Digimon Digital Card Battle is generally a game with relatively static graphics. After all, most of the time you're looking at the layout of cards on a table, selecting the ones you want to play. The animations, though, are quite nice--the flipping of the cards, the pulling up of the menus, and so on all look quite sharp. When a battle actually occurs, the game shifts into a 3D battle engine where you can watch the Digimon actually duke it out.

Unfortunately, like Pokemon Stadium, it ends up that a large amount of time is consumed with watching these animations. Thankfully, you can turn them off. That makes the game even more minimal in its graphics, but it's a computerization of a card game . . . what do you expect?

The music in the game is minimalist; it was there, and it didn't bother me, but I don't remember it after playing the game either. The same can be said for the sound effects. Lots of clangs and clings as the cards slide into place, and of course the battle sounds in the arena, but there's nothing here to get excited about. But, once again, this is not meant to be pushing the limits of the PSOne; it's a computer version of a card game.

And while I wish that the card game itself were more solid, there's no denying that Digimon Digital Card Battle does what it set out to do--reinvent the tabletop collectible card game on the PlayStation. Indeed, it does more than that; it adds a number of new features that will interest hardcore Digimon freaks, such as the ability to meld cards and to add Digiparts to your 'companions', making them more useful combatants. Unfortunately, the rest of the world will be left a little dry; there are better collectible card games out there than Digimon, and better PSOne games out there than Digimon Digital Card Battle.

The heart of the game is the Battle Arenas. You create a deck of cards, populating it with various beasties and different support cards, and then duke it out with a number of opponents in succession. For each battle that you win, you both gain experience for your companions and gain new cards to integrate into your deck. This is the equivalent of 'leveling up' in a normal RPG; the further you progress in the game, the more choices you're given when it comes to deck setup, and the more difficult the opponents get, as their decks have more favourable cards.

The game itself is relatively simple. Your hand consists of four cards, face-up at all times. You can have one Digimon battling at a time; if you don't have one on the field, you must select one out of your hand to play. After you do that, you can use other cards to get yourself Digivolve points. If you have the next higher rank of the same 'type' of Digimon and enough points, you can then Digivolve your Digimon, which makes them more powerful. Finally, you do combat.

The combat in Digimon Digital Card Battle is eerily similar to a computer version of Janken or the Prisoner's Dilemma. There are three levels of attack--a strong attack, a medium one, and a weak one. However, the weak one usually has a 'special effect'. This is often 'nullifies a strong attack', which can be downright devastating if you don't notice it. After both opponents select their attacks [without seeing each other's], they get to pick Support cards. These range from nullifying attacks to boosting your health to all sorts of other things. If you don't want to play a Support card from your hand, you can pick the top card off of the unused stack of the deck and see what happens with it.

And so it goes. Damage is dealt [or not], hitpoints are subtracted, and the game moves on. When you digivolve a Digimon, they gain the full health of the new form, so it's a good way to 'heal' your unit. The object of a given battle is to beat three of your opponent's Digimon. As you beat all of the opponents in each Battle Arena, you collect new cards--which can be put in your deck or merged to make stronger ones--and gain access to new cities with new opponents.

That's really just about all there is to the game. You have to keep adjusting your deck as you progress, making sure you add more powerful cards so that you stay on top of the game. The game itself isn't particularly long, but it's not a game that's meant to be blazed through; most fans will spend time trying to get most or all of the cards in the game.

The core problem is that there really isn't that much depth. The game itself relies a little bit too much on the randomness of the deck; I found four cards per hand to be a little too tight of a constraint for my tastes. There's also a lot of stat-watching, which can be frustrating; I much prefer Magic: The Gathering's simpler yet deeper way of handling damage, even though I don't play the game any more. Some of the support cards also seem insanely powerful, such as the ones that double damage and so on; they can really imbalance a game. These are not all critical flaws, but taken together they definitely put a dampener on my enjoyment of the game. Add to that the most vapid of 'plots', and you find yourself playing to play, not because you want to see what happens.

The first few battles in the game are almost trivial, but even then you have to play smart. They only get more challenging as the game progresses, so you have to be wary and constantly adjust your deck. Don't feel ashamed if you go back and trounce old opponents a few times to get some extra cards; you need as many as you can get. And don't be surprised if an opponent completely smashes you under their heel the first time you play against them. You may need to adjust your deck more, playing to their weaknesses, or perhaps you just got a bad deal and they got a good one. Such is the case with card games.

The basic controls of the game are pretty easy to get used to, although I found using Triangle for 'cancel' was a little confusing at first. I got over it quickly enough, though. Each screen has a list of the controls that you can use on it, and as you look at any card on the board it gives you a better picture and a full description of what the card can do, the Digimon's health, and so on. It's nice, considering. The core mechanics themselves are solid enough, although they're no stronger than the card game on which they're based. If you don't like its mechanics, it's doubtful that you'll like these.

There's not much to it, but Digimon Digital Card Battle has quite a bit of stuff for the fan of the collectible card game. It's not exactly like the 'real thing', but there are enough similarities to the tabletop game to make it interesting for some RPGers. Unfortunately, the game still isn't particularly deep, and many fans of 'classic RPGs' will find themselves bored with it relatively quick. Fans of the series or the card game will probably find a lot to like here; the rest will probably not.