After Digimon Time Stranger I wanted to play a different Digimon game, but also something I had never played before. There are only two Digimon Story games that were never released in the west. Digimon Story: Lost Evolution and Digimon Story Xros Wars Red and Blue based on an anime series that was ongoing at the time. Over the years, we have found something like a language will not stop dedicated fans and even though this game released years ago it got a Fan Translation in 2023 and that is the version I am going to play. As this is a translated game I do not know if it is a one to one translation or if anything was changed or not.

Lost Evolution is an odd game first it reuses most of its dungeons and levels from Dawn and Dusk. Now that is a problem, Dawn and Dusk have some of the worst level design and to see those same levels again was not fun. Lost Evolution is also the first game to tell a much darker story basically all of the Tamers, the group that raises Digimon, from the first two games went missing and the player has to save everyone from the group who caused that. Cyber Slueth, Hackers Memory, and Time Stranger have similarly darker elements as part of their plot. So it is safe to say that this game was more of a transition to the darker plot lines future games would have.

As for the gameplay changes the more incomplete routes for digivolution were finished in this game and a lot of new features were added. You unlock these by finding plates and repairing them with the touch screen minigame the better you do the better the digimon will be when it digivolves better stats and movesets are unlocked this way.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad game and the Translation is good enough that you can still finish the whole game. I did have some problems with the repair minigame, but I imagine it is easier with an actual DS and not an emulator.