So heres my first written review, a review of the Digimon Xros Wars xros figure series Dorulumon. So
Dorulumon is a nice figure to have. He recaptures the image of the TV character well, and he’s necessary if you want to build the X4 combination. But is he worth the 2200Y marked price? Let’s find out. I might as well jump into using CSToys’ reviewing system as a guide to writing this review, so let’s talk about articulation.
Dorulumon has the basic articulation of any four legged animal figure on the market. All four of his legs have 360 degree rotation, and all the feet are on joints too so its very easy to put this figure in a pouncing pose or a more “stealthy” pose. If you position him right you can get him to stand on his hind legs and get him to do something akin to a clawing attack which is nice to display him in. His tail has slight movement as you can either have it facing behind him or in front of him for his “Dorulu Tornado” attack. What really lets him down on articulation is his head, which has little to no movement. His mouth doesn’t open or close either, which is disappointing. There’s no reason why they couldn’t do this and they did it with Shoutmon. Overall I give this a 7 out of 10 for articulation. It has a lot of articulation in the most necessary places and more than a usual transforming figure.
There isn’t much to say about the paint on Dorulumon. The white, orange and silver look really nice on this figure. He has paint in all the necessary places. It’s not like there has been pieces left unpainted. Perhaps the face could have been a bit more detailed, but that’s only a minor nit-pick. Looking at official artwork, there should have been a little black paint on the sides of the figure, but again, this isn’t really important. He gets 8 out of 10 for paint.
As for the sculpt, my first impression was that Dorulumon was a bit “blocky”. His main body seems like a long box with legs and a head on it. I get that he’s supposed to turn into legs and for all intent and purposes he does look like a wolf, but blocky was still my first impression. I should point out that the drills on his head and legs are just bulks of plastic, no groves or even painted on lines. Surely that wouldn’t be hard to do Bandai? 7 out of 10 for sculpt.
Dorulumon is pretty durable. I’ve dropped him, knocked him over and he’s still fine. He clips together well and his parts will stay together unless you intentionally pull him apart. In his Dorulu Cannon mode, the two sections can “pop” apart if you don’t plug it in right, but this isn’t an issue if you transform it properly. He’s a sturdy figure. 9 out of 10.
Gimmicks. Well, this whole toyline is all about transforming and combining, but I’ll review X4 as a separate figure, so on his own his main gimmick is his “Hougeki Keitai” according to the digimon dictionary. For us English speaking folk that’s “bombardment form” apparently. He becomes a huge cannon for the Shoutmon figure. While it’s nice that they included this, it just feels like Bandai made this so they could say “Hey kids! You can have fun without Balistamon!”. It feels very tacked on. I suppose you could display it in this mode if you only had the two figures, but I’d personally display him in his normal form. 7 out of 10 for the tacked on gimmick, but combining into X4 redeems this.
Overall this is a great figure for any Digimon fan to own. Sure, its not perfect, but he’s great to display and pose on his own and he’s necessary for X4 (and the eventual X4B and X5) combination. Go out and buy him now, because most places are running out of stock. On a personal note, any feedback on this review would be great, and I’ll be sure to take it all on board when I do my next review.
I know the pictures are terrible, I took them on my phone in a dark room. I'll work on saving for a proper camera. Here is the video review, but it isn't very good. I'll probably phase those out and stick to written reviews. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0yw3eKie_M
