So this guy goes out one day and happens upon a vagabond floppy disk. He takes it home, loads it up on his computer, and watches in amazement as a girl pops out of his monitor. Then some giant mecha land outside his house; female pilots emerge from the machines and congregate with the disk-born chick, who can control the mighty pink mecha. They hang around for a while, lounging, talking, and bathing (but not doing anything particularly naughty). Then some mean girls show up in their own giant mecha, along with an unpleasant "copy" of the first girl. A showdown takes place, the copy is eliminated, the mean girls move in with the rest of the bunch, and they all decide to play janken.
That's a good chunk of the odd Digital Angel story. DA is a digital comic (if you haven't already guessed) with primary menu commands (Talk, Watch, Think, etc.) displayed in English. The most appealing element here is the art; the visuals aren't typical old anime-comic fare. The game has a distinctive appearance, and I found myself looking forward to each new screen. The music is also really cool (for a while, at least).
Odd plot + anime girls + English menu + distinctive art + good music usually equals a worthwhile game, but DA is actually a bit borderline. The story really loses steam during its second half. There are various Game Over and premature End screens, and while the Game Overs can usually be evaded easily, the only way to get the "true" ending is to master a "Slot Game," which can be very annoying and frustrating (and the true ending sucks anyway). I played the game a number of times and changed up my choices enough so that I believe I've seen pretty much every scene there is; unfortunately, the art and audio lost some of their allure during this wearisome process.
Digital Angel is by no means a poor product, but with the nice ingredients it has going for it, it should've made a more favorable impression on me than it did. I really enjoyed my initial experience with the first half of the story, but the aforementioned problems ultimately drag the game down a digital comic tier or two.
So you get awesome mecha and power armor designs...
...and awesome chick designs. Good combo, eh?
Unfortunately, there's too little cool stuff...
...and too much domestic stuff (especially later in the game).
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