Digimon Survive is the upcoming survival RPG that promises to take the Digimon franchise in a darker direction than previous installments. Featuring a unique blend of tactical RPG elements with a visual novel styled narrative, Digimon Survive offers a unique experience compared to the rest of the games in the franchise.

Over the years, the Digimon franchise has become known for its versatile game adaptations as it spans numerous genres like RPGs, dungeon crawlers, racing games, fighters and more. Though Digimon Survive will explore a new style of gameplay, there are plenty of other Digimon games that showcase the franchise at its best and fans won't want to miss these titles.

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While Digimon has constantly evolved over the years, it wasn't until Digimon Story that the franchise decided to place more emphasis on the narrative together with the monster-collection mechanics. The Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth duology has players assume the role of a cyber detective or hacker as they navigate the digital world to uncover a mystery. The turn-based battle system is one of the most refined in the Digimon franchise and there are hundreds of Digimon to train and collect. Fans waiting for Digimon Survive should try the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth games to see how the franchise has shifted its focus towards narrative-driven games.

Despite its initial lukewarm reviews, Digimon World 3 has retained a dedicated fanbase over the years and remains a classic RPG for the original PlayStation. Digimon World 3 took a different direction from its predecessors by shifting towards a JRPG style of gameplay. Players navigate an overworld while randomly battling against wild Digimon as the main character becomes trapped in an online MMORPG when terrorists attack. Digimon World 3 greatly refined the mechanics of Digimon games at the time and remains a testament to how well the digivolution mechanics could be developed.

Digmon World: Re:Digitize is easily one of the best games in the franchise due to the way it modernized many of the mechanics and paved the way for the success of the Digimon Story series. Based on the mechanics of the original Digmon World game, there is an emphasis on real-time combat as well modernizing the virtual pet mechanics of training, raising, and feeding. Unfortunately, the game has never seen a release outside of Japan despite a massive online campaign for its localization. As a result, players will need to use a fan-made translation patch to experience the game. Nonetheless, Digmon World: Re:Digitize stands out from its predecessors and is a fundamental reason that the Digimon series has experienced a resurgence in the past few years.

Digimon World: Next Order builds off the success of Japanese-exclusive Digimon World: Re:Digitize by incorporating open-world mechanics together with standard RPG elements. Similar to previous games, Digimon World: Next Order mostly comprises of raising Digimon through battles or interactions but features two partner Digimon instead of one. It also featured an interesting AI battle system where Digimon mostly fought in real-time on their own while players could issue commands or give them items. Though its story was weaker than other Digimon games, Digimon Survive fans will find the strategic combat system quite interesting.

Digmon World Dawn and Digimon World Dusk are beloved by Digimon fans for its additions to the monster-collecting mechanics as well as the introduction of brand new Digimon. While its story was lackluster and the localization could be hit or miss, Digimon World Dawn/Dusk brought exciting new changes to the DigiFarm, Digivolutions, and multiplayer mode. Though many of the mechanics weren't revolutionary by any means, Digimon World Dawn/Dusk helped streamline them for a more modernized approach.

Digimon Survive is currently in development for PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.

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