Digimon Story: Time Stranger review: "Finally in competition with Pokemon and Persona, this monster raising RPG is showing rapid evolution"

Digimon Story: Time Stranger is a welcome return to the series' more standard mechanics after the long-awaited Digimon Survive back in 2022 was a bit of a miss. Time Stranger focuses on developing the already strong monster-raising and battling mechanics of its predecessors, but while telling a new standalone story that doesn't tie into the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth games with which this shares half a title. It feels like a big leap forward, especially in how Time Stranger can feel quite close to the anime series – something Pokemon often struggles with. It might end up uneven, but this is a promising evolution for Digimon.

You play as an agent of ADAMAS, an organization who investigate strange happenings such as cryptid sightings. While following up leads in one such case, you discover an influx of phase electron lifeforms (Digimon) appearing throughout Tokyo and get caught up in a terrifying, destructive mess of events that threatens to bring about the end of the world. It's a high stakes anime-style plot that appeals to fans of the series like me, and may be one reason Digimon Story: Time Stranger player counts have already blasted past the likes of Persona and Final Fantasy on PC.

Conveniently, you slip through a gap in time and gain another 8 years to figure out just what caused the Shinjuku Inferno and, most importantly, prevent it. Of the two avatar characters you're offered at the beginning, the one you don't choose becomes your Operator, a fellow Agent who phones you up across the timelines to give you mission briefings, chat over what's going on, and consistently remind you that back in the year you came from things are not so good. Because being 8 years ago doesn't negate your work commitments.

Digimon are the champions

As well as sending you years into the past, Time Stranger sees you investigating two realms at once – both the Human World and the Digital World of Iliad. It's fun to run around the Digital World itself, and captures the magical feelings from the anime. Little nods to the series, like finding a group of Digimon hanging out who are all the rookie companions from Digimon Adventure 02 just puts a smile on my face.

Time Stranger's mechanics largely focus on an attribute-based strengths and weaknesses style of combat and building up a strong team with a variety of Digimon so you always have the right one for the job. It's a lot like Persona 5, except my nostalgic attachment to Digimon makes me care about my monster collecting a whole lot more.

Every Digimon's evolutions, skills, and even base stats can be influenced in myriad ways. For this, the Personality system is at the core of everything you do. Your Digimon have a personality that loves to shift around on a big old alignment chart, with quadrants for Valor, Amicability, Philanthropy, and Wisdom. Whereabouts a Digimon's personality sits on this chart will influence which stats they're more likely to improve through levelling up, which Personality Skills they're likely to learn, and some other cool quirks too.

A Digimon's personality changes based on how you respond to questions they ask you. A downfall of this is that many questions don't give you an answer for all categories. Depending on which you get, this does leave you just having to be a bit mean if you don't want all of your party to skew towards the trait they keep offering you. But, an amount of this is also based on where their Personality already lies, and whether they're Vaccine, Data, or Virus type. If all else fails, that's where items come in. Perfecting builds through this system really provides a wealth of customization for you to sink your teeth into.

Who's that Digimon?

To Digivolve into new forms, your Digimon must meet certain criteria such as their own stat levels in say speed or health, or even your own Agent Rank. You can see options on the tree if you've encountered them before, but, with over 450 Digimon in the game, you'll usually have some unknowns before you. Slowly uncovering mystery options from the Digivolution tree is a lot of fun, especially when you find yourself trying to guess who it might be based on silhouette.

It's easy to get caught up trying to unlock new entries and faffing about with a handful of microchips to steer towards evolving how you want. It will take a long time to get all of them, but with the ability to De-Digivolve as well, you have a lot of opportunities to take a Digimon in a different direction and carve out some more levels to make them stronger through the prestige-like process De-Digivolving brings. I think I'm finally understanding the hype of all that Pokedex business. The fate of the world can wait, I need to get a Wizardmon!

On that note, there's also the Convert mechanic. When you fight a Digimon, you gather data that builds up to let you summon one of your own. It seems to take a lot more encounters to get enough data the higher rank the Digimon is, so it can be easier to Convert a Baby Digimon and train them from the ground up. While it doesn't take many levels for them to be able to Digivolve, this also gives you the ability to max level them at each life stage for a super strong Digimon later on.

Taking a few cues from recent Pokemon titles has done some good in keeping Time Stranger up to speed. I particularly love the DigiFarm. Digimon on the DigiFarm won't be available in battle, but they can get a lot done while you're not looking. What's more, the loads of strange items sparkling on the map my magpie eye had me collecting turned out to be for getting Zudomon to build items for the DigiFarm. All that scavenging of Gray Textures was worthwhile!

You can build Training Sets to put a Digimon's growth on a particular path, but also create little decorative items so the place is all nice and pretty. And when you use the Training Sets, you actually get to see them in action. Seeing my Gotsumon hanging out in a tea room surrounded by cute buildings and windmills? It's basically only a couple of steps away from a Digimon cozy game that would own my soul.

The Digital World: Iliad gameplay sections may feel like stepping into the anime, but the dungeons get longer and slower. Thankfully, enemies are visible on the map, so you can try to avoid them or even wipe them out pre-emptively with a DigiAttack when it's time to hustle. Although it does drag the dungeons on a bit, it's a nice touch to include using some NPC Digimon's abilities to help you progress too.

Ironically, considering its title, the actual narrative of Digimon Story: Time Stranger takes a bit of backseat to its wonderful gameplay. It's got just the right amount of cheesy fun and surprisingly emotional moments I've come to expect from Digimon, but the pacing can be a little slow. There's nothing at all wrong with it, and it's a solid accompaniment to the compelling mechanics, but the anime-style story can get a bit lost when you're focused on raising the perfect new monster pal.

Take a look at our best JRPGs ranking for your next adventure! Or read our list of the best Digimon games.