Digimon World: Data Squad is yet another Digimon game, and this time, you have joined DATS (aka Data Squad). Now you and your partner, Agumon (after all, how could it be a Digimon game without an Agumon), will face off against the Seven Demon Kings.

Visually, Data Squad is pretty good. The levels, while not necessarily huge, have a lot of variety and details that make the scenery interesting to roam through. As far as character models, Marcus (your character) and the rest of the members of DATS look pretty good. The Digimon themselves look just like their TV show counterparts.

The game's music has a rock feel to it that does a pretty good job of getting you excited and really into the battles. Voicework is okay, but nothing spectacular, for the most part it gets the job done. I have to say there were a couple of times when the voice just didn't fit the look of the character. This was especially noticeable on some of the bigger Digimon.

Digimon World: Data Squad is a game based on the upcoming animated series by the same name. Like I mentioned above, you will control Marcus on his quest to find five missing children and figure out why wild Digimon have started acting aggressively.

Data Squad is an RPG where you will fight your Digimon against the wild ones found throughout the Digital World in order to get him or her to digivolve into stronger fighters. You start off with your Agumon, but eventually your party is joined by other Data Squad members who have a Lalamon, a Gaomon and a Falcomon.

Levels are open areas where you run around trying to either find someone in particular or hunt down a target Digimon. As you run around the location, you will be stopped by random encounter battles. As you would expect from a Digimon game, depending on how you fight in the battles, your Digimon might evolve. This game's evolution system is pretty intricate and was one of the reasons I got pulled into it so well.

In the Pause Menu, you can view the Galactic Evolution Map. Here, you choose a galaxy that represents the Digimon you are curious about. The camera zooms into that Digimon as a constellation within that galaxy. The different paths your Digimon can go spread out from that Digimon as other constellations. For instance, if you want to evolve your Agumon into a GeoGreymon, you just move your view to the right and check the requirements for that particular evolution. Requirements come in many forms. Some require you to open a certain number of chests, or use certain types of moves in battle, while others won't trigger until you've faced a certain level of opponent many times. There are even some criteria that requires your Digimon to be in a particular mood (more on "moods" later).

Once you've achieved the requirements, an option in the fight screen will appear to DigiSoul Charge. When this happens, your Digimon evolves and becomes the new form with new attacks. It will stay that form until you tell it to evolve again. The interesting aspect of this system is that you are not stuck on any particular path. If you want your Agumon to evolve into Guilmon, but he is currently Greymon, once you meet the criteria, you will still be able to change him to the new form. The best part is, once it digivolves into that form once, you can manually change it to that form again via the Galactic Evolution Map.

This Evolution Map is a great feature that really pulls in someone with my gaming habits, those habits being the collector tendencies where I feel I'm not done with a game until I've gotten all the goodies. Since the map tells you exactly what you need to do in order to earn a new evolution, I found my battle styles were very different depending on what I was trying to unlock. It's because of that same reason that I took longer than I would have otherwise with this game since I found myself not wanting to continue the story since I was always "so close" to unlocking a new Digimon.

I don't think I ever found Digimon World: Data Squad to be hard. There were times when the game got a bit tedious as the random encounters happened just a bit more frequently than I cared for, but I never found myself really thinking I wasn't going to make it through the game. Granted, there were a few battles that were tough, mostly the ones against the bigger Mega-Digimon, but for most of the game, I was able to blow through the battles.

I think one of the reasons the game was so easy was because winning most battles yielded at least one HP Charge (an item that restores some of your Digimon's health), and even if it didn't, one of Lalamon typically had some sort of healing move available, so I was rarely in the red with any of my Digimon.

The most interesting aspect of Digimon World: Data Squad, besides the previously mentioned Evolution Map, is the in-battle move selection and your Digimon's mood.

When it comes time to select a move to use in battle, you have four types of choices, Action, Escape, Guard and Support. Action is used for your various attacks, Escape are your various ways of fleeing, Guard are status modifiers and Support are things the tamer can do for the Digimon to alter its mood or use items.

What is interesting about this system is, your Digimon has moves that it wants to use. You can tell which moves it wants to use based on the moves that appear around him on the screen. If it has a couple of attacks, but one shows up a whole lot on the screen, then that is the attack it thinks will do the most good. If it feels like it can't win the battle, then several Escape moves will appear. If it feels it, or its team mates need a boost, then it will show some Guard moves. Choosing moves that your Digimon wants to use increases how good the Digimon feels about itself and how much it likes you as a tamer.

Like I just mentioned, if your Digimon starts to feel defeated and it wants to flee, instead of just running away, you can change its mood by selecting different options in the Support set. Most of these moves are statements the in-game tamer will yell out to the Digimon in order to alter its attitude. For instance, choosing the Cheer Up option increases its Iron-Will and keeps it from wanting to run away. Other options like Compliment decrease its Sympathy and tend to remove some of the Guard options from the list of moves it wants to use. If you get a good feel for how these Support moves alter your Digimon's list of desired moves, you can manipulate it to show just the right commands for the situation.

Is Digimon World: Data Squad the best game out there? By no means. It has an issue with some tediousness because of the very frequent random encounters, but its fun to play for an hour or so at a time. If you are a fan of the license and you are always looking for Digimon in new situations, then Data Squad is probably a good purchase, otherwise it might be worth just a rent.