The Digital World and the real world are colliding once again in Digimon Story: Time Stranger, but with the world seemingly coming to an end, you’re thrown back in time to try and prevent the worst from coming to pass.
This latest entry in the Digimon Story series picks up with a snazzy intro anime for the ADAMAS agency, a group of somewhat ostentatiously dressed agents who’ve been galavanting around and trying to stop anomalous threats. It’s clear that this world has already been transformed by disasters, with a giant wall having been erected to hide a completely destroyed portion of the city, and now a military lockdown of the area that has the populace scared, confused and angry.
For you, there’s a path to sneak into, taking you underground to pass beneath the wall and discover what’s on the other side. As you do so, you encounter Digimon for the first time… or so it seems. ADAMAS has actually known of these creatures for a while, and can now grant you the ability to summon one, choosing between Demidevimon, Gomamon or Patamon as your partner Digimon through this opening.
What’s immediately apparent, as you battle through the opening areas, is the rather modern and freeing take on a turn-based JRPG. Enemies are visible in the open world, which gives you the chance to strike first or to try and avoid encounters entirely, but once you do end up in battle, you have a streamlined and effective combat system. Creatures go in turns, and you can have up to three active Digimon all slotting into the battle timeline based on speed stats. One nice element here is that using an item does not count as an action, and you can also swap Digimon in and out without foregoing a turn, which I feel will encourage using this feature during the run of the story. Elsewhere, you’ve got animation speed and auto-battling right in the main UI, which are great quality-of-life features.
You also have two categories to determine strengths and weaknesses in combat, with both the creature type and their elemental attacks giving you a deterministic readout of damage bonuses and buffs – whether it’s multiplied or reduced by 1.5x, 2x or both. At least, it will do so eventually, once you’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t against a new enemy.
You can boost these multipliers further with the Cross Arts, a techno-ability for your human character to use that builds up as you land attacks that can deal critical damage, and can then be set to buff your team or debuff and damage the opposition. it’s a fun cutscene animation, with your phone turning into a random gun-like contraption.
Oh, and then there’s adding creatures to your team, not by catching them, but rather by learning enough about them through combat to replicate them – able to do so from 100% learning, but then able to generate more powerful versions by waiting to 200%. As they gain experience, Digivolution comes into play, morphing them into more powerful forms, giving you clear paths to follow and letting you revert and choose alternate creature forms down the line. We only experienced this through the regular run of combat, but interacting with your Digimon to shape their personalities or nurturing them through a Digifarm are also options.
Many of these features were gradually revealed to us through the opening chapter, where the game throws mystery after mystery at you. A woman calls up ADAMAS and seems to know you, though you don’t know them in return, but whisks you along through devastated government buildings and with countless Digimon wandering around, some of immense power that you have to avoid, before building up to a final rooftop battle.
Let’s just say it doesn’t end too well and throws the narrative off in a temporal tangent!
Jumping ahead to a later portion of the game, we’re in the Abyss, and what could actually be a rather idyllic seaside part of the Digital World, were it not for the attacks being wrought upon this village by a group of Digimon known as Titans. You have to figure out a way to stop this from escalating and find that there’s already a personal connection that you can use to do so, as one of the Titans has switched sides.
Now, to be honest, my knowledge of Digimon is much less deeply ingrained than Pokémon. I remember watching some of the early Digimon Adventure anime, and Agumon was obviously the posterchild back then – he still is, to be fair! – but I maybe underestimated just how out-there some of the Digimon designs could be. Deltamon has a signature ability to shoot like a Death Star, combining energy beams from both arm weapons and his mouth, or there’s Leomon, the humanoid lion with a knife which is a fellow with a giant gun for a body, and Aegiomon is literally just a human with goat legs, which feels less like a digital monster and more like something out of Greek mythology.
Through this section, the combat really starts to come into its own. The prologue had a lot of single hit battles (or even just some creatures getting KO’d by a preemptive attack), but heading down below the water to the Titan’s lair, thankfully with an invisible macguffin that means you can still breath alright, and the encounters here need more effort to learn and exploit weaknesses. Just as handy is how your party has ballooned in size, so you still have your team of three active Digimon to call upon, but there’s a bunch of story characters alongside.
The fight against the big Sharkmon boss of the Titans was a really satisfying one to work through, plugging away at his weaknesses and switching team members to put the best foot forward, using Cross Arts to debuff and damage them, and also then trying to target his head when he dips down to build up for a charge attack. It’s a good battle.
I feel that there’s a real opportunity for Digimon Story: Time Stranger to take advantage of. After some difficult times for Pokémon games, which are now shifting to a new real-time battle system, Digimon Story is sticking to the tried and true turn-based battles that could bring traditional monster battling fans to its yard.
