My least favorite is Digimon world 4. It felt like a non-digimon game that they crammed digimon in.
I wish they had digivolving as more of a core mechanic; you only digivolved once in that game and when you did you needed to basically restart the game from level 1. I also wish the game/combat wasn’t so grindy. Sitting in one spot mashing the attack button was the best strategy most of the time and… just wasn’t fun.
4 is also my least favorite, and yeah, the digivolution mechanics are very lackluster in that game, but really, I’ve never been fully satisfied by the digivolution mechanics in any game.
1’s training-based evolution lines and 3’s ability for any starter to evolve into all available evolutions in the game were great, but I want even more. I want every evolution to feel like it’s been specifically tailored to the unique relationship I’ve developed with my digimon, potentially even generating all-new digimon within the game on the fly.
Obviously, game development isn’t really capable of doing something like that right now, and even if it was, digimon isn’t a big enough franchise to be able to afford such a huge undertaking, but it’s always been my dream game.