I'm halfway through my three-hour demo playing Digimon Story Time Stranger when I finally muster the courage to de-evolve one of my most powerful monsters. Why? So I can build them back up from level 1 to be even stronger -- and grow them along a different evolutionary path. For casual players, this may sound excessive. For hardcore roleplaying game fans keen on building their fighters to the peak of performance, these expansive possibilities are exactly what they've been waiting for.
Digimon Story Time Stranger, from publisher Bandai Namco due out Oct. 3, is the next game to explore the Digimon franchise. While Digimon's digital world and quirky monster design have always given it a unique flavor, it's always been in the shadow of Nintendo's cultural colossus Pokemon, which reigns supreme in the monster-collecting RPG subgenre.
But Digimon Story Time Stranger introduces enough ways to alter and grow its monsters that it could step out on its own as a robust alternative to Pokemon. There's a complex battle system for calculating weaknesses, myriad items to equip that give different attacks and a host of ways to build stats. All of that combines for a rich depth of combat with quality-of-life considerations that remove some tedium from the level-up grind.
Digimon Story Time Stranger's plot feels like anime
Players will have plenty of time to dig into those complexities when playing through Digimon Story Time Stranger, which is set in modern-day Japan. Players take on the role of an agent of ADAMAS, an organization exploring anomalies, which generally means the appearances of digital lifeforms wandering into our world -- the eponymous Digimon.
In my demo, I played through the first hour of the game in which my agent fought enemy monsters while exploring a walled-off section of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. In the chaos of meeting a mysterious girl and being saved from a giant rampaging Digimon, my agent got sucked into the digital realm. That's where you'll find the game's main conflict: a war between more benign monsters living in harmony and a bellicose faction of Digimon called the Titans.
In Digimon Story Time Stranger, players take on the role of an agent of the organization ADAMAS that investigates anomalies -- i.e., Digimon. Bandai Namco
In the full game, players will have to tour the digital realm and quell conflicts between the two sides in around a dozen areas, all while growing a fighting team. I got a tease of the machinations happening in the background as a cutscene revealed a few posh children (who may be more powerful than they appear) speaking about the war, suggesting they could be manipulating the greater conflict from afar.
Based on what I saw, the game's story feels like an anime plot, and likely lasts dozens of hours. I didn't play enough to speculate on where it'll go, aside from leaning on familiar tropes like building friendships and turning enemies to allies, but I dug deeply into the gameplay enough to seriously recommend Pokemon players give Digimon Story Time Stranger a solid look.
Quality-of-life features include using items or switching Digimon without using a turn. Bandai Namco
... continue reading