Digimon Story: Time Stranger – Our Thoughts After Playing 4 Hours

Sometimes you sit down at a game with no idea what to expect. That was how I felt when I got my first hands-on time with Digimon Story: Time Stranger at Summer Game Fest. I’m a lapsed Digimon fan, someone who liked the franchise a lot as a kid and then just fell off as I got older. But when I played Time Stranger, I quickly realized I had to pay attention. This was a JRPG with some good ideas. So when I got the shot at an even longer preview (about four hours) at PAX West, I took it, because I wanted to see if that initial impression held water. And I’m happy to say that I think it does. Digimon Story: Time Stranger seems to get the Digimon series, but there’s also the foundation of a really good JRPG here, too. I mean the kind that you could spend a long time digging into. One that might be able to appeal to Digimon oldheads while creating new fans. If licensed games have a holy grail, it’s that. And Time Stranger might be able to find it.

Let’s get this out of the way before I go any farther: Digimon isn’t a <ahem> stranger to good licensed games. The last Digimon Story game, Cyber Sleuth, was pretty good, and Time Stranger is built on that foundation. After picking between a dude with anime hair and goggles and a woman with a very small hat, you step into the role of an ADAMAS agent. Whoever you don’t choose becomes your operator. You can call them Operator. Your job? Investigate anomalous phenomena in the city. Basically, you look into strange stuff that the public doesn’t even know about.

And man, there’s some strange stuff going on in this city. Things are shut down, and nobody can go anywhere. And what’s all this about being prepared for tremors? After taking my lady and her very small hat for a walk and chatting with some folks about what’s going down, I showed up at the Wall of Hope, which was built after there was an explosion in Nishi-Shinjuku eight years prior, which has been the site of many anomalies. After I snuck inside, I ran into my first Digimon, and it was time to choose my partner. I picked Gomamon – my other options were Patamon and DemiDevimon – and got to work clearing out the local Digimon.

Time Stranger is, at its core, a turn-based RPG.

Time Stranger is, at its core, a turn-based RPG, a DVD Menu Game’s DVD Menu Game (complimentary). That means your Digimon come in three types – Data, Virus, and Vaccine. Virus beats Data, Vaccine beats Virus, and Data beats Vaccine. But Digimon also have elemental strengths and weaknesses, too, so you have to pick the right moves and Digimon for the fight, and manage your turn order, which is shown on the right side of the screen. If you hit another Digimon with an attack, you’ll be able to check whether that Digimon was weak against it (or resisted it) in the future. You can also check on everything you’ve learned about a Digimon at any time. And if you land a pre-emptive strike from the field, you start combat with a massive advantage or sometimes win the fight outright before it starts.

The most interesting in-battle choice Time Stranger makes is allowing you to use items or switch your Digimon on the fly without having it take a turn. While this also makes it easier to get the right Digimon in position and use In Case of Emergency, Break Glass items when you need one, it also means enemies can be a little meaner to you, which is cool. And if you lose a Digimon, you can pull in a replacement from your reserve team. Once you run out, though, that’s it. The battles I played in my time with Time Stranger generally weren’t hard unless I was fighting something I clearly shouldn’t have been, but they were engaging.

As you battle Digimon, you earn what’s called Scan Rate. Once it reaches 100%, you can convert that Digimon and make them a member of your team. Wait until you get to 200%, though, and you’ll get a stronger Digimon. It’s one of those “If you wait five minutes, you can have two marshmallows” things, but it’s an enticing incentive. In addition, you can also equip Digimon with Attachment Skills, providing access to moves they wouldn’t normally get. And of course, you can Digivolve (and De-Digivolve) your Digimon once you meet certain requirements. The coolest thing here, though, are personalities. Depending on how you interact with your Digimon, their personalities will change, which will change how their stats level. There’s quite a bit to it, but I like how much freedom to play around with it you have, and how easy it is to build the Digimon you want.

Of course, it’s not all battles here. There is a story, and I was intrigued by Time Stranger’s plot. I met up with a girl that seemed to know my character, but who neither I nor my operator recognized; befriended some Digimon; got chased by a really large Digimon, and mostly tried to figure out what was going on. We know Time Stranger is a time-travel story, but I didn’t get to see that during my playtime. I did, however, get to jump ahead a bit, and that’s where I really got to play with Time Stranger’s systems.

It really made the world feel lived in, and like it existed outside of me, which is what you want in a game like this.

After my jump, I found myself in the Digital World with a much higher level team. I was in a village of Digimon that had recently been attacked by a group called the Titans. I started off by helping Shellmon, the local healer, gather some materials to make medicine. Along the way, I found Digimon hanging out, listening to a concert, and just enjoying some time alone. It really made the world feel lived in, and like it existed outside of me, which is what you want in a game like this. After a jaunt around the village – where I discovered Digimon trading cards, something producer Ryosuke Hara told me was an homage to the original Digimon (if you know, you know) – only to discover Shellmon had been treating Divermon, who worked for the Titans and was wounded during the battle. After the village is attacked again, Divermon decides to try to get the Titans to stop. After all, anyone willing to help an enemy can’t be so bad.

Before I finished up that storyline, though, I took some time to explore what else there was to see. One of the coolest things was the In-Between Theater, a sort of pocket universe situated between the real world and the Digital World. Here, I could visit the Digifarm, where I could place Digimon on the farm to train them up, increase their Bond with me, or change their personality. There was a Digifarm in Cyber Sleuth, but the one in Time Stranger is much more customizable, allowing you to place more Digimon and customize the various tiles in the farm. Hara told me that they wanted a better Digifarm, but they also wanted it to be like an aquarium you could customize and where you could see your Digimon interact and mingle with one another.

That sense of “this thing is yours” also speaks to why your character isn’t voiced and why they aren’t assigned a partner Digimon, like many of the other members of the cast are. This is your story, and you’re meant to put yourself in the shoes of your agent rather than playing a character that comes pre-built for you. Makes sense, right? About this time I also discovered I could change my outfit. And man, much as I loved my girl’s tiny hat, it was nice to be able to have her rock a t-shirt.

After goofing off a bit, I found Shellmon’s friend Whalemon, who took me to the bottom of the sea to face off with the Titans. We tried diplomacy, for the record. It just didn’t work. So we threw down with Sharkmon and his boys. He was tough; I had to swap my team, use my items, and like every fight in my time with Time Stranger, I had a lot of fun going toe to toe (toe to fin?) with him; he just wasn’t a match for Aegiomon. Once he was little more than Sharkmon fin soup, my demo ended.

I was impressed by how fast my four-hour hands-on session went by, how every little thing in Time Stranger fit together, and how thoughtful so many of its quality of life choices were.

When my time with Digimon Story: Time Stranger wrapped, I was exhausted. When you get up after a four-hour demo, you feel it, especially at an event like PAX. But I was also impressed by how fast the time went by, how every little thing in Time Stranger fit together, and how thoughtful so many of its quality of life choices were. If you get enough Scan Rate to Convert a new Digimon, you’re notified and you can jump to that menu with the press of a button. The same is true of when a Digimon completes its training on the Digifarm. You can even speed up the battles if you want to move things along.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger understands its genre, something Hara made clear to me when I sat down with him. A JRPG can’t just be about a great story and characters or a great battle system. It has to nail the little things, too, and that means investing in both quality of life choices that make life easier for the player while giving them enough depth to keep them interesting for the long haul.

Based on what I played at PAX, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is looking like it could pull that balancing act off. Like I said, I’m a lapsed Digimon fan, but if what I played is any indication, you kind of don’t have to be one to like what Time Stranger has to offer. You just have to want to play a cool JRPG with time travel in it. I’m still working out how that fits in here (we only got glimpses), but at this point, that just seems like a cherry on top of a beautiful cocktail. You’re here for the mixology, and Digimon Story: Time Stranger looks like a delicious concoction. Let’s hope the sips we’ve been provided are an accurate taste of the whole drink.