Title: Digimon Story Time Stranger
Title (JP): デジモンストーリー タイムストレンジャー
Genre: RPG
Platform: PS5, XBX/S, PC
Developer: Media Vision
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release date: 2 October 2025
Official website: https://digimonstory-ts.bn-ent.net/
After an eight-year gap since Hacker’s Memory, Digimon Story Time Stranger arrives as the long-awaited next entry in Bandai Namco’s flagship RPG series. Expectations were inevitably high: Cyber Sleuth remains one of the most beloved Digimon games to date, and while Hacker’s Memory suffered from a few narrative issues due to the nature of it being a spinoff taking place at the same time as Cyber Sleuth, it made numerous improvements to many different aspects gameplay-wise and still delivered a satisfying experience. It is thus unfortunate that Time Stranger does not quite live up to expectations. Despite technical upgrades and some clear improvements in presentation and playability, the game’s structure lacks coherency and is mechanically inconsistent, with many design decisions making it frustrating to play.
To start with the positives, Time Stranger is visually excellent. The environments are richer and more detailed than before, and battle animations for signature techniques are improved as well. The expanded roster adds a welcome range of new and returning Digimon, and unlike Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory players can substantially explore the Digital World directly, allowing immersion in a vibrant, colorful world of Digimon. The soundtrack also complements the visuals effectively, synergising with them to make for a strong presentation.
Encounters have also been updated to modern sensibilities: instead of having random encounters, enemies now appear visibly on the field and can be struck first for an advantage – or, if the player’s team is strong enough, defeated outright without ever entering combat. This alone is the single most satisfying mechanical improvement, making basic progression feel far smoother. Additionally, combat can be sped up dynamically whenever the player wants, meaning one can, for example, choose to go through mob battles at 5x speed and only look at attack animations when fighting bosses. There is also an auto-battle mod, that alongside the option to speed battles up and certain points where enemies spawn infinitely can be used for an automatic (if somewhat slow) method of grinding for levels.
The removal of the Digimon storage limit is another small but convenient change, allowing players to carry their full roster at all times. Combat balance, however, does suffer for it to a degree. While players can now bring all Digimon with them, only three can be held in reserve during battle, forcing tighter, but not necessarily more strategic, team management. The result is a system that sounds streamlined but can feel somewhat restrictive in practice.
The game’s story and setting also seems interesting: The main character witnesses a cataclysmic event and then is sent eight years into the past, a stranger from another time, and is tasked with changing things to stop that event from happening, accompanied by the mysterious Aegiomon, a Digimon with no knowledge of the Digital World stranded in the material plane, and Inori, a human girl who sees Aegiomon as a surrogate for her deceased brother.
The real problems begin with the structure. The main story is ambitious in concept but poorly executed, with uneven pacing and inconsistent writing. Its ideas have potential, yet the narrative constantly undercuts itself through bad execution. The human cast (outside of Inori) in particular feels sidelined, their roles reduced to almost non-existent after a certain point in the game.
And while the Digimon characters are given more focus, the writing there is also uneven – characters from earlier story sequences are clearly given more time and attention than ones from later in the game, and while it is clear that they are trying to draw from Greek tragedies (the major characters are mostly ones based on Greek/Roman gods), some of the sequences which are given sufficient attention still do feel a bit overly melodramatic, which further feeds into the imbalance when later sequences just rush by, sometimes with no tragedy or melodrama at all, breaking the formula in no meaningful way. The result is a script that feels extremely underdeveloped, an unfortunate combination for a game following in the footsteps of Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory.
The sidequest design is arguably Time Stranger’s greatest failure. Early into the final dungeon, the game abruptly forces a massive wave of subquests, equivalent to nearly ten hours of filler, onto the player. These, being sidequests, are of course not mandatory, but the game locks Digimon evolution behind their completion, meaning players are literally barred from evolving their Digimon: In order to unlock every evolution, the player has to clear every last one. This includes three separate mind-numbing quests each consisting of nothing but hunts for dozens of NPCs, many hiding, all over the world.
Exploration also suffers from bloated design. Dungeons are sprawling yet not particularly interesting, and while traversal can be alleviated to a degree by mounting a Digimon, many dungeons are also burdened with arbitrary traversal gimmicks such as teleport or grapple points that frequently dismount the player. Mounting itself can be cumbersome: only select Digimon can be ridden, and the logic behind eligibility is inconsistent – some bipedal types will carry the player in their hand, while others will not, and some fliers can be mounted while others cannot; the eligible Diigmon also has to be in the player’s active party, further limiting options imposed by the decrease to three active and three reserves; and large Digimon often obstruct the camera to the point where navigation becomes dependent on the minimap alone. And even on the PS5, loading delays occasionally prevent companion Digimon from loading onto the map, and since a Digimon for some reason has to be loaded onto the map to be ridden the player has to wait for it to load in.
The removal of the multiplicative EXP boost accessory as a regular item is another issue, making raising Digimon far more laborious, seemingly by design to push the optional (and expensive) paid “cheat” DLC that gives the player EXP items in abundance (the old EXP boost accessory is also available as a bonus for one of the costume DLC packs), which feels downright despicable – the endless spawn point auto battle exploit mentioned earlier in the review is little reprieve to this.
Additionally, several Digimon which were present in Hacker’s Memory such as the Sistermons, are excluded from the roster. The absence of Cyber Sleuth’s hacking skills, such as movement speed increases or instant dungeon egress further compounds the feeling that Time Stranger is in some ways less functional than its predecessors. And while filtering or sorting Digimon by various parameters is possible, the selections are limited and having to cycle through them one by one in a specific order (no going back) is also needlessly cumbersome. Finally, one of the most frustrating issues is how fast travel is limited and inconsistently distributed, often requiring players to chain multiple fast travel points (with loading screens between each) simply to reach a destination.
While Time Stranger offers a technically competent foundation and clear visual improvements, it feels like an unfinished product. The Digital World environments are expansive but frustrating to traverse, the systems are redesigned but not necessarily better, and the story is ambitious but incoherent. Digimon fans may find enjoyment in the monster collection aspect and the novelty of having a big Digimon RPG at all, but as a standalone RPG it unfortunately falls short of the series’ earlier standards. Despite all the flaws, however, it does still deliver on the monster raising RPG aspect, in many ways better than certain contemporaries.
The Good: Improved graphics, visible encounters and preemptive strikes streamlining combat, full-scale exploration of the Digital World
The Bad: Bad pacing and execution undermines an ambitious narrative, Digimon evolution is locked behind sidequest completion, insufficient quality of life features resulting in frustrating exploration
Conclusion: Digimon Story Time Stranger is an ambitious RPG that may offer enjoyment to Digimon fans, but its uneven execution unfortunately prevents it from fully realizing its potential.
