Digimon Story Time Stranger Final Preview - I'm a Believer Now

A couple months ago, my colleague and our Senior Content Manager Andrew Stretch played Digimon Story Time Stranger at Summer Game Fest and enjoyed it. He's a longtime cheerleader of the Digimon Story franchise, but I never believed him enough to try it for myself.

After three hours with Digimon Story Time Stranger at PAX West, I'm a believer now. It pretty quickly shot up to near the top of my October wishlist.

This demo session started off with what was essentially the beginning of the game, and I got a bit of setup for the overall plot and an easy onramp for the gameplay. Then, we transitioned to a later point in the story with level 20 Digimon.

Digivolving to a Better Quality of Life

The first major aspects I noticed with Digimon Story Time Stranger is just how many quality-of-life features there are. While I haven't played previous ones in the series, I know my way around a classic JRPG, and this one had a lot of lovely shortcuts.

We previously reported on some of them, like how you can auto-defeat wild encounters if your average level is stronger and still earn XP—even for 'mons in your storage. Combat animations can also be sped up by up to five-times speed.

I noticed a few new ones in my hands-on time at PAX, too. You can stand still in the overworld to automatically regenerate health and stamina. Your storage for all your Digimon can also be accessed anywhere in the overworld, making it easy to swap your 'mons out as needed.

"We don't need to do all the wasteful movements that people in past Digimon story titles had to go through," Producer Ryosuke Hara told me through a translator. "And trust me, we know there are people that have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in Cyber Sleuth and whatnot."

Battles are often determined by your understanding of type effectiveness, as you'd expect from a monster-taming game. I'm largely new to the franchise though, so learning the different attributes and elements felt like a lot to wrap my head around initially.

However, the combat UI makes it super easy to understand what's super effective and how strong (or weak) the multiplier will be. After all, this is a big monster-hunting turn-based RPG with hundreds of thousands of matchups to consider.

Overall, these quality-of-life improvements go a long way to making the game more convenient and streamlined, according Hara-san. He and the team iterated to find that perfect balance of ease without making it too easy. There's one big anchor that they used to balance this convenience against.

"In the end, we tried to balance it with the boss battles. We tried to make the boss battles more fun. We tried not to shake it up too much," Hara-san said through a translator. "Every boss battle is going to be appropriately hard for where you are in the story. That acts as the balancing in the game."

He assured us that while the boss battles ultimately serve as the skill checks, you likely will never be stuck in an impossible scenario. If your team isn't matching up well, you can always De-Digivolve and re-Digivolve your team to find new ways in.

Digimon Gets Personal

With the newly introduced Personality system, these conveniences feel like they'll go a long way to making Digimon Story Time Stranger a good time. Depending on which Personality a Digimon has, their stats will grow a certain way.

This system works on two levels, I've noticed. On the surface, you can really shape a Digimon's character and feel more of an attachment to them. If you feel like your Agumon is the brave, heroic type, you can foster that by interacting with him and answering questions with brave responses. It helps you develop more of a personal bond.

On a deeper level, understanding their Personality type will help you optimize their stats, allowing you to amplify their strengths and cover up their weaknesses. This creates a deeper endgame for players who really want to go that extra mile and make a team of absolutely perfect Digimon--or hell, even make a perfect version of all 450+ Digimon in the game.

So What's the Digimon Story?

In this universe, there's a Digital World that coexists with reality, and there's an ongoing war between Digimon that could lead to a cataclysmic apocalypse in both. You're part of ADAMAS, an investigation team that's trying to stop the calamity.

The protagonist is a Tamer that collects and controls Digimon to fight rogue Digimon and other threats. In the second part of my play session, a character mentioned something called the "Shinjuku Inferno," which sounds related to (or could be) whatever bad thing we're trying to prevent.

The game doesn't really waste time getting conflicts into motion; the opening hour or so throws you into the thick of a protest that goes wrong, and it ultimately leads what feels like a major inciting incident.

With a 40–50 hour campaign, there will be a lot to sink our teeth into when Digimon Story Time Stranger releases on Oct. 3. Personally, between the strong turn-based combat, quality-of-life upgrades, and intriguing apocalyptic story, I'm convinced I should've been a Digimon Story fan a long time ago.

Digimon Story Time Stranger was previewed after three hours of gameplay at PAX West courtesy of Bandai Namco.