamon, and Syakomon, while the second requires having a Tankmon. The thing is, Ikkakumon hangs out with the hard-to-befriend Birdramon (not helped by its move range of two tiles per action taken), while Tankmon, despite having a large opportunity open for gift-firing for its only wild encounter that time, still requires a lot of gifts to even get a favorable heart level, especially if the player did not start out on Blue Falcon. However, evolving Penguinmon (Ikkakumon by default) and Candlemon (Tankmon by default) still counts for mission completion.
  • The attack Giga Cannon will make the user strike as many times as its current MP allows (or until the user misses). Opponents have infinite MP by default, so if the player encounters a Giga Cannon-using enemy, it will strike a few times in one turn at the tech's first use, then proceed to only strike once if it uses Giga Cannon again.
• Artificial Brilliance: The enemy Digimon are surprisingly smarter when it comes to recovery techs, not helped by their infinite MP. If there is a healing opportunity, there is a higher chance of the AI to use an HP or status recovery tech. If the player's Digimon gains a buff, an enemy with Re-Initialize may try to dispel it.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Enemy Digimon with an Interrupt tech will always try to interrupt the party's first move if its AI calls for said Interrupt tech. While there is nothing wrong with this, Interrupts that affect damaging tech (ex. Electro Shocker) are still used this way even if the player's Digimon's first move is an Assist.
  • The battle against Crimson in Laser Domain pits the player against a SkullMammothmon with Hyper Flashing (weakens Vaccine-types). SkullMammothmon itself is a Vaccine-type, so if the player brings a party without a single Vaccine-type, SkullMammothmon may as well weaken itself due to its AI Roulette.
  • Certain encounter setups in general can induce this thanks to AI Roulette. An enemy may use an Assist tech when it does not need one, use Friendly Fire randomly regardless of the intended strategy, etc. Some encounters have certain Digimon occasionally Guard instead of performing any action. While the reason varies, it is mostly to make battles against them less frustrating (seriously, does anyone want to see Gekomon spam Sonic Crusher in every time the player encounters it in the wild?).
  • Invoked during battles against Bertran and Joy Joy in Modem Domain. Both Tamers are Brainwashed and Crazy and their teams reflect this. Joy Joy has a Raremon that prefers to spam Fungus Cruncher and a Ninjamon that prefers to spam Mech Ray (keep in mind the battle does not take place on a Machine Specialty floor). Monzaemon, meanwhile, has no damaging attacks at all, opting to weaken Virus-types with Virus Attack or Data-types with Heart Break Hit, both of which cripple two of her party members. Bertran has a Digitamamon that can only use Mega Heal on Deramon and only Deramon and a Tankmon that is stuck using Friendly Fire... on the same Deramon (even defeating Deramon early will still make them target it, resulting in "Attack Missed" messages). Only Deramon itself is competent, having two damaging techs, but the poor thing is stuck in a long Cycle of Hurting.
• Awesome but Impractical: The Attack technique Giga Cannon. One use of this will make the user attack random targets multiple times in a single turn (cannot be Interrupted and cannot trigger Counter Attacks)... but with a rather costly MP consumed per strike, so it will only end either after all opponents are defeated or the user itself has reached insufficient MP (its chain can also be broken if the user misses). While useful for short battles, it is impractical for random encounters unless the player carries a lot of MP-restoring items (that is, until the aforementioned items run out as well). Only use for boss battles if the player is sure the party can finish off the opponents in very few turns.
• Bait and Switch Boss: Overlord GAIA. It looks underwhelming at first - just one opponent - and can be taken out fairly quickly... and then its arms come off. Cue the real final battle.
• Blind Idiot Translation: The English version, while having okay translation job for most of the dialogue, suffers badly with the tech descriptions. Due to the character limit, technique description is restricted to a short sentence (ex. Pepper Breath's description is the straightforward "Shoots a fireball", as it is a basic damaging Attack tech). This results in horribly botched explanations on how a tech is supposed to work. For some examples:
  • Black Pearl Shot, whose description is "Attacks with no defense". It is an Attack tech, and it can be seen that it leaves the user with "no defense", taking damage as if it has drastically reduced Defense in the current round. Surely it can be reworded as something better like "Attacks, but leaves user defenseless" or similar?
  • Evil Charm's description, meanwhile, veers into Translation Train Wreck. "Fade away spell confusion". What?^[1]
  • Techs that target a random enemy have no explanation regarding this. All the player sees when using one of these is the fact that the "TARGET" markers appear on all three enemies as if it is an Area of Effect tech (these, at least, explain their range on their description), only to turn out that this is not the case.
  • Even Assists are not safe. For an example from this category, Darkness Ray, one of the element manipulation techs. While other techs of this type are more or less straightforward despite their inconsistent wording (add flame effects, gives mech effects, adds nature effects, adds water effects), this one takes the cake for having the description "Learn dark power attacks". No matter what, the affected Digimon will not learn any new Darkness-type attacks at all, but their attacks will turn Darkness-type.
  • The terms "stunned" and "paralyzed" are often interchangeable with each other, which makes certain tech descriptions that require the condition of the former (Shadow Scythe, Necro Magic) confusing, as the context is meant to be "knocked out".
• Blood Knight: Interestingly, they were named this before this trope even existed.
• Boss Room: Lampshaded in the very first mission in the game.
• Boss Rush: The tournaments pretty much consist of these. In order to move up a rank, the player has to face three opponent Tamers in a row without any breaks and items. Culminates in the Chief rank tournament, where the player has to fight all three Guard Team leaders.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: One of the main tricks up the Blood Knights' sleeve: a device that drives anyone without a neutralizer insane with confusion.
  • Crimson, transforming into Neo Crimson and going back to normal once he is defeated. It seems that Overlord Gaia is the unknown force that took over his mind.
• Brick Joke: Bertran's Digi-Beetle runs out of EP after rescuing him Modem Domain. The same happens again after snapping him out from Gekomon-induced confusion in Data Domain much later.
• Calling Your Attacks: As typical for a Digimon work. Due to the "voice" being bound to one specific tech each, it can result in hilarious Vocal Dissonance depending on what Digimon used it.
• Chekhov's Gunman: GAIA the little robot that Kim repairs.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Anytime the computer takes control of a Digimon in battle it will ignore any checks that would stop the player from doing the same action. (This includes the MP requirement and a certain status effect.)
• Cool Car/Weaponized Car: The Digi-Beetle.
• Crutch Character: During an early point in the game you're given a chance to recruit a Metalgreymon. While it has decent stats at the time it's available,(except for speed) later on you can get much stronger Digimon at lower levels.
  • There is also the Digimon Center that lets you trade Digimon. Most of the early traded Digimon are Crutch Characters.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Except a few of the early bosses any fight where there's only a single enemy will likely be this.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Although bribery helps. A lot.
• Degraded Boss: All boss Digimon appear as wild encounters later on. This excludes Digimon that appear in Tamer battles and unique enemies.
• Diagonal Speed Boost: Helps to conserve EP and escape from most roaming wild Digimon, as these never move diagonally.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Immediately after the Generator Parts are stolen, Akira overhears the thief griping about who sent her to get the Parts. Akira's response indicates he only heard her mention 'Generator Parts', and wonders if she knows something. The Blood Knights are also prone to this.
• Difficulty Spike: The Blood Knights' Digimon have improved stats compared to earlier Boss Battles. They also tend to coordinate attacks better.
• Disc One Nuke: See Crutch Character above.
• The Dragon: The three Chaos Generals to Chaos Lord. Also Damien to Crimson.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water>Fire>Nature>Machine>Darkness>Water.
  • There is still the basic Vaccine>Virus>Data>Vaccine. Unlike the above, this also affects the resulting "offspring" of a DNA Digivolution.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Bertran suffers one after an enemy trap leaves him boggled, confused, and crying his eyes out.
• The Faceless: Unnamed Tamers have their faces concealed.
• Faceless Goons: All Blood Knight Officers and Commanders are these. Damien happens to disguise himself as one at one point.
• Fiery Redhead: Akira is redheaded and, like most of main protagonists of the Digimon franchise, is Hot-Blooded.
• Fighting Your Friend: Bertran and Joy Joy are driven crazy by the Blood Knights' traps in Modem Domain, requiring the player to defeat them first to snap them out. The two, along with Mark Shultz, Debbie, and Chris Connor, are also fought in Data Domain to snap them out of Gekomon-induced confusion.
• Foreshadowing: In the Intro FMV, there's a split second where you see Overlord Gaia's Face.
  • When Kim is repairing the miniature robot GAIA, it tends to say weird phrases that talk about destruction and GAIA becoming powerful. Later on, the robot is shown to be the main antagonist on the game.
  • At one point, visiting the right room of Meditation Dome has a Biyomon meditating and a Patamon waiting for his turn. Talking to this Biyomon has her talk about "voices in her mind" related to "Esteena". A character with that name later appears, and her presence has something to do with how the humans ended up in the digital world.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: When he meets MasterTyrannomon for the first time in the main story, Akira is surprised that the File Islander is even a Digimon. This is despite the fact that he looks like a black version of Tyrannomon (which the player has encountered a few times prior) and it is possible that the player has raised a MasterTyrannomon of their own at that point.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In the post-game, the player can talk to Chris Conner at the Black Sword headquarters. He complains about his head being hurt from having drunken too much. Reminder that this is an E-rated game.
• Grail in the Garbage: Akira finds the Ship Key this way: a Digimon found it and was using it as a toy.
• Guide Dang It: Even after the player figured out some of the game mechanics, there are still instances like this.
  • Digivolution and DNA Digivolution. It cannot be emphasized enough. Regular digivolving is straightforward enough, and casual players just use DNA digivolution on maxed out Digimon to generate a new Digimon with increased max level, or just to get a new Digimon with more tech options. However:
    • There is the DP system (only shown on the digivolution screen, naturally). DP is obtained from DNA digivolution. Without a guide, the player will have difficulty telling which Digimon digivolves into which (or even if it can even digivolve further regardless of DP). At least the player can soon get the common pattern down (varies by form level) and eventually tell how many forms a species can digivolve into, but there is another catch: Digivolutions that change type and ones that require insane amounts of DP. Those who are familiar with the anime can at least try getting enough DP to trigger the former type of digivolution (ex. Gabumon (Data) to Garurumon (Vaccine)), though this does not apply to all species (Betamon cannot even digivolve into Seadramon here). As for the latter, did the player know that the legendary Digimon Omnimon, Baihumon, and Diaboromon can be obtained (outside Tera Domain) by digivolving, respectively, MetalGreymon^[2], Meteormon, and Okuwamon with 20 DP or higher?
    • Then there are also DNA digivolution mechanics. Want a particular Digimon as the result, especially Veemon (never appears in the wild)? Get your guides and notes ready, because there are a lot of obtainable species, and thus, lots of possible combinations. Some can be implied (in general, most combinations of "elemental"^[3] with "None" tend to result in a species with an element), but some others still require more guessing (Angemon + Apemon = ToyAgumon?), especially if both parents are Non-Elemental. Worse, there are even "mutations" thrown into the mix, which results in a Digimon that defies the usual DNA digivolution formula. For example, DNA digivolving certain Vaccine-type Ultimate Digimon with Cherrymon (Virus-type, Ultimate) will result in Vademon, a Virus-type Ultimate, when such combination will usually get the player a Vaccine-type Champion.
  • Tech effects can be this, not helped by the single-line descriptions and Blind Idiot Translation in the localization. Random-target techs have no descriptions that point that out until the player uses them. Some techs have confusing or misleading descriptions that the player will usually end up not caring and just use them as they are (for example, Crimson Claw, described as "Confuse, poison & stun foe", which would sound like a Game Breaker but instead is a damaging tech whose damage is boosted if the user has at least one of the aforementioned status problems). Some techs have additional effects that are not explained enough or even at all (for example, Invisibility, while straightforward enough, does not mention that the "invisible" user is still prone to attacks that hit the entire party).
• Hello, Insert Name Here: The player can name Akira, all of his partner Digimon, and the Digi-Beetle.
• Heroes Want Redheads: At the end, both Esteena and Kim show that they really like Akira, the latter even demanding him ask her out on a hot date. Techna-Donna also tells you she is going to give a big kiss for all his hard work.
• Improbable Age: Akira is a teenager or possibly preteen. He gets to have monsters and drive a tank with barely any supervision. And apparently that is commonplace in this universe. That is, until The Reveal explaining why it is like this.
• Inevitable Tournament: At several points, you can't continue the main storyline unless you earn a certain rank in the local tournaments.
• Justified Tutorial: Framed as a training mission, with your mentor Zudokorn teaching you the basics of dungeon driving.
• Level Grinding: Your Digimon will eventually hit their maximum levels. When they do, you can combine two Digimon to create a new one and raise it from level 1 all over again. This requires you to constantly recruit more Digimon, only to combine them once they max out their levels. This is also how you get one Digimon to have more than 2 or 3 attacks in its moveset, and with careful planning (and a guide) players can pretty much get any Digimon in the game they want.
  • Let's try to be more expository here: Your digimons have a Max Evolution Level attribute (Max EL). Every time a digimon's level reaches the Max EL, it will hit a level cap. In order to processed, a monster Max EL can be raised by DNA-combining him with other monsters. But there are 3 downside to this: Your new monster will be back at lvl 1, meaning you will lose 2 monsters in order to gain one monster with higher Max El. The second one is that the Max EL raises very little, it becames [Strongest Monster Level + (Weakest Monster Level/5)]. The third one is that both monsters should be at the level cap, or else you'll lose Max El you've gained.
• Luck-Based Mission: if the random dungeon generator decides to spit out unavoidable traps, you're quite possibly boned. Especially the Return bugs that instantly send your Digimon back to the city. And you can't destroy them unless you have the correct weapon and the correct ammo for the weapon, either of which might not even be available by that point.
  • What makes this even worse is this doesn't happen until later in the game after 30+ hours of level grinding. Earlier in the game it's possible to buy upgrades and see all traps level B and lower but after a certain point A level traps will start appear and while most are visible some aren't.
• Mystical Waif: Esteena.
• Mythology Gag: The File Island in this game contains a bunch of references to the first Digimon World, including having Jijimon as the File City elder.
• Named by Democracy: Chaos Lord, the prince of evil, because everyone had a low opinion of him according to Angemon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Late in the storyline, your leader sends The Cavalry after you. Unfortunately, none of them have any way to counter the Blood Knights' confusion traps...
  • Kim encounters a robot named GAIA, who you help fix. It turns out this is the final boss of the game, and you just helped fix it up.
• Not Completely Useless: The Friendly Fire tech can be used to trigger Counter Attacks without relying on enemy randomness and cure Confusion if the player has no other ways to cure it.
  • Not to mention, it can also be used in certain combos. For example, combining the use of it with Crimson Claw (copies the user's status problems to its target), with the Crimson Claw user getting a status problem from a Friendly Fire aimed at either a Fungus Cruncher-affected ally (if the user has both Friendly Fire and Crimson Claw) to Poison itself or a Friendly Fire modified with effects from Rotten Rainballs or Stun Ray to cripple the Crimson Claw user the same way.
• One-Winged Angel: NeoCrimson
• Palette Swap: Many of the infamous palette swapped Digimon from World 1 return, although unlike the original they can be obtained by the player in this game.
  • A few more (mostly Rookies) were Dummied Out.
• Percent Damage Attack:
  • Beast King Fist's counter damage depends on the damage inflicted on the user that triggered the Counter Attack.
  • If the player sides with the Blue Falcon team, the Data Guardian knows a tech that halves one of the player's Digimon's HP.
• Poor Communication Kills: Long after your Guard Team leader assigns you to locate Ben Oldman, you learn where he is from your teammate Joy Joy.
• Preexisting Encounters: Technically, they're of the avoidable kind. Many are avoidable on paper only, since they move in response to the player's movements, and many rooms aren't large enough to exit them without being reached.
  • Part of this also has to do with the fact that some groups of enemy Digimon react differently. Most of them will move one square towards you for each move you make, but a few will move twice. Some of them will even move *away* from you for every 2 squares you move.
• The Rival: Bertran to Akira.
  • Unknown Rival: Akira does not know who Bertran is at first, and takes a while to grasp the concept.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Leomon at Boot Domain is the very first boss the player faces, to continue with the "dead Leomon" Running Gag common in the franchise.
• Shipper on Deck: Skull asks in the post-game whether you like Kim or Esteena more.
• Something Only They Would Say: Used to expose the disguised Damien.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Akira catches up to Kim to ask her about the Generator Parts, she insists she didn't steal them or anything.
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Vaccine has an advantage over Virus, Data has an advantage over Vaccine, and Virus has an advantage over Data. This handicap translates in three fronts: battling, team equipment, and DNA predominance. The first one means that the Digimon with the advantage will hit for more and take hits for less damage; the second one means that, depending on which team the player chooses, they will be able to buy items that help dealing with the Digimon they already have an advantage over; the last one means that, when fusing two Digimon, the offspring will be the same attribute as the advantageous parent.
• A Taste of Power: During the training mission, you use Zudokorn's digimon. All of which are at Ultimate level.
• Theme Naming: The dungeons are all named after computer-related terms; for example, the first dungeon in the game is called the Boot Domain.
• Trapped in Another World: All the humans living in the digital world (GAIA) are victims of the GAIA computer itself going out of control and have been part of GAIA's experiment for an unknown period of time. The Digital City staff are, in fact, people involved with the GAIA project.
• Villainous Breakdown: Damien does not take his repeated losses to Akira well.
• Vocal Dissonance: Played with. The voice used for each technique's specific call always remains the same no matter which Digimon uses it. Thus, it can lead to amusing situations such as Mega level Digimon using Rookie voices, or feminine Digimon (like Angewomon) using masculine voices.
• We Can Rule Together: Crimson offers Akira several chances to join the Blood Knights.
• Wham! Line: After The Reveal that Esteena originated from the outside world and GAIA having created the Digital World: <Hello, Insert Name Here>, you are... like me...
• What a Piece of Junk!: Some time after building GAIA, Kim complained that the robot does nothing but mumbling something weird and she even call it a hunk of junk. How wrong she turned out to be!

1. ↑ It is presumably meant to be "magic spell causes confusion", which fits its purpose the closest. How the translators ended up with that mistake is a riddle of the ages.
2. ↑ To make things more complicated for this one, only Greymon can digivolve into MetalGreymon, but having DP past 5 will result in other forms instead, forcing the player to keep getting MetalGreymon as DNA digivolution results to keep Omnimon.
3. ↑ Fire, Water, Nature, Darkness, Machine