Digimon Story Time Stranger

It’s been quite some time since I last played Cyber Sleuth/Hacker’s Memory, and over a decade since at least Cyber Sleuth graced the Vita and other home consoles. We’ve been due for a new Digimon RPG for a while, even ignoring the semi-recent Digimon Survive. I had some criticisms of Cyber Sleuth, and I’ve also heard that Time Stranger had its own development difficulties. So, let’s see what they learned, or managed to salvage. Time Stranger starts you off as an Agent of Adamas, an organization that investigates urban myths and digital anomalies involving Digimon. During an operation to contain the Shinjuku Inferno, the Agent fails and is sent eight years into the past. After meeting a high school girl named Inori and bonding with a strange, boy-shaped Digimon named Aegiomon, the three form a team while searching for clues to prevent the Inferno. During a particularly harrowing battle, they are transported to the Digital World of Iliad, which is caught in a war between friendly Digimon and hostile Titans responsible for the events in the real world. From there, the Agent ventures forth to save both worlds from a dark future. A lot of people have been angry with the Pokémon franchise lately, another series about cute creatures beating the snot out of each other. Many have sought Time Stranger as an alternative. I’ll add one more comparison: it’s almost nothing like Pokémon.The gameplay is much closer to Shin Megami Tensei. You have a team of three, a backup set of three, and usually Aegiomon or another Digimon as guest party members. Digimon are largely tools, and you’ll have access to an army of them by the midpoint. Rather than catching them directly, encounters fill a meter that lets you generate a clone. Meet the stat and Agent Level requirements and you can digivolve them into stronger, or sometimes weaker, forms. Repeatedly doing this increases their “bond,” allowing them to retain stats when reverting to weaker forms. You’ll go through a lot of Digimon because of the sheer number of encounters and enormous evolution trees. Seriously, almost any Digimon can turn into almost anyone else. Some people dislike this, but most evolutions at least make sense. Mob Digimon can also be consumed for EXP. The returning Digifarm lets you train stats and increase bond outside battle. Since there are so many Digimon, getting the ones you want isn’t particularly difficult. Combat is standard turn-based fare. Digimon have elements and attributes that determine bonus damage, can equip four moves plus signature attacks, and have a CP bar used for Cross Arts. These can buff your team, debuff enemies, deal heavy damage, heal, and so on. There is a huge variety of Digimon. Even after 70-plus hours, I’m sure I haven’t seen all of them, perhaps barely over half. That said, most were already in Cyber Sleuth/Hacker’s Memory, so the early game can feel like a retread if you recently played those games. The World and Side Content The game is quite linear, with basic side quests. JRPGs are often linear, but games like SMT V: Vengeance and Dragon Quest give you more to do outside the main plot. Don’t expect much here until the endgame. At least they removed the mandatory fetch-quest nonsense from Cyber Sleuth/Hacker’s Memory. Digivolution progression is also handled differently. In the previous games, you reached Champion early and Ultimate not long after. Here, progression is gated by Agent Level, which you increase through main and side quests. I understand wanting Champion and Ultimate forms to have more presence, but Mega Evolutions are now effectively locked behind side content. You won’t have enough Agent Levels without completing most of the side quests, and even then you won’t reach Mega until around 80% through the game. That is WAY too far in the other direction. Plot and Characters Like most RPGs, we have a silent protagonist. I don’t mind the trope if the supporting cast or atmosphere gives you something to latch onto, but that’s a problem here. Inori, the deuteragonist alongside Aegiomon, doesn’t have much personality and rarely surprises you. The rest of the human cast is similarly forgettable, partly because you barely spend time with them. But these are humans, right? We’re here for the Digimon! The Digimon are more interesting, with much more effort put into giving them distinct personalities, although you don’t spend much time with them either. The pacing is also incredibly wonky. Around the midpoint, you begin retreading previously visited areas with barely any changes. That would be understandable for a game centered around time travel, but it’s especially bad when the dungeons were already mostly boring corridors with few set pieces. Look at Chrono Trigger, a 30-year-old game that does this far better. The second half also feels like it suffered major rewrites or cuts. Characters come and go while acting as though you’ve been through the ringer together, and the human cast gets the worst of it.The dialogue is clunky, frequently repeating information immediately after it was already explained. The Digimon are all voiced, although voice reuse is common. I mostly played the Japanese dub. The English dub is serviceable for the story, but the mob Digimon often sound like they were voiced by people who happened to be nearby. A giant sea serpent shouldn’t announce its attacks like someone asking a coworker to cover their shift. My review is spoiler-free, but the worst part of the plot is the twist, which I won’t spoil. Pay attention to the dialogue of your primary companions throughout the journey. The twist becomes maddeningly stupid once it reveals itself. Because the cast gives you so little to latch onto, the silent protagonist stands out even more. The Agent feels especially superficial during emotional scenes, and I think the game would have worked better with Inori as the sole protagonist, particularly given what happens to the party after the twist. Gameplay Critiques The shop system is frustrating. Items are scattered between different stores instead of being consolidated in the Inbetween Theater, which serves as a central hub for the Digifarm and DLC. It’s essentially the game’s Velvet Room or Cathedral of Shadows. Having to remember which shop carries what is annoying, especially when some stores are inaccessible for long stretches. The Inbetween Theater should simply be an all-purpose shop. The game also feels watered down after SMT V: Vengeance. The Agent’s animations and ability to ride Digimon seem largely pointless, especially since the Agent’s sprint skill is usually faster anyway. Vengeance doesn’t exactly have great dungeon design either, but it was still better than what Time Stranger offers. Combat presentation is another problem. Even with the elaborate signature moves, battles lack the back-and-forth feeling of an actual fight. It feels like you’re cutscening at each other. Better camera work and visual effects to sell attacks would help considerably. I even think Cyber Sleuth had more entertaining battles visually. The Digimon in your party also lack much of a presence. Something like SMT V: Vengeance’s Demon Haunts, or simply more ways for them to interact with the world, would have helped. As things stand, it barely matters who is in your party. It also makes little sense that Aegiomon’s forms don’t change his data type. Digimon Digivolving is hardly a spoiler, and leaving him with the same type means your primary helper can be at a disadvantage in many fights. Bosses don’t change things up much either. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen most of them, aside from their admittedly well-done signature skills. SMT V: Vengeance wins another point here. Man, I appreciate that game much more after playing this. Cutscenes in the middle of battle are particularly annoying. A few would be fine, but major fights can have three or four after only a few turns. It gets even worse late-game continued in comments

Um jogo que prende bastante a atenção e te leva a evoluir sem deixar o desafio de lado

best game

Es buen Juego, Lastima que tiene algunos logros bugeados, por lo que es imposible completarlo al 100%

I want Beelstarmon to sit on me

It's so peak

Nice