in my opinion, Applimon is XW done right. They did the Digimon spin off to have more freedom I feel. They are Digimon adjacent, similar enough yet very different. Perhaps a much younger world than the Digital world we think of which was likely born in the 80s. The Applimon and their world I feel would of been much younger round the dawn of the cloud, and smartphone tech. While the DIgital world was born along side Networking (and got a huge boom with the internet)



So yeah XW tried to go too far left field, the manga at least TRIED to remedy the situation with an explanation as to why levels don't exist/digis don't evolve. But that was something only tackled in the manga never addressed in the anime so it left many people scratching their heads. I mean if they would of called it something else (digimon universe insert mon type here) XW might not of been as much of a let down sincetechnically it wouldn't of been digimon. Sadly the creative minds in charge thought of this solution too late I feel.