"That's like, a Mega Digimon, right?"
- Someone who's watched Digimon before
Yeah basically, except that we consider Stingmon to be an Evo, despite being a Champion. Oh, and Gatomon is a Rookie, despite also being a Champion. What the fuck are you talking about? You're right, let's stop talking about Digimon, and start talking about Rumble Arena.
Being a Digimon video game, Rumble Arena has an obligation to represent Digivolution as a full on gameplay mechanic. As a fighting game, this needs to be a simple mechanic that can ebb and flow over the course of a 100 second round, so of course the usual complex evolution tree isn't fully represent, being reduced to just "Rookie -> Mega".
video of digivolution here
I remember the anime being way cooler than this.On it's own, it'd just be a cool mechanic that adds a bit more depth to your meter than "meter full, do super move", but that's not the end of the story. Turns out, you can just unlock these evolutions as stand alone characters. So if you're a competitive player trying to win a tournament, why wouldn't you always pick the more powerful Evos?
Now that's a perfect 5-5 matchup if I've ever seen it.Enter the concept of "formats". Instead of being a normal fighting game, with every tournament being run with the same standardized ruleset, Digimon Rumble Arena has two competiting standardized rulesets focusing on different parts of the game: Evos and Rookies. Put simply: "Evos" is a short name for "All Characters (Allowed)" format, where the already evolved characters take the spotlight at high level, and "Rookies" is a reduced character ruleset where only the Digimon that have "DIGI!" on their full meter are allowed to be picked. (You can still Digivolve during the match, of course.)
Magnadramon has a very punchable face. | Unfortunately, she can block just like the rest of the cast. |