Digimon Story: Time Stranger

Growing up I was always more of a fan of Pokemon than Digimon. I enjoyed watching the Digimon anime for a couple of seasons but never dove into the video games until much later. I played the first few Digimon World games and found them kind of hit or miss in terms of how much I enjoyed them depending on if they were geared more towards the digital pet aspect or were more action oriented.

When Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth came out I saw that the battles were more like a typical RPG and picked it up out of curiosity…and got hooked. While I haven’t played its sequel Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory yet, when I saw that Digimon Story: Time Stranger was coming to Steam I pretty much smashed the Wishlist button. Let’s dive into Digimon Story: Time Stranger and see if my enthusiasm was warranted.

In Digimon Story: Time Stranger you play as an agent of ADAMAS, an organization that investigates various anomalies known as “Electro Phase Life Forms,” or Digimon. While investigating one of these anomalies you encounter a girl in a tall building that you end up protecting from a giant Digimon that ends up destroying the world. However, in doing so you somehow get sent back eight years into the past, and now you must try to prevent that end of the world event, known as the Shinjuku Inferno, from happening. While trying to figure that out you meet Inori Misono and her father, detective Kosuke, who let you stay at their place while all of this is taking place, so at least you have a place to stay while investigating the end of the world.

Throughout the story you’ll occasionally get updates from another agent from your original timeline whose main purpose seems to be to remind you to gather intel on the Digimon you find and that your primary objective is to stop the Shinjuku Inferno from taking place. As you get further in and begin to befriend more Digimon, you start to feel that saving them is just as important as preventing the Shinjuku Inferno, especially once you get to the Digital World and learn more about the dangers that threaten it. There might even be a few moments in the story that will hit you right in the feels—speaking from experience here.

To assist with your investigation, you’ll be spending a lot of time battling, raising, and training Digimon. You start with a partner Digimon from a choice of three and every time you defeat a Digimon in battle it’s “scan rate” will go up. Once a Digimon’s scan rate reaches at least 100 percent you can convert it into a physical Digimon to add to your team.

Digimon are also capable of “digivolving” into multiple forms depending on their stage (In Training, Rookie, Mega, etc.), stats, and personality. You can give a Digimon various items to alter their stats or use new moves, and if you want to fine tune their training in a specific way you can send them to the Farm and have them train to level specific stats so you can digivolve them into the exact Digimon you want. If you’re more familiar with Pokemon, evolutions in Digimon are a lot more complex, but also have some really nice payoffs when you’re working towards a specific powerful evolution.

As you complete missions you gain Anomaly Points which help increase your Agent Rank and can be used to purchase various skills on one of several skill trees based on the various Digimon personality traits. The skills you unlock can increase the stats of your Digimon depending on what trait they currently have and what their current evolution stage is. You can also learn new Cross Arts which are moves that agents can use in battles once a special meter is filled up that can perform actions such as giving your party a temporary buff to stats or inflicting massive damage to every opponent.

What really drew me into Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth that carried over into Time Stranger was the combat. You can have up to three Digimon on your team plus three in reserve that you can swap between if need be. Each Digimon can be one of several attributes and their basic attacks and skills can be one of several elements, and these will determine what attacks a Digimon is strong and weak against. Figuring out a Digimon’s strength and weakness is key to dealing 300% damage instead of 30%.

While the primary attribute chain is Virus is strong against Data, Data against Vaccine, and Vaccine against Virus, there are a few types that are considered neutral and can be used effectively against any attribute. If you do tend to struggle a bit, you can use one item per a Digimon’s turn without using up their turn in battle, and standing around for a few seconds after a battle will restore everyone’s HP and SP.

One of my only real issues with Digimon Story: Time Stranger actually involves battling. As long as you have a decently balanced team including reserve Digimon, the regular encounters aren’t too difficult to win, and every Digimon you have with you gains experience (including those in your box that aren’t being used at the moment).

The longer you wait to digivolve something, the better stats they’ll inherit upon doing so, especially since after digivolving the new Digimon’s stats will be lower, and its experience level is back to level one. Thankfully they do level quickly, but you also don’t want to make the same mistake I did in the early going: wait until they’re near their current max level to digivolve. While that does mean higher stats, it can also mean being seriously underpowered for boss fights.

Throughout the story you’ll encounter enemy Digimon known as Titans which typically serve as boss fights. While I burned through the normal battles, the Titans were a different story. They can pummel you with damage while your damage output might not be that great if you haven’t been digivolving your team properly. Titans can also employ a mechanic where they start charging up a powerful move while something else on them becomes a target. Damaging the new target enough will knock them out of their charge, but if you don’t, you’ll have one turn to shield up/guard before they unleash a very powerful attack that can eliminate an unprepared team in one shot.

This all sounds very daunting, but in some battles another NPC Digimon might drop in to help with the battle. That sounds nice, but on more than one occasion it turned the tide of the battle so much it went from “very daunting” to being over in a few more rounds, making things kind of anticlimactic after the deus-ex Digimon showed up.

Beyond that though, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is a blast and I enjoyed it as much as I did Cyber Sleuth, if not more. The game looks and sounds great and has the same feel and charm that the prior games did. If you’re not as familiar with the franchise, some things can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to properly preparing your team to take on the dangers you’ll encounter. You can grind up experience if needed to get your team leveled, but I started learning to digivolve something almost as soon as you’re able to, depending on what digivolution you’re going for. Otherwise, you might end up in a Titan fight that you have very little chance of winning. Thankfully you can find doors to a place called the In-Between Theater now and then where you can rest up and purchase some items for use in battles.

If you’re on the fence about Digimon Story: Time Stranger, you can download a demo that takes you through roughly the first two hours of the game, and you can also check out an area in the Digital World to experience some later gameplay. Progress from the main story will carry over to the full game, and if you purchase the Ultimate Edition you’ll get a “special” Agumon and Gabumon that can quickly digivolve into special forms not normally obtainable until later in the game, making the earlier parts of the game a lot easier. I mentioned at the start that I was hoping my enthusiasm for Digimon Story: Time Stranger would be warranted, and I can definitely say it was without a doubt.