Seeing Pokemon’s popularity soar over the years has been a joy to see, and always makes me smile as a lifelong Pokémaniac. I remember being surprised however that Digimon was still alive and kicking a few years ago, because I hadn’t really thought about it since I was a child. I’ve reviewed a couple of Digimon games since then with a rather mixed success rate, but I’m always happy to try a new game filled with monster collecting and raising. Digimon Story Time Stranger is the latest Digimon game in a hell of a long line of Digimon games, and might be the best I’ve played.
After choosing between two blank slate characters, you’re told you’re part of an organisation that investigates anomalies. Your latest mission involves exploring a destroyed government building, finding some Digimon, and watching two massive god-like monsters beat the stuffing out of each other. This apparently isn’t a typical day in the job, and the end result of this wild intro is that you’re sent eight years into the past. Now you’re the only hope of humanity as the future looks pretty bleak. This means it’s time to do what you do best, investigate spooky stories and raise and fight Digimon.
In this world the presence of Digimon is almost entirely kept hidden from the general public, which is a little odd since they seem to inhabit every sewer system and abandoned building you enter. There are those who investigate these bizarre creatures though even in the past, and thankfully you meet up with them pretty quickly when searching for a missing occult streamer. Digimon are (as you’d probably expect from a Digimon game) the key to saving the day, so you’d better get used to levelling them up.
The combat in Digimon Story Time Stranger is a traditional turn-based affair, where you command a team of three Digimon against the enemy. Digimon come in all shapes and sizes, and have various elemental attacks they can use. Finding out what elements and attack types deal the most damage is often the name of the game, but in tougher fights you might end up using healing skills and various buffs and status effects to battle your way to victory. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before but it’s pretty entertaining regardless.
There are a few twists in combat as well to spice things up, like follow up attacks which seem to mainly trigger randomly and require you to time a button press to a ring overlapping a circle. Because these are fairly uncommon it’s easy to be caught off guard by them, but the extra damage and occasional healing bonus effect is always appreciated. Your human character can also use special abilities in combat once a super meter fills, and these are ridiculously powerful with effects like dealing massive damage and boosting everyone’s stats a whole lot. Using these is important because boss fights are especially brutal in Digimon Story Time Stranger, especially if you don’t do a lot of grinding and Digivolving.
In a monster raising game you’ll probably be expecting evolution to make your cute friends into badass creatures, and that’s basically how it works in Time Stranger. Unlike Pokémon though Digimon don’t just change into one specific new monster, they have huge branching paths of them. You’ll need to get their stats to certain levels to change them into new forms though, and this will admittedly often take a long time.
Collecting the Digimon themselves is much more straightforward, because by beating enough in battle you can just make them with computer magic. Then you’re able to start teaching them skills with various data discs, and can equip them with different chips for stat boosts and immunities. There’s actually a lot of scope to customise your party in Digimon Story Time Stranger, as long as you don’t mind putting the hours in to get the critters you want.
The most painful part of getting stronger in Time Stranger is levelling up your agent themselves. You get given points to put into a skill tree which grants experience boosts and other buffs to various types of Digimon, but it always feels like it takes so long to get enough points to unlock something decent. Annoyingly this often also gates the strength of Digimon you can Digivolve too, which is even more frustrating.
Outside of all your levelling up and creature gathering, Digimon Story Time Stranger feels like it’s trying incredibly hard to be a Persona game. Not necessarily in terms of making friends and them helping you get stronger, but in the Japanese urban setting and general tone of things. It’s not really got the charm of the Atlus megahit though, and I must admit when a magic door appeared on a random wall and took me to a mysterious place I could go and get stronger I rolled my eyes a little.
I enjoyed my time with Digimon Story Time Stranger a decent amount, but it has some issues that I struggled with as I played. The dungeon style areas are often really dull to explore, and are stuffed so full with Digimon to battle. You don’t have to fight them all, but the strength of enemies means that if you don’t then you’ll probably fail at the next boss. The pacing always feels too slow because of this, and it doesn’t help that the combat is good but not great.
The other main issue I struggled with in Time Stranger were the designs of the Digimon themselves. It’s just so hard to feel connected to these generic cute blobs, especially because when they evolve they look like a particularly edgy teen created them. There’s absolutely none of the charm of other monster collecting games (be they Pokemon, Dragon Quest Monsters, or even Cassette Beasts) and it’s hard to get over that – though of course if you’re a long time fan, your mileage may vary.
Digimon Story Time Stranger is an engaging monster collecting RPG with plenty of Digimon to raise and evolve. The combat is entertaining if fairly straightforward, and the amount of customisation you have over your team is impressive. It won’t be threatening the big daddies in the charm department any time soon, but if you’ve got affection for the franchise it is well worth checking out.
