A pair months in the past, my colleague and our Senior Content material Supervisor Andrew Stretch performed Digimon Story Time Stranger at Summer time Sport Fest and loved it. He is a longtime cheerleader of the Digimon Story franchise, however I by no means believed him sufficient to attempt it for myself.
After three hours with Digimon Story Time Stranger at PAX West, I am a believer now. It fairly rapidly shot as much as close to the highest of my October wishlist.
This demo session began off with what was basically the start of the sport, and I received a little bit of setup for the general plot and a simple onramp for the gameplay. Then, we transitioned to a later level within the story with stage 20 Digimon.
Digivolving to a Higher High quality of Life
The primary main features I seen with Digimon Story Time Stranger is simply what number of quality-of-life options there are. Whereas I have not performed earlier ones within the sequence, I do know my method round a traditional JRPG, and this one had quite a lot of beautiful shortcuts.
We beforehand reported on a few of them, like how one can auto-defeat wild encounters in case your common stage is stronger and nonetheless earn XP—even for ‘mons in your storage. Fight animations may also be sped up by as much as five-times pace.
I seen a number of new ones in my hands-on time at PAX, too. You may stand nonetheless within the overworld to routinely regenerate well being and stamina. Your storage for all of your Digimon may also be accessed anyplace within the overworld, making it simple to swap your ‘mons out as wanted.
“We needn’t do all of the wasteful actions that individuals in previous Digimon story titles needed to undergo,” Producer Ryosuke Hara advised me by means of a translator. “And belief me, we all know there are those that have spent tons of, if not 1000’s of hours in Cyber Sleuth and whatnot.”
Battles are sometimes decided by your understanding of kind effectiveness, as you’d count on from a monster-taming sport. I am largely new to the franchise although, so studying the totally different attributes and parts felt like rather a lot to wrap my head round initially.
Nonetheless, the fight UI makes it tremendous simple to grasp what’s tremendous efficient and the way sturdy (or weak) the multiplier will probably be. In any case, it is a massive monster-hunting turn-based RPG with tons of of 1000’s of matchups to think about.
General, these quality-of-life enhancements go an extended approach to making the sport extra handy and streamlined, in accordance Hara-san. He and the workforce iterated to search out that good stability of ease with out making it too simple. There’s one massive anchor that they used to stability this comfort towards.
“Ultimately, we tried to stability it with the boss battles. We tried to make the boss battles extra enjoyable. We tried to not shake it up an excessive amount of,” Hara-san stated by means of a translator. “Each boss battle goes to be appropriately onerous for the place you might be within the story. That acts because the balancing within the sport.”
He assured us that whereas the boss battles finally function the talent checks, you probably won’t ever be caught in an not possible state of affairs. In case your workforce is not matching up nicely, you possibly can all the time De-Digivolve and re-Digivolve your workforce to search out new methods in.
Digimon Will get Private
With the newly launched Persona system, these conveniences really feel like they’re going to go an extended approach to making Digimon Story Time Stranger a very good time. Relying on which Persona a Digimon has, their stats will develop a sure method.
This technique works on two ranges, I’ve seen. On the floor, you possibly can actually form a Digimon’s character and really feel extra of an attachment to them. In the event you really feel like your Agumon is the courageous, heroic kind, you possibly can foster that by interacting with him and answering questions with courageous responses. It helps you develop extra of a private bond.
On a deeper stage, understanding their Persona kind will assist you to optimize their stats, permitting you to amplify their strengths and canopy up their weaknesses. This creates a deeper endgame for gamers who actually wish to go that additional mile and make a workforce of completely good Digimon–or hell, even make an ideal model of all 450+ Digimon within the sport.
So What is the Digimon Story?
On this universe, there is a Digital World that coexists with actuality, and there is an ongoing struggle between Digimon that might result in a cataclysmic apocalypse in each. You are a part of ADAMAS, an investigation workforce that is making an attempt to cease the calamity.
The protagonist is a Tamer that collects and controls Digimon to battle rogue Digimon and different threats. Within the second a part of my play session, a personality talked about one thing referred to as the “Shinjuku Inferno,” which sounds associated to (or might be) no matter dangerous factor we’re making an attempt to stop.
The sport would not actually waste time getting conflicts into movement; the opening hour or so throws you into the thick of a protest that goes improper, and it finally leads what appears like a significant inciting incident.
With a 40–50 hour marketing campaign, there will probably be rather a lot to sink our tooth into when Digimon Story Time Stranger releases on Oct. 3. Personally, between the sturdy turn-based fight, quality-of-life upgrades, and intriguing apocalyptic story, I am satisfied I ought to’ve been a Digimon Story fan a very long time in the past.
Digimon Story Time Stranger was previewed after three hours of gameplay at PAX West courtesy of Bandai Namco.
