Siliconera had a chance to play an early build of Digimon All-Star Rumble on PlayStation 3 with four playable characters – Agumon, Gabumon, Biyomon, and Tentomon. Altogether, Digimon All-Star Rumble has twelve different Digimon that can Digivolve into different forms. If you count those, there are 32 Digimon spanning the entire series.
Digimon All-Star Rumble supports up to four players in a battle. I tried a three player fight with Agumon and two CPUs to start. Agumon can punch with his little fists, but his real power comes out when he transforms into Greymon. You can Digi-volve if you pick up an item that pops up on screen. I also grabbed a wind item that pushed Gabumon away. Whenever a character Digi-vovles they grow in size, immediately get a max HP boost, and, at least in Agumon’s case, a long range attack that reaches the other side of the arena.
The CPU controlled fighters didn’t even try to fight back–they’re programmed to run in circles until you turn back to your original form.
Players can choose different battle modes Point, Survival, Medal (when an enemy gets KOed they drop a medal which gives you a point, it’s possible to steal medals), Bomb (characters have bombs on their back that detonate and can KO other characters), Flag Battle (essentially capture the flag), and Damage Race.
While Digimon All-Star Rumble feels like it’s designed to be a multiplayer game, there is a story mode to play through. The game is set entirely in the Digital World. Why are characters fighting? Well, they still need to Digi-volve so they create the first ever Digimon Battle Tournament. Players will be able to unlock additional Digimon by going through story mode.
I got to try a little bit of this too, which puts players in a 3D world as a Digimon. You get to choose who you play as and I picked Tentomon this time. The forest area I was in had some obstacles to jump on, switches to press, and battles with smaller enemies like Neemon who are basically there to charge your Digi-volve meter. You can collect coins in this mode which can be used to buy DigiCards that give you different fusion forms. Biyomon was waiting as a boss at the end and if this Digimon wasn’t already unlocked defeating Biyomon would’ve unlocked the character for versus mode.
Digimon All-Star Rumble is entirely dubbed in English. A Bandai Namco representative said it was actually developed with the West in mind and so far the game has not been announced for Japan. Prope, the studio run by Yuji Naka and developer of Digimon Adventure, is developing the game.
Digimon All-Star Rumble is slated for release on November 11 for PS3 and Xbox 360 in North America.
