I’ll confess something right away: I’m not a Digimon fan. I have no strong feelings one way or the other for Digimon. It hit after I had already graduated high school, and all my memories of it come down to catching the cartoon on TV once in a while and the cover of Kids in America that Canadian band Len did for the movie soundtrack. Just a “wrong place, wrong time” situation for me. That applied to the games as well until a friend of mine vigorously recommended a PlayStation Vita game in the series called Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. Seriously, he was pushing it hard. I hesitantly picked it up and found it to be quite a good game all-around. Maybe there was hope for Digimon and me?
Because of Cyber Sleuth, I tried a few other Digimon games, but none of them quite did it for me. The key, as it turns out, is the developer. Media.Vision is a developer that has quietly been making excellent games in the mid-budget space for decades now. It was the studio behind the Wild Arms series, the back half of SEGA’s Valkyria Chronicles series, Square Enix’s Chaos Rings games, a handful of Shining games, and a few other odds and ends. Most relevant to this review, it’s also the developer of the last few Digimon Story games: Cyber Sleuth, Hacker’s Memory, and Time Stranger. Suffice it to say, I like what they do.
Time Stranger has been out for a little while on other platforms, but is just now coming to Nintendo’s platforms. My experience has been with the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, which does an acceptable job of bringing a game designed around much more powerful hardware to the console. There are some sacrifices, of course, but nothing terribly egregious. As is becoming the custom with Switch 2 ports, you can choose between performance and quality modes. The former aims for a higher framerate (it shoots for 60 but can’t quite hold it) and the latter settles for a lower framerate in exchange for better visual quality. The gap between the two isn’t as big as in some other games, but the game has a fine enough showing whichever one you choose.
Like Cyber Sleuth before it, Digimon Story Time Stranger falls somewhere between the yawning gap between Pokémon and Persona. The latter is mostly in how the tone and theme of the game feels, mind you. This is a creature-collecting RPG through and through, mechanically. You’ll recruit Digimon by digitizing them after facing them in battle a certain number of times, level them up, Digivolve them into new forms, merge them to make them stronger, and modify them with skills and equipment. Your active party can have up to three Digimon in it, with three more waiting on the bench that can be swapped in at any time during battle. Digimon also have personality types that you can influence by talking to them.
The raising and battling end of the game is quite satisfying in how it finds a sweet spot between complexity and accessibility. Boss battles have a good bite to them, but if it becomes too much, you can always temporarily knock down to a lower difficulty to get past choke points. Between Digimon types, personality types, elemental weaknesses, and the other customization options, you have a lot of variables to work with. With three active and three bench Digimon in your party, you can cover quite a few enemy weaknesses, but not all of them. Your main character, the Agent, can also affect battles with their special skills and the ability to use items. Battles encourage you to go all out, as you can fully recover your party outside of battle just by standing still for a few seconds.
As for the story, you’re an agent in some sort of secret organization known as ADAMAS. After a wild opening involving massive Digimon laying waste to Shinjuku, you find yourself thrown into the past. The mysteries quickly pile up, and it becomes clear that the only hope for the future requires your intervention in the past. While it’s a far more peaceful era, a number of anomalies begin to appear. As you investigate them, the truth behind everything becomes more apparent. It’s an engaging enough plot, though one where the characters are perhaps a bit thinner than would be ideal. As much as it evokes Persona’s traits, even right down to having its own take on the Velvet Room, Time Stranger can’t keep up with the narrative chops that series offers. Interesting enough to keep one playing, though, especially if you’re a sucker for silly time travel stories.
While this is a big step up from Cyber Sleuth in its presentation, Time Stranger still feels very much like a mid-budget game in a lot of ways. There are a lot of repetitive visual elements in dungeon areas, to the point that the map is a virtual necessity due to how similar everything seems to look. There are some larger areas to roam around in, but most of the game’s locations are broken up into smaller digestible chunks. There are places to explore with extra items and treasures, but in terms of scope, most of the areas in the game feel like they’re from an older era. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on one’s tastes, but it’s at least worth noting. Those occasional larger areas are where the game’s performance tends to struggle, especially if there are a lot of NPCs on screen. It’s easy to see why Time Stranger tends to opt for smaller chunks. It just works better with how the game is built.
Which I suppose is what it really comes around to with Digimon Story Time Stranger. In a world where we can find tons of huge RPGs with frankly massive scope, this game is content to be something smaller and more focused. It’s an RPG the way they used to make them, for better or worse. You likely won’t be spending a hundred hours on Time Stranger, and its world is exactly as big as it needs to be without much extra fluff. Yet it has plenty of interesting mechanics to play around with, solid pacing, a fairly intriguing plot, and charm to burn. Digimon fans are especially likely to appreciate having another well-made game to dive into, but you don’t need to know or care for the brand to have a good time here.
Digimon Story Time Stranger is a solid port to the Switch 2 that makes some sensible sacrifices without losing what made it shine elsewhere. It might not be the biggest or fanciest RPG on the platform, but its plucky approach to the subject matter is hard to dislike. As a creature collector, it has a lot to offer with its various systems and customizations. The turn-based battles give you plenty of opportunities to push all of that stuff to your advantage, and there’s enough to do outside of battles to get you poking around every nook and cranny. All of that is wrapped up in a plot that can sometimes be a little thin but never fails to keep things moving at a steady pace. Time Stranger is a good time all around, even if it doesn’t reinvent the proverbial wheel as far as RPGs go.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment
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