I don't believe it, a game made with Unreal Engine 5 that is optimized well and runs smoothly. It's Shin Megami Tensei but Digimon. Hold the L Gamefreak. Hi, I wasn't expecting my little meme post to get this much attention. It's not my intent to spread misinformation or deceive people on the fence about buying the game. Whether it was made with or partially with Unreal Engine 5, I could not get a straight answer from google. But per the comment discussion, it seems that I jumped the gun while looking for a quick answer. I do not believe the game was made with Unreal Engine 5 or previous iterations at this time. Regardless of the exact engine this game was made with, in my 5+ hours of gameplay with a 2 generation old GPU and 8 GB of ram. I have experienced so far; 0 crashes 0 stuttering 0 frame drops during cutscenes or gameplay. So it is well optimized and runs smoothly. Second, I compared the game to Shin Megami Tensei. After a few hours of trying the new systems it's clearly not a 1:1 copy (I can't talk to hostile Digimon mid combat, at least so far.) But I can sacrifice hundreds if not thousands for Yen, so that's pretty demonic. It is clear to me that they took heavy inspiration from the recent ATLAS hits to make this game, and that's totally ok! It still maintains enough fresh ideas and creativity to not feel like a lazy cash grab! My only major criticism is the DLC and micro-transactions. Way too many, especially for a game marketed towards children who don't know better. The NPC in the Theater who takes you straight to the store page to buy DLC is inexcusably greedy. With all of that said, so far, I give this game an easy 9/10. Not perfect, might be too easy even on the first available highest difficulty, but that's ok! It's fun! As a fan of this franchise since I was a kid, (I'll remember watching episodes with my brother on Saturday Mornings forever.) I've been with Digimon when it struggled to compete with Pokemon, and I'm happy to celebrate it when it finally has the attention and momenta it deserves. Might be too short, might be too easy. Please tone down the micro-transactions. But I do certainly like and recommend this game. A refreshing single-player experience in an ocean of live service slop. Lastly, I didn't know that reviews disabled comments by default. I welcome civil discourse and debate on the state of our hobby and Digimon is no exception, so please go wild in the comments. Consider stopping by at twitch.tv/spacedragie for live game-play impressions and commentary. Thanks for reading my thoughts and have a nice day!

Very important. First thing you need to do immediately after gaining control is open up the digivice menu, go into agent and change out of the ugly default outfit.

It's like if the Pokemon company actually cared about making a good game with a good story.

GOATED game. It's almost like digimon spent their time and effort making their games good instead of patenting game mechanics and suing competitors.

This game is great so far, but why the fuck are there so many DLCs and why aren't they included in the Deluxe or Ultimate versions of the game that include access to a "Season Pass" and other launch day DLC??? Why would I need to pay $10+ more on top of the already $120 JUST for an EXP grind dungeon and a couple costumes?

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10 For Me, it's the best Digimon Game that ever made after Digimon world 1 and 3 on PSX

I work, go to school, have a girlfriend and I don't get home most days till maybe 8-9 pm. When I tell you this game had me in a choke hold I mean it. Time was no longer a concern. As soon as I got home I would boot this ish up and got to work. I had business in the digital world like no other. I liked Digimon, then this game happened. Now I love Digimon and am playing Cyber Sleuth. On god buy this game, then annoy your friends to buy this, then annoy your partner to watch the show with you. Then Tell your parents about this game. Fall asleep to videos about this game. Bring your steam deck to work and tell your co workers about this game. I have issues, but this game does not. This game is going to be the god father to my children. If you don't know digimon that well, or aren't familiar with JRPGs the begining is going to feel slow but once you lock in on the story and the mechanics its like that scene in ratatouille with ego. Worth the price. If you reading this buy this game. Trust.

Listen, I actually really like this game. Very fun and great story. The only reason I am not recommending is because of the inability to play offline. I usually play games on my Steam Deck and saw that this game was good on the deck. Played it from my couch without issue. Sadly, went on a plane trip and realized I could not load the game. I'm not one to pay for airplane wifi because I know I'm just going to be gaming so I was very disappointed when I could not play this game without internet. Maybe once they fix that issue, I can update my review.

Actual day one price is $147.96 if you buy all the content they removed and sold separately. The $119.99 price they're charging for the "ultimate edition" doesn't include everything. The greed has to stop. Even 10/10 games shouldn't cost this much. The video game market is due for a crash. Wait for a sale. Edit: I want to be absolutely clear: I'm not hating on the game. I'm not that far but I enjoy it. I simply hate the practice that Bandai Namco and other large publishers have of removing content and selling that content as an overpriced version or more DLC. It preys on people who have OCD or heaven forbid want a complete game. If missing content doesn't bother you, buy the standard edition. I simply do not recommend the "complete" game a the price it is currently. It's a good game from what I can tell so far, but you can get a LOT of good games for that price. If money doesn't matter to you then obviously this whole conversation doesn't. For people wondering why I bought it, this was a rare occasion. Most of my games are free or are gifted to me. When a company or series has a consistent record of $800 of DLC like modern Monster Hunter games, I avoid it. I get that a lot of you have enjoyed the game so far like myself. I'm certainly not trying to dampen that or offend you. I'm simply saying that I do not recommend a purchase at this time for people wanting the Ultimate Edition. Have a good one!

Game looks like its made in Early ps3 era. Characters look boring and run like having a stick up ther A** . There are like 4 NPC models and gameplay is not inspring at all. Level Design is very linear.

Perfectly adequate RPG so far. Nothing mind-blowing, but Digimon fans should enjoy it. The amount of monetary extortion from Bandai however is inexcusable, and prevents me from truly recommending it. This game is already not worth 70 dollars, and you are expected to pay another 50 dollars on top of that to get so basic additional content down the road. Worst of all there are optional dungeons available for purchase as well to help ease grinding, which raises the question of whether the game is balanced in a way to push users toward using those options. That's not even all of the purchasable content, making this game in some ways feel more like you just paid 70 dollars for a store to buy more content within. I am willing to overlook this to a degree in a free multiplayer game, but this is a full-priced single player experience, and results in a very anti-consumer product from Bandai.

I am very conflicted about this game even though I had quite a lot of fun with it. If I had the option to give it a neutral review, I would have chosen that. For starters, the pricing policy of Bandai Namco is indefensible in my opinion. While Digimon Story Time Stranger certainly has the highest production value of any game in the franchise, it still is a AA game that somehow asks for 120€ for its „ultimate edition“ to get the full content. For reference, this is more than Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur’s day one prices combined and that is kind of ridiculous. It is also more than what Final Fantasy VII Rebirth asked for. Not only is the production quality of all aforementioned games (significantly) better, none of them sell predatory day one „EXP for money“ DLCs like Digimon Story unfortunately does. Yes, you wont’t need that DLC, but that’s beyond the point. With this pricing the game puts itself far above any of the best RPGs of the recent 2-3 years while not being able to see eye to eye with them in most aspects. I’m sorry, but that alone already warrants a negative review. Now you might argue that the pricing shouldn’t matter in a review, and that you are rather interested in knowing whether this game is good or not. What you are willing to pay for it is your business alone. Fair enough I guess.

Things to be enthusiastic about

The game has a lot of positive surprises in it. The story may start slowly, but after the first third of its runtime the tension and mystery picks up a lot. It is genuinely a gripping and emotional story with a great main cast and some very positive side characters. Some twists you’ll probably see coming but others will catch you by surprise. Be prepared for the story to feature mature and fairly dark themes such as war and how it affects the population of humans and digimon alike. Don’t worry though, it manages that without feeling overly oppressive or depressive. Every digimon has a unique special attack animation, sometimes even more than one which is awesome. And there are all these little details on top of that, which show how much love has been put into this game. For instance every time you use an item in fight on one of your digimon, they happily emote to that. It is really cute and a nice touch. Speaking of the battle system, it has a lot of (semi-deep) tactical options and things you’ll need to manage. The latter boss fights are a delight and you have some great challenges as end-game-content.

Things that are good and bad at the same time

The game has some rather mixed choices in its game design and narration. While the story does get much better later on, the first 20-25 hours are uneventful and at times even somewhat painful to get through. It doesn’t help that most of the human characters are kinda one-dimensional and not all that interesting unlike the great digimon cast for both friends and foes alike. That is a bit of a pity. Similarly, the battles are great and disappointing at the same time. Yes, I mentioned fun boss fights and I really did like them. Well, mostly the second half of them because the first were almost trivial despite choosing the „hard“ difficulty. However, the real issue are the mob battles. With one exception none of the regular fights were challenging at all. They felt like copy paste filler in between boss fights, which is a shame considering that this is what you’ll do the majority of the game. I acknowledge that this is sadly quite prevalent especially in RPGs. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur showed that this doesn’t need to be the case though.

The game’s serious flaw

If you want to pinpoint the biggest issue of the game with a bit of an edgy comment, it would look something like this: „You’ve most likely already played this game even if you’ve never spend a single minute in it.“ What do I mean with that? This is referencing the real antagonist of Digimon Story Time Stranger: the game and level design. If you have played any of the two Cyber Sleuth games, then you’ve basically played this game with less quality-of-life features. In fact, this is also true if you’ve played any linear turn-based RPG from the PS2 era onwards. You have small linear maps with copy paste mob enemies and (very short) loading screens when you move to the next location and of course also a fine selection of fetch-side-quests (go from a to b and fight c) over and over again… Some call this „not pushing the boundaries of the genre“, others will see this as yet another attempt at the classical but overdone turn based RPG-formula with basically zero innovation. If that doesn’t bother you and if you really like turn based RPGs, then you probably will have a good, perhaps even great time with the game. If you’re looking for something fresh and unique, you’ll find next to nothing here.

Conclusion

Overall I did have fun with Digimon Story Time Strange and it does have some undeniable strengths. However, it is also very formulaic with a heavily dated map and quest design. You’ll have to decide whether that is a deal-breaker to you or not.

The best Digimon game out there. The story is good, the gameplay is good, but I don't remember Digimon having so many busty Digimons. Great game.

For all JRPG and Digimon fans recommended. Otherwise stay away from this grind, menu, walking, talking simulator! Positive: - Story - Digimon - Battlesystem - Agentsystem - Traitsystem Negative: - Traveling System - Digimon Farm - Traveling System - Efficient Farming DLC for 8€ - Traveling System - QoL does not exist (e.g. Talk to an NPC to get to the farm just for you to forget what trait you need so you have to exit the farm again and look it up then talk to the NPC again just to get to the farm...) - Traveling System - Game is to easy when you start to understand the systems and use it (If you do not use the systems given to you it is a good challenge) - Traveling System - Achievements... (Need to play a 2nd time because the harder difficulties unlock after beating the game) - Traveling System - Without paying the 8€ for farming DLC New Game Plus with all maxed Digimons will probably take weeks instead of a day (Trust me on MEGA+ you need MAXED Digimons. Preferably a whole team of 3 ea Data, Serum, Virus | e.g. a normal Gotsumon in the first area has MAXED ATK and INT as well as 30k HP) - Traveling System - Only a Map for the Map you are on. Otherwise remember where everything is or good luck finding it again - Traveling System - Sidequest are a bunch of weird fetch or fight quests (With the horrible Traveling System it is boring at best - Sidequest are almost mandatory because it levels your Agentrank which buffs your Digimon!) - And did I mention the Traveling System If they patch some QoL to this game it goes from a 6 to an 8... Can not go higher because of the paid DLC for efficient farming... What a stupid move by Bandai.... Oh and absolutly F.... GEKOMON that stupid mechanic is dumb and should be removed from the game! EDIT: After I 100% the game i felt absolutly nothing but relief. It took me 52 hours. Grinding for New Game+ took me, with DLC, around 4 hours. The whole 2nd time with skipping everything that is skipable took me 9 hours (Could be reduced by another 4 hours when you do not play on MEGA+ for the main part). Mind you I just skipped Dialog for Sidequest and only read and watched the main quest stuff on my first playthrough. You do not have to play through the whole game on MEGA+ (I did) it was a good challenge but what counts is the end fight I guess. Now to the stuff for New Game+ on MEGA+: The parts where you only play with Aegiochusmon are absolutely bs. The fight in the first area when you go back is just RNG with Poison and Healing. The Gekomon part sucked massive wie... a 2nd time. The end fight was a drag. Even when you do 20-30k DMG it takes AGES because it is scripted. So you just heal and Res then to some damage and that takes about 45-60 minutes before you get into the last part! The last part of the end fight was good tho. Conclusion: I am standing on my 6/10 without paid farming DLC it would be an 8 for Digimon and JRPG fans. Please patch some QoL into the game and balance it more! People are playing menu simulator while grinding EXP with the DNA De-Digivolution tactic. It is just not fun! The Story is great and I like the new Anime!

This game wipes the floor with anything gamefreak has put out in the last 10 years.

The game itself is great; however, I shouldn't have to buy the BGM and Outer Dungeon separately when I already purchased the Ultimate Edition. They should be included as part of the Ultimate Edition.

***You buy the ultimate bundle thinking it comes with everything... Well it does not. DLC practices are horrible. Way to scam anyone that buys the ultimate bundle.*** As a mighty whale I need to stop preordering games and yes you don't need the "DLC dungeon" to play the game but have fun grinding away to get your favorite Digimon or building your collection without it. For example a few hours to get 1 to level 40 in the best non DLC spot or 5 minutes or less to level up whatever digimon you want to max level. Before the game release date, they only had "three" options to buy the game and It did not state this "DLC dungeon" anywhere until release date. I think this dungeon should be included it the base game. Funny thing is that all other companies that sell high tiers of their games usually give you the soundtrack with it, this game doesn't. If your playing to collect digimon - 07/10 5/10 - overall This game has LOTS of menus as a result upgrading your gear is tedious because of it. They must of done it intentionally so you the sell you the day one DLC dungeon. Story ??/10 - I started skipping it because i didn't like it how it was unfolding. Since I didn't follow the story until the end I won't rate it, most time travel stories never get it right. I love Stein's Gate though. Quests 4/10- some of the quest designs are horrible and lots of back tracking to older zones. World 5/10 - the worlds feel so small. some of the zones you explore are tedious because requirement of "digi-coop" Gamplay Battle - 7/10 - Its turned based, not much we can do to reinvent the wheel but fighting the bosses are fun. Raising Digimon - 6/10 - Missing lots of QOL features which makes it tedious - Example below Raising your Digimon, to increase your bond one way to do it is to feed it food 1x1 over and over for 50 to 100 times for each Digimon. There is no quick way to do it, no why to skip the animation, and it doesn't memory save the last thing you selected. Graphics - 10/10 - I like it Animations - 8/10 for Digimon 4/10 -For the human models you walk around with looks stiff

I am going to steal 2 lines from people I saw in other reviews. This is better than anything GameFreak has put out in the last 10 years and this is the game Pokemon fans have been wanting. I am unfamiliar with Digimon mostly, I haven't really done much with it since I was a kid, but the game has some adult themes, combat/animations are fun, the game is mostly voice acted, and there are so many Digimon to play around with. If you are looking for a monster battling game but are tired of the pokemon no effort games, this one is the way to go.

I am enjoying the game but at present I can't recommend the game due to business practices in the game. If one were to buy the Ultimate Edition they would not get all the content of the game, of which one DLC was not even announced prelaunch. If one were to buy the standard edition of the game and wanted to change their music they need to go past every single anime song and every single cyber sleuth song, Every single time you want to change your costume, you'll have to see the costumes you didn't buy. Every time you go to the outer dungeon you need to see the DLC dungeons you didn't buy. The game is fun but no one should have to go through mind warfare to enjoy their single player RPG. If you buy the base 70 dollar version having the guy in the In BEtween theater who can take you to the online shop should be more then enough reminder you can buy DLC. Edit: After Beating the game, the games ending if awful, the pacing near the end is bad, the randomness of when voice acting happens is horrible, the story doesn't make any sense and it hopes Time Travel TM will obscure how much nonesense it is. It's side characters have potential but don't get enough focus and it's main characters are just like Generic Good Boy who loves his Digi Destined and generic woman number 1 who wants to help everyone. The game condradicts itself. The lack of fem digi rides is bad. The gameplay itself is solid but digimon lacking their own abilities is frustrating, the personality system is ehhhh, the digifarm is really poorly handled, it has a ton of room for improvement. Even if we ignored the DLC and prices I'd give it a thumbs down here, I think this is probably a perfect 40 dollar game not a great game but a good enough time if your braced for an ass ending.

It's hard to enjoy games with such little effort for a premium price when games like Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring exist. Edit: Thanks for the steam points, clowns. ;) Keep slurping up that slop and don't forget to go back and buy that day 1 DLC.

Bought the ultimate edition, it doesnt include the anime music or the extra dungeons. bandai greed strikes again

TDLR - Save Satan and make him the protector of realms while endearing humans to him. Pure Evil masked as a wholesome story. The very concept of this game and story ends up being a story of bringing the "protector" of the world back into the fray. This character is one who becomes Aegiochusmon which the official lore states is the Roman Jupiter (false god) and that he hails from the Dragon tribe all while having goat legs to connect to Jupiter. That god going back in history is Lucifer according to the Bible. The creatures are chimera or hybrids that are akin to the sons of God sleeping with women in the bible. Probably other stuff too based on history of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian and other gods. mixed with a "healthy" dose of kabbalah in there as well, I am glad I can tell others who want kids or friends to play this to stay the hell away literally.

UPDATED: 10/8/25 Game has several soft locking points if you think ahead or want to explore to much during story quests. One example is moving a bridge before a specific quest step. You are auto saved after the quest step and the bridge gets moved back to the second location leaving you trapped with no way to fix unless you reset the game or have an old save... This is one of several. For a new Full priced game of $70 to $120 USD. These kind of bugs should have been addressed before releasing. CHECK the community hub on steam to see ALL of the various Soft lock points. I cannot recommend this game as it is now. For now I must give a NO GO on this title... They release a day 1 DLC that was not Included in their $120 USD or Deluxe Addition. Thought it is just a few Dungeons its the principle of the thing. Dont add UNLIMITED JRPG Infinite Dungeons at a premium...Should be in the game or include as a preorder or even in the Premium tier editions. (will update when game is complete to see if it meets the usual Review Formula.)

Playing this game left me genuinely sad and mad. I’ve been a Digimon fan for years, and after really enjoying Cyber Sleuth, I was genuinely excited for this one. I wanted to love it so badly, but couldn't. It’s not just the game that frustrates me — it’s the company behind it, and the players who keep enabling this nonsense. Watching people throw money at this just because it's a Digimon game feels pathetic. Nostalgia shouldn’t make you a paypig for a corporation that clearly doesn’t respect its fans. This is a $70 title that barely lasts 35 hours, it’s impossible to recommend. Especially when other modern JRPGs like Persona or Expedition 33 offer more content, better pacing, and actual value for your money.

The Good

✅ The story is good, and the twist lands greatly (even if predictable). ✅ The characters carry the game; you’ll actually care for them, which is rare in monster-taming games. ✅ The core combat / Digimon evolution stuff is fun. There is a satisfaction in juggling builds and a wide variety of mons, but it really never challenges you meaningfully. ✅ It’s enjoyable until the flaws nag at you so badly you want to quit.

The Bad

❌Every side quest is “go to X, fetch Y, return,” over and over. No variation. Fifty fetch quests just to kill time. ❌There’s no good spot in the game where you can reliably grind or level up without frustration (unless you buy the grind DLC). And right before the final fight, they dump dozens of side-quests into your journal just so they can say they have content. ❌At launch, there were game-breaking bugs: like Aegiomon not recovering HP/SP outside of battles, the Pegasusmon egg bug, etc. Seems like they were too busy making a dozen DLCs to QA.

The Ugly

❌ The game shipped with TEN DLCs from day one. So the devs literally withheld content for extra cash. ❌ The season pass (at ~$30) gives you virtually nothing meaningful at launch. The big “Gold Statue” is purely decorative. The rest (~15 “mega digis”) are scheduled for rollout in 2026. You’re paying now for content you might not get (or may not be worth it) later. ❌ There is no multiplayer (no co-op, no trades, nothing). Previous Digimon Story titles allowed more social interactions; this one is utterly single-player. ❌ There’s an NPC whose sole function is to open the Steam store. The main menu has a button that opens the DLC store. The game feels like a giant ad. But it's worse: even if you don’t own a DLC item (outfit, music, whatever), the game adds it to your inventory menu anyway. If you accidentally click it, it pulls up the Steam store—unwanted prompts to buy garbage you didn’t ask for. ❌ 20 bucks for a music DLC, lol.

Overall Take

If you want to enjoy this, you’ll have to mentally ignore the DLC crap, the side quests, the pacing issues, and the bugs. If you can do that, there’s a pulse of a decent JRPG underneath. But for what it charges, it fails to deliver. If you like Digimon lore and are willing to be nickel-and-dimed, you might still find some joy. But if you expect a polished, generous JRPG you’ll be disappointed.

"Steam Deck Verified!" Except with NO Option to actually Transfer the Save Game Data from the Demo, into the Actual Game, if you are on Steam Deck... (what a complete and utter joke and WASTE OF MY TIME!) You claim the game is Steam Deck Verified, claim you can transfer save data into main game, and yet I try, get some BS "Save Data Corruption" restart, and my save data (auto-save only) IS THERE, load it, and am literally stuck in PURGATORY!!! (stuck in the hyperbolic time chamber where I can only see white and move 2 feet) Game DOES NOT Transfer save data, if you play on steam deck... Bandai Namco---How could you guys possibly F*** this up THIS BAD?????? I am literally pissed and shaking my head at your complete and utter incompetence.. like what the actual F***??????? There is no excuse for this... FIX THIS NOW, make it a smooth transition without having to jump through a million hoops, and make it ACTUALLY transferable on steam deck... It shouldn't be this hard or IMPOSSIBLE for a game that's supposedly "Steam Deck VERIFIED" to just load demo data to full game... You guys are a COMPLETE JOKE.... I have never had this happen before with any other demo to full game save data transfer before... (You literally went Above and BEYOND to F*** this up for me, and 10s of thousands of others----THANKS!) WTG!!!!!!!!