Table of Contents for Digimon Story: Time Stranger:

1.  Early Impressions
2. Final Impressions

This is a continuation of the Early Impressions and I recommend reading that first before continuing further. This second part will contain major story spoilers. There are genuinely a lot of very awesome aspects to this game, and the setting is probably one of the most thrilling for long-time Digimon fans who want to sink their teeth into a Digimon game, and it is one which gives expanded lore and significance to a plethora of diverse and wide-ranging Digimon to use. The Digivolution system of this game is also fantastic. I loved the setting, I loved the use of parallel worlds, and I loved the use of Time Travel. There are many strong components in this game and I wish I could ignore the fatal flaws, but I have to be honest.

After a really interesting start, the first thirty hours of this game were a complete bore, but then the first plot twist happened and I must admit that it caught me off-guard, because I was expecting a Chosen One scenario with Aegiomon being forced to accept his role as Guardian Hero, and instead he says something so ridiculous in the worst possible instance that it repeatedly made me burst out laughing both when I saw the scene itself and afterwards. This plot twist scene was genuinely hilarious, well-thought out, well-executed, and it is perhaps the real highlight of the game. Junomon’s temple is attacked and overrun by Titans, Junomon is weakened and struggling to help the humans escape with the egg by keeping a portal to the human world open, she beseeches Aegiomon to take up the mantle of his destiny as the Great Guardian, and his response is that he wants to live with Inori in the human world. This was a genuinely interesting conflict between two generic anime tropes that I thought was definitely worth exploring, if only because of the fascinating character dynamics that result from such a conflict. The cliché promise of childhood friends to stick together forever versus being a destined chosen one, and the Destiny child choosing the former without any regard for the consequences was quite a shock. To fully appreciate this scene, imagine that the mythology of the New Testament was to happen and you’re a Christian and you are at the final battle against Satan and the Anti-Christ’s forces with your Christian warriors ready to vanquish the forces of evil, but you’re losing badly. Imagine as you’re exhausted, fighting, and praying for Jesus’s arrival . . . Jesus Christ himself slowly descends from the sky answering your prayers. Now, imagine instead of him fulfilling his part of the Christian Prophecy of Revelations of slaying Satan and the Anti-Christ to cast them in eternal fire to be tortured forever, Jesus Christ instead looks at you and the other followers and says “Sorry everyone! I know you believe in me and have been praying for me to come during your time of need . . . but I just want to go back to Heaven to play House and live with my Mom. But good luck fighting the forces of evil seeking to destroy you all!” and then he flies back to Heaven leaving you to fight against the forces of Satan and the Anti-Christ without a care in the world. So, in this hypothetical, the Christian prophecy is correct, the prophecy is fulfilled and happened, but Jesus Christ himself decided at the last possible minute to just go back to Heaven to live under the care of his Mother. That was equivalent what Aegiomon did in this scene. That was why Junomon lost her mind and went insane immediately as a consequence of Aegiomon’s actions.

I greatly enjoyed the battles and story afterward, but I must admit that while I was thrilled by the continuity of events going haywire and leading to a new timeline that was a separate dimension from the world that the Main Character came from; I found myself enjoying the Protagonist acting solo without Inori or Aegiomon to be a lot more interesting and fun. It was as if all the truly awesome and surprising parts of the game came about once Inori and Aegiomon stopped holding the game back with a family dynamic. Nevertheless, everything from the Shinjuku Inferno happening faster than expected and the Protagonist going Solo were very fun for me. I loved the random fights against older versions of characters that we met previously, I loved seeing the aftermath of the main story decisions of these characters, and I loved the random fights and the dungeons were fun for me. The game finally became somewhat challenging on Hard Mode, albeit with the annoying handicaps still in play, and I loved the Dragon Quest-style before and after effects of your decisions on respective self-contained stories. The best part of the game for me was playing it with just the Main Character helping others and fixing various problems; it was a refreshing change of pace, never felt monotonous, and the game felt like it loosened the training wheels a bit, so that it could challenge you a bit more with one-hit kill attacks from enemy bosses on Hard mode. I enjoyed seeing the story of the Two Bear Brothers, the story of Neptunemon and Venusmon, the younger siblings of Minervamon, Junomon’s conclusion, and Vulcanusmon’s journey.

Unfortunately, the late-game plot twist, which really felt like a last-minute twist, of the Protagonist basically being Aegiomon’s Nobody and “borrowing” heavily from Kingdom Hearts destroyed all remaining coherence for the story to the point that it became a trainwreck of bad writing. Prior to the plot twist, the Operator informs us that Dr. Yuki, the Father of the Main Character, was who created the Digimon Summoning Program and general equipment for the paranormal government agency, ADAMAS. However, if Dr. Yuki doesn’t exist, then who created the Digimon Summoning Program, the Cell Phone that does interdimensional phone calls (proven by getting a message from Inori in the beginning of the game), and why was the technology so much more advanced than even the parallel world’s technology in their alternate future? How was a Shade of Aegiomon even woken-up in a parallel world? Is the only explanation that “God did it” and that’s it? Why did this God copy the information of Anime that Inori’s dead brother liked and fuse it with the Aegiomon Shadow? That made absolutely no sense as an explanation and there was no reason whatsoever for this God to choose Inori’s long-dead brother to copy information from. That part was completely incoherent. Before the Aegiomon shadow twist, it made sense that Aegiomon couldn’t find Inori and created duplicate shadows from his failed attempts, because Inori was with the Early-Game Protagonist in their alternate world. The event triggered another Shinjuku Inferno and so was destined to happen, which explained why Aegiomon could never find Inori. Unfortunately, the twist about the Protagonist being an Aegiomon Shade means that this was impossible: Inori was suppose to be trapped in darkness forever, Inori doesn’t react or mention the very beginning of the game despite it being an important introduction, and an otherwise self-contained and stable timeloop of events is made completely incoherent and impossible because some dumbass in the writing room wanted to keep adding Anime Tropes and confused Tropes for good writing which is why they copied Atlus Japan’s Megami Tensei, the Anime Spy x Family, and then Disney and Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts by the finale. The twist should have been that the Protagonist was from a world where the Spy Anime was real life in their world, but an Anime show in the alternate world. That would have made way more sense than the explanation that we did get, because the game’s story devolved into abject incoherence by the end. There are also two significant plot holes: Inori Misono was never there with Aegiomon or Agent / The Protagonist when they first met Dr. Simmons, because she had school but she acts as if she was there when speaking about the event in the early game. Second, Inori’s friend only said that Inori’s Father traveled abroad, it was never explained how Inori learned that her father was a Commander at Public Safety or how he suddenly became a scientific inventor of the machine to kill Digimon. None of that information was explained.

The Endgame is especially incoherent: So, Chronomon hated that everything was predetermined by fate and violated God’s Laws to commit suicide in a less interesting version of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, but the ending reveals that God permitted Chronomon to break time to kill himself so Chronomon could end his own suffering. Now, if this God of Digimon permitted Chronomon to kill himself even if it meant breaking time itself to do it, then how was he violating God’s laws? Either the God of Digimon permitted or didn’t permit Chronomon to commit suicide by destroying time, but apparently both answers are correct? Aegiomon mentions that he had to learn to let Inori go which helped him mature and transform into Jupitermon, but then they save Inori from being perpetually lost in darkness and he reaffirms his promise to protect her anyway. So, what was the moral lesson here? Inori wanted all three: Agent / The Protagonist, Aegiomon, and herself to live together but by the end, Aegiomon seals himself away to rewrite the timeline and it is only the Protagonist and Inori living happily ever after without him. Inori even had an explicit and lengthy scene crying about how she didn’t want to lose any more loved ones in what seems like childish naivety that ruined her character by the end of the story and Aegiomon doesn’t return to her. Everything the main character did feels completely invalidated by that moronic twist of making the Protagonist an Aegiomon Shadow, which is solidified by Inori only seeing Aegiomon through the Protagonist. The Mother-Son / Big Sister-Younger Brother relationship between Aegiomon and Inori gets bizarre with the twist of the Protagonist being another Aegiomon too. Aegiomon’s end-credits scene of the Olympus 12 was the final incoherent writing piece, because Aegiomon claims it was his choice despite the world being imperil, it being solidified as his destiny to replace Chronomon set forth by both Chronomon and God, and Chronomon’s backstory firmly establishing that Free Will doesn’t exist in their world. Also, honestly, I hate the overuse of imposing Abrahamic concepts on Greek Myths, even when Japanese writers do it. Chronomon is more a Satan parallel than Kronos parallel. It just feels shallow to me, because I’ve seen it so often with US writers just being lazy when Greek Myth is so much more interesting.

Overall, the game is decent. If you’re a huge Digimon fan hoping to sink your teeth into something related to Digimon, then Digimon Story: Time Stranger is definitely worth it. Insofar as good or even challenging games, or compelling stories, it has positive moments, but the overall picture and presentation is a colossal mess. I’d give it a 3 / 5 only because the Setting and Digivolution system are fun to use and people sorely miss the opportunity of playing a Digimon game. At best, it is average in every sense of the word, and at worst, the game’s incoherent writing and handicapped gameplay make it boring in various portions of the game. There are some aspects that are likable, but the game is honestly a mess and I must reaffirm my earlier Impressions argument of suggesting to wait for the Ultimate edition to be $60 or less.