Digimon Story Time Stranger - Review

 Genre: RPG

Developer/publisher: Bandai namco.

Platform: PS5, PC.
Official Site: https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/digimon/digimon-story-time-stranger

Release date: 03-10-2025 

 

I always liked the digimon franchise and watched S1 and 2 of adventure.

I remember watching frontier too but that was kinda it. I also played

cyber sleuth OG on switch so this isn't my first digimon game.

 

I wasn't originally going to play this near launch but I saw the Gatomon costume

and was like this is it! this is my life now and got into it!

 

Disclaimer: This is purely my own opinion and it could be different from yours

this is not meant to be some kind of all-truth, just an opinion that came from playing this.

If you don't like what you're reading then close the tab, move on and just idk play it yourself. 

 

Pro's

- Decent enough story.

- Fun dialogue which makes side quests worth doing.

- Its fun to raise/build your team.

 

Grey Area

- Takes notes from PS2 era games, in good and bad ways. 

 

Con's

- Some pacing issues, obvious padding.

- Final boss was too scripted. 

 

This game 70% of the time...

Story was surprisingly solid? it has some cheesy moments and a lot of wtf is going on moments

but it only made me want to progress and find out what is actually going on.

 Which is a good thing in an RPG cuz if you don't want to learn more

then what is the point of playing it? Anyway eventually all the pieces fell into its place

so it started to make sense and it only took about 40 hours for that to happen.💀

 

Length? shouldn't take longer than 40-50 hours if you focus on the story

I dipped on some side quests near the end though as there were just too many.

If you do it all, it might extend to 60 hours... but at what cost? momentum of the story maybe.

Atleast the game had content if you wish to engage with it that is, so its not a complaint. 

TFW the game is pointing out my outfit choice...

You can choose between a male or female protagonist and the one

you do not choose becomes an assist of sorts which was honestly a nice touch. 

The MC is kinda self-insert and you get dialogue options to react

to story events and sometimes they're funny too which was great.

Inori and Aegiomon were fun characters as well, without them i'd feel lonely.

I liked how the story cleverly used existing digimons and incorporated them

into it all, it was such a treat even if I don't even know/recognize them all. 

There were however some things that I had a hard time wrapping my head around

and it mostly involves the protagonist, needless to say just keep playing and most things

will make sense eventually. Also male MC was voiced by Shimono Hiro

so it was nice to have him be operator, don't think he would have talked as much

if feMC was anything to go by when choosing him as MC. 

Relevant.

The gameplay was surprisingly smooth and it didn't feel like I had

to digivolve back and forth as much as with cyber sleuth.

Well uh unless your name was Aegiomon but he had some accessories

that could put him into a specific form. So it didn't detract from the experience.

Though I did find there were a bit too many enemies on the field and its easy

to run into them if you're not careful, leading to potential jumpscares.💀

 

TL;DR

 Mostly had a good time with this game but there were moments

where I thought, are you dragging this out? but atleast they wrote

a solid and somewhat consistent story about time travel.

This theme is not particular easy and I recommend not thinking too hard about any of it. 

Story and character wise there were highs and some low's. I don't dislike it as a whole.

Maybe next time a less scripted final boss? other than that the game was fine.

Very good if you come here looking for challenge especially on harder difficulties

but I am a casual player so normal or easy mode is enough for me. 

As said outside of a few gripes there's not much I disliked.

Also I can't help but think that if I had done every side quest at the end...

that I would have burned out during the final act. So i'm actually kind of glad

I just winged it and only the final boss was beefier than whatever was before it.

8/10

Anyway I had fun leveling my mon's and occasionally training them... on normal

nothing was too hard and they gave useful advice during combat too.

Had I trained even more I may've made it too easy so I am glad I restrained.

I was never really too overwhelmed by this games contents and its easy to choose

what to engage with, ok maybe a little choice paralysis as to what to digivolve too

but incase I wasn't sure I just saved before it.

 

Definitely gets a recommendation if you always want to play a digimon game

or want another SMT-like game to sink some time into.

 

There's not really any spoilers beyond but I do have some out of context screenshots.

More ramblings after the jump.