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im not going to read through this thread in its entirety but I am a HUGE Digimon fan and have been in the community for a long time.
The games are either solid or great. The only bad game is Digimon Racing for GBA. That's it.
Instead of trying to pit either monster franchise against each other I'm just going to randomly skim through the thread and answer questions as I go down.
-How does Digimon Evolution work?
Depending on what game you are playing there can be different metrics.
Digimon World 1, Next Order, Championship, Medley, Digital Monster for Wonderswan, ReDigitize, DeCode
These all follow the V-Pet system of training X amount of times, battling X amount of times, X amount of care mistakes (Not feeding on time, overfeeding, not letting them sleep, over training them etc) and Jogress (A fusion system that comes from Joint Progress).
The Story games and others (Story, Dawn/Dusk, Cyber Sleuth, Hackers Memory, Lost Evolution, Anthode/Cathode etc) all follow a more traditional RPG system of meeting stat requirements, having a certain item, having obtained a certain Digimon etc. Things of that nature.
-Can you recommend me a Game?
All the Wonderswan, DS, 3DS, PS1, PS2 and Vita games are easily accessible.
If you want to play the MMO, Digimon Masters Online, which is available on Steam or Gameking you can play that. It's fun in big groups and solo is ok but to really enjoy end game its gonna be pricey (Korean Gacha Grind Style) there are private servers for it. Same with the old Digimon RPG Online/Digimon Battle.
You can also get a V-Pet, very easily from online retailers and just connect them online via a fan game called Digimon w0rld. Very big tournament scene and you can enter Digimon you raise IRL onto the Digital World. (Digimon Real +1, Pokemon Real 0)
I think I'm running out of space so ill reply to this post.