The core of Digimon Story Time Stranger is unbelievable.
As is the case with the Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth video games, the underlying system of discovering, elevating, and evolving your Digimon is the place this long-awaited RPG excels.
Nevertheless, all too typically, Time Stranger stands in its personal manner, sidelining its brilliantly addictive gameplay loop in favour of a linear, story-driven construction that constantly limits your freedom.
You play as an Agent, a specifically educated member of a secret organisation that offers with ‘anomalies’. Principally, each time unexplained phenomena happens, it is your job to test it out and report upon the disturbance.
The sport opens as you are investigating one such anomaly in downtown Tokyo, which simply occurs to have been the positioning of a sizeable strangeness years earlier. It is an intriguing intro, and it is not lengthy till you are nose to nose with the mysterious Digimon themselves.
Because the identify Time Stranger suggests, the plot that follows includes hopping throughout timelines, just about on the mercy of the continuing anomalies. And whereas time journey generally is a difficult narrative hook to get proper, the sport does supply up some cool twists and turns — finally.
Earlier than you even hit the title card, you may be subjected to round ten hours of uninspired detective work, as you stroll the streets — and sewers — of Tokyo. Predictable story beats and tiresome, poorly offered facet quests could have you questioning the sport’s intentions.
All of the whereas, you may be increase a celebration of allied Digimon to be used in turn-based battles. Once more, the will to easily grind ranges and experiment with the powers of your new companions is powerful, however past a single sewer atmosphere that you just revisit manner too typically, you are given no room to mess around with any of the title’s RPG mechanics.
Luckily, issues take a flip for the higher when you attain the Digital World. In contrast to the sport’s repetitive recreation of our personal actuality, the house of Digimon is splendidly nicely realised. These places are filled with all types of creatures and odd structure, leading to what’s presumably probably the most convincing depiction of the Digital World in any Digimon recreation thus far.
Arriving in these areas for the primary time is a real spotlight, and Time Stranger lastly feels prefer it’s discovering its footing. What’s extra, a plethora of latest Digimon are launched, and your party-building potential skyrockets.
Certainly, there are over 450 ‘mon to gather all through the sport, and so your choices nearly really feel countless. However to see even half of those Digimon, you may must take full benefit of Digivolution — that’s, levelling up, evolving, and likewise de-evolving your companions.
There are fixed selections to contemplate. Every ‘mon has its personal evolutionary tree, which branches off in a great deal of completely different instructions relying on the present stats of stated monster. And so the grind begins — but it surely’s an pleasing grind, due to the sheer quantity of freedom that the Digivolution system presents.
There’s at all times one thing new to find, and as talked about, that is the true pleasure of Time Stranger.
However the frustration units in when the sport so not often affords alternatives to truly interact with the aforementioned grind. Stunted, story-driven dungeon design is a big impediment right here, as working backwards and forwards to reset enemy spawns is an unnecessarily tedious course of.
Time Stranger is begging for some type of randomised dungeon — like Persona 5’s Mementos — the place you’ll be able to actually get caught into the mechanical facet of the expertise. As an alternative, you have to make do with a collection of short-lived corridors that hardly accommodate the expansion of your principal Digimon get together — by no means thoughts the a whole lot of creatures that you would be able to carry round as again up.
Shifting on, the turn-based fight is stable however a bit unspectacular. It revolves round Digimon’s common rock-paper-scissors weak spot system, however depth is added via further elemental weaknesses, non permanent buffs, and standing results.
Naturally, the bottom line is to kind a celebration that covers most bases, throughout each Digimon varieties and their accessible talents. You will want to consider stuff like stat distribution as nicely, since a extremely defensive foe, for instance, will be capable to shrug off bodily harm — and so you may want an ally that is proficient in magic expertise to convey it down.
There may be plenty of transferring elements to Time Stranger’s battles, and that is usually why it is a good suggestion to boost a small military of Digimon. Nevertheless, boss fights specifically generally is a main sticking level.
Usually talking, it seems like bosses have manner an excessive amount of well being on the sport’s regular issue setting. Though distinctive mechanics do typically break these battles down into extra manageable phases, they will nonetheless severely take a look at your persistence.
The overarching downside right here is that if you do not have a group constructed particularly to take care of the opponent, you then’re in for a slog of epic proportions. There have been quite a few instances all through the marketing campaign the place we have been basically stonewalled by a boss as a result of we hadn’t introduced a really particular sort of Digimon with us.
At that time, you are both burning via therapeutic objects in a battle of attrition otherwise you’re knocking the issue right down to simple. Or, you are loading up an older save so that you could rejig your get together — however that is going to require some grinding, and as we have already established, the sport’s design is at all times pushing again in opposition to such a notion.
You are most likely pondering that Time Stranger seems like an absolute chore, however as we have touched upon, it does get plenty of issues proper. It is simply an almighty disgrace that many of those components aren’t given the eye that they deserve.
And talking of deserving issues, PS5 gamers deserve higher technical efficiency. Bafflingly, Time Stranger is capped at simply 30 frames-per-second on PS5 and PS5 Professional.
That is not essentially a deal breaker provided that this can be a turn-based RPG, however for some mad motive, extra body charge drops are ample. The title struggles to take care of its 30fps goal outdoors of battle, and though efficiency by no means fully tanks, the dips make for a disappointingly stutter-ridden journey.
