Digimon Survive lost its way

polygon.com:

The itinerary for a class trip typically includes safe, normal things — visiting a historical landmark and learning how to cooperate with people from other schools, for instance. You’re less likely to encounter classroom-sized spiders or intense personal trauma, and hopefully, you won’t be responsible for a friend never returning home. But these are just some of the everyday tribulations for the unlucky band of middle schoolers in Digimon Survive.

Developed by Hyde, Digimon Survive shoulders the heavy burden of evolving the series’ traditional blend of monster breeding and turn-based role-playing — namely, with the addition of visual-novel elements. But that burden proves a bit too heavy to carry. The visual-novel aspects seem ideal for the story Digimon Survive wants to tell, but whether from a lack of confidence in its own characters or a misunderstanding of what makes visual novels a powerful storytelling medium to begin with, it falls short of its abundant potential.

Digimon Survive opens with strong similarities to the original Digimon: Digital Monsters anime: A group of students from different schools gather in the countryside for an educational camping trip. Your usual personalities are along for the ride, whether they want to be or not — the popular girl, the prankster and his serious companion, the moody loner, and the insecure class leader — but there’s no sense of optimistic adventuring once they land in the digital world, the series’ name for the alternate reality where Digimon dwell.

Digimon Survive divides its lengthy run time between exploration, free time, and battle segments. During exploration, you chat with your fellow students, look for key items or paths forward, and generally get a better idea of