Review — Digimon Story Time Stranger

Embark on an epic adventure through time and even the digital world, as you try to save te world from a cataclysmic event in Digimon Story Time Stranger.

The Digimon series needs no introductions nowadays, as the series has been going strong ever since its inception in 1997. While the naming convention — with Digimon being short for Digital Monster — might seem the series was conceived as a direct counterpart to the Pokémon series, being released only one year after the release of the first two paired games Pocket Monster Red and Green, Digimon was meant to compete with the craze of the Tamagotchi handhelds. Similarly, the premise of the first Digimon game (aptly named Digital Monster) was for players to keep them as virtual pets.

Lore-wise, these pets are entirely made of digital data, a concept that has been carried forward throughout the entire series, up until Digimon Story: Time Stranger in 2025. Publisher Bandai Namco still holds the rights to the series, with many of the games developed in-house, with Time Stranger developed by Media.Vision. Time Stranger itself is part of the Digimon Story sub-series of the franchise, now released eight year after the previous entry Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth — Hacker’s Memory. However, both games started development at around the same time, with Time Stranger focusing on an entirely different story than Cyber Sleuth.

Despite being somewhat of a Pokémon fan, the Digimon games have always had a soft spot in my heart. Both series obviously share similarities — with the main focus lying on capturing monsters, training them, and pitting them in fights against others — but the Digimon series managed to stand out fairly well. One of its main draws is its unique evolution system that allow your digital monsters to evolve — and even de-evolve — into a tremendous variety of increasingly crazy abominations, and I mean that in a loving way. In what other game will your cute little dinosaur eventually turn into a cyborg dragon with cannons for arms? Managing your digital pets remains the main focus of Time Stranger, as with any previous entry in the series, but the story behind the games keeps it fresh for the players.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

This time, the games focuses on an unnamed secret agent, working for the illustrious ADAMAS organization that specializes in investigating anomalous situations across Tokyo. The player gets to choose between a male or female character, but this has no bearing on the actual story (you can actually change this at any point in the game). Time Stranger does not wait long before dropping the player into the action, as they follow the unnamed protagonist on their investigation into weird monsters appearing in Shinjuku City. It does not take long before these mysterious monsters set of a cataclysmic event, later labeled as the “Shinjuku Inferno”, resulting in the main character being transported eight years into the past. Luckily, the connection with your partner agent at ADAMAS is not severed, and after some awkward commiserating on what to do, the main goal is to return to the present, and potentially prevent the Shinjuku Inferno from taking place again.

And while the game comes out running with its introductory mission, it does slow down quite a bit from here on out. Time Stranger is a slow burn, and it takes a while before the player is introduced to the other important characters in the story: Inori Misono, a schoolgirl bent on learning more about the weird digital monsters that suddenly started appearing, and Aegiomon, an human-like Digimon suffering from memory loss. The trio set out to learn more about Aegiomon’s origin, and eventually you’ll end up in the Digital World: Iliad, a world filled with other Digimon going about their day. From here on out, about five hours in if you don’t rush anything, the game really starts to open up. A slow burn indeed, but ultimately truly worth it.

Proper Power

Thanks to its increased development time, and being released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, it manages to break free from the limiting shackles that its predecessor Cyber Sleuth suffered from. While not a bad game, Cyber Sleuth was obviously limited due to its release on PlayStation Vita. Time Stranger on the other hand looks and play wonderfully on the current gen consoles. The game retains its traditional anime art style, but the many wonderfully rendered cut-scenes, lack of frame drops, and its vast 30–40 hour campaign make Time Stranger really stand out among current releases. And while the majority of the game is fully voice-acted, the protagonist however is not. This is somewhat disappointing, and I can imagine voicing both a male and female character is quite a budget consideration, many other games have done this masterfully. It’s a shame Time Stranger goes for the silent protagonist, and while it may seem like a small thing, it does hinder my ability of getting fully invested in the main character. This is especially evident when both Inori and Aegiomon share a touching moment, only for the protagonist to stand around and stay silent.

Rock — Paper — Scissor… and some more

But the bread-and-butter of Time Stranger is of course its wonderful combat mechanics, aided by an immense roster of more than 450 Digimon to capture, train and evolve back and forth. And developer Media.Vision did not hold back: The Time Stranger roster looks better than ever, and the battles play out in wonderful detail. However, let me state this from the beginning: Time Stranger offers the ability to play out battles automatically, and even allows you to increase the speed of combat. Now, while this may seem silly, if you want to grind some levels for your Digimon fighting the rank-and-files enemies you encounter as your progress through your missions, this does save some time. The boss battles however require a fair amount of agency, since many will have special conditions or effects applied. Combat remains turn-based, allowing ample time to plan and select your moves, and Digimon act in order of how fast they are.

The main combat loop is somewhat similar to the Pokemon franchise, with each Digimon having one of seven attribute — although thematically they fit more for digital monsters such as “Virus” or “Data” — and certain attributes being stronger or weaker against others. Added to this are affinities such as “Fire”, “Ice” or “Steel” which increase or decrease damage against certain attributes as well. The game is quite helpful and will show you whether a certain move will deal double or half damage, as the system can get fairly complex to remember at some points. Aside from this, each Digimon will have a “Special Skill” unique to it, but also has the ability to learn moves through the use of “Attachment Skills”, items that can be found or bought and individually taught to your roster. This allows for an enormous amount of customization, and choosing between offensive or defensive abilities can turn the tide of battle. To top it off, your character has access to “Cross Arts”, abilities that need to be charged during combat, but can help with dealing massive damage or providing a boost to your team. Clearing main quests grants you “Anomaly Points”, which are used to increase your character’s “Agent Rank”, allowing you to gain new Cross Arts or straight up increasing the stat points of your Digimon.

Similarly to the Pokémon franchise, you can only take six Digimon with you on your travels, but unlike the Pokémon franchise you’ll send out three Digimon to fight at once, with three Digimon as backup that can be freely swapped out. You’ll often be joined by “Guest” Digimon, such as Aegiomon, and items can be used for healing or other uses. All of this combined makes for a wonderful combat system that allows players to customize their team as they see fit, especially since you can customize your team on the fly. But the main draw of the series is of course its “Digivolution” mechanics, where you can evolve or de-evolve your Digimon once they have reaches certain skill thresholds.

As opposed to the Pokémon franchise, where you monsters mostly evolve in a straight line, Digimon can evolve in a variety of monsters based on their stats (and even their personality, which can be influenced by talking to them in the overworld), and you can choose to de-evolve them if you want to evolve them into something entirely different at some point. To acquire a new Digimon, you’ll have to capture them by first “scanning” them in combat. Defeating opposing Digimon in combat raises their scan rate, and by the time this reaches 100% you can convert that data into an actual Digimon. Waiting until the scan rate reaches 200% however will allow you to acquire Digimon with better starting stats.

On a Sidenote

Aside from the main quests and the multitude of side-quests (which actually get introduced to the player depending on where they are in the main quest, but will also reward Anomaly Points), you can take part in a multitude of optional side content. For instance, your can interact with your Digimon on the DigiFarm. This returning mechanics allows you to train your roster without actively engaging in combat, by having them “training sets” to increase certain attributes.

This will allow Digimon to have reach their requirements for Digivolution a lot easier, but it does take real time for it to complete, time that can be shortened by spending in-game currency. Aside from the DigiFarm, Time Stranger introduces several other side activities, such as the “Outer Dungeons” that will reward you with powerful Digimon if you manage to complete its mini-game. Additionally, Time Stranger introduces a card-based mini-game as well, where each Digimon has its own card that can be used and collected by defeating opponents in said card game.

The Verdict

Digimon Story: Time Stranger builds on the success of its predecessor, and Bandai and Media.Vision manage to deliver one of the best entries into the series to date. And not only is the game great within the series, it manages to stand out among the current releases by featuring an engaging story combined with the deep combat system and extremely customizable roster of Digimon at the player’s disposal. Great story, great characters, stellar voice-acting (although missing a voice for the protagonist certainly is a knock against it), superb musical score and the familiar but deep combat mechanics make Time Stranger a game to look out for. Even if you have no affinity with the Digimon series, Time Stranger could be a wonderful introduction. Just: great.

4,5/5

Reviewed on PlayStation 5.
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