Digimon Story Time Stranger

Digimon has stepped up and been on an A game for some time now. While I have my issues with Beat Break, the current anime series, the card game has been going strong and another lauded entry is what we are looking at today, the JRPG Digimon Story Time Stranger.

Time Stranger can be seen gameplay wise as the sequel to Digimon Cyber Sleuth or Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth making it the most recent in the Digimon Story line of games… and since none of the others bothered to get released in Europe I’m just going to call it the second in the stories line, (a reminder to people in America that ever complain if we in Europe get a game released before you, it’s still a looong way till those scales are balanced) assuming we include Hackers Memory as an expansion to Cyber Sleuth and not its own game.

You start out as an agent of ADAMAS, a secret group dealing with the paranormal. Right away in your investigation you get caught up in an explosive encounter with Digital Life forms, very early given a choice of three to start with but quickly able to gain more. Then suddenly you find yourself in a war between two factions bleeding into the physical world and some kind of Giant robot while you try to protect a young woman who seems to know you, even had your number yet you never gave her it. And then you travel back in time. And that’s where the demo ends.

As the plot goes on you re-encounter the young woman and learn more and more about the crisis that seems to be destroying your future, you are out to avert the Shinjuku Inferno thanks to your journey back in time and discover powerful forces and ancient rivalries… and then all the confusing stuff because of time travel… don’t worry its done well, this isn’t one of those “oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed” trying to work out the plot.

The Digimon line-up has increased since Cyber Sleuth, notably a heavy focus on the Olympos XII which are based on the Greek pantheon, though with names based on the Roman iterations. Sadly the cast of Ghost Game are not in the game, and annoyingly my beloved BlackWarGreyMon and his kin are tied to pre-order dlc (I think you can get it separately, but it’s annoying given how fan favourite he is)… also they could have avoided using the absolutely terrible forms from that abysmal last Evolution movie *shudders* But it is good that a faction other than the Royal Knights are getting such attention, they are in it but mainly just a side story post game, main story it’s the Greeks. So you can kind of guess who the final boss is going to be if you know your Greek mythology.

The core battle mechanics are the same as the last entry, though unique Digimon abilities are gone, (as in the ones that are just background effects from them being in play, they still have the unique attacks) instead abilities are attributed to the Digimon’s personality, which can be influenced by interacting with them or types of training at the farm. The other major change is that rather than having a memory limit on Digimon that increases as you play the game and find items to do that. You instead get anomaly points that are invested into agent skills. Doing so increases your agent rank and higher Digivolutions require set agent ranks 3 for Champion, 5 for Ultimate 7 for Mega and a few others for even higher. These agent skills will boost up your Digimon and are broken up into 5 categories 4 for the main types of personalities and 1 for generic stuff. These agent skills can lower the requirement for Digiovultion beyond just having the necessary rank so it’s a good idea to plan them out.

I can’t say I ever truly struggled thanks to one… my habit of grinding so I get the Digivolutions I wanted and 2, thanks to the outer dungeons, a sort of repeatable mini dungeon, I was running about with A LOT of super all heal items that also recovered my Digimon’s SP as well as HP. Mind you there are 2 bosses in the game that can mess that up… but I had a fairly strong team so they weren’t too tricky, but I can see why for people not obsessively doing everything they can to try and get a Mega the first chance they get… and it be that ONE Mega they really want might have difficulty with. But that’s all for the challenge. That said the mechanic where a boss would suddenly put up a barrier to charge their ultimate attack and if you don’t get rid of it you take a large hit, was a bit annoying… meant a lot of fights once I know how to take that down, I was never seeing their special attack, and others just felt frustrating.

Much like Cyber Sleuth though this is an absolutely great game to play whether you are into Digimon or not. It works as a good turn-based rpg. Between that game and this though they realized Digimon had a larger international appeal so this has an English dub.. though I’m fairly sure the people voicing the Digimon you control was not a large cast, and a bunch of voices don’t fit, especially if you watch any of the anime. It can at times feel frustrating as you want to get to a higher Digivolution but are held back by the agent rank not being high enough, and no side quests to push it higher, in fact the vast majority of side quests end up being at the last moments of the game and feel it could have been spaced out better.

However a HUGE improvement over Cyber Sleuth is in the variety of locations you go to. While that was mostly one large dungeon area with multiple floors that splinter off into sub dungeons, Time Stranger has many locations including the digital world itself to explore. This will leave certain lines not showing up till later than I would have liked, but it is great to have more than just one type of location.

For those people that are needing a good monster taming game, or a good rpg, or a game they can sink a bunch of time into, I recommend this one as it will be a great journey. I just wish Jellymon was in it.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮