What's that smell in the air?  Could it be?  It seems that yes, it's the smell of the nostalgia I have for Digimon Rumble Arena.  If your as big of a Digimon fan as I am, you may have heard of or even have played this game before.  Although, if you have played it then you probably wouldn't be reading this huh?  Well either way, let's kick off this review!

   Graphics:

   Compared to other Digimon games on the PlayStation at the time Digimon Rumble Arena holds up really well.  The game that I would compare it to would have to be Digimon World 2 as it released the year prior to Rumble Arena.  Rumble Arena was released in 2001 (2002 in America) so of course the PlayStation 2 had been available for about a year by then.  However, even if compared to the PlayStation 2 releases at the time such as Grand Theft Auto 3 or Max Payne, Rumble Arena still looked great comparatively even if it comes with a few more uninvited pixels.  Compared to Digimon World 2, the game was a decent upgrade graphically.

Sound:

   As far as sound goes, Digimon Rumble Arena's sound is about as good as you could expect from a game on the PlayStation.  Every Pepper Breath or Blue Blaster you fire sounds just like it does in the show.  Of course, each character is voiced by the same voice actor they had in the show as you would expect from a game based on an anime as popular as Digimon.  The music was good for a fighting game although, none of the tracks ever stuck out to me.  If you're looking for a game with amazing music, you'd probably play something like Parappa The Rapper rather than a fighting game anyway.

Addictiveness and Story:

   I'm going to briefly mention addictiveness here as I don't believe it's long enough to warrant it's own section.  I've played through this game more times than I can count but it was mostly just to unlock characters and once I finished that goal, I didn't go back and play it much afterwards.  I would never play Digimon Rumble Arena for the story as there isn't much of one.  The only story I can gather from it is that Reapermon is the bad guy and you must defeat him after fighting many other Digimon for whatever reason.  I wouldn't even have included this in the review if it wasn't for the fact that they called it "Story Mode".

Depth:

   Digimon Rumble Arena is not the deepest fighter you'll ever play.  It only has one ground combo and one aerial attack for each character as well as two special moves for each.  Every special move can be activated simply by pressing either triangle or circle and you can jump by pressing X.  There is also a "digivolution" for each character accessed by pressing R1 when the appropriate meter is full along with an ultimate move that is activated the same way when you are digivolved.  Occasionally, some items will appear on the stage that can give you a quick health boost, fire a quick projectile, or even give you an immediately filled digivolution meter.  Despite not seeming very deep mechanically, it is just deep enough to offer a fairly engaging fighting experience.

Difficulty:

   When I played this as a child, it seemed like the hardest game ever.  I was never able to beat Reapermon.  That is of course, until a couple years later when I returned to it after running out of new PlayStation 2 games to play.  Suddenly the game became much easier for me and I was able to beat it enough times to unlock every character.  So the difficulty depends on you really.  If you've played quite a few fighting games before, then this game will probably be a cake walk.  However, if you're fairly new to fighting games this game could offer you a decent challenge.

Conclusion:

   Well as much fun as it has been going down memory lane with you, I'm afraid I must end this review here.  There's only so many things I can say about a game from the early 2000's that's based on a children's anime.  If you're looking for a good Digimon game or even just a simple fighting game, you should give this game a try.  Just don't expect it to be a substantial replacement for Street Fighter or King of Fighters.  Who knows, maybe you'll really enjoy it.