Digimon Story Time Stranger Review – Monsters with Personality

Digimon Story Time Stranger is the new game in the franchise’s main line, a title that arrives 10 years after the previous effort, such as a JRPG full of energy. Despite its good elements, it is the feeling that the overall experience is impaired by decisions of the media producer.Vision, which hits its long curriculum in the genre, does not seem to be able to expand its scale.

There is a lot of charm in this game, an interesting narrative, simple combat system, and mechanical evolution that encourages to play, but you will face a less competent technical part and a linear design that too simplifies design. It’s easy to look at Digimon Story Time Stranger and realize that it is a JRPG that many will love, especially Digimon fans, but it is also easy to feel that they could have gone further.

Yes, Digimon Story Time Stranger is a JRPG that can have fun, but it is also a game that can unexpectedly become tiring, without realizing your best attributes. This is because, in large part, linear design forces to constantly circulate among the same “corridors” to the point of breaking the rhythm.

Narrative on Time Travel and Digimon

One of the most interesting elements in Digimon Story Time Stranger is his narrative, written around time travel. At the beginning of the game Choose Dan Yuki or Kanan Yuki as the protagonist (the other becomes in the operator who talks to you throughout the adventure), Adamas agents, a secret organization that investigates the real world in the real world-related anomalies because their operatives are the few humans with the knowledge of the digimon existence.

However, after a huge explosion destroyed a building in Tokyo, panic is installed among the inhabitants, who were already frightened by reports of mysterious anomalies and spotted scary creatures. While investigating an isolated area of ​​Tokyo, the protagonist ends up plunging into a time travel that will allow him to discover the truth around the original explosion and how to reverse a cataclysm.

This includes time travel, knowing figures that initially do not seem to be of particular importance for events, and enter Iliad, the digital world where a huge conflict surrounding Digimon mega-senses will eventually expand to the real world.

Harmful linearity

Digimon Story Time Stranger is a game in which extreme linearity becomes detrimental to experience because it limits the potential and fun that you will feel with game systems and mechanics. Whether in real -world Tokyo or Iliad’s digital world, you will find beautiful places that basically function as runners seen from various perspectives. The same can be said of most “dungeons”. This linearity and lack of ingenuity in the design of dungeons generates some tiredness because it is the feeling that this design does not benefit from the potential of each place.

Linearity is not harmful to an experience, but the way it is implemented in Digimon Story Time Stranger can be. A few larger scale zones were enough to get you out of the constant corridors, wider zones to explore and enjoy each location in a more fun design. At least reducing invisible walls would help. Throughout the experience, you will go through the same linear places several times, which wears out, especially in conjunction with fragile graphic quality, and even too simple side quests reinforce this feeling of wear.

There are huge linear design JRPGs that don’t tire, but the overwhelming majority of them displays a sumptuous dungeon design, interesting optional activities, better disguise from map limitations, fewer invisible walls and diverse moments, things that Media couldn’t get in Digimon Story Time Stranger. You can even feel that the producer should have copied persona in more things than in aesthetics and affinity system, could have been inspired by Atlus’s mill to draw rhythms of experience and dungeons.

Super simple and deep combat system mechanical evolution

Despite the linearity and lack of ingenuity for design, Media.Vision has hit the main Digimon Story Time Stranger systems and mechanics, which is the main reason for continuing to play even when you start to feel worn out and out of the same sewers. The shift combat system is simple to learn, you can speed up up to 5x and activate automatic mode to help the grind, and I felt that the biggest fun came when fighting (except in the bosses that are boring with the exaggerated life and peak of difficulty) or when it was managing the digimon.

Given that to get new Digimon you have to defeat them several times in battle, to accumulate digital information between 100% and 200% (the larger, the stronger it can be) and convert it into a digital creature, is very beneficial to the experience that the combat system is practical and fun.

Media.Vision seems to have been inspired by the central time travel theme for its approach to Diggrigations, since now you have no fixed lines to evolve them and even regress evolution to pursue other paths, which makes room for countless possibilities with great control levels for even more personalized teams.

Among the more than 400 Digimon present in the game, you will find creatures of 16 different personalities, which also influences the growth of statistics, skills, and the paths of evolution that will be unlocked. The menu inform you of all this easily, so that you know what you should do to achieve one of the blocked evolutions. You can often pass the monsters to Digifarm and train new personalities.

In addition to the shift combat system, everything that is related to the Digolutions is the best of Digimon Story Time Stranger. You will spend a lot of time to pursue new lines of evolution, to get more creatures to test evolutions, which also includes reaching new agent levels with the protagonist. When spending important moments of the narrative, earning agent points to unlock buffs to the digimon of this personality. It is a way of ensuring that you do not have too powerful creatures for each specific phase of the game.

Picking up a Digimon and reaching its maximum potential will require time, dedication and a good understanding of all mechanics, but it was in this element that the biggest fun I found when playing Digimon Story Time Stranger. Equip up improvements or new spells, create teams with different attributes to respond to the biggest challenges, especially bosses, find out how to achieve new evolution and even have a creature before you find it in the game, is this side of Digimon Story Stranger management and evolution that will most easily cling to players.

Technical component leaves something to be desired

Digimon Story Time Stranger is a game with characters that convey a strong feeling of playing an anime, but this is one of the few compliments we can make to visual quality. Human characters and Digimon display strong graphic quality, with this anime tone, but the scenarios make it a lot to want. Although art direction deserves compliments, execution does not suggest that Digimon Story Time Stranger is a current generation game.

Weak textures in scenarios or the absence of textures can help reinforce the aesthetics of an interactive anime when you are in Tokyo, but when you enter Iliad’s digital world, things are no longer so well disguised. The most beautiful and more detailed scenarios show more weaknesses, it is often the feeling that the sharp image is low, and the 30fps performance level does not bother particularly, but it is at the same strange.

Conclusion

Digimon Story Time Stranger is one of those cases that will leave many thinking “It’s a 7 that had fun more than many 9” games, but the truth is that Bandai Namco and Media.Vision had the possibility of going further and reaching a spectacular home run. It is impossible to play Digimon Story Time Stranger without feeling the potential wasted with the exaggerated linearity of the scenario and how the design promotes tiredness. The simplicity of mechanics and systems is a positive point, but the boss fights, the overall graphic quality, the performance and the side quests.