Digimon Story Time Stranger puts players into the shoes of a member of ADAMAS, an organization dedicated to tracking down cryptids and investigating odd goings-on. It's like "The X Files" but with an anime flavor. Your unlucky protagonist gets caught up in a battle involving a group of electronic lifeforms known as Digimon. In the midst of battle, they are sent eight years into the past ... and discover that the future is currently being ravaged by an apocalyptic war that threatens to end all life on the planet. Now your ADAMAS agent needs to team up with people and Digimon to figure out the origin of the bizarre attack and what can be done to prevent the future apocalypse.

Digimon Story Time Stranger's surprisingly dark concept is softened a little by the general story. Time Stranger is a fairly kid-friendly game about accepting others despite your differences and having fun adventures, but it occasionally trends into some serious subject matter. The result is something that feels like a pretty fun game aimed at the young adult crowd, and the game is full of colorful humor and just enough spice to keep it from feeling too "kiddy." I got a tad annoyed with how lengthy and frequent some of the cut scenes were, but there were enough fun moments to keep me invested.

The bulk of the gameplay in Digimon centers on collecting and fighting with various digital creatures. The game uses a standard turn-based combat system where you can deploy up to three Digimon (plus guests and special characters) to battle at any time, and you take turns beating up each other until one side falls. This is very much a sequel to Digimon: Cyber Sleuth, and while there are some differences, it's going to feel familiar to fans.

Fighting enemies gradually builds up a scan meter, and once it reaches 100%, you can recruit that Digimon to your side, but filling it up to 200% allows that Digimon to start off stronger. Time Stranger allows you to attack enemies outside of battle, which can either defeat them instantly or give you a starting advantage, which is a nice change from Cyber Sleuth. Another nice change is that you can instantly recruit a Digimon on the field once they've been scanned, which makes it a lot more fun to get someone new on your team.

Like in the previous Cyber Sleuth games, the big gimmick in Time Stranger is that your Digimon can evolve into different forms as you progress in the game. As your character's Agent Level increases, you can take the digital monsters from cute little blobs to insanely spikey death machines, with almost all Digimon having a variety of evolution trees available, depending on their stats and personality. Each Digivolution has its own elemental strengths and weaknesses and at least one baked-in special attack.

Digivolution isn't a one-way thing. You can evolve and devolve at will, as long as your Digimon meets the stat requirements for the evolution. You'll always return to level one,  but your Digimon will maintain some percentage of the stats they had before digivolving (determined by their level of bond with your agent), which makes it easier to get stronger. There are even specialized evolutions like "DNA Digivolving," which lets you fuse two Digimon into one stronger Digimon. The number of different options means you're almost always going to be looking at something new, even in the late game, where rebuilding your Digimon can help with some tough fights.

Each Digimon also has a personality that's built up from Amicability, Philanthropy, Valor, and Wisdom, which also have sub-personalities like "Overbearing" or "Caring." These personality traits influence which of your Digimon's stats grow the fastest and which forms they can Digievolve into. Changing from one personality to another can offer you the chance to get a unique personality skill for that Digimon, and the skill can range from boosting healing effects to instantly raising a dead Digimon from defeat.

To top that off, you can  customize your Digimon using equipped discs that further modify their abilities or unlock new ones. Most Digimon will naturally learn these equippable skills as they level up, but the skills can be removed and transferred to another Digimon. It  can sometimes be worth training weak Digimon if they get you a rare or useful skill.

For the most part, combat is straightforward for this kind of monster trainer game. You and the enemy take turns attacking one another, and the priority is to aim for elemental strengths and weaknesses. Since every Digimon is comprised of multiple attributes (elemental types, data types, personality traits, and more), it's not as straightforward as using Fire on Ice types. Damage numbers can be reduced to as little as 30% or as high as 400%, depending on how strong or weak a Digimon is.

This generally encourages players to keep a stable of diverse Digimon rather than sticking to a couple of them. Even if you have an incredibly strong Digimon, if it's a Virus type, that can mean it isn't effective against Vaccine type, thereby severely reducing the damage it can output despite its high status. On the other hand, bring in the correct Digimon, and you can smash enemies to pieces in one or two attacks. More variety makes the fights a lot easier.

Your player character can also contribute to fights by using special Cross Arts, which are this game's version of Limit Breaks. By hitting enemy weaknesses or taking damage, you can charge up your Cross Arts meter and spend the meter to do special moves, such as powerful attacks and full-party heals. The customization option means you can figure out what works best for your team. For example, when I was going for a very combat-heavy team, I swapped out my damaging Cross Art in favor of a healing one, allowing my protagonist to do a full-party heal without wasting items.

Time Stranger's boss fights were probably the highlight of the game for me, especially earlier in the game. While a lot of the fights are against Digimon that you can recruit, the game puts some effort into making sure most of them have some kind of interesting mechanic. One boss can charge up powerful attacks, but he has two bulky allies who use taunts to draw attacks while he charges. Another boss powers up by being hit by lightning bolts that rain down from the sky, but the lightning bolts are more likely to target Digimon made of metal in your party.

The nice thing about these boss fights is that they encourage you to change up your team. While the game isn't punishing enough to demand that you optimize every boss fight, there's a significant difference between going in prepared versus going in with whoever you had on hand. Digivolving into new forms or grabbing a Digimon from the environment for your team can often be the difference between an easy fight and a fight that you win by the skin of your teeth. However, there are times when you'll end up in a boss fight and realize you don't have a reliable way to win. The game offers a convenient "Give Up" button for those circumstances, so you can back out and rebuild your team.

Despite this, it's worth noting that Digimon isn't a super difficult game, assuming you're taking full advantage of the many available tools. You can create some absurd Digimon with the right combination of skills and abilities, especially since every Digimon's attack has different attributes and there are over 400 different Digimon to collect. It is still engaging because of the complexity and depth of the game's customization systems. Finding the exact right Digimon with the exact right personality and skills to trounce a tough boss feels rewarding in the way a game should.

The dungeons are largely uncomplicated, but they'll occasionally have a few moments of complexity. There are minor puzzles, hidden rooms, and occasionally special areas or zones that you can only access if you have Digimon with specific skills or abilities. Sometimes you'll need to return to complete side-quests or find specific items, but nothing is too over the top. You even gain the ability to ride on specific Digimon, but this only makes you move slightly faster and offers a small cosmetic benefit. For the most part, they're fun and don't get in the way.

Time Stranger's biggest flaw is that it feels weirdly unpolished. Patches can absolutely fix this over time, so hopefully these complaints are short-lived. The menus feel awkward to navigate and a touch too slow, and I generally found the interface to be unintuitive. Occasionally, the cursors that showed my next objective would vanish or point to the wrong location. Rarely, they would take a strangely long time to update after I changed missions. I also encountered a few notable bugs, including a rather significant and recurring one where items in my inventory would glitch, display a number of blank slots, and then duplicate themselves several hundred times. This would go away if I bought something new, but it would randomly reappear from time to time. It didn't get in the way beyond being annoying (and theoretically wrecking the balance of the game), but it was another symptom of things that felt underbaked.

Visually, I can't complain about the game. While the character animations sometimes feel a bit low-budget, it's clear that a ton of energy and effort went into making each Digimon feel distinct, and a lot of the game's environments are striking and memorable. Strong art design helps carry some otherwise basic graphics. Likewise, the soundtrack is quite good, and while it isn't going to be one of my favorites, it contains a nice batch of memorable songs that set the atmosphere. A relatively solid, if unexceptional, dub also gives the story some gravitas.

Overall, Digimon Story Time Stranger is everything I could imagine a Digimon fan wanting. It's a fun adventure through a digital world, and all of your favorite collectible monsters are there for the ride. The combat system is fun and clear-cut, and it has just enough teeth to feel compelling. Customizing and creating your ideal Digimon is a whole lot of fun. The only real negative is that it feels a bit unpolished in places, and you need to have some of fondness for Digimon to get into the game. It's an excellent experience for fans, but perhaps it's one worth waiting until a few patches have rolled out.

Score: 7.5/10