Producer: Bandai
System: Wonderswan, GameBoy Advance
Year: 2003
Overview: Digimon Battle Spirit marks Digimon's debut not only on a portable system in the US, but also on a Nintendo system. I had previously thought Nintendo would be too worried about competition from its Pokemon franchise to release a Digimon game on one of their systems. I'm glad I was wrong, though.
Story: This is a tournament fighting game, so don't expect much in the way of story. Milleniummon is terrorizing the Digital World, and various digimon from Digimon Adventure, Zero Two, and Tamers band together to stop him.
Graphics: I'd say they came out quite nice. The graphics are crisp and clean, with very fluid animation. They're well detailed too; both characters and backgrounds.
Sound: Here's where I think the game suffers a bit. The music is mediocre at best, and the sound effects aren't that much better. This is a game I often play with the sound off.
Gameplay: While this is a tournament fighting game, the gameplay is vastly different from anything I've played before. First of all, there are no health bars when battling your opponents (except during the final boss). When a character is hit, they drop spirit orbs. The object is to collect as many of these spirits as you can (you must collect the blue ones your opponent drops, while he trys to pick up the red ones you drop). When time is up, whoever has the most spirits wins. You'll play through a total of eight battles; about halfway through you'll fight Impmon as a mini-boss, then Milleniummon as the big boss at the end. The playing field is usually rather expansive, with numerous traps, as well as enemy digimon that roam around. Defeating the enemies usually causes them to drop weapons you can throw at your opponent. At some point in the fight, Culumon will appear and start flying around the field. If your digimon catches him, they'll be able to evolve; usually to their Ultimate stage, with some exceptions. When evolved, they cannot lose spirits, and their strength increases greatly. This only lasts a short time, though.
Challenge: The challenge really varies, since you can select the difficulty level you want in the options menu, along with the time limit.
Final Rating: 8/10 A really good portable digimon game, this one is certainly worth picking up if you're a fan of any of the first three seasons.
