Breeding new Digimon is the most fun I ever had with a monster battling game. The battle system unfortunately doesn't live up to it's full potential. It could offer so much tactical depths with three own Digimon on the field at once, a plethora of status moves and an amazing turn-based system, everything is thrown away as soon as you encounter any boss. They're just resistent or even immune to each and every status effect or debuff you could throw at them, and buffing your own Digimon has ridiculously little effect either.
Oh, how I wish there was some sort of balance hack like there are for Pokémon games. This game would absolutely slay Pokémon in every possible category if it was balanced better.
If you're a gigantic Digimon fan like me, it's still very much worth playing tho. Awesome Digimon, well animated, cool although poorly paced story, and probably the best Digimon game of the entire decade.
Oh, how I wish there was some sort of balance hack like there are for Pokémon games. This game would absolutely slay Pokémon in every possible category if it was balanced better.
If you're a gigantic Digimon fan like me, it's still very much worth playing tho. Awesome Digimon, well animated, cool although poorly paced story, and probably the best Digimon game of the entire decade.
Great game for Digimon fans. Story is absolutely insane, and a great soundtrack
So I should probably preface this review by saying that most of my exposure to Digimon is through osmosis and I was attracted to these games because I heard about how good they are from my friends. And they were right. These games are incredible whether you are or aren’t familiar with Digimon. I’ve heard there are a bunch of nostalgia bombs for fans of the series, but whether you’re a long time fan or totally new to the series, this collection has two fantastic RPGs that are absolutely worth checking out.
Around the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield, I saw a lot of people suggesting this game as an alternative, but I’m not entirely sure that’s fair to either game. There’s definitely the frankly quite addictive gameplay element of messing around with evolving and devolving your Digimon to get different critters, which I actually made me kind of happy I wasn’t familiar with the series because it was exciting and fun to see what Digimon I would get.
In terms of the stories’ themes, though, I would say that it felt a lot more like the modern Persona games (yeah, yeah, I know, but bear with me here) or maybe even The World Ends With You, what with its use of actual locations in Tokyo as its map and the exploration of the social issues resulting from the internet and social media through a science fantasy cyberpunk lens. They don’t quite have the stylish polish of the Persona series and very rarely get even close to being as dark, but I feel like people let down by the the occasional tone-deafness and treatment of LGBTQ+ characters in more recent Personas will find these games to be pretty refreshing.
Despite the fact that I gave it a perfect rating, I do think there are a few flaws to the games. The dungeon design in Cyber Sleuth is pretty repetitive, and while Hacker’s Memory has some more variety in terms of more dungeons, Territory Capture missions, and the TRPG-esque Domination Battles where you can do very light social links with both human and Digimon characters, I found myself wishing for a little more polish. Hacker’s Memory improves over Cyber Sleuth’s gameplay in most ways, but I did kind of find myself wishing for level scaling options that would give me better EXP. It takes a heck of a lot of messing around to get to a point where you can evolve your Digimon to Mega, after all, and while there’s a fair amount of passive EXP gain via the farms I wanted more of a challenge in missions where I’d have to go to the lower levels of Kowloon.
I feel like the pacing of the story is a case where your mileage might vary. I kind of loved the more episodic bits where you’d just solve cases for random weirdos, both human and Digimon, as they were generally fun little vignettes and they helped flesh out the characters and world. I can imagine some people wishing the game would just get to the good stuff, though.
Personally, I thought the aimlessness felt a little worse in Cyber Sleuth due to its plot hinging a little more on the fate of society and the world, while Hacker’s Memory was more of a focused story about individual characters and their various problems. They’re both great, though, and I don’t think Hacker’s Memory would’ve been quite as fun if I hadn’t played Cyber Sleuth first.
Anyway,if you’re on a budget and you need a game that isn’t super expensive, will last you a long time, and would be genuinely worth $60 anyway, you’ve gotta go for this. You get two fantastic games that are excellent stories and are super fun to play! I think all of the collection’s strengths more than make up for its flaws. The music is also extremely good too, so there’s that.
Around the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield, I saw a lot of people suggesting this game as an alternative, but I’m not entirely sure that’s fair to either game. There’s definitely the frankly quite addictive gameplay element of messing around with evolving and devolving your Digimon to get different critters, which I actually made me kind of happy I wasn’t familiar with the series because it was exciting and fun to see what Digimon I would get.
In terms of the stories’ themes, though, I would say that it felt a lot more like the modern Persona games (yeah, yeah, I know, but bear with me here) or maybe even The World Ends With You, what with its use of actual locations in Tokyo as its map and the exploration of the social issues resulting from the internet and social media through a science fantasy cyberpunk lens. They don’t quite have the stylish polish of the Persona series and very rarely get even close to being as dark, but I feel like people let down by the the occasional tone-deafness and treatment of LGBTQ+ characters in more recent Personas will find these games to be pretty refreshing.
Despite the fact that I gave it a perfect rating, I do think there are a few flaws to the games. The dungeon design in Cyber Sleuth is pretty repetitive, and while Hacker’s Memory has some more variety in terms of more dungeons, Territory Capture missions, and the TRPG-esque Domination Battles where you can do very light social links with both human and Digimon characters, I found myself wishing for a little more polish. Hacker’s Memory improves over Cyber Sleuth’s gameplay in most ways, but I did kind of find myself wishing for level scaling options that would give me better EXP. It takes a heck of a lot of messing around to get to a point where you can evolve your Digimon to Mega, after all, and while there’s a fair amount of passive EXP gain via the farms I wanted more of a challenge in missions where I’d have to go to the lower levels of Kowloon.
I feel like the pacing of the story is a case where your mileage might vary. I kind of loved the more episodic bits where you’d just solve cases for random weirdos, both human and Digimon, as they were generally fun little vignettes and they helped flesh out the characters and world. I can imagine some people wishing the game would just get to the good stuff, though.
Personally, I thought the aimlessness felt a little worse in Cyber Sleuth due to its plot hinging a little more on the fate of society and the world, while Hacker’s Memory was more of a focused story about individual characters and their various problems. They’re both great, though, and I don’t think Hacker’s Memory would’ve been quite as fun if I hadn’t played Cyber Sleuth first.
Anyway,if you’re on a budget and you need a game that isn’t super expensive, will last you a long time, and would be genuinely worth $60 anyway, you’ve gotta go for this. You get two fantastic games that are excellent stories and are super fun to play! I think all of the collection’s strengths more than make up for its flaws. The music is also extremely good too, so there’s that.
Combat lacks any kind of thrill or tension and strategy, dugeons are dull and straightforward in a similar fashion and the way you interact with digimons is artificial and soulless and makes you see them as a tool. The setting and thriller tone are a bit wasted and the writting suffers from the exposition and saturated dialogues one would expect from this kind of japanese pieces.
What really makes this game shine is the way it handles digimon mythos. The main conflict appears when a human-created virtual world brings a desease that consumes all that's around it in the digital world, that desease is made out of the darkest part of the human psyche, which the virtual world cannot handle. That issue wasnt taken into account by the creators of that world as the digital world wasnt known by them, which emphasise the fact that the digital world exists by its own. The royal knights are divided by how to solve the situation being the two sides fixing the issue by eliminating the human race or doing it by their side.
Nokia works as the energetic character that represents the power of the bond between digimons and humans.
In secondary missions you get to know digimons previously known in the series playing, and sometimes subverting what you know about them as with that Etemon that had a sweet personality and just wanted his music to be heard by others.
It sometimes interweave urban legends, esoteric rituals or even material affairs as a malfunctioning air cooler with the digital world as, as I said before, people dont know about the digital world but its connected to the real one in a eerir way, making these intangible and ethereal situations make some sense once the big picture can be seen.
What really makes this game shine is the way it handles digimon mythos. The main conflict appears when a human-created virtual world brings a desease that consumes all that's around it in the digital world, that desease is made out of the darkest part of the human psyche, which the virtual world cannot handle. That issue wasnt taken into account by the creators of that world as the digital world wasnt known by them, which emphasise the fact that the digital world exists by its own. The royal knights are divided by how to solve the situation being the two sides fixing the issue by eliminating the human race or doing it by their side.
Nokia works as the energetic character that represents the power of the bond between digimons and humans.
In secondary missions you get to know digimons previously known in the series playing, and sometimes subverting what you know about them as with that Etemon that had a sweet personality and just wanted his music to be heard by others.
It sometimes interweave urban legends, esoteric rituals or even material affairs as a malfunctioning air cooler with the digital world as, as I said before, people dont know about the digital world but its connected to the real one in a eerir way, making these intangible and ethereal situations make some sense once the big picture can be seen.
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.
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.
Probably the freshest take on a Digimon game. Its great characters and alright plot are held back by a lack of polish and monotonous dungeons, but an enjoyable experience for both Digimon fans and RPG diehards.
Solo he jugado al cyber sleuth y está bien pero la gente lo sobreestima demasiado yo creo, tiene mucha mierda clunky y la historia es horrible
Despite the comparisons with pokemon, this game its far from being a "Pokeclone". Not only the story and characters are amazing, but the evolving mechanics are not far behind. On top of that, this release has one of the most underated multiplayer modes of the generation, that unfortunely, came in the wrong era. There is hardly anything bad i can say about this game when even the pricing its great. If i had to nitpick a negative its just that the consequenses of being built around handheld hardware of 2011 using and even more limited budget are easy to see in areas like the dungeon design.
only main game. didnt finish hacker's memory. unbelievably charming game, i really like what it does with the IP. localization is hot garbage in a really funny way. the eaters are sexy
I've really tried liking this but it's atrocious design wise: 20% rpg, 10% running back and forth, 70% of shitty dialogue and cutscenes that can't even be skipped even if you are on NG+.
it's one thing to have story heavy segments and it's another to completely break every gameplay segment every 5 minutes with constant dialogues and cinematics. to start mosts quests, you'll have to go to the place where they start, interact with something, then you have go back to the office, accept the quest and go back - to the place you were at first.
the constant interruptions drag down the quality of the dungeons as well, which are not very good to begin with. simple and linear, the early game features a lot of slow back and forth where you keep running into the same lower level mons for the first hours of the game. bumping the difficulty is not more satisfying since it just makes enemies deal more damage and take less. later dungeons offer very easy puzles and put some chests in certain areas marked on your minmap to 'explore'. it's also very on rails, since harder areas are walled off by npcs that tell you to go away until the story reaches that part.
the digimon raising system leaves a lot to be desired. often it requires you to devolve them, then level them up again to evolve them, a bunch of times so that a certain stat increases and you can unlock an evolution. plus the stat requirements copuled with RNG means sometimes you can't even meet requirements on a certain digimon if they have a certain personality which does not befenit their stats. a more boring grindfest than most rpgs.
and again, the story is so fucking bad, i probably hate it even more because you're forced to sit through it.
it's one thing to have story heavy segments and it's another to completely break every gameplay segment every 5 minutes with constant dialogues and cinematics. to start mosts quests, you'll have to go to the place where they start, interact with something, then you have go back to the office, accept the quest and go back - to the place you were at first.
the constant interruptions drag down the quality of the dungeons as well, which are not very good to begin with. simple and linear, the early game features a lot of slow back and forth where you keep running into the same lower level mons for the first hours of the game. bumping the difficulty is not more satisfying since it just makes enemies deal more damage and take less. later dungeons offer very easy puzles and put some chests in certain areas marked on your minmap to 'explore'. it's also very on rails, since harder areas are walled off by npcs that tell you to go away until the story reaches that part.
the digimon raising system leaves a lot to be desired. often it requires you to devolve them, then level them up again to evolve them, a bunch of times so that a certain stat increases and you can unlock an evolution. plus the stat requirements copuled with RNG means sometimes you can't even meet requirements on a certain digimon if they have a certain personality which does not befenit their stats. a more boring grindfest than most rpgs.
and again, the story is so fucking bad, i probably hate it even more because you're forced to sit through it.
Mastemon go brrrrrr
Both of the games featured in this are worth the base price, and it goes on sale for cheap very often.
Its persona but instead of personas its digimon
As a digimon fan this is one of the best digimon games I've played, there are over 340 digimon in this game and they all look really good and have nice animations, plus their size is somewhat accurate and all 340 digimon have their own fully animated signature and special moves which is really nice. The story is fun too but the appeal here is growing your collection of digimon, at least for me it was
As a digimon fan this is one of the best digimon games I've played, there are over 340 digimon in this game and they all look really good and have nice animations, plus their size is somewhat accurate and all 340 digimon have their own fully animated signature and special moves which is really nice. The story is fun too but the appeal here is growing your collection of digimon, at least for me it was
This would have been a good game, if you could skip the long ass cutscenes. Instead that's a huge focus of the game you need to sit through. To get to stuff you actually care about. Making it too much of a slog. I just wanted to battle and collect digimon.
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.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is the finest Digimon RPG of all time and surprised me with an exciting evolution and de-evolution mechanic and unexpected mature and deep storylines. The lovely characters are designed by Suzuhito Yasuda, known for Durarara!! and Shin Megami Tensei. Each of the 341 Digimon has at least one signature skill with its own unique animation in the turn-based combat system. While random encounters could actually become annoying, you will be able to turn them off very early. The Complete Edition features both games, Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory, and allows you to transfer your progress from one game to the other.
HOW DOES THIS GAME EVEN EXIST
2 STUPENDOUS MON GAMES IN ONE
GOATED MON HABERDASHERY ALL THE WAY THROUGH
IF YOU LIKE RPGS N POCKET MONSTERS N SHIT THIS IS THE GAME FOR U
GO
GO
GO!!
2 STUPENDOUS MON GAMES IN ONE
GOATED MON HABERDASHERY ALL THE WAY THROUGH
IF YOU LIKE RPGS N POCKET MONSTERS N SHIT THIS IS THE GAME FOR U
GO
GO
GO!!
It's cool
Just to review this version of the game, is neat how they manage to pack 2 JRPGs with all the bonus content and DLC, and updating the roster of the first one.
The games are neat by itself, a cool monster collector for those tired of Pokémon.
The games are neat by itself, a cool monster collector for those tired of Pokémon.
Jogo realmente sensacional, porém de extremo nicho, não e todo mundo que vai gostar, ele leva tempo, você tem que ter paciencia pra conseguir os digimons mais fortes e pra ver o desenrolar da historia, so recomendo se for fã de j-rpgs ou de digimon, até eu que curto muito esse estilo tive dificuldade, mas me mantive jogando por horas a fio jogando, por querer ver as digievoluções, acredito que essa seja a maior qualidade do jogo.
This review contains spoilers
I'm going to preface this review with this: if you like Digimon in any capacity, and you haven't played this then do it. Right now. I'll wait. And yes, you have to play both of them. I'm going forward considering this whole thing a package deal; if you beat Cyber Sleuth, I consider it mandatory to go ahead with Hacker's Memory.
Welcome back.
I played Cyber Sleuth when it originally came out on PS4, and I had basically no memory of it. I remember getting frustrated and kind of just blasting through the last half of the game without paying any attention to the story. At that time I had a lot going on and I just couldn't be bothered with a longer game like this.
What frustrated me so much? Well, I'm going to list what faults I believe these games have, because they're so few and really the only criticisms I can give.
1) The translation. It's really not good in many parts. (At several points and enemy type called an Eater is inexplicably referred to by many characters as a Bakemon, which is just a regular Digimon). Especially in the Digiline messaging thing that adds some flavor to the world - it's very apparent that the main messages you receive and the replies you send to them were translated separately, and thus often your reply seems wildly inappropriate, as whoever was translating had no context for the other side of the conversation. The translation errors are further compounded with the fact that most of the main cast of Cyber Sleuth are just kind of a bunch of oddballs, in a way that I don't think translates well to a western audience. So you'll often be left wondering after an exchange between two characters, thinking "Was that supposed to make no sense, or is the translation piss-poor?"
In Hacker's Memory, the translation is much better (save for the aforementioned Digiline issues), and the main cast is much more grounded, so everything flows much better. When the Hacker's Memory cast interacts with characters from Cyber Sleuth, you can really see that many of those characters really are just supposed to be off-the-wall weird.
If you can look past the translation issues, and really focus on what the text is trying to say rather than what's been translated, you'll find yourself slowly being immersed in a fun world with captivating characters and a worthwhile story.
2) The grinding. Grinding is necessary, especially if you want the cooler Digimon. The complete collection does away with the mission requirements for digivolving into some of the stronger monsters, so you're free to go straight for Gallantmon CM or Lucemon SM or whatever you'd like. You'll just need to grind for them due to the ABI system and stat requirements. If you can manage to get 3 PlatinumNumemons and a full suite of Tactician USBs the pain is lessened 100x, and grinding becomes a cakewalk, so it really didn't bother me. Keep in mind though that you can't transfer Digimon between games until after you've beaten each, so you will need to do some grinding in both.
3) Graphics. I'm not really sure why I'm mentioning this, but I know it bothers some people. These games originally came out in the PS Vita, and these are basically direct ports. So some of the models/textures don't look the best. Nothing beats having Beelzemon BM follow around behind you on a motorcycle though.
All in all, these are minor gripes, and it really is an absolute must play for Digimon fans, or even collectable monster games fans in general. The world is fun, the characters are memorable, the monsters are cool, and the story isn't bad, in fact it's pretty good! What more could you want? By the time you finish Hacker's Memory, you'll be reflecting fondly on your journey to that point, and hoping you'll be able to meet all those characters again someday.
Welcome back.
I played Cyber Sleuth when it originally came out on PS4, and I had basically no memory of it. I remember getting frustrated and kind of just blasting through the last half of the game without paying any attention to the story. At that time I had a lot going on and I just couldn't be bothered with a longer game like this.
What frustrated me so much? Well, I'm going to list what faults I believe these games have, because they're so few and really the only criticisms I can give.
1) The translation. It's really not good in many parts. (At several points and enemy type called an Eater is inexplicably referred to by many characters as a Bakemon, which is just a regular Digimon). Especially in the Digiline messaging thing that adds some flavor to the world - it's very apparent that the main messages you receive and the replies you send to them were translated separately, and thus often your reply seems wildly inappropriate, as whoever was translating had no context for the other side of the conversation. The translation errors are further compounded with the fact that most of the main cast of Cyber Sleuth are just kind of a bunch of oddballs, in a way that I don't think translates well to a western audience. So you'll often be left wondering after an exchange between two characters, thinking "Was that supposed to make no sense, or is the translation piss-poor?"
In Hacker's Memory, the translation is much better (save for the aforementioned Digiline issues), and the main cast is much more grounded, so everything flows much better. When the Hacker's Memory cast interacts with characters from Cyber Sleuth, you can really see that many of those characters really are just supposed to be off-the-wall weird.
If you can look past the translation issues, and really focus on what the text is trying to say rather than what's been translated, you'll find yourself slowly being immersed in a fun world with captivating characters and a worthwhile story.
2) The grinding. Grinding is necessary, especially if you want the cooler Digimon. The complete collection does away with the mission requirements for digivolving into some of the stronger monsters, so you're free to go straight for Gallantmon CM or Lucemon SM or whatever you'd like. You'll just need to grind for them due to the ABI system and stat requirements. If you can manage to get 3 PlatinumNumemons and a full suite of Tactician USBs the pain is lessened 100x, and grinding becomes a cakewalk, so it really didn't bother me. Keep in mind though that you can't transfer Digimon between games until after you've beaten each, so you will need to do some grinding in both.
3) Graphics. I'm not really sure why I'm mentioning this, but I know it bothers some people. These games originally came out in the PS Vita, and these are basically direct ports. So some of the models/textures don't look the best. Nothing beats having Beelzemon BM follow around behind you on a motorcycle though.
All in all, these are minor gripes, and it really is an absolute must play for Digimon fans, or even collectable monster games fans in general. The world is fun, the characters are memorable, the monsters are cool, and the story isn't bad, in fact it's pretty good! What more could you want? By the time you finish Hacker's Memory, you'll be reflecting fondly on your journey to that point, and hoping you'll be able to meet all those characters again someday.
si pokemon fuera bueno y persona no diese cringe
-el juego
-el juego
Raising mons is pretty fun but literally everything else is not.
It's a slow game with boring winded dialogue, the combat is simple, the menu UX is atrocious.
It's hard to get attached to the critters because of how many you get and how intertwined their evolution chart is.
It's a cheap persona clone with less QoL features.
I played Hacker's Dream which is supposedly the better one.
I have a soft spot for Digimon and it's cool to have a MetalGreymon and ExVeemon running around with you but that can't carry a game alone.
It's a slow game with boring winded dialogue, the combat is simple, the menu UX is atrocious.
It's hard to get attached to the critters because of how many you get and how intertwined their evolution chart is.
It's a cheap persona clone with less QoL features.
I played Hacker's Dream which is supposedly the better one.
I have a soft spot for Digimon and it's cool to have a MetalGreymon and ExVeemon running around with you but that can't carry a game alone.
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.
===
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.
I’m giving it a solid 3 stars but I’ll be honest and say I dropped it. While I love Digimon and the story was interesting it all was just too tedious. The first annoyance was it’s awful mission tracking, barely giving you any detail on your current and where you’re supposed to be or who you need to talk too, so good luck if you have to put it down for a couple of days and forget where you were. Then the long character conversations started to weigh on me, with a ton of needless conversations to slog through. But the nail in the coffin was the evolution design. A Digimon game should be about collecting Digimon and digivolving them into cooler stronger Digimon. Straight forward, right? Not in Cyber Sleuth. Not only do you have to raise CAM through battles but you also have the incredibly stupid AGI that you de-digivolve to obtain, where 1 battle with equal 1 ABI point, and the higher evolutions require insane amounts of ABI. It all just became too tedious and started feeling like a chore to play through.
Honestly a really solid Digimon game. The story kinda drags, so I keep getting bored with it. Combat is passable but nothing special.
Far and away the best Digimon, but it's a pretty cookie cutter experience, especially as originally a Vita release. The Switch version in handheld lags badly at times, and there's just a general underwhelming feeling to a lot of the presentation. It's made up for somewhat by great Digivolutions, the soundtrack, and good turn based combat.
Literally one of the best games I've ever played I love it so much
After many-many months of grinding (though the game is not as grindy as I made it to be) I beat the first game. Gameplay and leveling system it's pretty neat, the best in the franchise (though I have not played Survive yet).
The things that sadly keep this game from being fully awesome are the uninteresting dungeons and crappy story.
The extra content on the original Cyber Sleuth also has a truly insane difficulty (might be a bit easier on normal, I played on hard). The last few optional bosses became so infuriatingly cheap that I just dropped everything and went straight to the ending.
EDIT: Not that a lot of people (let alone more than 0) read my reviews but I just learned that Digimon Story is a "sub-series" not attached to the Digimon World sub-series which I didn't knew run parallel to it and also focuses more on the breeding/raising part of the digimons rather than battles and strategy.
I also don't know if Survive is part of a sub-series or a thing of it's own so...whatever.
The things that sadly keep this game from being fully awesome are the uninteresting dungeons and crappy story.
The extra content on the original Cyber Sleuth also has a truly insane difficulty (might be a bit easier on normal, I played on hard). The last few optional bosses became so infuriatingly cheap that I just dropped everything and went straight to the ending.
EDIT: Not that a lot of people (let alone more than 0) read my reviews but I just learned that Digimon Story is a "sub-series" not attached to the Digimon World sub-series which I didn't knew run parallel to it and also focuses more on the breeding/raising part of the digimons rather than battles and strategy.
I also don't know if Survive is part of a sub-series or a thing of it's own so...whatever.
I might come back to this but man this game is too long for what it is, lol