#digimontimestranger

[765nanami]

Aegiomon

[softkeychains]

Lighdramon confirmed

and wishful thinking for DLC

[valtren]

[softkeychains]

Wishful thinking for the best bun to be in!

[arkadiaasks]

Thank you. I can stomach a bad plot (I love Pokémon) but the lack of challenge sounds frustrating (one of my current beefs with Pokémon haha). If I care a lot about the roster of a monster collector, which is better, Time Stranger or the Cyber Sleuth ones you mentioned?

Time Stranger has the better wider more updated roster. (But I think it's an addition of like 50 new mons including Beel Starmon, the Olympus XII and a bunch of other stuff) However you only get access to Megas like MAYBE one or two Dungeons away from the end.

Cyber Sleuth has a more outdated roster, but you can access Megas at a much more reasonable point and the game caps you in a more interesting way. And you can use PlatinumNumemon as XP Slaves, lmao.

Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory also are longer and have more interesting side quests, while Time Stranger is much more Modern AAA Video Game in its side quests.

But Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory is in the budget dimension of using the same 10 micro dungeons.

While Time Stranger has actual set piece dungeons

I forget if you can turn off the heal mechanic for Time Stranger, I bounced hard after finishing it.

[arkadiaasks]

NGL I was thinking of getting Time Stranger b/c I saw things about it breaking records for Digimon and stuff. Why is it a trainwreck?

I'll start with two preambles:

I have not played the DLC as the original game was a birthday present from a dear friend of mine and I am strapped for cash in perpetuity. I have heard they are okay for what they are.

It's perfectly fine if you're looking for a monster collection game but its monster line-up is very clearly from 10 years ago. The entire gameplay loop is fine, good and generally newcomer friendly. If this is your first entry it won't put you off but I think it'll leave you wanting for more.

But a lot of the problems strike me as a result of it having a 10 year troubled production.

The writing is very incoherent and slapshod as it pretty much is a series of not very consistently tied together set pieces. Like I'm not expecting War and Peace but in a modern game I do expect some level of dignity and consistency.

Basically the game wants to be two-three things at once:

A) A time-travel detective noir about Digimon following up on Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory (which I think was the original plan, to just Like A Dragon it onto the PS4/PS5, i.e. lots of asset reuse)

B) An epic about the Iliad Digital World to show off a clear origin story for the Olympus 12 (basically the Greek Gods as Digimon) to the general public that isn't a phone game (Digimon Crusader).

C) A story about the dangers of time travel.

And it somehow mishmashes all three things into a clunky mess that never feels fully baked. And the director did confirm this was an issue, as they had to backload like the vast bulk of the game's side quests/side missions to the start of the last dungeon because all the editing to the main scenario meant that the connective tissue for where those side quests should have been got excised.

Beyond issues with the writing being a mess, the game basically has a full heal mechanic if you just stop moving anywhere in a dungeon, you automatically heal back to full health, which kind of removes NEARLY any real challenge from the game?

And basically any of the actual like "Pokemon Center" you had in the Cyber Sleuth duology got shoved directly into your menu to prevent friction and they basically made the training mechanic near useless until the end of the game.

The game basically feels like it went through at least two dev cycles, and this is conjecture, that by 2024 Bandai management told the team to haul ass and ship something within a year in a playable state.

It's very pretty. It's fun. You'll probably enjoy yourself. But it's very very clearly a Frankenstein'd Chimera of disparate parts hastily stitched together.

But.

I cannot really recommend getting it at $70.00, but I cannot ultimately tell you what to do.

I do think Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Complete Collection, while 2 Vita era RPGs, is much more complete, has two much more emotionally satisfying stories, with fairly similar monster rosters. And costs $10.00.

If there's any other questions you'd like to answer.

[arkadiaasks]

Now that the dust has settled, thoughts on Time Stranger?

It's Digimon BioShock Infinite.

It's a severely unfinished game that was hastily assembled from unfinished parts and assets, had all its difficulty sanded off, and clearly 1 to 2 iterations of the production team or the game's production got thrown out.

I'm glad it got people into Digimon, but HORY SHITE that thing is a trainwreck.

[arkadiaasks]

Are you playing Digimon Time Stranger?

Yes.

Just got to Dark Field.

It was a gift from a friend.

(Bonus points, I'm almost done rewatching Digimon Adventure)