Potato Beard Digimon Story: Time Stranger Review

Am I a Digimon fan? Yes. Has this coloured my view of the game? Likely yes, although I'd like to think that it is an appropriate amount. That said, let's get into it. Gameplay: This is a solid turn-based JRPG. It does nothing groundbreaking, but if you want a fun experience with nice special move animations and the ability to speed up the combat on the fly, then this game does just that. Outside of combat, it is a standard JRPG. In combat areas you can initiate battle to begin first having damaged the enemy or even outright killing them in the overworld. The personality system is a key part of building up and training your Digimon. You can change this by talking to your digimon (random) and training your Digimon in the Digifarm. There are 12 personalities, each one giving a bonus to two stats when levelling up. Alongside this, personalities also contain abilities, which range from being able to overheal when using a recovery move to countering an attack after being hit. This provides an additional fun layer to team building. Another fun aspect of the game is the ability to ride some of the Digimon. This makes traveling around faster (and cooler), however, certain Digimon are large, and as such, take up a lot of the screen with their model. This is annoying when they are following you, but can also be so when you are riding them. Now for what is likely my biggest criticism of the game. Jogmon Ultimate Card Game... *sigh* This f*****g thing. What a confusing, RNG heavy mess of a minigame. Digimon have 2 card games that they could have used as inspiration for this minigame: Digimon Hyper Colosseum and the newer Digimon Card Game. Either of these, even simplified would have been fun... This sadly, is not what they did, and as a result of wanting to collect all of the cards, I played more of this garbage than I ever wanted. Story: I enjoyed the story; it was engaging and had some downright emotional moments. The characters (Moreso on the Digimon side) were fun and likeable (or unlikable if intended). I do wish more was done with Inori's family and past, but that is really my only mild complaint. One thing that I find hinders the story, however, is the lack of dialogue from the MC. You play a character who, because they don't have voice acting, seems like more af a side character that isn't actively involved in cut scenes or dialogue, short of the occasional option selection. This is something that I think is an unneeded relic of old JRPGs that all of the Digimon Story games suffer from. Graphics: What can I say here, the graphics are good. Not melt your computer, hyper realistic or anything. But nice-looking cell shading, lighting, and character/world design make me think that this game will hold up for a long time without looking TOO out of date. I believe that more monster collector games should use cell shaded graphics over cartoony 3D, but that is just a personal opinion. Sound. The music in this game is good. all of the songs fit nicely for their intended use. I can't find fault in the audio design for this game short of a lack of voice for the MC. That being said however, the option out of the gate to change the songs with music from Cyber Sleuth, Hacker's Memory, and the Anime OP/ED from every series up to the new Beatbreak, meant that it wasn't long before I had replaced practically everything I could. As an aside, if you have the Cyber Sleuth & Hacker's Memory pack, I would suggest you replace the boss battle music with the final battle song from Hacker's Memory. You can thank me later. Overall Rating: 92/100 A solid and fun JRPG that scratches the itch for both turn-based combat RPG fans and monster collector fans