29. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory
Rating: 6/10
Played on: Switch 2
Hacker's Memory is such an interesting game to me. It is essentially Cyber Sleuth 1.5, but as a whole seperate release rather than DLC. It's just as long, if not longer, than the original, with the same systems, same selection of Digimon, and following the same story, just concurrently with different characters and plotlines. It has a lot of quality of life and gameplay improvements, more mature character arcs, and a couple new gameplay mechanics. On paper, it feels better than Cyber Sleuth, while simultaneously feeling identical. It feels like a lot to ask to play a 60 hour RPG as a preface to play another, mostly the same 60 hour RPG.
The core gameplay mechanics are all still here, but it lost the sense of discovery. I already knew most of the Digimon I could obtain, and even though I used an entirely new team, it didn't feel like a unique enough experience to justify this being an entirely separate game. There's just as much bloating and repetative quests in this game as in the original Cyber Sleuth, but they feel worse here since I already did all of that in the same system once before.
Again, I loved the story here! It was just frustrating that I had to essentially repeat the same game again to experience it. The characters were all great, Erika's story was well executed, and even though a lot of the plotlines felt disconnected and strangely unresolved, I enjoyed what they ended up doing with them. I mean, there's a pretty much canon gay love story going on here, in addition to the lesbian one from the original story, so that will always get points from me.
It feels weird to not recommend this game as the "definitive" Cyber Sleuth experience. I wish it was just a quicker side plot of the main game rather than its own full fledged 60 hour bloated RPG. But, I suppose if I'm going to be a Digimon fan now, I've gotta get used to some weird decisions.
