25 October 2022

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

Digimon is probably the most dear cartoon for me from my childhood. It was different, dealt with difficult themes (though six years old me understood none of that), had great soundtrack and monsters and plots were something that I still remember after all these years. There's something special about the original anime series from the late 90's that nothing has quite captured since. Adventure Time came close, but as much I love that cartoon it doesn't have the nostalgia for me that digital monsters have. 

With that said, it's weird that I haven't ever played any Digimon games. Maybe some web ones, but I don't really remember. So when I saw Cyber Sleuth on Nintendo Store, looked at the trailer and realized how crazy it looked, I decided to give it a go. And honestly, it was time for me to complete another JRPG after Xenoblade Chronicles 2. 

I had zero expectations, and thus I got myself a pretty addictive monster collecting simulator with very stupid anime clichés everywhere. And a lot of bare skin. Digimon has sure grown adult too during these years.

Story

Well, as you may expect, the plot is crazy and goes to weird places. There is this general story of Eden syndrome, caused by this digital world where people spend times and later big bad Digimon's attack and try to destroy the world. Or at least that's what I got out of this game - to be honest, I didn't follow the story too intensively. Overall it served game well, but I would be fine with little bit less talking and more exploring. And I would love to see more of the anime style cutscenes as they were beautiful but used very sparing. 

There are lot of side missions too, but most of them don't have too interesting story lines going on. There was this one longer story line about ghost hunting and cult stuff, but I'm not still sure if that was part of the main game. I didn't do the DLC missions that were unlocked late in the game as in that point I just wanted to finish it, but might check those later.

Gameplay

Gameplay is a hybrid between adventure, visual novel, pet raising simulator and (J)RPG, having elements from all of those genres. Missions are pretty usual stuff: go to place x, fight some enemies, fetch a thing... There are some attempts to add some puzzle elements but to honest those were little bit boring. And stupid. There are so many other ways to force player spend time on game than make them run around and collect data. Main focus is clearly on the Digimon battles, and even those after a while become pretty easy, so thank Digi-gods for auto battle! That saved a lot of time - and I could play the game while watching a movie or something, 

Some boss battles required more tactical approach, but mostly it was just finding good balance with supporting and more aggressive Digimon's on your team. I played on normal difficulty, so I can't say if battles are more challenging on hard. Probably.

One thing about gameplay. In the late game dungeons became these massive mazes which I hated. I don't want to spend my time running aimlessly around the same corners. It felt like a forced attempt to lengthen the game, and to be honest, it failed. I admit that I used a guide to run through those mazes as quickly as possible.

Digimons!

I don't know if I would have played through this game if it wasn't for Digimon's. I love those silly things, and even though human characters were funny at the time, collecting Digimon's, raising and evolving them and just reading through their descriptions was something I really enjoyed. I know mostly ones from seasons 1 & 2 of anime, so there was lot of familiar faces but many new ones too, which kept game interesting for a good while. Evolving was the best part for me, and trying to get right stats for different evolutions was an interesting concept. Take away the battles and story, I would love to have a Digimon simulation game similar to Animal Crossing or The Sims. I wouldn't play anything else ever again. Well, not really, but it would take over my life for a while.

In conclusion, Digimon: Cyber Sleuth is pretty okay JRPG with some translation errors in some places. But would I recommend it to someone who has no clue about Digimon's at all or nostalgy for them? Probably not. But for everyone else, seeing your first baby Digimon's evolve is magical moment that you'll remember for some time.