Worst MMO Ever? - Digimon Masters Online 

Hahahahaha. This game is crazy. "You're thrown into a world with no direction. No clear goal. Nothing makes any sense. Good new is that you have a companion that is meant to help you. The bad news is that the companion meant to help you only speaks Spanish." I think you did it. You found it.

If you speak Spanish like that one more time, I WILL leave you on the second monitor PERMANENTLY.

I like how the digimon that are “about to mischief” are literally just walking around doing nothing. They’re only evil because the game says so.

The sad thing is Digimon could really work as an mmo, if you really focused on combat, and making it feel good. Since it's digital you could have endless design choices for worlds and plot. So long as controlling your monster felt good.

"If I were a Digimon fan, I would be insulted by this." Very on point, Josh. This uses one of my favorite seasons as a frame for this shit. None of the story. None of the quality. Only the brand. Sigh...

"ooh it gets good at end game" I had put a disgusting amount of time into this game and as someone who came close to reaching end game. It does not. It gets SO MUCH WORSE in the end game.

That's such a bizarre choice for an opening tutorial fight, since it's a recreation of the climax fight in the X-Evolution movie. It's not the most obscure Digimon thing, but it's obscure enough that there was clearly some level of love for the franchise at some point... and yet the lack of care also instantly shines through, because you're given Omegamon to fight with in a battle that very VERY notably is Alphamon's big moment. Not to mention that the MMO's story immediately switches to roughly following the Data Squad plot line, which has nothing to do with X-Evolution beyond "evil royal knights and yggdrasil". Just very strange all around.

Its astonishing how something as the Digital World couldn’t be properly implemented as an mmo. There’s a lot of easy components and history of games to work with.

As a spanish speaking fan of Josh, i enjoyed his spanish pronunciation more than i should

The review about fans starving for a game is very on point. I just want an ok game. Please. Anything halfway decent would be good enough at this point.

I got very excited at 12:24 because I literally own that characters exact top, but as a sweater not a hoodie. I also have brown hair and green/hazel eyes, used to have almost the exact same hairstyle, pretty much wear only dark pants, am currently wearing a pair of black headphones, and *literally crocheting a pair of fingerless gloves as I was watching this,* and hearing Josh say "I look like some middle aged out of touch executives idea of what 'cool' people dress like" hit me directly in the soul.

I used to play this alot back in the day, and I remember the day I stopped. I was killing mobs to collect eggs and data so I could get my favorite Digimon; Terriermon. I spent days, probably weeks gathering data and finally got one egg for Terriermon. I tried injecting the egg with said data and it 'broke' the egg, meaning I'd have to farm all over again to get more data and hopefully get another Terriermon egg. The fact I could just buy Terriermon off the shop for after weeks of in-game struggle, just ended any enjoyment I could have.

"This may be the most boring MMO I have ever played." Given that this channel has reviewed both Khan Online: Rebirth AND Forsaken World: Gods and Demons, that is one hell of a thing to say. Ooof.

Digimon as an IP comes with built in aesthetics, built in monsters, built in mechanics, built in lore, built in room for creativity and wiggle room to shove in whatever shenanigans you want, built in everything you could possibly need to make a game. You just have to actually MAKE the game. You don't even have to make NPC models. Any given Digimon can be an enemy mob or an NPC. That's typically how it goes. That's Digimon. You could totally forgo human NPCs altogether and copy paste anything over and it's fine. That would actually be acceptable. It would be seen as lazy and easy, but it's works within Digimon's framework. It's completely lore viable. It's like being given a puzzle with most of the piece already glued together and just requiring you to lay it on a mat and fit those chunks together and instead you've decided to smash the puzzle against the wall and pick up a handful of the now damaged pieces to put together part of the puzzle. Just enough to recognize what it's supposed to be.

I was an original Beta tester for this game, it was actually better then. Besides all of the issues brought up in this video they actually made the game less forgiving over time and my experiences with their support team were just as bad in grammar, spelling and sentence structure and they even basically told me to shove it when I had issues with the game not working as intended.

You know what's really sad? Back in the early (golden) days when the game existed only in Korea, people were going nuts in anticipation of global release. It looked so awesome and promising, with the gorgeous cell shading art which I believe still looks quite good. I vividly remember the trailer for the game, and how epic it all looked. People were literally going as far as making Korean accounts using fake Korean ID numbers and coming up with quazy-virus-infested translation files, just to be able to play the game. And when the global release finally came out, more specifically the Closed Beta, there were so many people trying to play that Joyxmax who had been running the game at the time, had to put in a 3h limit for each player. I don't remember if it was like a daily thing, but I remember being able to play for just 3 hours a day for a while before the game came out fully. It was amazing. Some of my best and dearest memories. With friends especially. As hard as it was with all the paywalls, I still fondly look back at how we used to struggle trying to find ways to get Evolutors so that we could unlock our digimons' evolutions. And of course endless grinding for eggs and data to try and get a 4/5 digimon (those who played know very well that nightmare). It's a shame what has become of the game. It really did have a ton of potential. Honestly I think it still has, but most companies just look at it as a giant cash cow and continue with the insane pay-to-win system whilst not adding any new proper content. At this point the game really is only for the crazy fans who just enjoy the idea of collecting digimon.

By the way, hacking in this game is a real issue. The game has some sort of vulnerability that allows hackers to change the email of your account without confirmation from your email. There are hackers in this game that steal high-end accounts and sell them for 2000-3000$ in the black market. If you lose it getting back your account is really hard. The customer service in this game is the worst of the worst. Furthermore, you didn't even touch any of the systems and how heavily monetized they are. Cloning, unlocking cards, Limited mons, and getting jewelry for your tamer.

"We chat to ... this thing..." Josh, about the NPC looking like the Agumon he's been using for 5 hours now.

I played this game religiously ages ago when I was a kid and I redownloaded it a couple years ago, played it for maybe a week, and I redownloaded it again a couple weeks ago. The change between all 3 periods was insane. In my opinion the original was best, and not just because of nostalgia. The start was good, you had a clear and well-explained main storyline, everything was fantastic. The second playthrough was a bit different. Actually, I don't remember much of it except they added a cutscene-esque tutorial in the beginning with Agumon which was weird, but they added more new player rewards, which was nice. The 3rd time was just awful. That beginning is so weird, they changed the first town which was just so iconic and nostalgic to me, they make you evolve your Digimon into the highest stage in the first half hour of the game, then instead of sending you to the second area of the game, they send you to one that used to be accessed pretty far in the game (The place with the original anime Digimon and locations), it's just a fucking mess. EDIT: Just watched a bit more of the video, and I just realized they hadn't changed the starting town when this video was made, but they did modify the previous one. But it seems like they change such major things every 3 seconds. Why??

The weirdest thing about this game is I swear the tutorial and the plotline change, like, every year or so, because I retried the game TWICE after initially playing it, and all three times, the beginning was completely different, I'm not sure why their priorities are THERE instead of literally anywhere else.

The saddest part about this game is that the franchise has been making MMOs.... since before they could be bothered to make it multiplayer. I remember playing Digimon World 3, a 2002 singleplayer RPG set in a fake MMO. Colorful sprite based overworld, 3d fights, kind of like pokemon, down to a gym leader progression. It brings in actual stakes when real world terrorists do a "you are now stuck in the mmo" thing, back in the 2000's era when that plot hadn't been done to death yet. The game wasn't amazing, but it had fun little subquests like talking to the married furry couple and asking them for their fursuits when you need a disguise.

God, I wondered when this one would get an episode. I played back during the original closed beta ages ago and hopped from the original Gameking launcher version to the Steam version, 2,000+ combined hours of this disrespectful, lazy mess, and I ended up quitting around March of 2020, before that pointless tutorial got added in. I can safely say the late game experience and the early game experience are pretty much identical, only with more bashing your head against the wall later on since stuff gets scaled so ridiculously that unless you deal with all the upgrade systems, you're going to be struggling. The way they push you towards the shop with its low odds are disgusting, and I with an addictive, compulsive personality fell for it for years, thousands of dollars in and not wanting to quit because of the sunk cost fallacy taking hold hard, but also because of my attachment to Digimon. It always appealed to me and still does even though I recognize as an adult that some things are kinda dumb, and this was one of those games where you could take out any mention or show of Digimon, turn it into a generic Korean grindfest MMO with bland monster mechanics, and it'd lose nothing. It had that little care for what franchise it was utilizing, from its gameplay to its landscapes. The latter is a big shame because one of the big aesthetic appeals of Digimon has always been its oddness in the Digital World, these combinations of natural lush fields with modern world appliances like train track segments, random street signs, and things of that nature. Hardly helps that later on the actual game pushes the grind to an absurd degree, Digimon Maze being the prime culprit. You need to collect up to forty of an item off a mob, and you'll get maybe two every eleven kills, if you're lucky, and you need to do this often three times a room before being allowed to move on. And this happens a few times per floor of the dungeon you're in. Top that off with a dev and mod team that are some of the most unfriendly I've ever seen, a team that actively seems to dislike its own player base, and I wonder how this game has lasted even a few years. It had barely anything to offer when it was officially released past the brand name, and it has nothing to offer now. So many games have come out since DMO came out to now, and almost all of them are so much better. We even have a new Digimon MMO on the wind in the form of Digimon Super Rumble, and even from a glance it has to be better than DMO, we can only go up. Writing my own review of the game when I quit felt so much like writing a restraining order to an abusive ex that kept making you think they were sweet and misunderstood when in reality they drained your energy, sanity, and wallet when they weren't harshly beating you and telling you that you're no good and you were lucky to have them. Good riddance, DMO, and love the video, Josh. Edit: Adding on for some extra context, things I failed to mention, and some replies to things. 1. Yes, 2,000+ hours. That is just what the sunk cost fallacy and being a fairly firm Digimon fan made me commit. Keep in mind, when I started back during the CBT era, I was still in middle school, when I was much more 'hardcore' a fan, and was less picky and knowledgeable about games and unscrupulous monetization tactics. I associated it after with the weird nostalgia and the Digimon brand, and even when that wore off, it just became, "Well, I've grinded my way to the top for so long and spend so much money, that'd all go to waste if I stopped, and there's nothing else as far as Digimon MMORPGs..." It sounds stupid from the outside, but it is just that, and that's exactly what this game preys on. Sucking in and keeping fans of Digimon who are willing to settle until they break and can't take anymore. I'd gotten to the upper ranks of the game, nearly all the major Jogress Digis at no less than 4/5, grinded the Spirit Digimon to 99 so I could nab Susanoomon, max-Digiclones, I got the stat boosting cards that need cash shop items to activate, I'd grinded for days and weeks in dungeons for the best accessories I could get at the time, I pulled hair and teeth for X-Antibody quests. I endured so much before I finally decided I couldn't take it anymore and said goodbye. So please understand, I'd done a lot that made it hard to force myself to say enough was enough, please don't do it to yourself if you've ever even remotely considered starting. 2. A fair point I saw was in regards to performance, which, while I hear is better now, was pretty atrocious at times back during the time I played. Crashes and huge lag and delays weren't uncommon, and not just that, but they happened almost seemingly at random. Nothing quite like being near the end of a several minute long hard mode dungeon run only to have the game give up and eat your entry pass along with your time. Or trying to move and attack and having a solid several seconds of time where animations happen, but nothing takes effect until everything up to that point happens all at once. 3. Bots, God, the bots. This created the normal issue you tend to see, lots of gold seller advertisements flooding chats and a bunch of clearly bot accounts just littering the hub area all the time. Let's be real though, that part's not abnormal for any MMORPG anymore, especially grindy Korean ones. But the way the dev team handled it baffles me. Basically, any player can target another and report if they suspect botting/AFK/cheating tools. Then, a sort of "quiz" pops up where you have to click specific images before the time runs out. If you fail, you get booted, and your account receives a strike and timeout. Three strikes, you're gone forever. The issue with this was they attached a *500% EXP BOOST REWARD* to the person who made the report if the player gets struck. This led to a lot of malicious nonsense since the exp grind was so awful where innocent people would get reported just for sitting still for more than thirty seconds in a field. I can speak to experience with that from a time I moved myself intentionally out of the way of mobs in a field to go to the restroom for a couple minutes, came back to a bot check nearly done, and got a strike. Given reports among friends and groups I was in at the time, I clearly wasn't the only one. Just a system ripe for abuse. 4. RNJesus rules DMO, and RNJesus is a cruel, malevolent god that has its fingers dipped into every element to specifically work against you. Digicloning, a necessary process for strengthening your digimon's four basic stats for endgame? Anything past the first 3 - 6 ranks basically requires reinforcement to ensure you don't fail, or worse, lose a rank. And if you wanted the best stat increase and not the lowest possible, better have the very rare, specific version of a Digiclone item, or try your luck with various resets. Trying for a Digiegg that's better than 3/5 (scale) so you can make them bigger and alter their base stats? Without a guaranteed rank Digiegg, which is either bought from the cash shop or earned through specific events, good friggin' luck, you'll be fortunate to get a 4/5 after I kid you not, 50 attempts. I've spent days on-end trying to go for the items needed to get the Miracle Digiegg from the Keramon dungeon with no luck, and each time I did and tried to make something with it, the attempts always failed. 5. The cash shop is atrocious. Plain and simple, it always has been, with items you basically NEED to advance into the later game being locked behind a pay wall of at least a few dollars for things like Burst Modes or whatnot. The introduction of loot boxes and them becoming just a normal thing with every new Digimon though was the point where I'd finally started to pull my head from my arse and distance myself. Basically every Digimon and special evolution introduced now is part of a loot box that's not only fairly expensive, but only has a 0.1% chance to get the thing you want from it. These new Digimon too are all fairly powerful, and all of them fairly popular or at least attractive for collection, so they know people will be willing to spend the heavy bucks to try for them. It's very intentionally predatory and disgusting. So again, I need to emphasize, don't ever try this game if you've considered it, and if you are stuck in it like I was, please get out, however you can, and stay out. DMO is not worth it, no franchise would ever be worth putting yourself through what a game like this will do to you.

Would love to see a digimon mmo that uses a setting like ark without so much survival crafting and emphasis on challenging combat and exploration. Maybe have some dynamic events where a big bad starts up on part of the isle, perhaps threatening friendly hub areas. That digimon and its underlings can be strategically engaged to retake control and end the threat. Some fun dialog interactions with wild digimon that can result in item gains, favors, or difficulty ramp for the encounter rather that just mobs for the slaughter could make for some immersive alternative approach game play Alas, a pipe dream

It sucks cause a proper Digimon mmo with love and thought put into it would be incredible.

As a Digimon fan, this hurts. Like you have *no* idea. Despite how they've been marketed outside of Japan, Pokemon and Digimon really have never been competing. The reason is because Digimon literally only started as the male-oriented equivalent to Tamagotchi, it's a Virtual Pet on a keychain that you raise and battle with other V-pet owners to make them evolve and grow strongers. There has been a trading card game, there have been countless video games, but Digimon as a franchise has literally never been competing with Pokemon. Digimon is still immensely popular and financially successful in Japan, but in the US it's barely even remembered. Which is why it sucks to see a franchise that would be so incredibly AMAZING in an MMO setting has only ever been given one attempt, and that attempt is such a fucking cash-grab gacha garbage trainwreck that has only gotten worse since the original launch. If you haven't, go and play Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory, then fucking imagine that in an MMO setting. It's genuinely a tragedy that this is all Digimon fans have gotten, and it's mostly because Digimon has honestly failed everywhere outside of Japan. There's an entirely new reboot anime of the original Digimon Adventure anime that still hasn't been dubbed in english. You would think that would be enough nostalgia bait but... No one really cares.

15:30 complementing the enemy design isn't complementing the game, it's complementing the source material/franchise the developers just used existing designs.

I played this game a lot before just because it was Digimon and just wandering around with the Digimon I had (I never spent money on the game, but had luck with my event given ones and later on the game became a bit more forgiving on letting you gather the stuff up needed for evolutions from daily logins or playing a certain amount of hour a day) gave some level of entertainment value, but I haven't touched it in years so it was weird to see how much has changed in how the game kicks off. Originally there was no "large scale", "climactic" fight at the start of the tutorial. You started in the sewers, got some much quicker elaboration on how the combat goes, then you got to the overworld which was the same city, but way smaller. Had the hatching tutorial there and you were sesentially allowed to go to the Digital World after a few quicker "sidequests". The area shown in the later part in the video isn't even the place you originally go to at first. That one was something you could only access much later if you were higher level. Originally it moved you to Wild West Town and it """tried""" to adapt the story of Savers instead of throwing you into the random sidequests of that area for "story". Although the change to throw one in there is something I'm not surprised, a few years ago before I stopped playing the game started giving new players essentially a huge kick off boost where they could skip the tutorial parts and just teleport to that area right away where they can obtain another Digimon from an event egg and gain so much XP that you go from level 1 to around 65 or so. Seems like they thought it was a good idea to cut the aspect that could have provided some form of engagement.

About 15 or so years ago, I played my first MMOs. The one that hooked me at the time was Fiesta Online, partly because it was free, ran on my very low quality set up, and was pretty. I spent hours playing it. I even revisited it recently for the nostalgia. And when I saw this game I was very confused, because it looked a LOT like Fiesta Online. The UI is practically the same, at least the same as it was back then. The "forest beach" map, while having different trees, also looks exactly like one of the first maps you go to in the game. The mobs, the placement of the terrain, etc etc. Makes me wonder how much they just grabbed from other games...

hey Josh, i am a Digimon fan who spend an ungodly amount of time on this particular game and i must say, it gets worse at endgame. the opening scene is a reference to the ending of a movie that was only released in Japan; the tutorial used to be based on the beginning of one of the anime seasons, but somehow the developers made it even less accurate to the anime by trying to make it faster, the earlier levels of the game have an alright original plot that makes you go trough a different area, but now it is obscured because the tutorial ( which is the third time they tried to remake the tutorial) skips your progression to the mid game portion thank you for covering the game tho, most fans accepted this sore excuse of a game, not simply because there was nothing better on the market, but because there was literally nothing else, since the game launched on a time where Bandai had given up on localizing the games to the west

As a digimon fan i can say that ive been loking foward to this, the ammount of farming one needs to take to get an ultimate is so exhausting, let alone a super ultimate like omegamon or ogudomon

I remembered really enjoying this as a kid when it came out and recently tried to come back to it but even with all the nostalgia I couldn't play for more than a few hours before getting very, very bored.

I found your content when you did LOTRO. I watched it because it is one of the MMOs I actually play. Now I am watching all of your content because its super entertaining, even when I don't play the game (most of them). You should try your hand at City of Heroes. It is an older game with a dedicated fan base that has been revived as a private server for free. I would love to see a video about that.

One day i want Josh to make a Tier list of all the "Worst MMORPGs" he has played, it will be long, but it would be so much fun.

The whole evolution thing for Digimon gets even muddier when you consider in most of the games they can jump "species" or cross evolve or other nonsense and what you start with won't likely even be in the same zip code of where it ends up. It's great.

Your sign comment at 25:00 got me. Thought I was already subscribed, but I fixed that. Well played sir.

I swear I have played this game many many many years ago, maybe around 10 years as a kid. The music and models are all the same, I don't remember the tutorial or the character selection screen but you played in a city and there were tons of people just like this. I was thinking to myself "Hmmm maybe this is very similar game, but it's not the same" but once I heard the music I knew. I can't believe I remember that soundtrack after so long.

I found this game back in 2015, there were three weeks left of my senior year at my military high school. One of my classmates, and my closest friend at the school was also a Digimon fan. I suggested we try the game out. We actually had a lot of fun playing it together. We'd hop into each other's room after study hours and play for 45 minutes before 10 pm (When we had to be back in our rooms and lights had to be out). One day we worked the command post (essentially two cadets would be at the front desk greeting visitors, calling formation and special events, that kinda thing just all day) and we played the game all day together. Overall in those last three weeks, we probably had close to a hundred hours. While this game may be an embarrassingly bad MMO and Digimon game, I'll always have super fond memories of playing it those last three weeks of high school with one of my best friends, who I still chat with to this day.

14:26 "This is the MMO equivalent of a school dinner." I've never heard THOSE two words together in my life, until this. This quote alone is enough to inform new players what they're getting into.

Just finished the entire Playlist. Great work! Really enjoyed the series. You plan on doing more?

If I recall right, this is actually a remade version of the original from years ago. It's changed company hands two or three times, the tutorial section was rehauled each time as well as what was pay gated and what wasn't being changed. So this version isn't the same version I enjoyed years ago where the pay gates weren't nearly as terrible, just upped drop rates or growth compared to...this...

As someone who has 1000s of hours spent playing DMO over almost a decade I can say it’s absolutely terrible game, but man I just love Digimon so much I could never stop playing

This game was tight when it released. GM's would enact scenarios, host dungeon runs, and pvp events. The areas would be super laggy from all of the digimons walking around Great times

I'm two minutes into the video and got a popup from Malwarebytes reminding me to do a scan EXACTLY as you mentioned Xing Code 3. Since the video was fullscreen I didn't realise it wasn't a joke reference and thought it was just a bit xD

I think many people who still play old MMOs that should have died a long time ago play them for the same reason people play stuff like Second Life, especially if the game had a spectacular release hype like this had. They were very unlucky in real life, so these became their lives where they can actually have social connections without the judgement and grimness of whatever they experienced outside. Now they're clinging onto the things with their dear life and would have an extremely hard time letting go of them.

I remember playing it close to launch because of how desperate Digimon fans were at the time for pretty much any sort of content. That opening cutscene wasn't in the original, and it makes absolutely no sense since it's a straight rip from a movie that isn't even related to the series they originally used for material. Also, another thing you didn't touch on is that collecting Digimon is a miserable process. A grind for an egg with an abysmally low drop chance, compounded by yet further grinding for resources to pump into an egg, made yet worse by the resources having the chance to do either jack squat or destroying your egg and forcing you to restart the process. A bit damning for a series based on creature collection to have the act of collecting the creatures themselves be tantamount to banging your head on a wall for a full 36 hours until something happens.

Digimon is a franchise that has so much potential but is constantly being mismanaged. I grew up as both a Pokemon and Digimon fan and what I really appreciated about Digimon was how it was more mature and adventurous when compared to pokemon and willing to go into more dark places (e.g. Digimon Tamers). It's honestly a real shame what has happened to the franchise. Fun Fact: the only game I've played to ever make me throw a controller is Digimon World 4. Premise behind the game sounds cool, but my god is the execution absolutely horrible.

8:13 It is the kind of music I would use to stress out prisoners if I was running a totalitarian reeducation camp.

Oh geez. I remember playing this for a short while. I just wanted to see if I could get myself a Dorumon without having to pay because it’s my favorite. Short answer was yes but the “free” one didn’t have good digivolve options.

Unfortunately, when it came out, it was the only current english digimon content AT ALL., and stayed that way for many years. We really were being held hostage, it was this or nothing. I'm sorry you subjected yourself to it.

I played this. THOUSANDS of hours put into this during my high-school days and several years because I grew up with Digimon and when I found this I thought it was some joke fan thing and turned out it was a real thing. Back when I played it years ago though, it was ran by a small-ish studio called Joymax who did their best to run it. They'd even go ingame to interact with players with events and free items and actually had nice cash shop sales. [Like 1 dollar for a bunch of really popular digimon] Unfortunately some stuff happened and they had to give the game over to Movegames, who ran the Korean version of DMO. From there it went downhill. The game gradually turned more and more into one giant gacha grind game, with ALL of the best Digimon being locked behind a 0.1% chance in different lootboxes, along with cash campaigns to get people to spend a ton of money in a two week span for a special limited time Digimon. These campaign Digimon ran from making people spend 100 dollars minimum to upwards of 300+ dollars, and most of these campaign-only Digimon were WORSE then what you could get gambling for the 0.1% Digimon from the various lootboxes. Pay 100-300 bucks during a short 2-week period for a reliable, but not as strong, Digimon, or gamble away possibly hundreds for a chance at the best Digimon in the game. Pick your poison. This also isn't including the insane grinding needed for resources. Need clone items to max your Digimon's stats? Either grind for dozens of hours for the items or spend some money to buy them in buld. By the way most of the "free" clones are completely RNG based how much they'll raise a state, so better hope you get the max roll or you'll LOWER YOUR OWN CLONING LEVEL to try again for a max roll. How about Digimon Seals? Mandatory for permanent statboosts. How do you get seals? Grinding certain Digimon for 3000 OF THEM FOR THE MAX EFFECT. But you also need an item to UNLOCK the seals so you can use them, how you get the items? Random events or the cash shop. Even your Tamer's equipment matters. Jewelry? Either do the endgame raids or buy them for millions from another player. Think you're set? Think again: the stats the jewelry gives are RANDOM. But don't worry, they have certain items that can change your stats: via the cash shop or randomly through some events. Timed Costumes for extra stats? Events or cash shop. Even regular Clothing? Endgame raid random drops or buy from others for millions. You even have to grind to level up your Digimon's Attributes and Type so they will deal more damage to certain Digimon. [You mentions this in the vid, but I can promise you type matchups do exist: just none of them matter until you're at 100% Attribute, which can take hours to grind as you MUST kill things of an equal-ish level of what you are strong against to increase it, unless you're a DATA Digimon, in which case you have to do a completely different mechanic to increase you're attributes to 100%. The amount of grinding in this game is awful and it's designed that way to really try and push players to spend money. On top of ALL of that, despite having SO many Digimon in this game: only about a small handful of said available Digimon are even viable for use at the endgame, because much of the endgame is developed with the Lootbox Digimon in mind in terms of Bosses HP being millions upon millions so you need a ton of DPS to mow them down, as well as the insanely high damage from the Bosses UNAVOIDABLE AOE'S [Some bosses can even spam multiple AOE's in a row, and they are INSTANT so you just have to know when they happen and then heal fast.] I could rant about this game for hours and how abysmal it has become, and I haven't even touched on the massive botting/hacking problem this game has as well [Bots are everywhere farming stuff 24/7 and you can easily have your account hacked too.] I finally quit the game several years ago and never looked back. I'll always have my fond old memories of Digimon Masters Online during those Joymax days, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a money-starved company ruin those good times I had. One of the reviews said it best: I know you're starving for a Digimon Game... But. Just. Don't.

I used to play this a lot under its first management company, when it wasn't TOO MUCH of a pay2win game. It was mostly a farm simulator where you just got more and more digimon, trained them, raised and enhanced their stats and then stored them lmao. But at least everything was obtainable to some extent or not too expensive in the cash shop. Nowadays, even if the game has some more purpose and endgame content, it's gated by the loot boxes, digimon upgrades that unless you pay, they can fail 90% of the time, so it may have more content, but it's not worth it. It's sadly one of those games that if you didn't play from early days to build yourself slowly or pay up now. You'll take forever to catch to the actual content and by the time you do, you'll most likely need to rearrange again due to some new update needing even stronger digimon (which luckily were also put into the same update via lootboxes)

Fun fact: the "Item Get/Thing Achieved" noise is clearly just the Nick Arcade "Reveal" music. Half expected to hear the "Overworld Maze Walk" motif.

Don't know when they changed the tutorial, especially the starting area, but I remember it being completely different and better structured when Joymax had the rights (they actually explained and utilized the Train/D-terminal in the main quest imagine that.) Either Game King got the short end of the stick, or they personally made the most important part of an MMO worse when it didn't even need such a massive rehaul.

You're probably never going to play another Digimon game, but for clarification, Digimon evolutions are not a straight line. Digimon can evolve into difference results, and a given result could have multiple progenitors. Different evolutions can have different conditions, or sometime be fusions. This is partially because different series can reuse/reintroduce previous mons, but also because there's actually a wide breadth of genres they've tackled with different prgression mechanics; Some are like Monster Rancher, some are like Pokemon, some are like Skylanders. The best example of evolution mechanics as well as just being a great game is Cyber Sleuth. Plays like something between Pokemon and Persona. There are many branching evolution paths, evolving increases that given mon's level cap, and that mon can unevolve into any of the potential progenitors with the new new moves, stat boost, and increased level cap. This means you can heavily customize builds and take powerful abilities from one powerful mon and put them on completely different mons. This also gives options for special evolution conditions, where some evolutions require higher levels or move that the base forms wouldn't normally have. If you're looking for a decent JRPG and wondering what the hell Digimon is about, Cyber Sleuth is a great option.

Un placer ver el video. Muchas gracias por hacerlo. Que tengas un excelente día también.

I unironically love this game, I run the Subreddit for it, which I guess says more about me really. They recently shut the UK/EU Servers and merged all the others, there's a lot of drama at a player level haha Subbed, thanks for the video!

The issue is the Digimon IP was licensed to a Korean Developer to make this MMO and all past Digimon MMOs for the past 15 years. If this game was made by Bandai we might actually have a legitimate game.

I played this game when it first came out A LOT has changed and this game has actually been owned by I believe 3 different companies. When I played there was ZERO tutorial like the one you got. It should also be noted that you used to start in a completely different area and had a completely different line of quests. Even though it didn't look as nice I actually preferred the old start area. I stopped playing this I wasn't like other players. Who would just play to level up every new new digimon to level 99. It really becomes a problem when you get a quest to kill a raid boss but no one is interested in fighting a old raid boss so your only option is try to level up to a point where you can solo it or prey you see someone else trying to do the same thing.

I'm a huge Digimon fan, and have done a few videos for this game (and almost all of them at this point) and gotta say I couldn't even last 5 hours playing this digiturd. Thanks for letting me see a bit more of this game without having to suffer it.

As someone who grew up with Digimon, still loves Digimon, and will advocate it's a great series for kids and adults... this saddens the heck out of me. I can't imagine how disappointed I would've been as a kid if my first experience with the series was this rather than the anime, or heck, one of the PS games.

I feel like once he hits 100. He needs to do a Tierlist of them all. Ranking the 100 he played and finding out which of the 100 is the WORST.

I don't know if it's a thought you have had Josh or something you have previously done and I have missed, but with 59 entries in the Worst MMO series now have you considered doing a tier list or top ten style compilation? I would love to hear your thoughts on which of the series you genuinely think are the worst/best of what you have endured on our behalf so far.

I think the only reason the models look nice is due to the fact that the parent company had really nice, reusable models made for each Digimon years ago, and they've been using in every 3d game since.

I clicked on this wondering if I might get a pleasant surprise like LotRO... I'm disappointed, and yet, not. Also, watching this series makes me desperately want to develop an mmo (titled SCAMMO, Shrieking Cats Associated MMO or something) and fill it with as many horrible things as I can find in this series. My sheet of ideas is running out of room.

Every single Digimon MMO has been bad...money grubbing, grindy, and low effort translations. The mobile games also keep getting launched and shutting down in 3-5 years only for them to make some new shiny one for a while. The single player games have been faring much better, Next Order and Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory were both great...shame that Survive has been delayed for so long. Maybe some news tonight at DigimonCon? But I agree with most fans to please give more GOOD content...

"And for some reason, despite playing on an English server, my digimon speaks to me and offers vital in-game advice IN SPANISH!" is a sentence that I am both surprised and not surprised to hear. Honestly confused on how to feel.

Digimon World 1 on PS1 was the best Digimon game we've ever had. Digimon Masters Online almost starts with the same foundation as Digimon World, at least in being a trainer and caring for your digimon in an MMO setting. But then it immediately decimates any semblance of possibly good gameplay with its horrendous store-brand MMO game design. The game changed hands from Joymax to some other company that has since destroyed what little good things were there. 100x more pay-to-play, 100x more useless grind, 100x more content paywall. I'm confident that the game is 90% bots and 10% trapped players in the Digital World. Please, please, any digimon loving game developers out there, please save digimon from the game development hell it has been tormented by for so long.

you're so funny bro, i literally play no mmo's but watch your videos cause your commentary is incisive and precise. top notch, really.

This game is an actual contender for Worst MMO ever. I'm a big fan of Digimon and dear lord this game is awful. Every system is made to frustrate you into spending money, its actually disgusting. I seriously cannot think of a single positive thing to say about this game.

This is going to HURT me bad. I love Digimon to death and adore the designs, the world, everything about it I could never get into this MMO, as much as I wanted to. I was hoping that maybe it was good, maybe I could give it another try some time I am glad for this video though. Maybe I can put it to rest, and hope a better Digimon MMO comes out some time in the future

That outro was hilarious! No one says “lindo dia” though, we say “que tengas un buen dia.” lindo means ‘cute’

That background music doesn't scream MMO...it screams "low budget 80s sitcom has a 'very special episode' about drug addiction".

My brother and I were obsessed with this game when we were young. I was even the guild master on one of the top 10 guilds on a server. I really think this game 100% rides on the nostalgia of older Digimon games and shows. All of the super powerful Digimon I loved as a kid were behind a giant paywall that I unfortunately did pay. This was the first MMO I ever played and I think my first experience of the social aspect of gaming which was why I kept playing. Also it’s crazy that Josh gets to the point that used to be endgame within this video.

What's really sad is that in terms of digimon MMOs, there were like two or three. When this game was ran by Joymax it wasn't TOO much better but still playable and much different in terms of story progression than what you've played and in my opinion it sadly was the best one out of all of them which says a lot about digimon MMOs back then.

Cant waint to see the Maplestory episode. That was like the first game I can remember that had a cash shop. Wonder if it even started that trend.

wow, it's been a long time since I haven't seen anything related to this game. I used to play it years ago, around 2015 I guess, and my initial experience was very different. Probably because I'm a big digimon fan, but also because they did change those first levels. For some time, it was so awesome to see my favorite digimon in those nice looking 3D models, and I got really excited about hatching new digimon, leveling them up, evolving, but then I realized how shallow the game mechanics were. Once I got all the digimon I wanted, I found no reason to continue. I uninstalled it, and never looked back. It's so frustrating that the gameplay consists only of spamming single target point and click abilities. It's just stat checking.

I remember playing this years ago. --- the joymax digimon masters (The original) It didn't have a tutorial (of any kind), the original maps were tiny, so you had to watch the loading screen over and over, since that big map was in pieces; the text boxes were different and the words were actually broken up and it was owned by the company Joymax, not Move Games. But even back then, it looked better and had less bugs. The gameplay was boring and later on they added the "X-antibody" digimon that forced you to grind for points, so you could transform into an X-Digimon, which drains the points; but making you strong enough to fight the bosses there. It was grinding for the right to grind more. --- realising the truth --- I told the people in my guild about this, I asked "why are we literally farming to be able to farm" and they told me "you just don't like the game anymore, do you?" and I realised what was going on. Either they were stupid or addicted; so I left and joined Guild Wars 2. Best choice ever!

This game was part of my teenhood and its predecessor Digimon Battle was one of my favourite games ever just due to the community and the friends and guild I met. (Founded the Checkmate guild and was a part of Oreo on Digimon Battle if anyone here remembers!) …That being said, modern DMO is a soulless gacha cash grab. It’s always had some bad RNG mechanics, but it’s depressing to see what it became.

for the broken text, including the random p in the name (and similar reason for random l or n in simiar broken text areas): all three, p, l and n is common character representing fromating, l or n is for linebreak (from nextline), sometimes, but much rarer nowdays c also used (carriege return, from the typwriter and some printer), p is of course the paragraph end letter, and those are poping up around broken text is expected, as it is broken because of the wrong usage of the formatting

I actually enjoyed this game when it first came out. That's how rare digimon games are. Just the ability to walk around with your favorite digimon was worth it. As other have said though, having GMs that actually cared was a pretty big deal that went towards making the gameplay less terrible feeling.

I used to play this back in the day, even got server first Magnamon on Seraphimon before it went to steam. It didn't have nearly the amount of issues in this video and back then it didn't have that big tutorial, either. I stopped playing shortly after the raid bosses started to get added and they started selling the fruit or whatever that gave you a guarenteed 130% digimon or something. Been a while. Game has actually gotten worse over time.

I stopped watching Digimon after 02 ended, and even I feel insulted by how bad this is. Also, Spanish Agumon sounds like a meme that was made after a off-hand joke made in the show, and fans just ran with it for a decade and a half.

As a native Spanish speaker, thank you, this video made my day, my month, my year, thank you so much xD

Loving this series...but there's one in particular I'm waiting for. I'm surprised you haven't found it yet 😆

As someone who still deeply loves Digimon, I have never once played this game. I saw what it was a mile away and refused to hurt my love for the franchise with this kind of lazy cashgrab. Thanks for letting me see what it's like without the need to lower myself to play it 😂

I don't know what's the timeslot in UK right now, but here in Brazil, this video is going to air at the same day as the Digimon Con. Now, here's some piece of trivia: 1) There are other two Digimon MMOs, both of which were developed by the same company behind DMO. The games are "Digimon RPG" (exclusive to Korea) and "Digimon Super Rumble" (still in beta, only in Korea). 2) Don't worry, we Digimon fans have good games, like the Digimon Story series.

Seeing you play this... man, it's changed A LOT. But, it also has kept A LOT of the same stuff, and not for the better. Yes, the grind is insane, yes, the quests are very repetitive. Back when I played it (think early 2010s), what I remember loving the most was exploring. Hoping I had enough items and my Digimon were strong enough to explore. Pick up quests and hope to finish them to reap the rewards before my items were used. I really liked the feeling it gave me of exploring a new world with my Digimon Partner. Played it again, 4 years after initially doing so. The amount of p2w stuff was wild. You had more rewards thrown your way, but in the end, for me it was always about getting new companions (I remember loving my Kunemon and Biyomon so much), but... well... the GRIND to get enough eggs to fully be able to hatch the digimon you wanted was insane, I'm sure still is. Unless you bought it with real money, it took you hours, if not days or weeks. "Horrible/10" is a perfect summary, when looked at objectively. For any other Digimon content, I'd stick with the "Digimon World" line or "Digimon Story" ones. More RPGs, and the first one is better and more rewarding on the grind, I'd say.

Man your school missed out, I was really into monster rancher, pokemon, and digimon! Still am

I'll be honest: I let nostalgia took me and played this game. I LOVE the Digimon Franchise, I loved the series, spent my elementary until mid-highschool days playing the first three Digimon Worlds on the PSX (which you should review one of these days at Josh Strife Plays), but last 2017 I was definitely on a nostalgia high and signed up and played Digimon Masters Online. I could not agree more on your statement that this was a definitive insult to Digimon fans, but I was fueled by nostalgia. I loved the environment, the music, the Digimon designs, seeing my Digimon follow me, and basically being part of a Digimon World. However. The game is TEDIOUSLY MUNDANE AND REPETITIVE, GRINDY AS HELL, lacking in story, and a giant ass paywall for premium features. And because of my love for the brand, it led me to spend almost $100 just to get Digimon I liked, only to go back to the same routine of just walking up to Digimon and killing x amount of enemies. Once the nostalgia trip faded after a few months, I got the equivalent of a post-nut clarity: _This game is just brand, no substance, or form._ I agree, the Digimon Franchise has yet to make a decent Digimon game (Cybersleuth, and the DW1 Remake was "eh" at best) but this? *_This was a sacrilegous display saying that 'this is a Digimon game'._*

I've binged the last couple of days through a lot of you're "Worst MMO Ever?" - Series and I've to admit even with your added critique this game was too boring to watch everything in one sitting :(

Every time josh i always look from the second monitors when you say that word

This game was my childhood and so deared to me, luckily my mother language is spanish, I had the luck to start playing with my ever favorite Digimon (Lopmon) but never got to the point to get finally Cherubimon... it was really painful to level

I absolutely played the mess out of this game with my friend. Horribly monetized but it's just so fun collecting your favorite Digimon

I remember playing this a few years back with my best friend. I was having fun... until I finally got to the map with Garurumon (my all time favorite digivolution line) and I had to make them drop an egg if memory serves, so then I could hatch it in a machine for A CHANCE to successfully hatch it into either a Gabumon or Garurumon (I don't recall which), otherwise I'd just lose the egg and it was back to farming. It failed 34 times in a row, I was farming for literally days (I played about 4 hours a day or so) and after day 3 or so I was like "Nope! Fuck this!" and I haven't touched it since. What an effing joke.

Hoping you yet cover Dragon Nest. It was the first MMO I'd ever played, and I haven't played that game in a long, long, long time. So I got curious lately, and decided to jump back into it. ...It feels like 28 Days Later, when the protagonist wakes up in the hospital, naked, wandering for a few hours into the city, searching for any signs of human life. When I finally did find it, I just kind of avoided them, cuz who can you really trust in an apocalyptic, dying world? In a last pathetically desperate attempt to pull in any stragglers left in the apocalyptic city, the devs set up a bot in the world chat that unabashedly instructs you to type in "God Game Dragon Nest" for cool loot... It essentially gives you a ring that turns you into Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen. +50000 Physical & Magic attack power, +15000 Physical & Magic defense, and +300000 HP. Utterly unstoppable

6:15 Oh I agree. But this often feels like part of the show's personality sometimes. And this has become less a thing as the seasons have gone by keeping the evolution lines more logical. Most of this is hand waved by how the digital world was created from data from the interest slapped together like your dreams are glued together. So these simulated lifeforms are like 19th century archeologists putting together the first dinosaur bones.

"If I were a Digimon fan, I would be insulted by this." Sorry Josh i'm going to have to disagree with you here. As a Digimon fan, i'm offended and out right feel attacked by it's existence. It being in my presence is an afront to my eyes, braincells, and ears. I personally give it a "somehow worse that Digimon: Frontiers" out of 10

It's like a cash-grab asset-flip game, but the shop doesn't work, the assets are licensed from a major franchise, and the game is at pre-alpha playability. It's like a mattress store without employees - expensive fluff without context. Also, probably laundering money somehow.

6:55 Agent 47 in the background tying up loose ends. 14:53 I remember those days during Christmas with the family 🤣

The best part is that there was another digimon MMO that was much better called Digimon battle online. But unfortunately, its only hosted on private servers now, but management of them has been pretty hit or miss for me.