Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (2016)

If someone says the plot of a game gets really interesting more than halfway through it, then the story is no good at all IMO.

Since I hate dropping games and I was dead set on getting the platinum (back to the good ol' trophy hunting phase), I powered through until the end. Did it really get better? Yes. Was it worth it? Hell no.

The only parts I loved were the battle mechanics and digivolving/de-digivolving my Digimons. The rest was just a repetitive and boring mess. A sad waste of potential.

This game was my first foray into the Digimon World, and I truly loved every minute of it.

If not for the mediocrity of the dungeons and tons of backtracking and often boring side-quests that plague the game, the side-quests in the game are arguably the weakest link as towards the middle-end of the game, it just becomes plain tedious back tracking with no real interesting short story to tell.

The dungeons in the game were at best just....mazes. Now I get that maze dungeons or what seems like randomly generated dungeons aren't bad, after all I ADORE Persona 4 Golden which didn't have particularly intuitive dungeons but still had slight uniqueness to them, and the dungeons in this game feel bland and repetitive

The story itself was intriguing, nothing entirely new but also well-done enough with some twists here and there, the ending was really sweet, unexpected but sweet.

The combat itself was very much like persona, turn-based but never felt dull at any moment. It's just perfectly fine.

-->Overall, if not for the mediocrity of the dungeons and side-quests I would've rated this game at least 4 stars, i would definitely love to continue my foray into the Digimon world though so this is definitely not the last Digimon game i play.

I am now 102 hours into Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and so, so in love! I've totally rediscovered my love for the franchise (although, let's be real, it wasn't buried that deep to begin with.)

Here's a taste of the content Digimon Cyber Sleuth inspired me to generate over the course of the last month and a half or so:

Let me unpack these feelings before I just start crying all over this review.

STORY

SO GOOD. When I started, I was very much phoning it in. I was like, "Okay, so it's basically a VN. Let me guess... childhood friends, spooky villain, I'm the chosen one, whatever." but then the game completely knocked me on my smug ass. Over and over and over.

I made sure not to read any reviews or tips before starting, so every time I thought I was Probably Definitely at the end of the game, I'd fight like it was the final battle and then... it would reveal 2-3 more fully developed story arcs to follow! Like, what?! How?!?

There's like 50 hours of narrative, and it's so good and addictive that I need MORE.

GAMEPLAY

Do you love Pokemon? Do you hate yourself? Do you love to hate yourself AND love Pokemon?? Okay, perfect. Step on in! This is monster collecting on hard mode – just when you think you're ready to evolve into the next best ultradude... you're not!

Or you do, and you realize instantly that it's useless without x and y skills from 3 evolutions backwards, or you need 100 ABI (generated by evolution) to get to the next best thing, and it'll take 2 hours of grinding to get there.

It's tedious as all hell, and you'd think that would hurt the game, but actually... it's so addicting. As a collectibles nerd, I was in HEAVEN. Like I said, I've got 102 hours on my file and I've still barely scraped the surface when it comes to collecting all the Megas and DNA digivolutions.

ALSO, this game is HARD. Due to the evolution mechanics, which make it so as you're improving, your team absolutely will be zeroed out and low-power from time to time, you always have to be really on your game with type matchups and min-maxing stats. Otherwise, you end up absolutely wrecked by the boss fights, which often feature really overpowered + stat boosted enemies with insanely strong gimmicks that can easily OHKO your entire team.

But even though it's hard, it's never so hard as to be impossible or not worth the effort. No matter which fight, there's always a straightforward way to win, usually with the help of a Digimon special skill or a well-constructed team. The game can get frustrating, but even when it's pissing me off, I can tell the design is solid and I stand a chance, which is great.

DLC

Yeah ok. This is the only reason it loses a star from me. So, from what I've learned, Bandai Namco decided to pull this game and all its DLC from PSN very quietly in Dec 2018.... only a few days after I finally got the game (cry). The cited reason people got when contacting support was ‘the game is outdated and we focus our efforts on still supported games’, which I really read as code for, "Buy Hacker's Memory." And not only that, but it shipped with exclusive pre-order DLC that never received a re-release. Big yikes for fans who don't have the money to throw at the game on release day, or recently got the console.

Gaming industry is a business. I get it. I work in it too, so like, I SUPER get it. But as a consumer, I was really disappointed. I have this amazingly fun game that I would love to put more hours into and 100% it before moving to the sequel, and yet... I'm out of content.

I just beat Imperialdramon PM with my final team of Lilithmon, Mastemon, Rosemon BM, Omnimon, Chaosmon, Kerpymon, Imperialdramon FM, UlforceVeeDramon, Magnadramon, Crusadermon, and Sakuyamon and I have soooo many new forms unlocked thanks to the end-game missions, but... no motivation to get them.

There's no story left to play, so my only option is mindless grinding or the offline tournaments. So I'm counting this as case closed, but like, imagine I stamped a little frowny face on the file.

TL;DR

Play this game, omg. And then talk to me about it, because I am never going to shut up about how much I love it and my family and friends are already so, so done with me. In parting words...

this outstayed it's welcome, i think i would have enjoyed it far more were it half the length and not so full of busy-body nothing missions, it felt like it took a very, very long time to really get started - i would have certainly welcomed it leaning harder into the persona influences with respect to the characters you interact with, i think there was scope for some interesting character study to be had here that wasn't really taken advantage of.

that said, collecting digimon is fun! zig-zagging back and forth on the digivolution trees is fun! my lizard brain will always have a weakness for that kind of thing and digimon does it well.

that localisation though, whew.

This game had a lot of glitches, yet it was incredibly fun to play.

The Good:

Visually attractive: It was bright, colorful, and just fun to look at. As you explored Tokyo neighborhood, you got to see familiar buildings and signs. The characters were creative and distinctive-looking, the digimon were equally diverse.

Gameplay: It has a bit of a Persona-esque play here, where you get to explore by solving mysteries as well as pursuing the main story through both the physical and digital worlds. The act of exploring is pretty fun - each part of the digital world is different from the previous, so you never feel like you are exploring the same "dungeons" over and over.

Digimon: The whole point of the game! There are so many types, it is super fun to evolve your digimons into new forms that have yet to be seen. By the completion of the game, I had about 203 seen and 165 registered.

Characters: I adored all the characters - each person/Digimon had their role clearly defined and the personalities ranged quite a bit. I did not receive quite the one-sided personalities as you would with most games - if anything, your protagonist is probably the most one-sided... since it's you.

Side Cases: The cases that you receive in each chapter are really fun! Many of them take the time to explore various Digimon's personalities and you pursue some pretty silly expeditions. There is an additional level of cases called Great Challenges that will be available during the last chapters of the games (I did not pursue these, so I cannot say much). However, there is one type that I put below in The Bad.

The Bad:

Glitchy: It can get pretty glitchy at times, especially on your Farms.

Training: This mostly applies to those new to Digimon - if you do not know what all the stats mean for each Digimon, be prepared to grind quite a bit towards the end in order to get the Digimons you are hoping for. Since I fell in this category, I spent most of the game not knowing the importance of ABI and when I couldn't evolve any further because the ABI was too low, I spent a lot of de-evolving and waiting to evolve again. I would not say this upset me, but I wish this was clearer at the beginning of the game so I had an idea what to look for as I progressed. Then again, I could have just put 90 hours in and got the results instead...

Side Cases - Lost Items: Be prepared to get very bored with these! When you have your Digimons hunting for cases for you on the Farm, these are the primary ones you will receive and it becomes extremely repetitive. You will mostly pursue these in order to get rank 20 for Sleuth status - if you do not care about this, do not bother with these cases.

Viewing direction: I do not know what to call this, but basically you can only view your focus straight ahead. If you need to see something beside or behind you, you have to move backwards to see it. I HATED THIS! It is excruciatingly annoying during the "lost items" cases.

Overall, super fun game, but figure out everything you need to know at the beginning of your gameplay. I would consider trying it again through New Game+ in the future, but I am not sure if I would get the follow up game Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory yet, since it appears to be the same exact game with different characters.

Cyber Sleuth is riddled with flaws. The gameplay is repetitive. The environments are limited. The characters, especially your own, are vague and lack much of an arc. It attempts to mimic aspects of the Persona series, but your in-game choices lack consequence, so the execution seems pretty shallow. The battles are laughably easy.

And yet, I enjoyed playing it so much.

For all those aforementioned flaws, the rhythm of playing this game is really, really great. In stark contrast to games like Pokémon and Yo-kai Watch, capturing monsters and grinding both feel purposeful... you spend almost no time depending on chance, and more time raising stats to earn that digivolution you were after.

Having never played a Digimon title before, I was also impressed with the creature designs. It's so much fun to digivolve a cute character like Agumon into a freaking mech superhero like Omnimon.

So in spite of my critical misgivings, I can't give this game anything less than five stars. It captured my attention for a shamefully long period of time, easily earning its place as one of my favorite games for the Vita. If you're a fan of both Pokémon X/Y and Persona 4: Golden, it's an easy recommendation.

I loved this game. Prolly my favorite of the year. That being said, I rolled on every *every* battle. This is one of the most broken games I've played. Like, there are exploits that absolute destroy competetion and I somehow got all the Digimon aside from the illusive 195. I'm not even sure if I'll go back if Bamco fixes it. There better have some amzing DLC. Maybe I'll take my broken team online and see what happens. Final Verdict? I love it. It's no pokemon. Also, this game wishes it were made by Atlus.