Table of Contents for Digimon Story: Time Stranger:

1.  Early Impressions
2. Final Impressions

If you’re interested in this game, wait until there’s a sale for the Ultimate edition with it being at least $60 or less. It’s not worth any more than that. I bought the regular edition and found myself strategically locked out of content with efforts to convince me to pay for DLC to the point that it’s obnoxious. I truly wanted to enjoy this game, but the DLC practices, excessive tropification, and the gameplay giving you constant assists to prevent any failure just make it unenjoyable.

Okay, I understand that some people dislike when I mention that a game is too easy and may feel I go overboard, but I really do not see how this game’s difficulty settings are justifiable at all with how easy it is. I wish I could like this game, because there is a lot to like, but the shortcomings are almost fatal to it. The biggest shortcoming is the Day One DLC scam. You have three prominent humanoid characters within the story and you’re locked out of costumes for half of the main character’s costumes and you’re locked out of all the costumes for the other two story-relevant characters. For that reason alone, just wait until the Ultimate edition is at least $60. The scamming was especially egregious with this game since the Ultimate edition’s base price is $120, which is twice the price of a $60 game. I bought the regular edition which came to a total of $76.11 for me and I feel I’m locked out of 75% of the cosmetic content of this game. They also have a “season pass” for a turn-based JRPG game. A “Season Pass” for a turn-based game. Make it make sense, please.

I had selected “Balanced” mode, which was the Normal mode situated between Story and Hard, because I wrongly believed it would actually be balanced. Instead, this game gives you two turn-orders (that is, your Digimon get two turns each for every turn the enemy Digimon have), they give you a controllable guest Kid-Digimon who usually can strike the weaknesses of the enemies, and they add a guest NPC Digimon for every dungeon. These non-controllable guest Digimon usually hits with critical attacks on the enemies in the field. The only difference switching to Hard Mode seems to do is that you and your Guest-Digimon sometimes miss attacks due to RNG from what I’ve played after growing severely bored with Balanced mode. To better understand how ridiculous the game bends over backwards to treat you like an idiot by making sure you never fail at any task: in one tower dungeon that I did in the early game, I was given an extra NPC Digimon that did a critical attack every 3 or 5 turns to enemies on the field on top of the Kid Digimon guest character who could do critical damage. Further into the dungeon, the game gave me an Area of Effect RNG that paralyzed the enemies (and keep in mind, this is on top of being given two turn cycles for every one turn of each of the enemies). Once I got to the boss of the Tower dungeon, story-wise the game tried to portray as the Area-of-effect healing the boss, but in actuality there was no healing being done in the gameplay side of it; the Kid Digimon guest-character could do critical attacks, the NPC Digimon guest-character could do critical attacks, and then near the end of its lifespan, they gave me another NPC Digimon as a guest-character who was leagues more powerful than the boss and could probably kill it in two turns. What even was the challenge in this? This was just boring.

I was actually intrigued by the story initially, because the beginning is really good. I found it fascinating that a future Inori meets the main character and you see parts of what appears to be a plausible endgame scenario from the beginning. That was genuinely fascinating. I’m partial to time travel stories; I can’t fully explain why I usually like them, but it was probably the influence of the Terminator original film, Steins;Gate main series, Chrono Trigger, the original Radiant Historia, and especially, certain Dragon Quest games. The best depiction of it to me is the Netflix Series, Dark. The Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 duology being a very close second. I doubt I’ll ever be able to write something as complex as either of them. The beginning helped create the plot hook, intrigue with how a future-Inori was there, curiosity on where future-You could be and what you were doing while Present-You is helping Future-Inori, and why a super-powerful Digimon came to save you and what relationship it and Future-Inori have. Moreover, the Metal Greymon attacking the player at the start with the chase scene honestly reminded me of randomly stumbling upon Metal Greymon in a dungeon in Digimon World 2, but I can’t be sure that was a homage to it or not. I truly was enjoying the beginning, but while the story still seems good, it got too obnoxious to the point that I don’t want to play anymore. The obnoxiousness killed my fascination and curiosity for it.

The lackluster gameplay and stupid decisions to keep giving players a proverbial handjob throughout the game with controllable and NPC Guest-characters fighting for you, so that players never encounter any difficulty at all, was the focal reason I gave-up. This is a strange case of the gameplay being good, but adding so much NPC and extra assists that it ruins the fun of the game itself. However, the second major failing is that there is an absolutely obnoxious character who is simply called “Operator” who sometimes infodumps in text-like messages on the right-hand side of the screen. They are the worst part of the game, because they repeat only two conversations throughout the ENTIRE 30 hours that I played. The conversations can be condensed to simply: “HEY, REMEMBER THE FUTURE SHINJUKU INFERNO THAT IS YOUR MISSION TO STOP!? REMEMBER THE MISSION BY PLAYING HUSBAND / WIFE TO INORI AND DADDY / MOMMY TO AEGIOMON!” and “HEY REMEMBER WHEN YOUR DAD DIED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES!? MAYBE THIS DIGIMON CONFLICT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT!? ARE YOU REMEMBERING THAT YOUR DAD DIED?! DO YOU REMEMBER THAT YOUR DAD IS DEAD!? DON’T FORGET THAT YOUR DAD DIED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES!” and I’m sorry to say that it’s only a very slight exaggeration. Inori and Aegiomon have decent to good development, but during story missions they have a bad habit of repeating “I don’t understand anything!” or repeating back the task that someone already explained immediately after it was explained in nearly the same way, as if the player is an idiot. Moreover, Operator always proceeds to text you to repeat the information in a text-like message and I don’t understand why they did this, because there’s an option to just read the Mission assignments in the Menu. Why the need for repetition of the same exact information 2-3 times, if you can just read it in the menu options when clicking on the mission objective? Finally, might just be a personal preference, but even the text-message style setting of Operator’s messages is extremely obnoxious and annoying. I really dislike it, it seems to me like they wanted to capture the social media feel and I hate it, because it feels like the game never has a quiet moment with constant pop-ups of Operator’s messages, menu information telling you that you can level up the Main character’s “Agent Points” to increase specific battle abilities and Digimon Stats, and tells you when a Digimon is ready to digivolve, even if you may prefer to wait for another digivolution. It doesn’t force you to digivolve the Digimon, but it is annoying to have such a chronic pop-up about it when you want to be more selective with digivolution options.

The Digivolution system is honestly the best one that I’ve played, but I’m only comparing it to Digimon World 2 on the Playstation 1. The process works by fighting the same Digimon on the field to get them to 100% in a “Convert” gauge which means to convert their digital data to summon them. I can also wait until they reach the 200% Convert rate to summon them with higher stat values. I was surprised I could summon multiple of the same Digimon, which I liked a lot, especially due to the intricacies of the Digivolution system of trying to get the correct stats boosted to digivolve into a particular higher-tier Digimon. It’s genuinely the most fun that I’ve had with a Digivolution system, which is more freeform than the strict and irritating one from Digimon World 2 on the PS1. I can de-digivolve to change my Digimon or sacrifice them to increase the potential level cap of my other Digimon. It’s a fleshed-out, detailed, and very fun system. The graphics of various Digital world locales are great and I do believe creativity went into them; exploring both human and digital towns was very fun for me and the NPCs felt like they were in a living world in all locations to me. The art style and graphics are great.

Unfortunately, the one final nail in the coffin is that this game effectively lacks an identity. I was liking the story, and I won’t judge it without finishing it, but I can’t help but see the obvious when it comes to inspirations. Basically, this game is desperately trying to copy the Megami Tensei formula of Atlus Japan and it is “borrowing” a collection of tropes that Atlus pioneered, alongside a few obvious references to very popular Anime, and it is all crammed into a hodgepodge that leads to information overload after information overload upon the player. You begin as a secret agent of an organization that detects paranormal phenomena and the device you use is almost a complete ripoff of Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers 1 and I don’t believe that is controversial to say:

The device actually opens with a side-screen in the same exact way as the devices that the cyberhacker group Spookies in Soul Hackers 1 and the Main Character of Soul Hackers utilize. For those ready to argue a coincidence, the program used by the device is called the “Digital Summoning Program” – so it borrows both the manner in which the Soul Hackers 1 group used their devices and even copies the term “Demon Summoning Program” with the explicit, verbal mention of a “Digital Summoning Program” in the beginning of the game. Now, the artist of Devil Survivor 2 and the one for Digimon Story: Time Stranger are the exact same artist, but did Inori have to look so similar to Io Nitta? Was this a purposeful direction by the game development staff or their managers?

The plot is clearly inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei Main Series like Strange Journey and other MegaTen like Devil Survivor 1 of stopping an apocalyptic event. The two special type of dungeons that I played had music that is so close to being a copy of Persona 5 that it is absurd. The first special-type of dungeon where you save two people wasn’t anything interesting, but the second one looked like it was heavily “inspired” by the Witch Labyrinths of the Madoka Magica series. In a section where you briefly play as Aegiomon, whenever you return to the main character, they will blatantly do the Persona 5 follow-up clap as if they’re tagging each other. Finally, the private investigator you meet and who lets you stay at his house with his daughter; this was a confusing set-up but it somewhat made sense since the story had the player character save his daughter’s life from her own recklessness. After the Digimon who eventually digivolves into Aegiomon was effectively treated as an adopted child suffering discrimination, but cared for by the Player character and Inori . . . I realized that the Private Investigator was just window-dressing. They were cramming tropes from the Spy x Family Anime into the game. The game has you play the role of a “Secret Agent” who is assigned by the Operator to play House with Inori and Aegiomon just like Loid Forger’s Operation Strix. You’re playing the role of Loid Forger, Aegiomon is playing the role of Anya but without the psychic powers, and Inori plays the caring side of Yor Forger. They broke the Yor Forger role to make it less obvious, but Minervamon shows-up and basically plays the Assassin role of Yor Forger. This game is trope, after trope, after trope just being shoved in the player’s face repeatedly without a distinct identity or purpose of its own and the decision to make the right-hand of the screen have instant-gratification text messages didn’t help anything.

I’m really disappointed with this game. The potential for it to be amazing was all there, but Day One DLC and shitty assist mechanics in combat have completely ruined it. Moreover, tropes are tools and only exist because a specific story sequence becomes popular, but then you have games like this that try to follow the money and every possible trend they could think of, to create a shittificated version of what made those tropes popular. As a final example, there’s a place called “The In-between” which is meant for being between the Digital and Human world and obviously based upon the Velvet Room of the Persona series, and the training sequences for leveling up Digimon Stats are lacking, there’s a shop that is like any other regular shop in the game, and the “Outer Dungeons” next to the purple-haired girl are just a paywall to pay for DLC that would make the game even more boringly easy. Everything I complained about and feared would happen when people kept giving Atlus Japan a pass for making games easier just created this Frankenstein abomination that killed any heart that the game developers had with what was likely executive meddling to make as much money as possible, because Namco Bandai stupidly decided to work with Sweet Baby Inc, they did a garbage job with a completely unplayable “Unknown 9: Awakening”, and it hurt Namco Bandai so badly financially that they closed projects and fired internal developer teams despite multiple warnings from gamers. The only way that I believe this game can do well, is if they give some of the paid DLC for free, refund the money, and add a higher difficulty mode. There’s no incentive for them to do that though. Nobody listens to us, nobody respects us, and every time we participate in Free Speech discussion, they repeatedly malign us by scapegoating us for what are likely a projection of their own insecurities upon us. At the very least, there doesn’t appear to be any censorship, but the Triple A trashfire had to learn that the hard way with the colossal failure of Sony’s Concord. If that’s what it took to change minds, then I’m not holding my breath. Indies seem more likely to be the future now, because of repeated instances of corporate incompetence from traditional gaming companies, but that’s Capitalism’s “Creative Destruction” for you.