I'm a bit late to the party with Anode Heart, a creature collector RPG that launched to near-perfect user reviews last month, and I'm kind of kicking myself for it. After dipping my toes in the free demo on Steam, I reckon this could be one of the most underrated Pokemon-likes of the year, in no small part because it's got a heaping helping of Digimon in its DNA.
Developer Stochastic describes Anode Heart as a semi-open-world "homage to the classic monster tamer games of the early 2000s," adding that "JRPGs and monster tamer games have defined my childhood and they've greatly inspired me to create my own stories and games." In particular, they point to the PS1's Digimon World games, which absolutely tracks.
