Part 3: Jungle City

I haven't heard of anything like that, though I have had them topdeck a convenient card on more than one occasion.



Jungle City...saint Cherubimon's ass, this city wound up being way harder than it should have been, because if you have a Red deck it's completely easy, but other colors have a much rougher time of it.



Okay, positive thoughts. I like Jungle City's music. It's similar to the Tropical Jungle theme from Digimon World, same sound effects and drum beat. This song, as well as the Battle Café theme, get re-used in Digimon World DS for some reason. Come to think of it, the Fusion Shop themes get re-used in Digimon World 3, so clearly someone on the dev team liked the music in this game a whole lot.



Inside the Battle Café is another character from Digimon Adventure 02...

...what the fuck? "Keely"? Her name in the dub is "Yolei". How the fuck did that happen?



Awkwardly written dialogue follows. Apparently the guy running the arena stopped giving out the passcode. Only real way to get any info is to clear the arena, so what are we waiting for?



Green Digimon have the fastest Evolution speed in the game. Most Green cards give 30 DP and cost 30 DP, so a Green deck gets to Champion on turn 1 frequently. They actually make a good case for taking the first turn - if you take the second turn, you attack first, which Red decks like, but if you take the first turn, you can get to Champion, survive one round of attacks, and possibly get to Ultimate on the following turn.



It's because of this that Vegiemon is one dangerous motherfucker. A Red deck obliterates him before he has a chance to hit Ultimate. Yellow decks don't have that kind of attack power most of the time.



Instead, ToyAgumon drops his HP down to where I can nail him in one hit. Man, I love that card. Why hasn't ToyAgumon been a main character's partner yet?



Since they rely on Evolution so much, let's ALTER their card color with an ALTAR card.

I'm sorry.

Anyways, changing their card color stops them from Evolving since the color has to match. This can also be used to change the color to something you'll do triple damage against.



And not a moment too soon, if he had gotten to Champion I might not be able to stop him from reaching Ultimate. By the way, you may be aware that a fourth level exists in Digimon called "Mega". In this game, all Mega-level Digimon are classed as Ultimates, either as an artifact of the previous card battle game being made before Megas existed, or because they thought a fourth level of card would be cumbersome.



Anyhow, Palmon gets knocked out, J-Mojyamon comes in and knocks out NiseDrimogemon, so I've brought in Rockmon, who appeared in Digimon World, this game, and then never again. Guess he just looks too generic.



The weakness of Vegiemon's deck is that the attack numbers you see are what you get. He doesn't use many cards to raise his attack or HP.



Next up is Ninjamon, who sports a fun deck gimmick. (I didn't say it was a good deck gimmick.)



He uses a lot of Evolution Options. Pictured here are Mutant Digivolve, which allows him to "Evolve" to a Digimon of the same level...



...and Digi-Devolve, which reverts him back to a previous level, but doubles the new Digimon's HP.



Now why would he downgrade himself? Despite the huge HP bank, he also now has less attack power, right? Well he also has the Gotsumon card, whose support effect doubles your attack power as long as your HP is higher than your opponent's, which it clearly is here.



Let's fix that right away. (please don't discard my partner)



(fuck!)



I'd like this gimmick if it weren't for the fact that Ninjamon has so many of those Evolution Options that they clog up his hand like crazy. Remember, they do absolutely NOTHING outside of the Evolution phase. Here he's started with a Champion out of desperation.

And yes, this card is called R-Gatomon, I presume it stands for "Real". Gatomon is a Champion-level Digimon, but for this game only they've made a Rookie Gatomon card as well since she's a potential partner - there are actually six partner cards you can get throughout the game.



Ninjamon then brings out Drimogemon, and Psychemon saves me from having to take a KO.



Now I'm starting to wish I had let him hit Ultimate, though I don't even know if Ninjamon has any of those. Well, this marks the first time in the LP I've Evolved to Ultimate, at least!



And it lasted all of one turn. There are various EXP bonuses for defeating Ultimates, evolving your partner to Ultimate, and I think you get a bonus for evolving to Ultimate in general.



I got a Digi-part that lets your partner's X attack triple in damage to a particular element...but look at that stat penalty! Well, actually, if Digmon equipped it he'd still have a 200-point X attack, that isn't too horrible.



Next up is Veedramon, who you might remember was Taichi Yagami's partner in the Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 Manga.

...I may or may not be the only one who knew that.



"V for Victory"? Sounds like that'd be the name of Veemon's deck, but okay.



Veedramon's deck is Green, but it focuses more on attack power. The Veedramon card actually costs 40 DP - unusual for Green Digimon - but boy is it a powerhouse. Let's stop him from getting there.



This card returns 3 discarded cards to the deck. I...have no idea why he used this, he has no cards in his discard pile...



I got some unlucky draws and even more unlucky trying to predict his attacks.



You know, some have found evidence that the computer is, ah, suspiciously good at predicting your attacks.



I was hoping to bring out Etemon, but after being KO'd twice, I discarded that idea and sent in Digmon instead.



Then I get my first KO, the second follows shortly after.



Then I draw the fucking perfect hand for getting Etemon out there, but I figured it was too late at that point, seeing as Digmon was about to get KO'd and I can't be messing around with only one chance left.



Well, thanks to ToyAgumon abuse, I am poised to finish him. He even has no cards left.



Would be great if somebody could get to Ultimate level.



It seems losing at cards was just too much for him!

...seriously what the hell. How do you pass out over a card game?



This is the longest arena so far! The final match is against Wormmon, who I used to like, but not anymore!



I never thought it was possible for Wormmon to be a threat, but there's a way, all thanks to everyone who voted I use Armadillomon.



Oh yeah, you can save after the third battle in any arena. On my first attempt, I foolishly decided not to!

There's also the Deck Data option. I never mentioned this until now because all it does is give you a sentence or two of information about the deck you're facing.



The Wormmon card is fucking pathetic. What it SHOULD have warned you about was THIS:



YEAH. He has four copies of that, and since I'm using a Yellow deck, him drawing that was basically a death sentence.

Wormmon is another of the opponents that uses a song from the TV show in the Japanese version. In this case, it's the theme of the Digimon Emperor. (yeah big time plot spoilers) They replaced that song in the US versions. It would suck if we had to hear that theme over and over again for several battles in a row.



I lead out with Hagurumon, the first Digimon so far to have the Crash ability. Crash is a LOT of fun in a Yellow deck. What it does is inflicts damage equal to your HP, then drops your HP all the way down to 10. There are dozens upon DOZENS of ways you can use this ability to your advantage beyond simple desperation. I've made entire decks around it!



The animation for it with 3D animations turned off still manages to be fun.



What. I did not expect that card to show up so soon. You can imagine the kind of hijinks this thing causes.



Internally, the game counts Armors as a level between Rookie and Champion, so if you have an Armor out and he just has a Rookie, this card is perfectly usable.



Wormmon is also a possible partner, though you have to wait awhile for a shot at getting him. The partners we can't pick at the start are Patamon, Gatomon, and Wormmon, and they all have two armors you can get, even though in the show Patamon and Gatomon only had one armor, and Wormmon had none.

There are actually TEN armors for each of the six partners in the Digimon canon, but that's way too many for one season of a show, a CD drama, and whatever other media there is featuring Armors. Armors still appear in other settings even when there aren't any Digi-Eggs to make it possible. (Or maybe there always are?)



Man, I used to write off X Attack Disc as being useless, all it does is double your X attack power. Except my card effect took place before Wormmon's, so I still got a KO here.



Didn't take much longer for the early mole to catch the worm.



Yeah you can probably guess where the plot is going, for some freakish reason Ken decided he wanted to take over the Digital World Of Card Games. We get no rewards for completing that arena and Wormmon scurries away.



Fortunately, if you head back to the Café and talk to Veedramon, he hands over the passcode and we can be on our merry way. Thanks, Veedramon! Let's hope the other NPCs are this cooperative.

HOWEVER! There is something you should take note of. Your save file in this game tracks how much of the game you've completed, represented by a percentage. Now that Wormmon has left Jungle City's arena, it technically counts as a separate arena - so completing it a second time is worth completion percentage. Many players made it to the very end of the post-game and completed everything, only to find they were at 98.7% or something despite having all cards and Digi-parts. Jungle City's "new" arena is one of the possible culprits.

You don't win anything for having a 100% save (although you do get a bonus Ultimate card for clearing the arena again) but it's still something that people were confused about for quite awhile.



You know how "hell freezing over" is a metaphor for something completely impossible?

It just did.