After many years of delays and development team shifting, Digimon Survive is set to finally launch this week to the delight of fans of the digital monster franchise. Ahead of its release, PlayStation and Bandai Namco have put out a new blog post detailing what to expect from Digimon Survive's Karma system and how it will impact the player's story experience.Digimon Survive is the latest entry that's set to introduce a different take on the storied franchise. Following the story of several teenagers on a camping trip who end up in the digital world, Digimon Survive is a visual novel with elements of tactical battles and is set to introduce a much darker tone to Digimon with a heavy emphasis on player choice. The new Karma system will add on to that sentiment rewarding player choices as they progress through the game.In the blog post, Associate Manager John Liao goes into great detail as to how the Karma system will change the player experience. In Digimon Survive, there will be a Karma score that is directly impacted by player choice such as what the player decides to do in the morning or choosing to fight or flee. Karma is broken down into three different categories that impacts the growth of main protagonist Takuma's Digimon, Agumon or the other types of Digimon a player has access to.
The three categories of Karma are called Moral, Harmony and Wrathful. Each are denoted by a color, and as the name of each implies, are pretty straight forward in their descriptions. Moral focuses on justice, is denoted by yellow, and allows access to Vaccine type Digimon. Harmony focuses on cooperation, is denoted by a green color, and shares compatibility with Data type Digimon. Wrathful focuses on achieving the objective no matter what, is denoted by red, and attracts Virus type Digimon. Depending on which way a player gravitates to, it will directly correlate to the recruitment of certain Digimon and the Digivolution path they have access to.
Liao ends by noting there is no right and wrong answer, which is typically the case for games of this nature as they strive to reward player experimentation. However, it is important to note that the game features a rock-paper-scissors combat system where certain Digimon have an advantage over others. Liao breaks it down as "Vaccine > Virus > Data > Vaccine."
Digimon Survive looks like it's shaping up to be quite the shift in the franchise that was once considered to be a challenger to Pokemon. In light of Pokemon considerably changing over the years, hopefully this is what Digimon needs to breathe new life into the franchise.
Digimon Survive is scheduled to launch on July 29 for PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
