I used to be at all times a bit extra of an outlier on the playground again within the day, preferring tales of destined kids contending with trauma alongside digital monsters than on a regular basis pre-teens leaving house to gather pocket monsters. Years later, Digimon nonetheless has my coronary heart in a means Pokemon by no means will. The one space of the 2 respective franchises the place I’ve loved Pokemon greater than Digimon is the video video games. However I proceed to carry out hope, dreaming of a Digimon online game that may rival how a lot I take pleasure in Pokemon Platinum, Omega Ruby, Legends: Arceus, or Scarlet.
I am nonetheless unsure if Digimon Story: Time Stranger is that sport. The most recent within the Digimon Story sequence, you play as a undercover agent in Tokyo, Japan who witnesses a city-leveling catastrophe after which immediately travels eight years into the previous. Together with your information of what is to return, you need to examine the thriller surrounding the approaching catastrophe. Your actions twist the world and reshape historical past, plunging you and your allies via alternate timelines. Your investigation additionally leads into the Digital World, a parallel actuality the place Digimon live–you can befriend and prepare these digital monsters as companions to make use of whereas in battle with Digimon that imply you hurt.
As you may need surmised given the identify, the Digimon Story sequence has usually instructed their tales very well–the focus of the sequence has been to submerge the participant in narrative-rich experiences. Gameplay has been the a part of this sequence that may be very hit-or-miss, and I am unsure Time Stranger bucks that pattern.
I did not get to play an excessive amount of of Time Stranger at Summer season Sport Fest–about 20 minutes in whole. After exploring a hub-like space and seeing numerous Digimon (together with a enjoyable Digimon Journey 02 easter egg of Veemon, Hawkmon, Armadillomon, and Wormmon hanging out collectively), I performed via two fights: a fast bout towards a bunch of smaller Digimon, after which the primary few turns of a boss battle towards Parrotmon. Time Stranger’s turn-based fight is constructed on a Rock, Paper, Scissors framework–certain digital monsters resist assaults of particular sorts, and are weak to different sorts.
Time Stranger makes use of the franchise’s long-used Knowledge, Vaccine, Virus format, by which Virus corrupts Knowledge, Knowledge rewrites Vaccine, and Vaccine cures Virus. A Digimon of a selected kind tends to largely be taught strikes of that kind, however stronger ones can be taught from at the least two differing kinds to assist cowl for weaknesses.
It is fairly simple to select up. Each time a brand new Digimon reveals up, there’s some detective work wanted on the participant’s half to determine whether or not you are coping with a Knowledge, Vaccine, or Virus kind, however easy experimentation with quite a lot of strikes will reveal the consequence. It isn’t very arduous, particularly with solely three choices.
The potential difficulty I see is that, to make this dynamic more difficult, Time Stranger appears to have opted for making opponents have very massive well being bars. After taking part in via one spherical of fight towards Parrotmon, I had deduced its kind and which of my Digimon had been greatest suited to combating it–I switched out my Virus staff members who would take further injury from Parrotmon’s Vaccine assaults, and directed my Knowledge allies to leap into the fray. For the subsequent three rounds, I pumped the identical super-effective assaults into Parrotmon time and again. However although my assaults had been doing large injury and Parrotmon’s assaults had been decreased to negligible numbers, I used to be solely knocking off a tiny chunk of the boss’s well being bar every spherical. After the 4 rounds I performed, Parrotmon nonetheless had over three-quarters of its well being, and no new enemy had proven up, which means the one factor left to do was maintain clicking on my tried-and-true technique for a number of extra turns.
Had I saved taking part in, I think about the preliminary thrill of strategically reacting to Parrotmon’s kind and implementing a profitable technique would have dulled into tedium as I wanted to maintain chipping away on the large parrot with the identical strikes time and again. There is not any method to know for certain that will have occurred, as my hands-on time with the demo ended there, and I did not see what occurred subsequent, however that grind is not interesting. It tries to create problem by making a boss battle longer than a conventional battle, not by making it extra complicated and incentivizing you to consider what transfer to make use of subsequent.
This has been an ongoing difficulty with Digimon video games for years–I truly expressed comparable complaints with Digimon Survive again in 2022, which made fights “harder” by making every subsequent encounter last more and longer. It did embody one of many two non-standard Digimon sorts, Free, however that all-resistant kind simply made sure fights final even longer. I’d have a lot most well-liked Variable/Hybrid boss battles–Digimon that change their kind mid-fight, forcing an opponent to regulate their technique on the fly. With that, Survive may need been greater than one other Digimon sport with an amazing story and okay gameplay.
A lot in the best way Survive instantly pulled me in with its likable characters and saved wowing me with its timey-whimey narrative, what I’ve seen to this point of Time Stranger’s story is intriguing. Like previous Digimon video games, I believe that is the place the sport goes to excel. I cherished exploring the hub space within the early a part of the demo and seeing Digimon use their historically violent powers for on a regular basis duties, like Zudomon wielding its lightning-generating hammer to construct instruments as a blacksmith. The tradition of the Digital World has by no means been an enormous a part of any of the video games or anime, so having a hub that delves into that sounds thrilling.
I left the demo of Time Stranger as soon as once more wishing for a Digimon sport that will simply be a visible novel. That stated, I really feel like I have not had an opportunity to present Time Stranger’s fight a good shake–I solely performed one minor battle and a part of a single boss battle. I used to be instructed that the 2 fights I performed will happen about halfway via the story, so it stands to motive that they seem to be a pretty correct illustration of what fight will probably be like all through Time Stranger. However it was a demo, and different fights is likely to be wildly completely different. Heck, if different fights at the least see you face off towards a number of Digimon of assorted sorts, I believe the sport may ship a decently strategic gameplay expertise. That is simply not what I noticed at Summer season Sport Fest.
We do not have lengthy to attend and see what the ultimate sport will probably be like. Digimon Story: Time Stranger is about to launch for Xbox Collection X|S, PS5, and PC on October 3.