It appears Digimon Survive is getting review bombed. The Namco Bandai-published game launched on Friday, but its user reviews on Metacritic are an abundance of negative reviews. But it seems some players didn't realise the genre and format the title would be despite its makers advertising it early on. On Metacritic, the PS4 version of the game is on 3.4 at the time of writing, with 40 negative reviews against 22 positive ones. The Nintendo Switch version fares a bit better at 4.3 for combined user reviews, but the Xbox One version fares worst with the game scoring a lowly 1.8. But the review bombing is coming from some truly determined negative nancys. But some players have rallied against this smear campaign. "The 0/10 spammer need to be corrected because it's complete bull and the game is awesome, seen someone copy/paste his same review on every platform, F the haters," posted Troovtnaz on the game's Xbox One user reviews page (they gave it a 10).
But there does appear to be some misunderstanding. When Digimon Survive was announced and in follow-up trailers, Bandai Namco did emphasise its tactical RPG elements and said visual novel elements would be a part of it. But the game's visual novel status appears to have blindsided some players. This however doesn't justify the review bombing since the publisher did identify Digimon Survive as being a visual novel. But some seem determined to dork things up.
One determined review bomber has targeted all versions of the game on Metacritic, copy/pasting their negative review. "It would be a Digimon game that I would really enjoy if it wasn't so loaded with those VN elements that are completely out of place," according to the serial review bomber who of course gave the game a 0. But others have been fairer minded.
PlatinumReviews gave the game an 8 on its PS4 page and said "it has a lot of story via Visual Novel but the story is interesting and engaging". However they were disappointed that Digimon Survive has a "very limited number of Digimon to collect".
Developers have spoken out about the harassment and abuse they receive from entitled gamers, while review bombing is another toxic element that, like the harassment, is not going to achieve much at all. So let's all chill out a bit. But if you didn't know, Digimon Survive is a visual novel first but it also has tactical RPG gameplay. Bear that in mind!