I'm going to be honest and say I cannot recommend this game. It has a really strong base that needs to be built around, but the bad heavily outweighs the good.
The good:
You get to raise your favorite guys. It's one of the main draws of the franchise, you pick a mon and that's your blorbo. Your funny little guy, your rotten soldier so to speak. It's super gratifying to have your Digimon evolve after raising it.
The bad:
- Certain grinds in the game are beyond ridiculous and do not respect the player's time. Having to catch one thousand fish to recruit one of the NPCs is ridiculous when the fishing "minigame" is tapping the screen and hoping the hitbox on the fish stops being wonky enough to actually let you catch them. The grind for getting crafting materials for rebuilding shops in Server City is too RNG. The reason why it wasn't so bad in Digimon World Next Order is because you were able to manually go out and gather the materials instead of just waiting for an NPC to gather them for you in random quantities (and sometimes they won't even grab any of the items you need!). Also, the defeat requirements for some of the evolutions are too high. I've been playing the game in my free time since it dropped and I'm barely at over 2000 defeats. Getting eight thousand for Dinomon is too much. Heck, getting to over ten thousand defeats for some of the Ultra level Digimon is ridiculous. There's also a Gomamon NPC that will not be recruited unless you find a 1% spawning fish. The NPC itself doesn't even do anything that's actually useful so why even bother locking it behind an RNG item drop?
- There's no actual direct or guidance on how to progress. Having to flip from screen to screen hoping you've gone to the right map at the right time after completing the correct requirements isn't fun or engaging, it isn't exploring either. Again bringing up Digimon World Next Order, there is a Koromon NPC that gives you hints on where to go next to recruit an available NPC to the city. Any form of direction or hints would be helpful. I'm not saying you need to get your hand held and guided to every single objective and NPC but having hints or minor guidance would be very helpful and reduce the frustration that comes from not knowing what to do next.
- The attribute system is extremely overtuned, you could be 20 levels above the opponent but if you're at an attribute disadvantage? Near instant loss. It's honestly to the point that it's better to raise a Digimon of the Unknown attribute than to raise multiple different Digimon with different attributes due to how long it takes to raise a second mon unless you've already unlocked every single map, which that in itself is such a monumental challenge. (I'm looking at you Aquilamon!)
- The NP System (essentially Pokemon IVs) should not have been implemented. One of the mechanics that a vast majority of monster tamer genre fans hate is random and hidden stats. I am aware that there is an NPC at the very end of the endgame that lets you raise your NP but getting there is so long and tedious it feels almost pointless. It is frustrating having to tame or hatch multiples of the same Digimon in hopes of getting decent NP. At its core Digimon is a franchise that does not encourage essentially throwing the mon away because it was born with sub optimal stats. You raise your mon from beginning to end without any of those kinds of hang ups.
- One of my biggest pet peeves is that item drops aren't automatically picked up. You have to click the item in order to actually finish the fight. There's even a dialogue blurb that says "Pick up all items to continue!" I don't know why this is even a thing, games don't have this sort of mechanic anymore for a reason. It's extremely tedious and just another layer of time wasting. I wouldn't be as bothered by it if there were an upgrade later on you could build towards that lets you automatically pick up items. It is even more bothersome when you are farming monster cards and the mon explodes into items that bounce all over the screen and you cannot continue until you've picked up all the items, and since the game has very strange hitboxes when it comes to clicking on objects you'll be sitting there sometimes for a full minute until the item is done moving around and then you're able to click it and pick it up. That is my feeling on a lot of things that should be included at base, QoL options and mechanics that should be available at the get go but I'm willing to compromise with those QoL mechanics being available as upgrades and rewards. Heck, sometimes I even enjoy it more when I've been dealing with something tedious but I've earned a reward to overcome the tedium.
I have so many more points to go over but these were the biggest ones that stood out to me. I do genuinely think this game has incredible potential. But right now as it stands? I can't recommend it. It feels like this game wasn't play tested much if at all before release. And if there was playtesting done, it feels like no feedback was given whatsoever and everything was met with a "Looks good boss! No changes needed!"
Tl;dr: If you like mindless grinds with RNG bottlenecks go ahead, the game is a good time sink in that aspect. But if you're someone with not much time to dedicate to games like this, I'd skip it.