This review only covers Cyber Sleuth. I may come back to this edition to play Hacker's Memory eventually but for now I'm not in the mood.

===

This is an interesting game, I'd say. Really, it's a bloated and fairly lame low-budget visual novel wrapped around a simple monster-collection JRPG skeleton, and it just sorta... works. It doesn't work to the point of becoming anything particularly great, but going through the gameplay loop and skipping most of the dialogue made for a pretty fun time as a background task while I was doing other things. Honestly, that's all I needed.

The low budget and originally handheld nature of this game show at every turn. With a weak translation, an embarrassingly limited soundtrack for a 40+ hour game (done by one Masafumi Takada, neat!) and an even more limited graphical style and UI, it's a wonder that this game got a PC port at all. I don't mind that fact since I would rather play it on PC than its other platforms, but it's just funny to me how cheap the game feels.

Despite that, I think there's something almost cute about how quaint this game is. It's not exactly a relic of the far-off past as games from the early 2000s and earlier tend to be, and it's not a meme game like a lot of mid 2010s ones were. Instead, it's a very 2014-2015 feeling game that very much captures the general vibe of "anime game from around then anime was transitioning into the mainstream in the West and was well cemented as a staple in Japan proper". It's pretty neat for that, and I believe it's actually pretty fitting for as late-90s as old Digimon already felt. I do very much enjoy when I can find games that are truly time capsules of ages that I can imagine, even ones that I didn't immerse myself into or exist in. Games that are truly products of their times in ways that feel informative and fun to make fun of rather than lacking or offensive are a rarer breed than I'd hope. There really is something cute about this full-on major Digimon game having the vibes of an obscure Japanese visual novel in its presentation and style.

I like to talk about the writing of just about any game that has a significant amount of it, so I'll give a quick little briefing here. The writing in this game is a classic case of having the more important focus characters be uninteresting compared to side characters and ones you're not supposed to take seriously. Rina and Nokia were easily the highlights of the cast, and it's a shame neither of them quite got the spotlight they deserved. Nokia came close, but wasn't quite pushed enough. If anything I'd have liked for her to just be the protagonist as the one you play as is a cardboard cutout. Beyond the actual cast, the plot itself is pretty much stereotypical uninteresting anime plot complete with gigantic text dumps about random pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo or technobabble of any kind. It gets old fast, and once I realized the game was pretty much devoid of having interesting turns or meaningful character interactions, I zoned out and skipped text whenever it didn't pertain directly to either humor or the next task of the main story.

That's enough of that, though. I also like to talk about mechanics at least briefly, so... this game's a very mixed bag in that department. The actual creature collecting and upgrading mechanics are surprisingly pretty deep, but none are explained meaningfully to the player to the point where even in the endgame I was wondering about a number of features and stats that are important to getting digivolutions going. The battle system is a bit of a joke most of the time because of how dull it is, but it's obviously more there to serve the purpose of showing off the results of your hard work and training than to be an actual challenge to think through and overcome at length. The main part of things is definitely the collection, though, as I found myself almost addicted to digivolving as many mons as I could to get my favorites all together in my team. If there's one thing the game does well, it's giving the player just enough experience points and new scans to hook them into going for a grind session or two.

I wasn't expecting to write this much about this game, but I guess since I spent 40-45 hours in it I had quite a lot on my mind. The short of it is that it's a low-budget game with a lot of low-quality aspects to match, but the actual gameplay is just addictive and pleasant enough to make it plenty of fun all the same. It's just also the kind of game where you'd want to mash B/A through all the text possible. I think more than anything else this game makes me wish for a Digimon title with a relatively high budget on a home console or PC - one that's much more hands-off in the story department unless it's something much more well baked. If we got something like that with high poly Digimon models and an art style led by anyone other than Suzuhito "Anti-Gravity Chests" Yasuda, I think we'd have a really awesome title on our hands. Digimon is always full of potential, and I'd love to see it shine through one day in a video game.

After finishing Hackers Memory, I can say it. I don't know why people are so hot on this game. The only thing it has going for it is the digimon, which rock and are beautifully designed and animated. But the story is just empty mush, the world is static and dead and there's nothing to do in it besides go directly to quest markers, and the dungeons are completely devoid of personality. Hackers Memory has the bigger problem of being a bunch of shit happening off to the side of the actual story of the first game - it tries to get around this problem by focusing on characters, but ultimately the game doesn't take itself seriously enough to get the payoff it wants - it's constantly toeing right up to the line of actually saying something, or having a REAL emotional moment, and then backing off and making a joke - I know persona has jokes too and undercuts its own seriousness sometimes, but it isn't afraid to get really emotional and honest, and this game is TERRIFIED of that. The times you visit Erika's memory server are easily the high points of Hackers Memory - the art direction in those levels feels like something from a game that is 10 times better than the one I spent a million hours playing.

oh boy i have a lot to say about this game... i might end up sounding like an entitled gamer who sucks lol

pros:
- two conceptually interesting stories that explore cyberspace in their own ways
- the digimon models are rendered wonderfully
- battle system is has slightly more nuance than its often compared to rival, pokemon
- both stories kept me intrigued the whole way
- funny localization moments (like bffr you've never heard someone say "oh snap! yo dawg let's bounce!")
- didn't experience any bugs as far as i noticed

cons (because i am a salty gamer):
- lack of essential quality of life things i've taken for granted in other jrpgs (skip cutscenes, skip text, battle fast forward, story recap)
- CHAPTER 16 HACKER'S MEMORY TERRITORY CAPTURE LEGEND ANGELS (they heal every other turn omfg)
- not really the most memorable ost, immersive for sure but not many bangers :(
- SILENT PROTAGONISTS (personally feel like this trope needs to die out)
- hacker's memory protag has a voice for like the very beginning and the very end, feels bad for the seiyuu tbh
- if you want decent digimon, you're kinda forced into grinding which is pretty sucky if you're just casually playing (constatnt digivolving and de-digivolving for ABI to go up by a mere 5)
- the voice acting is inconsistent. like you'd go from a voiced scene with the main cast to no voice right after. i get it but i personally thought the main cast should have had all their lines voiced
- random encounters felt a little dated tbh but i've just been spoiled by a lot of games today that have phased out the concept of random encounters
- dungeon design was lacking but it's nothing major to be upset at
- kinda surprised there was only two difficulties. normal and hard

i prefer cyber sleuth over hacker's memory in terms of story. given that cyber sleuth is kinda sorta the "main" story anyways, there's a noticable difference in regards to the writing quality between the two. hacker's memory kinda follows one driving plot point for most of it, resolves it SUPER quickly, and then moves onto another plot that's been building up in the background slowly.

i do like the mechanics in hacker's memory though. domination battles were neat (but ffs why can i not decide WHERE my characters start?)

so uhh long story short: neat stories locked behind some tedious gameplay if you're willing to endure it. i would say that cyber sleuth is the only one worth your time tbh

I have not played Hacker's Memory, therefore I am only reviewing the main story of Cyber Sleuth. Great entry in the Digimon series. The mechanics are good, game is fun and the Digimon evolution lines are interesting and are very adaptable. Easy to pick up if you have never played Digimon before. Battle system is a good, classic turn-based system which is clear at providing information as to what Digimon will attack next. Unfortunately, it did become very repetitive at times, and some of the soundtrack lacked variety. Storyline was good, but the pacing was inconsistent, with some chapters feeling very slow while others were much faster. Being a Cyber Sleuth that can travel through networks was a great combination and felt creative.

no spoilers, & this is for hackers memory & thoughts after both games

these games are just really fun~ my feelings about this second installment are very similar to my feelings about the first, so I won't go on about those as u can just read my other log in here if u want.

as for hackers memory specifically, I found the lil quality of life improvements to be welcome. the music ofc still slaps! the story is alright, similar in quality to the first mb a bit better, tho it was a bit of a bummer sumtimes to have to play a guy, I missed how much queerer it felt to play as a girl in cyber sleuth. it got better towards the end, even stirring up sum emotions at sum points which I didn't expect. I didn't appreciate the ableist aspects of the narrative though (or the slight seasoning of misogyny that popped up here n there), it's cool that one of the main characters is Disabled but u can tell that whoever wrote it still has a lot of ableism to unlearn. I also really like Yu as a queer character, tho they kinda dropped him at one point that felt jarring, & ur interactions with him didn't leave u any agency to decide how u relate with him unfortunately seeing as u are playing as a more specific character in this game.

oh, there was a certain animated sequence toward the end at one point that I absolutely loved, wud love to see more experimentation like what they did there, v psychedelic!

I liked the addition of 3-person battles to shake up the approach to combat every now & then, but sum additional things like territory battles & the whole taking-friends-on-quests thing felt a lil uninspired. I liked a lot of the additional digimon designs, tho sum are just really hard to achieve without lots of grinding...

once I beat the game, it was really confusing how continuing ur game or new game + worked... & for sum reason u can only transfer digimon from your Digibank in Cyber sleuth into hackers memory, not any of the party or farm digimon... which is really frustrating as far as I can tell there is no way to go back into cyber sleuth & move digimon into your digibank, so I don't have access to most of my Digimon from the first game- bad design. there are still a few digivolutions I haven't gotten yet & am not sure if i will be able to find a fun way to keep playing to achieve them.

overall, I highly recommend this series! despite its flaws the two combined kept me engaged for longer than most games have, and it's definitely a way better monster-catching game & overall experience (better gameplay, story, characters, queer representation, evolution system etc) than pokemon main-line games, so pls check it out if u haven't yet! i picked it up for like $15 or sumthin, it goes on sale for cheap. I hope they do another game like these- better accessibility settings, difficulty settings (something other than super-easy & grindy-hard) & better story would take this to a whole nother level!

For the first game, I really liked it. The combat was really fun and I loved the designs of the Digimon as well as the different animations. The animations felt really realistic which was funny considering the game. Yes, the combat did get pretty grind-heavy but I loved that about it. The story was pretty interesting too. I liked the detective angle and how it changed the gameplay sometimes. The biggest drawback of the game is how much of the game looks really similar thanks to the setting.

For the second game, I found it really fun. I thought the story was an interesting continuation of the first game. A ton of it was carried over from that game too which made it feel like not much of a new experience. Overall, I really like the game a lot but felt it could have had more new content than it did.

As batalhas em turno deveriam servir de exemplo para pokémon, o fato de cada digimon ter um golpe único e esses golpes únicos terem uma animação própria já é um ponto muito forte. O sistema de auto-play é bem útil quando se está grindando xp para seus digimons e é uma ótima mecânica para encurtar o grind excessivo geralmente presente em outros jogos "mon" de turno.

Infelizmente a gameplay se torna um tanto enjoativa depois de um tempo, com missões tão repetitivas quanto, dungeons simples demais e poucos momentos da história são emocionantes.
Resumindo: é um persona de digimon de baixo custo, sem elementos de DatingSim. e divertido até certo ponto.

As a Digimon fan, this is so much fun! It's really not a perfect game, and if I weren't a fan of the franchise already, I'd just think it's a good game, but being able to sorta raise my own digimon and play around with the evo tree rly tickled my fancy. The story is typical digimon fare, which means I loved it. It had a couple innovations, like the digital world, the digital area and the hacker stuff. The music is pretty cool but nothing to write home about. Idk what else to say other than I'm having fun trying to get all the digimon

no spoilers~ & this is just for the first game, cyber sleuth

i had so much fun with this game that I immediately launched into playing Hacker's Memory after 98 hrs of cyber sleuth~ it's not perfect by any means, with sum very uneven difficulty & invisible encounters for example, but the design is pretty solid, so that even grinding is fun (& u will have to grind a lil, even on normal). the story was fun & along with the character development it took sum unexpected & subtle turns that kept me engaged. as someone who was all about Pokemon growing up, this was super refreshing; actual characters, actual plot, darker & more mature themes, more challenging gameplay, & way more queer representation (the game is especially queer if u play as the girl)~ just a real one-up on the tired pokemon games (though I rly enjoyed Arceus, finally some innovation), aside from of course the classic digimon hit-or-miss quality in the monster design & naming department. I like how challenging it is to achieve some of the digivoloutions, & hard difficulty was actually hard for boss battles, which gave the game a lot more strategy elements. u cant just go in with no items & spam high-damage moves like u can in pokemon. I just wish they had spread the difficulty between easy, normal & hard instead of just normal & hard, because sumtimes hard was a lil frustrating & normal is way too easy, would've been nice to have sumthing in the middle as I found myself swapping between them (which I'm rly grateful you can do at any point!). the music is rly fun, I adored how cheesy it is from the beginning & then grew to love it~ I also thought the Japanese voice acting was good.

this collection is often on sale for really cheap, I highly recommend u pick it up if u like digimon, JRPGs, the monster-catching genre or are just in need of sumthing more fun & refreshing than main-line pokemon

oh, also, it is rly obvious the localization team had to translate the digiline texts out of context, which makes for some absolutely hilarious & often unintelligible conversations! i absolutely loved it hehe (& don't worry, the digiline texts are simply flavour & the rest of the game is translated well! tho sumtimes the cheese factor is veryy high or overly expository in the English translation)

yo soy megafan de digimon así que probablemente a la persona promedio no le guste tanto este juego pero a mi me encanta me lo pase genial jugándolo
creo que el mayor problema que tiene es que el gameplay no es nada del otro mundo es rpg estándar sin demasiada dificultad pero hay alguna que otra pelea interesante creo yo
y quizás es algo largo aunque bueno longitud normal para un jrpg
pero la historia es TREMENDA creo que de lo mejor que he visto en digimon y no solo porque me parece que la trama principal esté bastante bien escrita y que te creas lo que les pasa a los protas sino porque todas las misiones secundarias están super chulas, hay una al inicio del juego en la que hay un personaje no binario y en general este juego tiene bastante representación lgbt lo cual está muy guay

creo que este juego no es para todos porque le tienes que echar muchas horas pero si te interesa mas o menos digimon y te puedes tanquear un juego largo lo recomiendo mucho me lo pasé muy bien me gusta mucho este juego

eso si solo me he pasado la historia del cybersleuth base no se como será hackers memory