The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Digimon World 3 differs from its predecessors as the system has been changed to be more like Japanese Role-Playing games of the time such as Final Fantasy VII or Legend of Dragoon. The game has two primary modes in which it is played: an overworld map and the battle screens. The player character navigates through a 3D world map using sprites that represent the playable character and the monsters that make up his party. In battle, players control the parties with up to three monsters in turn-based style battles where the player's party fights one-on-one against the opposing party, with the option to switch or perform certain actions with the party members.
Story
Junior, and his friends Ivy and Teddy, log into "Digimon Online", where Ivy renames herself "Kail". Soon after Junior arrives, the players are trapped in the game by an error in the system. MAGAMI's "Game Master" publicly assures the players that the situation is under control, and blames the incident on the hacker, Lucky Mouse. A.
A. A. This results in Kurt being turned into Oinkmon and the Vemmon Digi-Egg stolen. Junior leads an attack on the Admin Center, which results in the Game Master being defeated and interrogated.
Development
Digimon World 3 was developed by Bandai Entertainment Company and Boom Corporation. Bandai showcased the game at the 2002 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, where it was playable at several booths. Its music was composed by Satoshi Ishikawa, who had previously created the soundtracks for Digimon World 2 and Digimon Digital Card Battle. The game's Japanese theme song is "Miracle Maker", performed by Spirit of Adventure, a group composed of Digimon anime theme song performers Kōji Wada, AiM, and Takayoshi Tanimoto. It was released as a single on February 5, 2003, alongside "The Last Element", an insert song from the anime Digimon Frontier, by NEC Interchannel Records.
Reception
Digimon World 3 received a 27 out of 40 total score from editors of Japanese Weekly Famitsu magazine, and would sell 83,635 units in Japan by the end of 2002, becoming the 142nd most-bought software title that year in the region.
The game received "generally unfavorable reviews" from Western critics according to video game review aggregator website Metacritic. Critics such as Brad Shoemaker of GameSpot found faults with the title's "tiresome" gameplay, commenting on the constant need to grind experience points to power up the player's Digimon in a combat engine that is "painfully slow and tedious to use." Although the reviewer acknowledged its budget retail pricing and "surprisingly easy on the eyes" background graphics, they would ultimately declare it "at best an average role-playing game that will appeal only to fans of the greater Digimon franchise." Fennec Fox of GamePro magazine similarly commented on the game's "impressive" world map graphics, along with its "extremely catchy anime-style music," but panned its "sluggish pace, long loading times, and some very ugly 3D models during battles."
