Digimon Story Time Stranger

Bottom line up front: I recommend this game, but only on sale. Full disclosure, I love Digimon. I have over 140 hours in Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory, and I grew up playing Digimon World 3. With that in mind, I think this is a genuinely great Digimon game. The Digimon themselves are easily the highlight. The models look fantastic, they all have voice lines, and the battle animations are smooth and high quality. Honestly, it feels like most of the budget went into making high fidelity Digimon models, and I am completely okay with that. The roster is huge, and there are a lot of quality of life improvements to move sets, skill learning, and stat growth. You can basically build any Digimon into an endgame viable monster with maxed stats, which is something I have wanted for years. The story is also surprisingly solid. I think it is one of the better Digimon Story plots overall and it actually has a pretty decent twist. The cinematics are great too. Jupitermon and GraceNovamon fighting Chronomon is chef's kiss. The music was another big standout for me. I honestly think it is a noticeable improvement over recent Digimon entries. That said, this game has some major problems. At 70 dollars, it is massively overpriced. It feels even worse when you realize how much content was carved out into expensive day one DLC. The season pass pricing is absurd considering how much of it is reused assets and locations. If you want Digimon like MetalGarurumon Black or BlackWarGreymon, you have to pay extra just to unlock their evolution lines. That is ridiculous, and I refuse to support it. The other big issue is that the game feels old despite being brand new. If you have played something like Shin Megami Tensei V, Time Stranger feels like stepping backward in time, which is crazy because SMT V itself is already old at this point. Like previous Digimon Story games, most of the gameplay is still just running back and forth through narrow corridors for 80% of the game. What makes that especially frustrating is that the Digital World itself looks incredible. The environments feel huge, magical, expansive, and full of life. Then you realize most of it is just background parallax that you never actually get to explore. Honestly, this game would have benefited massively from an open zone structure like Xenoblade Chronicles II, SMT V, or even Pokemon Legends Arceus. You play as an Agent investigating anomalies, but there is barely any actual exploration. The setting and premise were perfect for it. There are also a bunch of smaller issues that add up. The protagonist is barely voiced outside of random reactions like yelling "Wow!" when finding items, so there is really no reason there could not have been character customization. The human character rigging is also rough in a lot of scenes. The game constantly gives you fake dialogue choices where all 2 or 3 options lead to the exact same response and change absolutely nothing. Some areas also feel incredibly underdeveloped, like they were either cut content or thrown together at the last second. The Dark Zone especially stands out there. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Digimon Time Stranger. The Digimon themselves, the music, the cinematics, and the customization systems carry the experience hard. But the outdated structure, lack of exploration, and aggressive DLC pricing keep it from feeling like the modern evolution this series desperately needs.

Pros Story and characters are genuinely really great. It gets off on a good foot, and keeps that momentum going. The only thing holding it back is that it becomes pretty clear where they started to cut back on presentation. Its not too bad but it is noticeable. I appreciate the voice acting, I have low vision and dyslexia. So its very much welcome for someone with eyes like mine. Cyber Sleuth and previous games only had japanese which made it much harder for me to get through them. The voice acting itself is very good, you can tell the characters really care about each other. For the moments the voice acting isn't so good, or a little weird. Its kinda cool. The digimon come in a variety of shapes and sizes. So when you see a big tough digimon that just sounds like a kid working at mc donalds its silly but nice. It reminds you that digimon aren't their affinity or species. They are just their own species of people. Yeah that toddler over here? He had the voice of a gym bro cause he hits the gym. That massive dragon that looks like she could end the world? Huge dingus dorkus loves anime figures or japanese food. Game play is amazing for a JRPG, it has so many quality of life features holy geezum. I'm just gonna list em out You don't capture digimon, you slowly grow a percentage every time you beat one and they you can just make it on the fly. Sitting still for 9 seconds completely recovers your party reguardless of where you are. You can use items freely once per turn without it taking that turn You can swap out your current digimon on the fly at any time during combat to a set of 3 in reserve there is a little farm sim thing that you can put digimon in to have them passively get you resources and level up in particular stats All digimon you own, not just those in your party/back up get EXP Fast travel, holy biscuits fast travel Your human character has the ability to boost all your party members in battle meaning they aren't just for sitting there giving commands you can speed up battles x5 Its awesome, and def helped carry me through some of the slower sections of the game. Graphics are nice, no real input here. Its anime, we perfected this look on the gamecube/PS2/Xbox lol. There is some nice stylization like with human NPCs sorta being solid colors. An the digital world being more saturated in its colors vs akihabara. Lastly Aegiomon is always part of your party but does not take up a party slot. You can control them, and they are just the sweetest little bean. Cons Achievements are busted, I'm missing one single achievement in the middle of the game like 40 hours in. So if I even want a chance of getting it I have to replay all of that. The game also requires a second complete play through on its hardest difficulty Mega +. Which sets all mons to have a attack of 9999 and max level. With some other stats also set to 9999 depending on the mon. With the removal of usable items in battle, and the ability to run away. They reuse locations a lot, I understand its time travel but I think if they broke up some of the repeat visits with newer areas in between it would have been nice. You will sort of always have a guest party member with you aside from Aegiomon. Various allies join you, and its not really annoying but at times it can feel like you're having your hand held. I'm not sure on a good solution for this, because it does add character to those digimon. The game does not know how to pace its side quest. You get like 2 or 3 at a time between each level, and near the end of the game you get like 30 all at once. Some of which show character moments that would have been appreciated in the main story or in the downtime. Some of these also effect a cutscene in the final battle. Its genuinely nice that these are here but having them all together like this feels awful. I had a solid bit of time where I was upset about getting new ones after finishing up ones. I realized that its silly cause I love the game to pieces and its more game but yeah it was strangely frustrating. Whoever on the dev team decided that a teleport maze should be built around cringe phrases, please seek help. Its a cute idea, but making players go through it twice, with none of the phrases hinting where the player will end up??? You need therapy, or a dominatrix you masochist. Solid 9/10

so, first off this game is great especially if you like digimon. music: 9/10 sound track is good but could use a little more variety. give each area 2 songs next game. having to go back to the same areas would be more enjoyable that way. also hire more VAs guys there is an army of people who dream of working as VAs who would do it for cheap/free you have no excuse. graphics: 9/10 the visuals are amazing and the digimon manage to look perfect in 3d despite being from an anime. better than any anime style game ive ever played by a wide margin. which is good because the game has you go through the same like 7 places twice. gameplay: 7/10 so the game is fun i love the multiple evolutions for each digimon. i love that you can talk to your digimon. i enjoyed the story. where this game falls flat though is its UI, system and mechanics. the game does a poor job explaining any of the systems or mechanics. if you do not train your mons, use the rock paper scissors mechanics properly and sacrifice mons to power them up you will be under powered. battles drag on way too long, the areas are repeated and the world is a series of small areas with very little to do in them. just pretty set pieces really. as a digimon fan its a solid 8/10 if i wasnt a digimon fan and judged it as i would any other game id honestly say its closer to a 6/10. there is a lot of cool stuff here but it feels liike it needed a bigger budget and more time to add things like more quests, accessories for your mons, more character customization, BETTER UI, better battle pacing etcetera. it feels like they really wanted to capture the vibe and image of the original series anmd though they succeeded beyond measure the rest of the game was somewhat half baked as a result.