Whether you're a seasoned Digimon veteran or a fan of the monster catcher genre biding your time until the release of Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is the perfect RPG to delve into right now.
Whereas Pokemon is simple to dive into -- catch them, evolve them and train them to max power -- Digimon can be more complicated to access for a series beginner. Unintuitive forked evolution trees and intensive personality training are just two of the hurdles, but mastering an entirely new slate of Digimon strengths and weaknesses is also tough.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger's complex turn-based combat can be challenging, but if you build a strong team and use every tool at your disposal, even the toughest bosses will fall to your might.
If you put in the work to learn Time Stranger's mechanics, you'll discover a surprisingly compelling story centered around a time travel mystery that takes you to the end of the world. Here's everything you need to know as you start the game.
I picked my partner DemiDevimon because I wanted to explore the virus-type evolution tree, but I rounded out my team with vaccine- and data-type Digimon afterwards. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET
Build a balanced team from the get-go
There are many considerations when putting together a team in Digimon Story: Time Stranger. You'll want to balance it with data, virus- and vaccine-type Digimon -- and be sure to include digital monsters with different weaknesses to cover a range of moves. You never want to put together a team that's completely weak to one enemy. For example, if your team is packed with virus-type monsters, a single attack from a vaccine-type boss could wipe out your entire Digimon squad.
Certain Digimon species specialize in physical combat, with high attack stats and strong defenses, while others deal more magic damage and shrug off enemy spells. It's worth building a mix of both to take advantage of different enemy weaknesses.
Hold off on converting any of your Digimon, even weaker "in-training" monsters like Betamon. It'll be easier to help them digivolve later if you promote strong early stat growth. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET
Convert Digimon at 200% data collection
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