To celebrate the occasion and give players another good look at what Digimon Survive really is, Bandai Namco has just released a special launch day trailer for the game. While it doesn’t necessarily offer any truly groundbreaking news about Survive, it serves as a good reminder of the fact that the game may be one of the darker chapters of the saga, and that it may entirely forego its occasionally cheery disposition.
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Digimon Survive is one of the main reasons why this is an excellent week for JRPG fans. Being one of the most eagerly awaited titles in this genre, Survive has some big shoes to fill, and it remains unclear at this time whether the game could possibly live up to its hype. It was first announced in 2018, only to suffer several major delays and a change of developer, to boot. At its core, the game is a mix of a visual novel and a turn-based strategy title, and it’s been presented as a somber and serious entry to the Digimon franchise. This puts it at odds with other monster-taming IPs, such as Pokemon.
Specifically, it has been outright stated that some characters will die in Digimon Survive, and the general tone of Bandai Namco’s pre-release materials for the game has been notably grim. This isn’t necessarily unprecedented for Digimon, it’s worth pointing out, but it implies that the franchise may be competing with an entirely different competitor than Pokemon at this point, as Survive looks more similar to a Persona game than anything else at this point.
Fans have got some interesting changes to the core gameplay formula to look forward to, as well. Digimon Survive has greatly altered Digivolution, which is the in-universe process of temporarily changing a creature’s form into something more suited for the given situation. There’s a great degree of freedom present in how players change and interact with their creatures, though this seems to correlate somehow to the choices made during the game’s main story.
Bandai Namco previously released a Digimon Survive trailer highlighting the game’s cast, which should provide additional context for total newcomers to the IP. Most of them have already been established in previous media, which is what makes Survive’s attempt at revitalizing the IP as something new and exciting particularly interesting.
Digimon Survive is scheduled to launch on July 29 for PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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