I rewatched the entirety of Digimon Tamers in May, so to keep up my Digimon momentum I decided to take the chance and dive into this game.

After ~66 hours I'm finally done with Cyber Sleuth, the first of the two games contained in this collection. When it comes to this type of plot-centered RPGs, my personal experience usually happens to fall into one of these two categories. Either by hour 30 I'm already completely burnt out (like with Final Fantasy XV), or I'm completely immersed due to its charming characters and world (like with the Persona series). This is one of those strange cases where it was a mix of both.

Some things of note:

• The Characters

  One of this game's strongest points is its writing. The main cast's relationship honestly surprised me. The main trio of friends start out as your typical energetic, kind of dumb girl who plays the funny man and an aloof, snarky boy who plays the straight man, and initially you don't expect much from them beyond needing to be saved by the protagonist during a critical moment before leaving the spotlight.

  To my surprise though, their character arcs don't completely hinge on the titular cyber sleuth. Even more surprisingly, they were allowed to have active, important roles in the plot without needing the protagonist's presence. They don't need to be saved or helped every step of the way to be effective, and they're even allowed to be in the center stage during certain climactic moments without the protagonist having to be the center of the universe.

  This game goes above and beyond in terms of what roles it lets its side characters play in this type of "Mime Hero" games (even ones I consider to have great characterization sometimes fall victim to hanging the entire side characters' development and achievements on the protagonist - I'm looking at you, Persona 4).

  For example, Nokia, one of your two initial friends, starts out as an simple-minded, lively girl who's too afraid to step up and help others, even when she desperately wants to - but throughout the game, you see her evolve in something that I can only describe as a shounen protagonist's character arc. Her optimistic, passionate, "act before thinking" nature, combined with good amounts of charismatic shounen protagonist speeches, lead her to become worthy of being called a hero as she creates from scratch a group that champions and protects both Digimon and humans. Her arc culminates in this Gurren Lagann-esque scene where her digimon partners finally evolve to Omnimon, which I must say is one of the most badass scenes I've ever seen for a side character in a JRPG. Her entire side of the story astonished me from beginning to end, and I was always looking forward to what she'd come up with next.

  A character like this, who in a lesser game would, at worst, be relegated to just a love interest who only waits for the protagonist to interact with her, and a dumb sidekick at best, to be allowed to have this kind of depth and growth, it was gripping!

  And it's not just her. Every single character has their own story beats and roles and growth in the story, and every single one of them completely destroyed my shallow expectations of what kind of stereotypical character roles they'd play. Needless to say by the end of the game the main group gave me this tight-knit group of friends feeling similar to a Persona game, which is quite an achievement!

• The Plot

  The main plot is griping, starting with small mysteries that escalate into full blown corporate conspiracies, a rift between the real and digital world (as expected from a digimon work), without ever losing its initial playful tone that makes it such a blast to play.

• The Protagonist

  It wasn't just the side characters that surprised me. The main characters is a silent hero, but I was amazed by just how much personality they have despite having no written lines. The dialogue "options" are actually non-options and it's pretty clear that more often than not the protagonist is actually saying all of the options, one after the other.

  The avatar's expressiveness, together with the choosable options and how some characters respond to your protagonist make it extremely clear what exactly it is that they are saying and feeling at any given time, and present them as this sort of optimistic, lively, chummy, extremely sociable ditz.

  In fact, they are so well characterized that I'm amazed they weren't just given voice lines like any other character. It feels weird to say, but the main character is honestly one of the most charming, fun, cutest characters in the game (which is already full of an extremely charismatic cast!)

  I'm serious about the dialogue "options" being non-options by the way. Just.... just look at this, lol, it's basically just a single run-on sentence split into 3 "options":

• The Gameplay Loop

  The gameplay loop has you solving a set number of sidequests between each story beat, and, all but the filler lost property sidequest have unique, fun dialogue and banter that makes them fun to complete, with the only downside being that you'll more often than not be forced to clear the same annoying, repetitive mini-dungeon over and over (either to find a digimon, some item, to grind some material) in-between each quest-progression dialogue. It's very annoying and honestly exactly what grinds the pacing to a halt and turns this from a fun, immersive experience into an annoying grind.

  I played this game on hard mode and even then the battles feel like filler without much strategy involved, the gameplay is kinda broken with the DEF/INT piercing attacks that render all other moves virtually worthless in comparison. I'm normally not the min-maxing type, and even for someone like me it was crystal clear that they're the best moves by an abnormally excessive margin.

  The evolving and digivolving mechanics are really fun, but some of the mega requirements turn it into a grindfest when you find yourself digivolving, grinding levels, de-digivolving, grinding more levels for the same digimon over and over just to meet some of the ABI/stat requirements. Despite liking the game, the setting, the characters, the aesthetic, the digimon, I was still already done with it by chapter 12 or so due to how annoying the main gameplay loop is.

  Insult to injury is that the game is missing some critical QOL mechanics that would have made for a much smoother experience. In-between each plot even, the game throws at you a set of sidequests that require you to travel to specific locations/dungeons to clear them, with many of them happening in the same area. Instead of allowing the player to select several sidequests and knock them all out in a single expedition, the game locks the player into only one quest at a time, requiring many, many back and forth expeditions to the same dungeon area just to clear the list of sidequests. This is the most egregious thing about this game and what makes it such a slog.

I've read the other game in the collection, Hacker's Memory, fixes some of these nitpicks I have, so I'm still looking forward to sinking my teeth into that one.