Digimon Story: Time Stranger – Review

Digimon Story has been active for many years. For over 2 decades, the series has evolved, revealing a new roster of Digimons to learn and become accustomed to. But there is one game that comes to my mind that has totally brought the game to new heights, and that is Digimon Story: Time Stranger.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger is the 7th installment of the Digimon Story series, and it features an all-new cast of characters, a total number of 450 plus Digimons, and stories that forever change both the human and digital world. This new JRPG game centers around the protagonist, who is known to be an Agent of Adamas, whose mission is to save the world by investigating and solving anomalous phenomena. In the course of their investigation, they encounter an unknown creature called a “Digimon” in Shinjuku, an area sealed off by the government. They are caught up in a mysterious explosion. Later, they wake up 8 years in the past and are given a new task to prevent the so-called Shinjuku Inferno and learn what connections both the Digital World and Human World have.

The gameplay of this new Digimon game utilizes turn-based combat, and I really love the fact that we need to build a team of Digimon with different skills and attributes that are suited for various combats. It is fairly straightforward to determine which attacks can inflict bonus damage depending on the type of Digimon you are fighting. Players can choose up to 3 Digimons in combat and 3 others as reserve, with up to 3 guest party members joining mostly during the story missions.

In every mission, whether it’s the story mission or the sidequests, the combat of Digimon Story: Time Stranger becomes more intriguing as the boss fights are what gamers are truly looking forward to. These boss fights have a special charged attack that will deal a ton of damage if they are not interrupted in time. These fights are so climactic that the players, whether they are playing for the first time or during NG+, will face the challenges that will be present no matter what.

Defeating them now is much more challenging, as it requires precise timing and strategic planning. Plus, Digivolutions will be the key to helping players get through this hard difficulty. Compared to the previous Story game, the new Time Stranger shows how complex and difficult it will be in Digivolving your favorite units.  Specific requirements must be met for each Digimon, usually by hitting certain stat thresholds. While these stats can often be reached by leveling up, other times players will hit max level with a Digimon and won’t be able to digivolve them. Whenever this type of situation occurs, it is best to start upgrading your agent skills by earning points through various quests that will help boost the stats of all your Digimon and eventually make it possible to digivolve them.

This tremendous feature in Digivolving is really awesome, as I can test the limits on what resources I should use at my disposal, especially in performing DNA Digivolving. Another new feature added to this game is giving Digimons traits. These traits help unlock bond skills that can help players fight off enemy Digimons and, at the same time, buff or heal your party during combat. To have a specific trait added to your Digimon, either by interacting with them or training them through the Digi-Camp. Though this method is important, the game fails in introducing and explaining this feature properly. At first, when I learned of this feature, I thought it would not give any importance to strengthening, but only through mid-combat that I learned that it could greatly help me overcome Titan bosses. If I were the developers, I would have put a huge importance tutorial mission on it, especially since these traits help in digivolving your units.

Leveling up in this game is important, and most of the time, there are sidequests that players can complete, including the Outer Dungeons. Outer Dungeons are optional challenges that reward you with money, items, and rare Digimon. There are several of these that can be found in various areas of the game, and some of which can be found in unexpected locations that prove to be very useful in earning tons of resources. However, I have noticed that the missions to complete them may seem restrictive and challenging; there are times when I feel the content feels repetitive. I am not saying that it’s bad at all, but it feels kinda bland for especially in cases where I have an overpowered unit, and to complete it is either wiping them out or surviving the time limit. Technically, they could adjust the difficulty of these dungeons based on the Agent’s level, and once that happens, stronger enemies will appear and the rewards will be doubled as well.

The graphics for this game are really generic. Depsite using high-quality rendering for the environments and level designs, the Digimons look out of place as they still use the same appearance and rendering as they used in the previous Digimon Story games. For example, when you look at Agumon in the game and put him in the background of Central, you notice quickly how out of place his appearance is, and if anything that needs to be criticized, it should be how developers can make them fit in within the whole map.

Despite the cons stated, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is so far the best Digimon game. It has done some things right and was definitely made for those who are hardcore Digimon fans. I would love to recommend this game to any of my friends who are into the series, but first also recommend trying out the demo to see if it suits their taste as well.