Digimon Story: Time Stranger Reintroduces the Digital World to New Audiences

Bandai Namco Entertainment's latest addition to the Digimon Story game franchise, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, marks the first time the series will have a fully English dub. Coming nearly eight years after Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory, fans have eagerly awaited the continuation of this side of the game series. In contrast to the Digimon World games, the aptly titled Digimon Story games place a greater emphasis on story elements, monster-collecting, monster-taming, and turn-based battles as opposed to just raising a virtual pet. Fans of recent RPGs, such as the Persona series, will find themselves—minus the social links—right at home with the game and battle mechanics.

As I played a guided hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest: Play Days in front of producer Ryōsuke Hara, I was transported to a detailed town full of Digimon. This stand-alone story takes place in an area called Digital World: Iliad, inspired by Greek and Roman mythology. Playing as Yuki Kanan, an agent of a secret organization called ADAMAS, I spent time exploring the Digital World and checking out shopkeepers' wares. Even though the game is mostly voiced, there are some unspoken lines from the NPCs. “In addition to being the first Digimon Story game with full English voices, the game text is compatible with eleven different languages. We wanted to accommodate Western fans in that sense,” said Producer Hara.

The playthrough experience begins sometime after the introduction, set away from the real world, where Digimon are living their normal lives. In addition, there's a time travel story element (hence the title) that will be further explored in the game, but I only engaged with the Digital World in a limited capacity.

“We won't go deep into the time-traveling aspect,” shared Producer Hara. “First of all, to reach this part of the game, the main character gets thrown back into the past, and that's where the story gets started. There's a little bit of going back and forth between the past and the future, and there's a lot of that happening. But, we don't want to spoil it.”

To travel the narrow areas a little faster, I jumped on Garurumon and began riding the Digimon wildly around the streets. This ability is brand new to the franchise, and the development team made sure to include Easter Eggs referencing past games as well as the anime. As a fan of the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, I'm happy to see that Suzuhito Yasuda returned to illustrate the character designs. However, I didn't get to speak to any of the human characters during my twenty-minute playthrough; only the Digimon. While walking around, I asked Producer Hara if the Digimon would spawn randomly, and he answered that they are meticulously placed. Despite my limited time, the detailed world design struck me as made with a lot of love and care for the franchise. Not surprisingly, since the game has gone through multiple years of development.

“We want this game to be a gateway for people who don't know Digimon to learn about it in addition to being a game for longtime fans.”

During my first battle at the outskirts of the town, I scanned to see what I could destroy to find treasure. The environment is engaging, allowing the player to initiate combat with other Digimon as well. Once the player's level is high enough, there's an auto-battle and auto-win function, saving time from battling low-level monsters to gain experience points. At its core, the Digimon have an easy rock-paper-scissors advantage system with elemental-based attacks. The three main attributes, data, vaccine, and virus, provide an inherent advantage that packs an additional punch over other Digimon. Similar to the battle mechanics from the Persona series, the player will undergo trial-and-error testing to see which elemental attacks are most effective against the enemy. The player can control their three main party Digimon, but guest members aren't controllable. I can imagine the inability to control your entire party as a headache, but it keeps the gameplay interesting as you navigate how to manage against enemies.

Another interesting aspect that separates Time Stranger from other RPGs and monster-training franchises is the ability to control a Digimon's nonlinear evolution. With 450 Digimon to collect, the player can find, convert, and explore as many paths as they want. For example, Patamon has multiple evolution paths with different requirements, and I chose Angemon at the advice of the staff. Once I had Angemon, I could de-digivolve back to Patamon or unlock other paths to upgrade benefits. There's another game mechanic that allows players to collect and convert Digimon, which also yields benefits like increasing stats and level count.

Jumping forward to a boss battle with a Titan, Parrotmon, the team of Digimon has now advanced to Champion level from the last time I had them in my party. I had to keep my wits about me to try and beat the boss, as I recall the original rock-paper-scissors advantage, but also the elemental abilities would do any damage. Thankfully, I was able to switch to reserve Digimon without taking up a turn. With all the different mechanics to keep track of, the turn-based battle adds a layer of strategy that's required instead of winning by brute force. The design team spent time on whimsical, detailed attack animations, like Kyubimon's Fox Tail Inferno. Because the animations can be repetitive, players can increase the speed from 2X to 5X. Likely, you won't need anything faster than 1.5X, as there comes a point where the idle animations become comedically fast as they sway back and forth.

The hands-on playthrough focused mainly on the battle system, as the team wanted to ensure the play testers were given the chance to fully enjoy the encounters. Certain moves required click reflexes, with timed button pushes to ensure the attack lands its strike. Most impressively, the Cross Art (or X-Art) function that provides a huge buff to characters comes in handy when dealing with high-level Digimon. Parrotmon eventually entered power-saving mode, leaving the player to strategize on how to fight differently and land a blow within a time limit. When I built enough power to activate an X-Art, the screen played an animation of the character taking out their phone, which displayed pixel art of their team's three main Digimon, and then transformed the phone into a gun. After shooting the field of ally Digimon, the team is given a status buff which includes increased attack, defense, and others.

Overall, I was impressed with the battles within Time Stranger, but I didn't have a good sense of the time-traveling story elements. Producer Hara mentioned the development team began planning Time Stranger around the release of Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory, and the team's size was about the same as Media.Vision's Cyber Sleuth. As with anything Digimon-related, he said the emphasis is always on the bond between humans and the Digital Monsters.

“To bring out that experience to its fullest, we intentionally didn't make it an open world. We wanted everybody to get that same story experience from playing this game.”