Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition

Don't let my playtime mislead you. This game was originally bought and beaten on the Playstation Vita. Amazing game. Obviously not quite as good as the newer entry, Time Stranger, but a great representation of what JRPG Monster Collectors, and especially Digimon games, *should* be. The writing is mature but nothing special, but it's come a long way from "kids go into a digital world and have wacky adventures", and it's an absolute 10/10 entry in a franchise that was yearning for a revival, especially after whatever Digimon Next Order was. Save for a couple challenge bosses, no fight ever forces you to use a certain team composition. You are free to use whatever digimon you want. There's two (well, technically four) type matchups. Type, which is Data > Vaccine > Virus > Data, and then three different Element triangles, Fire > Plant > Water > Fire, Earth > Electric > Wind > Earth, and Light > Dark > Light. What makes this really customizable is that your team roster has a massive 11 slots, limited only by the "cost" of each digimon, with stronger ones costing more space, and the ability of digimon to inherit skills from past forms. For example, going down the MagnaAngemon line to gain healing and revive abilities, and then de-digivolving to Kudamon and Wanyamon and going down the MachGaomon line for strong Wind abilities, before de-digivolving to go down yet another line. All the while, as you digivolve and de-digivolve, you will be gaining ABI points, which act as a cap on how much you can essentially EV train your digimon stats. So, more digivolving means more skills and more ABI, which means more stats. You can literally have any build on any digimon you want, especially when you consider most digimon also have a unique passive skill which also usually applies to all digimon in battle as well, such as increased speed or regaining SP every turn. Online leaves much to be desired, especially with most of the fights just being tryhards with Turn 1 teams that make getting the achievements kind of hard (and a big middle finger to any company that ever includes achievements for competitive online play in a single-player game) but they're rather predictable setups so you can usually run an effective counter. Hacker's Memory is more of a side story than a sequel, and relies on the player having beaten the original game, so play Cyber Sleuth first. HM is more refined, but CS sets up the story. However, your save data is shared between both games, so any digimon or medals you unlock in one is unlocked in the other, and vice versa, saving a lot of time grinding once one is fully beaten. Yes theres a lot of dialogue. Its a JRPG. Yes theres a lot of mashing the A button. Its a JRPG. Yes theres a lot of grinding. Its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ JRPG. No there is not an unreasonable amount of any of those three. If theres a lot of grinding, its because youre not doing it good. If theres a lot of dialogue, its because youre doing story missions. If youre mashing the A button, its because youre not facing anything special. Boss fights take strategy, story takes words, and levelling takes planning. You have google, use it. 100%'d the OG (Not Hackers Memory) in around 150 hrs. That included all Digivolutions, all Medals, and all Achievements. It's a shame that BAMCO is removing the steam trading cards, but like, thats not enough to just downvote a game?? are you an absolute moron? Games are meant to be played and enjoyed for their time, not to earn you a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ badge on your steam profile from buying a bunch of trading cards. None of you bought this $60 game specifically for trading cards, so who cares.

Creature collecting JRPG with detective layer. At the time of the review I played only the main game. [h1]PROS:[/h1] - Creature collecting, leveling, feeding, upgrading (Digivolving) is fun. - So many Digimons to collect! Some really cool designs. - The story is quite good. - Mini quests (detective cases) are good (story-wise), some even comparable to Yakuza games. - Visuals are OK, especially Digimon designs are detailed and have great animations. - I don't speak Japanese, but character voices sounded good. Music has some really nice songs as well. - The city design and Japanese vibes are awesome. Rather simple, but the Japanese feel is strong. [h1]MEH:[/h1] - There are some moments of exposition dump, but if you are used to Japanese games, it's normal. - The difficulty is all over the place. Most battles are too easy, even on Hard. Some boss battles are really difficult even on Normal difficulty. There are so many synergies and items that could utilize balanced difficulty! I almost didn't use any items other than healing, because it wasn't necessary. - The detective part of the game is not utilized enough. It would be cooler if you had more available keywords to ask for cases, and if you didn't know whom to ask what. Right now, you have big quest marker over person indicating that you need to ask this person about your single keyword. [h1]CONS:[/h1] - The gameplay and 3D movement with no camera rotation is somewhat weird. - There are bugs. I was unable to run the game without switching to a fresh Windows 10 user. It is a known bug. To sum up, I had 50 hours of fun, but a lot of potential is wasted or misplaced. Still, I recommend this to any creature collecting fan or Japanese culture fan. [b]GAMEPLAY 8/10 GRAPHICS 8/10 AUDIO 8/10 STORY 8/10[/b] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778693344 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778693876

Review for Cyber Sleuth only. Will update once I've completed Hacker's Memory. Pros: -Digimon collection and grinding are quite addictive. Ended up spending most time in the digilab instead of continuing the main story. -Character designs are quite unique. They're at least memorable to some extent. -Good plot twists when they happen. -I actually like the town maps even though they're limited in scope. Cons: -Cannot rotate camera with right analog stick. -Cant instant teleport/enter world map from anywhere. -Can only accept 1 case/quest at a time. -A certain quest 'how to get a girlfriend?' had an npc wasn't marked on the screen so had to waste time running around same place. -Decent turn-based. -First time I saw this kind of first or back attack system in a turn-based game that even though unlikely to happen most of the time, it relies heavily on RNG because the foes are not even on the field. -Decent story, only got better in the last few chapters. -Repetitive dungeon designs. -Cannot skip cutscenes/skip skill cutscenes. -Main objective (outside of case) isn't shown anywhere on the screen. Need to talk to NPCs to recall. -Cannot use heal skills outside of battles. -To be honest, most of the character's personalities are insufferable. Also, the way they talk/dialogues are sometimes annoying to read. I don't know if it's intentional or due to translation's quality. At least some of them have good chara development (e.g: Kyoko and Nokia). Still enjoyed the game despite the long list of cons. 7/10