Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth was sneakily one of the best RPGs of 2016. Almost a decade later, its long-awaited successor is mounting another lowkey coup in a genre that’s only gotten more competitive in the years since. Digimon Story: Time Stranger plays like a very traditional turn-based role-playing game in all of my favorite ways while bringing multiple generational leaps’ worth of technical upgrades to a spin-off series whose last entries were built for PS Vita. It feels like the Persona-style glow-up many Pokémon fans have been waiting for.
At PAX West last week I had the chance to play over 90 minutes of Digimon Story: Time Stranger, which comes to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 3, and the latest Bandai Namco-published creature fighter from veteran RPG maker Media Vision did not disappoint. Things already seemed good coming out of a Summer Game Fest demo earlier this summer and a deeper dive only firmed up the sense that the game, first announced eight years ago, can meet the increasing expectations surrounding Digimon Story‘s return.
The latest session let me play the start of the game before later shifting to a much more advanced segment over a dozen hours into the adventure. You play as a secret agent working for the ADAMAS organization investigating ominous anomalies in Tokyo that seem to be linked to social upheaval. The Digimon Story games have always had an emphasis on compelling conversations and background intrigue, which Cyber Sleuth took to the next level with a narrative that felt like more than just a means to an end of raising virtual pets.
What I played of Time Stranger continues that with English voice acting and more polished cinematic animations, coupled with an unusually stellar soundtrack. Are there extremely goofy moments too? Absolutely. I’ve already witnessed half a dozen snippets that I can’t wait to send to folks in the group chat who have not interacted with Digimon since it debuted in the West on Fox Kids back in 1999. Watching familiar RPG tropes reenacted by absurd-looking creatures that speak like humans is an acquired taste, but Time Stranger does an admirable job.
Eerie anime vibes established, my early tutorial section eventually transitioned to a later stretch set in the Digimon world’s colorful seaside Abyss Area which felt oddly reminiscent of Chrono Cross‘ tropical archipelago. Here, Time Stranger‘s bread and butter took center stage: fighting, collecting, and growing your Digimon. There’s the combat triangle between Data, Virus, and Vaccine type Digimon, elemental weaknesses, and a swapping system that lets you use different Digimon on the fly if your current team doesn’t have the right build.
Building meter during battle also lets you unleash an ultimate attack to deal extra damage or buff your team. It’s a nimble set of mechanics that helps turn-based battles shine, forcing you to think about what you’re doing and adapt on the fly without getting bogged down in too much minutiae. It’s definitely old-school but more satisfying than just mashing the same set of attacks over and over again. If things do start to get repetitive, a fast-forward button helps bypass the boring bits. Defeat a Digimon enough times and you get a 100 percent scan rate to create your own, or you can wait for a 200 percent scan rate to get an even stronger version of it.
Outside of combat, the main focus remains on Digivolving and De-Digivolving your pals. The first makes them more powerful while the second makes them weaker again in the short term to raise their long-term potential. Aiding this convoluted process is the DigiFarm system which lets you tweak the new personalities of your Digimon to change which stats grow the fastest. Certain personalities are also required to Digivolve or De-Digivolve specific Digimon along with player rank and relationship status. Consumable items and training sessions let you speed up this process too.
There’s also an entire character skill tree full of perks that provide extra bonuses to your team depending on a Digimon’s specific relationship with you and their personality type, though I didn’t get to see how these systems feel over the long haul. Do they feel balanced? Do they get tedious? Is it too streamlined or too convoluted? But I certainly came away with the impression that Time Stranger has a great foundation to work with.
Will it hold up over a 40-50 hour adventure? Is it well paced? Does the story end up going somewhere cool even if you’re not a dyed-in-the-wool Digimon sicko? Only the full, finished game can answer those questions. So far, however, the successor to Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth continues to look like it’s making smart choices and pushing the series forward. It could easily be overshadowed next month by Pokémon Legends: Z-A but it doesn’t deserve to be. Digimon Story: Time Stranger should be on every RPG fan’s radar, whether they’ve been keeping up with the franchise or not.
