What's a "Moral Compass Cricket Thingy"?

[Moonface]

The one thing I wished Digimon would rip Pokemon off for earlier(and part of what makes Digimon Story so interesting) is the core gameplay loop. Pokemon NAILED its core gameplay loop in Gen 1 (buggy as it is), and Digimon could have taken notes a lot earlier than it did. The idea of exploring the Digital World, taking in all kinds of Mons as you fight for a better world is SUPER interestinf. Digimon World 2 was the first game that explored this, but got mired in its Dungeon Crawling nature and slow speed (seriously; love it to bits, but it's SO SLOW). It really isn't until Digimon World DS that Digimon nails a gameplay loop like that that's JUST distinct enough for plausible deniability, but they could have gotten on that train a lot soon than giving us shit like Digimon World 4 (bet you thought I was gonna say Data Squad, didn't you?)

When you say core gameplay loop, my mind thinks of catching Pokémon and levelling them up to take on a gym, rinse and repeat, so I'm guessing applied to Digimon it would be the same thing but a boss rather than a gym? Like how in Adventure 01 each episode in the Devimon saga I recall there would be a "bad" guy each time so they could take that as smaller area bosses you beat on your way to the big bad ruling over everything.

Heck, just give me an open world style game like the Pokémon Legends games but you start out on the island in Adventure 01, deal with the problem there then get access to cross the sea to the big continent. Bonus if the game doesn't hold back and makes it where if any of your Digimon die they get sent to that one place where all the Digimon get born so you can get them back but have to make a journey to go get them.