I’ve now played through the video game, Digimon Story: Time Stranger two times now, so I thought I’d do my own little review of the game.
As a disclaimer, I should point out that Time Stranger has actually been out since last year. It only became available for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in the middle of last month. Regardless, I had been chomping at the bit to play this game, partly because I had been hearing nothing but good things about it online, but also because I had repeatedly played two previous games in this series, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Story (Cyber Sleuth): Hacker’s Memory. Time Stranger not only lived up to most of its hype, it was also a major improvement over its two predecessors. I mean, Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory weren’t bad games, but I always felt like they had a sort of low-budget quality to them. The same cannot be said of Time Stranger.
As for the story in Time Stranger, it’s pretty good overall. Time travel of course plays a major element in the story, as implied by the title. After the events of the prologue, the player character is flung eight years into the past. Aside from the main character, the main focus of the story is on a girl named Inori Misono and the Digimon who becomes her partner, Aegiomon. Also playing a major role in the story is the Olympus XII, a group of powerful Mega-level Digimon based on the Greek/Roman Gods. The way that the members of this digital pantheon are introduced over the course of the story is pretty cool, and all I’ll say is that a good chunk of these Digimon don’t appear in their fully evolved forms when introduced.
My one major complaint about the story is with this twist about the player character that’s revealed towards the story’s climax. I’m not going to say what that twist is because it’s a major spoiler, but I will say that it was just a little bit too “out there” for my taste. Other than that, the only other issues I had with the story were with little things that happened towards the end; short little cut scenes that I felt were just a little too cheesy. I also felt like the battle against the final boss was just a little too scripted. I mean yeah, it was challenging, and I might’ve lost big time if I hadn’t gone into it sufficiently prepared or if I had been playing at a higher difficulty setting, but it kind of felt like I couldn’t actually lose the thing.
As for gameplay… Time Stranger really ripped off a lot from the Pokémon games, but then so did Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory. For one thing, you start the game by picking from one of three Digimon to serve as your starter (I went with Patamon during both play-throughs). Also, in Time Stranger you can send out your Digimon to attack the wild Digimon you encounter in a way that’s very similar to how you can deploy your Pokémon to attack wild Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet. Battles also use a very similar turn-based format. One big difference is that you send out three Digimon at once to do battle (if able) instead of just the one.
There are a couple of other aspects to the battle system that differentiate this game from Pokémon. For one thing, you can freely swap out what special attacks your Digimon can use (the only exception being the signature moves of the Digimon in question). Another major aspect to battles in Time Stranger is the existence of Cross Arts, which are special attacks that the player can personally unleash during certain points of the battle. These attacks can either buff the player’s Digimon or do serious damage to the opponent. The player unleashes these Cross Arts using their Digivice, which in this case is a high-tech flip phone that can transform into a ray gun.
Of course one of the biggest gameplay aspects in Time Stranger is the evolution system (or Digivolution system, I should say). The player has full control over when their Digimon evolves. When the time comes, they just select from the appropriate menu options. Most of the Digimon in the game have different branching evolutions, and what form they can evolve into depends on if they meet the minimum stat requirements for that form. How far a Digimon can be evolved depends totally on the player’s Agent Rank, which can be raised as the player completes various side quests and progresses through the main story. There is another facet to all of this though, the Digimon’s personality.
The Digimon obtained in this game can have a number of different personalities, such as Enlightened, Daring, Tolerant and Friendly. There are sixteen different personalities in all. These personalities not only affect the Digimon’s stats, they also help dictate which form the Digimon in question will have an easier time evolving into. The personalities of the Digimon that the player raises can also be changed through various means if necessary. In short, the system for evolving Digimon in this game has a lot of moving parts, but it’s actually pretty easy once you figure out how everything works, and it gets even easier as you unlock more of the Agent Skills in the game.
All of that being said, I did get a notebook to jot down the most efficient evolution lines for obtaining certain Mega-level Digimon in the game to serve as reference for future play-throughs. In fact I’ve thought a lot about making my own game guide for this to put on the Game FAQs website. It wouldn’t be a walkthrough, but more of a Digivolution Planner. I hesitate though because I’ve never written a guide for that site before, and I’m not sure how well-received it would be. Plus I’ll probably have to play through the game a few more times and experiment different evolution routes in order to get truly good information, though some of this information could be obtained easily enough through research of already existing websites.
Getting back to my review, there is one gameplay aspect of Time Stranger that I really don’t like. Most of the Digimon in this game start out with a fairly low level cap, and the only good way to raise it is to repeatedly send the Digimon into question into battle, level them up a bit, evolve them, and in some cases devolve them and evolve them again. Now if you’re using the same small group of Digimon in almost every battle throughout the game, this isn’t too big of an issue. However, if you’re trying to raise a large group of Digimon to swap on and off of your active team to better deal with certain boss fights, this means you’ll have to stop at several points for long periods of tedious grinding to raise the level caps of all the Digimon you intend to use.
In fact towards the end of the game, a lot of level grinding is needed in general. In order to stand the chance against the last few bosses, the player’s Digimon need to be a minimum of Level 80, with at least one or two stats at or near five thousand. The bad part is towards the end of the game, there aren’t too many good grinding spots to choose from. There is some cheap paid DLC that includes a special dungeon where you can grind for high EXP items, but you’ll need a lot of them, so it doesn’t make the grinding process any less tedious. During my second play-through of the game, it took me four or five days to get all of my Digimon sufficiently leveled up for the endgame.
My only other major complaint about Time Stranger is that it doesn’t have an actual postgame. There are a ton of side quests that pop up once the endgame is reached, and these can be saved for after beating the final boss. The thing is this game encourages players to take on side quests as soon as they pop up, because one of the rewards for most of them is points to increase the players Agent Rank and thus gain access to stronger Digimon evolutions. In other words, its more to the player’s advantage to finish those side quests before taking on the final boss. So really, the only thing left to do after beating the game is repeatedly fight a few optional bosses. This means that the game world in Time Stranger becomes the same existential dead zone as postgame Kanto in the original Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow games.
I think that pretty much covers it for this review. Digimon Story: Time Stranger is by no means a perfect game, but I think this is one game I’ll repeatedly visit for at least a few years to come. The game is set to get some major DLC some time during the next year. I don’t really know what’s being added, but I’m hoping it’ll at least be something that’ll make the game a whole new experience all over again, or at least add something that could be considered an actual postgame. In the meantime, I’m looking forward more to the new Fire Emblem game that’s set to come out next month.
