Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers

Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers is one of the best-rated games built on the Digimon brand and also a showcase of how well Bandai's own license fit its own console. The player finds themselves in a digital world, collecting and raising digital monsters and sending them into turn-based battles, and the core of the fun lies less in the story than in the effort to raise the best possible team. Digimon evolve according to how the player treats them, what battles they're allowed, and how they're cared for, so two playthroughs side by side can end up with completely different lineups.

The development system is the most interesting part of the whole. Instead of simple level climbing, a whole range of stats is tracked, and the resulting shape of the monster is a reward for long-term care, which creates strong motivation to experiment. On top of that comes trading and linking between players, which gave raising an extra dimension, and plenty of content referencing the second anime series, which was peaking at the time. Technically it's a colorful, clear title with well-executed monster portraits that manages to cram a lot of stats onto a small display without becoming illegible, and the music keeps a brisk, adventurous tone familiar from the source material.

At the time, Digimon games were part of what sold the WonderSwan to a younger audience, since the brand was at the height of its popularity in Japan and Bandai used it systematically on its own console. Tag Tamers holds a reputation among them as the most accomplished entry precisely because of the depth of raising, which surprisingly holds up well even next to later games in the series. Today it's mainly interesting for monster-collecting fans who want to see how the approach to raising creatures can differ from the Pokémon way; the language barrier is noticeable, but the system can also be understood through experimentation. The reward is the feeling that the team you've raised is truly your own creation, not just the result of how many hours you spent grinding experience in one forest.