NAMCO Vital Bracelet Digital Monster Digivice V Edition

Where to begin with this magical little device. After doing an immense amount of research, purchasing, trial and error I felt inclined to leave what may hopefully help anyone who is on the fence about purchasing one of these.Let it be known that THIS particular device is the DIGIVICE-V model from Japan, which is the GEN II of the Vital Bracelet which IS vastly superior to it's predecessor. HOWEVER if you unless you are a Digimon superfan, there is officially no need as the American Version has finally been released. It costs exactly the same amount and I will get into the differences between the two shortly.First and foremost, THIS IS A TOY, but that being said, it's a damn cool toy. Yes I am like every other middle-aged nerd on here, a 34 year old male who loved the original v-pet and anime series as a child. Just having picked up a Digimon 20th, this thing caught my eye. Was this the NEW digimon?! Full color screen, beautiful sprite work, WEARABLE. Yes please!So after getting my hands on both the Digivice-V and the the Vital Hero (American version) I learned a couple of things between the two devices.WRIST STRAP: So this is the biggest difference between the two. The Japanese model, while seemingly trying to advertise and appeal to adults, it's still a toy for ages 8 and up. That being said, it was actually intended for a child OR we are just that much chonkier than all of Asia and they are aware of it. Whatever the reason, the localized version (Vital Hero) has a MUCH larger strap that should fit most adults regaradless of wrist size. IF for whatever reason that strap is not large enough Etsy and the online community have gone above and beyond creating custom straps, and strap extenders. I have small dainty girl wrists so the Digivice-V (Japanese Model) is actually still big on me if I don't tighten it.LANGUAGE: So I provided some photos to show the literal language barrier that exists on the device. Truth is there isn't one. For the exception of the abbreviation for the word ATTRIBUTE everything else is in English UNLESS you are using a Japanese DIM card. I will get into those here in a second as well. As for instructions, again, there is now a localized version that comes with a VERY (yet still incomplete) in-depth instruction manual. Also, if you do decide to still go with the Japanese Digivice-V model the internet has plenty of resources that will help you get everything in order.DIM Cards: What the heck are those? Well These babies are pretty much the digimon themselves. If you were to buy one of the 20th Anniversary digimon for 20 bucks, think of these as the modern day-equivalent of that. Each DIM is essentially it' own egg that can evolve into pendulum style evolution trees. (Using digimon jargon, watched one too many videos regarding all this stuff) Decently priced (SOME) since they have been out in Japan for a while now there selection is rather large. THIS IS WHERE YOU MIGHT WANT TO WAIT. As I mentioned earlier, THEY JUST LOCALIZED THIS ABOUT A MONTH AGO so we are about 2 years behind what has rolled out in Japan. From what I have researched and found the American Dims, JUST released and are essentially only available online from what I can gather. 20 bucks will score you a DIM double-themed pack. The Japanese DIMs ARE compatible with the Vital Hero and vice/versa. In the photos provided I have my Metal Greymon on my Digivice-V and Gammamon on the Vital Hero. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE HERE IS THE NAMES. Japanese DIMS = Japanese Names. English DIMS = English names REGARDLESS OF DEVICE.BRACELET: So again, all things considered just like it's keychain counter-parts, this is a toy, NOT a fitbit or a substitution for. THIS IS A V-PET using mechanics from other devices all in one place. The only real new "additions" to hardware other than obviously full color screen and HD sprites is NFC and the Heart Rate Monitor. Otherwise, they use the pendulum's accelerometer (the thing that's "counting your steps" which is ultimately just tied to how much you move your left arm rhythmically. So yes, you could technically "cheat" and be lazy as with any other device that you is intended to make you move (VR games, Motion controls, Etc). The Vital Bracelet BE seems to be the next step in upgrading and being (at least it SEEMS) geared more toward adults with overall better hardware for tracking AND water resistance. That however is exclusive to Japan and hasn't even dropped yet, so moving on!GAMEPLAY: So after watching hours and hours of videos, reading a ton of tutorials and FAQS, I STILL didn't pick up and learn everything until after spending about a week with both devices and playing around with them through trial and error. First and foremost, I truly believe this is meant to be played WITH a smart phone, there is a companion app that comes in to play later that I will briefly touch on, but for now, the bracelet itself.Is it a V-pet? I sure as heck think so. A lot of digifans say if you want more of a v-pet experience you're better off with a Version 20th. I am currently playing the heck out of both and let me just say, minus the poop cleaning and feeding, this is still very much in my opinion a v-pet. All of the elements are there, just slightly tweaked or replaced by something else.-Different eggs produce different evolution lines. (Just like the original V-Pets)-Food and Effort have essentially been replaced with Vital Points and Miles. (Those are literally just names for the made up metric of measurement being tracked between a Heart Rate Monitor and an accelerometer)Think of VP as hunger as your pet will literally lose vital points if you don't wear your watch. If you constantly wear your device and have your Digimon awake he will literally slowly leech off of your life energy slowly filling his VP. You can achieve VP in mass quantities by winning in battles as well (this will almost be necessary for evolution requirements at some point) as you only have an allotted amount of time to achieve certain criteria before your Digimon evolves into the next level.-You can still get injured from battles, and you can still kill your pet. Again, in the manual there are descriptions for all of the different animations you might see your Digimon make at you and what they mean. Too much neglect (not wearing your bracelet and NOT putting your Digimon to sleep or in backup) Battling too many times and not healing when necessary, etc.BRACELET STANDALONE: The Bracelet WITHOUT the companion app is still pretty nifty and allows you to do things to a limit. Below are all of the things you can do WITHOUT ever touching the companion app.-Have two Digimon on the device at once. (One active and one in "Back Up" (storage))-Use the same DIM to hatch a second egg.-NFC Battles. Pretty cool actually, and NFC enabled device will start a random encounter that you can either engage in or flee from as long as your home screen is active. Again, certain evolution paths require X amount of battles, so why this feature/metric is so important. At the ATM? Put your Metal Greymon up against the card reader and see who pops up from the digital world to challenge you. At the check out in the grocery store, let Gammamon near the card reader and boom, go time. Also you can just unlock your phone screen and hold it up to your device and battle an infinite amount of times. The simple fact that I have a DIGITAL MONSTER on my wrist and can interact with REAL WORLD electronics and start digital fights is truly a dream come true. It sounds silly but I love it so much. This is my child hood dream realized. I have a real Digimon, who trains and exercises with me (and is the best work out partner I've ever had in my life) and can randomly interact with ANY NFC enabled device in the real world to start electronic binary battles. Hell yes.-Adventure Mode: Under the missions tab is Adventure, much like in the Digimon X series of devices, each section has you hit a certain number of miles (mind you, again, miles is literally just a name for a unit of measurement here, and that measurement is "steps") before pitting you up against a boss (someone from your DIMS evolution line) until you clear area 15. I have yet to do so. Do not know if and what reward is given for clearing all 15 stages.So there you have it. It's totally a V-pet that's game play is centered around excercising and being active. If you are comparing the experience to the traditional keychain counterparts, again all of the elements are there they have just been replaced, reworked. You literally have to TRAIN WITH your Digimon if you want him to do well in fights. Not having full/high VP and steps will effect how you battle and your stats plus bonuses. So you want to feed your Digi? Have to wear him. Effort? Trophies obtained through literal effort. How often are you keeping up? Are you earning one or two trophies per hard mission? You only get 4 a day.COMPANION APP: So as cool as this thing is all by itself, this is where this device REALLY shines. It's a simple app you download on your smart phone called VB Lab. It's totally free and is meant to serve as the general storage unit along with a lot of really cool bonus features. if you grab the Digivice-V or even just Japanese DIMS the companion app will translate everything when you pop your Digimon off your device and on to your phone! As you can see, Gammamon's name is in Japanese, currently being behind and not watching the current run of the show, I had no idea what this guys pre-evolutions names were let alone his if it weren't for his DIM card saying it english. Well with the VB lab, problem rectified. You get translated names, beautifiul artwork, bio, and possible evolutions WITH their requirements. That's right, an all in one database that show you how to obtain the different possible evolution paths.Outside of that you get to battle ONLINE. That's right, other trainers all over the world (although honestly most of them will be from Asia) get to pit their Digis against eachother in classic style binary battles with beautiful sprite art and full color HD.THINGS TO NOTATE ABOUT THE VB LAB. Why this app is so critically important, one, it translates all of the Japanese names if you are using Japanese DIMS. It allows you to store digimon in capsules (which you can earn more of though playing or buy registering new DIMS to your device) a la freezer mode. Actually Anytime a digimon is transferred from your bracelet to your phone it is essentially "frozen". What this means is, your vital points will not diminish, and your evolution clock stops completely. This is critically important as this enables you to literally play at your leisure. As mentioned, certain evolution trees have certain criteria. Well you will learn hitting some of those values WITHIN THE TIME FRAME GIVEN becomes the challenge.EXAMPLE: The Vital Hero came with the Dinosaur Roar DIM which unlike other DIMS I've seen has the option for two rookie stages instead of one. That's right, your Koromon could either turn into a classic Agumon OR it can evolve into a Black Agumon like mine did. Well after raising him up to a Metal Greymon I put him in back up and popped the DIM back in, bam, new egg. Well not knowing to check requirements I went to the VB lab, clicked on Koromon and checked the requirements for the sillouette I'd yet to unlock (obviously Agumon). The only requirement was to have 1200 VP. Pfft. That was it? Why the heck did I evolve into Black Agumon? (NOT that I am mad about it. Almost prefer it?) Welp the thing is, Koromon evolves in 3 hours. Being in training your Digimon does not have access to battling yet. That's not until the next evolution stage. (III/Rookie) i had no idea how hard it was to hit that value without being able to battle. 1200 VP in 3 hours is VERY hard if not borderline impossible unless you are essentially VERY ACTIVE for the entirety of 3 hours. I'm talking I shadow boxed for an hour and did 70 push ups and barely broke 800. I had to stop. I was exhausted. Just wore him for a while afterward to let him leech, he had to hit just feeding off my vitals right? WRONG, too much time started to pass and I was barely at 1000 VP, so I transfer Koromon to the App to learn he has 40 minutes before he evolves. (oh yeah the App shows you what your evolution timer is at) Awesome. I mean good god, but awesome. I had successfully frozen his evolution timer to allow me to recuperate and get those 200 points I needed later. I now have Agumon, but that was a super long-winded explanation as two why being able to freeze the evolution clock matters. Some requirements are just silly and can't be done in a solid window (nor do I think they were meant to). By the way, placing a Digimon in "BACK UP" on the bracelet itself has the same effect. Stores, VP, Steps, and Freezes evolution timer. Why having two Digis on one bracelet works so you can swap out whenever you want and train/play to your hearts content!CONCLUSION: Sorry for word vomiting all over your monitor, I just truly am enamored with my device and just would like to perhaps provide some info that may have been overlooked by other sources or just in general for anyone who may be on the fence about getting one of these. If you want a cool streamlined-modern take on the classic digimon formula, then this is it. Grab a Japanese model, grab a local model, whichever you grab just enjoy it and try to make these things catch like wild fire so we can get a localized BE. (The GEN III device coming out later this year in Japan). OR just hold out for that one if you don't have the money to spend on both as it IS a different device all together therefore has it's pros and cons. I have written enough here though so anyone who actually made it this far and is curious enough about it will go look it up I'm sure.

I had a beloved Digivice back in the day and went looking for one nostalgically. Instead, I came across this little thing! For a basic heart rate/pedometer smart watch, the price was a steal, not even including the value of the game.I crochet for a living and the bracelet's pedometer actually picks up the movements I make with each stitch. With many of the challenges coming every x steps, I'm more motivated to work on my projects - working away with excitement, waiting to hear that little battle alert and grow my Digimon! It keeps me away from my work for only a couple minutes, then I get right back to it having felt a little reward before my project is finished. It also reminds me to take a short break for sanity. My workday is now a lot more fun!I can't speak more highly about the device and app as a whole. Everything is slick, easy to navigate, fun, and engaging without becoming a massive time sink. My only complaint would be that the screen is VERY easy to scratch, especially since you'll be tapping your phone against it a lot. However, this is pretty easily remedied with a screen protector and taking care not to randomly bash it on things.Give one to a friend once you're hooked and you can even share the little DiM cards that contain additional Digimon (up to 3 devices per card)! Worth noting is that the DiM cards are an optional purchase and reasonably priced. I have not come across in-app purchases at all or any ridiculous pay-to-win tactics. The DiM cards serve more as a small paid expansion to your Digidex, allowing you to play with Digimon other than the one included.Overall, this is a wonderful device for both longtime fans and anyone who moves a lot throughout their day and wants to spice it up a little with a little gaming fun.

Ok, so, let's go a head and clear this out the way. It's not a fit bit, it's not hard core accurate on steps or heart rate. It is a toy for every digimon or virtual pet enthusiast. Now that that's done, here are some things to note. This is the second generation of vital bracelet, and has many improvements over its predecessor. 1. Dim cards can now be linked to up to 3 vital bracelets instead of just it's first one (this is great incase you ever have to replace your bracelet or have more than one person in your house with a bracelet and want to share dims) 2. You digimon no longer decides when it sleeps, You do. This means it can fit any life style! (Personally I'm up during the night so this was a major plus) 3. Your digimon being asleep no longer pauses the time till it evolves. For some this will be amazing (personally I like this) but for others this will mean your digimon will digivolve too fast, making it hard for some to meet the requirements for the Mon you want. There are ways around that issue but it can still be an issue for people with limited time in the day to play with your Mon. 4. It does not come with pulsemon, and at time of this review, there is no way to get him separately. Now for my full thoughts. I love it! The gammamon dim that comes with the bracelet has a good amount of evolutions to start with and each one is fun to see battle and evolve! I recently started working out again before I got this and since getting it it's actually been easier for me to stick to my work outs! Like, I'll start to get tired but see I'm just shy of beating a challenge and will push forward that extra bit just to see a stronger result for my digimon. It's not mega accurate on what it reads, but instead of using it as a measurement, I see more as like having a little work out buddy. When you use the phone app there's even more you can do, like battle, fight in raids, and even send more challenges to your watch. All and all, I love it, and would suggest it to any digimon fan.