Before reading: Content including visuals might include spoilers.

If you were born in the 80s or early 90s then you probably remember watching the famed Digimon series on television and have fond recollections of it. I know I sure do. Having not played a Digimon game in over a decade Digimon Story:Cyber Sleuth was not in my plans to get really but seeing it on sale I decided to fall into nostalgia and get it. This is a review for the Vita version but there are not any content differences between the two so fret not in that regard.

Digimon is a series that’s always been compared to Pokemon and that’s pretty fair, especially when you open the main menu “digivice” which is more or less the pokedex of the game. You can find player information including where to next on your current case and a guide that lists all the digimon that you have discovered and more. Even now I keep typing pokemon instead of digimon. Now this is not a slight against either game as I have enjoyed both series but it is more to show how much games tend to borrow concepts from one another and give fans of one series a point of reference for getting into the other.

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Online Meetings Become Dangerous

So the game starts off showing you how technology has advanced… a group of people are in a chat room, of the virtual world EDEN and discussing things like hackers and digimon. Apparently at this point digimon are more of a rumor than anything confirmed. A hacker arrives in the chat room and announces that they have a surprise for them and tells them to meet at a specified time. Then fast forward a bit to that time and go through some more dialogue and you arrive, the characters meet up, the protagonist, which you can choose both name and gender of but the default is a Male named Takumi which I kept it as myself.

Shortly afterwards, Takumi meets his friends from the chat room named Arata and Nokia, now in EDEN using their avatars. Those are basically virtual figures of their own real-world bodies. The story goes into a frenzy of talk about hacking, digimon, and the virtual world of EDEN where I just get a bit lost in all of it and find myself longing for a feature to scroll up and re-read text or some kind of in-game dictionary that explains the lingo. A mysterious figure named “Mr. Navit” the one who invited them hacks them and makes them hackers as well, which apparently in this game makes you a shady person people tend to be afraid of. I guess that shows how far society has come with stereotyping in the Digital World. Most importantly though it also seems to give you the ability to capture digimon.

Afterwards you meet another hacker and they give you a choice of three digimon to start with and from there your digimon adventure truly begins. Then the main characters go their separate ways and things progress, them still communicating and seeing each other pretty often through the story.

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Digilab, Digimon, and Digivolving A.K.A. “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”

The idea of digivolving and de-digivolving your digimon is all fair and well, but if you take everything on the surface without diving deeper into things you will most likely find yourself like me. Spending hours grinding levels because you found a boss that was too difficult and asking people on forums to explain it to you. The way you capture digimon is pretty simple, whenever you find one in your random encounters you battle them and you scan them. When the scan reaches at least 100% (maximum 200%) you get to convert it at the digilab and put it in your party or do whatever you see fit with it.

The digilab, ran by Mirei Mikagura is where you can store some of your pokemon in the digifarm or the digibank, digivolve your digimon, as well as access features such as the online Colosseum where you can battle other players. It’s a pretty central place you will be getting very accustomed to as you play. Since you’ll be going there pretty often, it’s worth mentioning that most dungeons also have a shortcut to get to the digilab and back readily available. So don’t worry about having to fight a boss and wanting to change your party beforehand or anything of that nature.

The digifarm and the digibank are two very important parts of the lab. The digifarm is an expandable area where you can store your digimon and they can do one of three things, investigate (find property new cases for you) train (level up while you continue to play) and develop (create items). Also you have the option of feeding them different food items that you find which can increase various stats of theirs. It might seem like a lot to take in, but there’s even more to it.

The last two parts of the digilab, the mirror dungeons and the online Colosseum. In the mirror dungeons, you can return to dungeons you have previously explored once you unlock them and use them to level up your digimon and/or scan digimon, accessible directly from the digilab, this can be quite the useful function for finding the digimon you’re looking for or getting some levels before continuing on in the story. Finally there’s the online Colosseum which as you can probably guess requires you to be connected to the internet and you can battle other players or A.I. if none are available, in order to increase your ranking. Also there’s a trophy associated with it for those interested.

Digimon Battles

As with many video games, especially JRPGs, the combat is an important part of it. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth does not lack in this department, it’s a bit more of the typical 3vs3 party method with a slight spin on things. True to JRPG fashion, you level up and increase stats as you win random encounters, you fight bosses at the end of dungeons, and you collect items through battles and chests as you advance. You know what they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The combat itself is a lot less complicated than the actual digivolving and de-digivolving of the digimon. You have your usual guard, attack, skill, and escape choices as well as the option to use items. Elemental weaknesses also come into play here as well as digimon type.

The three types for those new to the series would be vaccine, data, and virus, they have a rock paper scissors type of strength/weakness going on. For example, if a vaccine digimon attacks a data digimon it does half damage, however if it attacked another vaccine type it would be normal and a virus type would do double damage. Now the elements also work into this, if you attack a digimon your type is strong against and your element is also at an advantage then you do triple damage rather than double, and if only your element is advantageous but your type is disadvantageous then you do 75% of your normal damage. So on and so forth. It might seem a little complex but it’s something very integral to winning battles, especially those harder boss battles towards the end of the game.

Also there’s something called CAM which is short for camaraderie which is a necessary part for some digivolutions, you gain this by having your digimon in your battle party. Your total party can hold 11 digimon at a time with 3 of them being the battle party, the ones fighting. You can switch them out at any time including during battle. Digimon with a higher CAM also are more likely to be able to do combos with their fellow party members, which increases the effectiveness of attack or skill used. It’s seemingly random when your digimon will have a combo but there are skills certain digimon have that make it more likely.

So you Wanna be a Cyber Sleuth

The actual “Cyber Sleuth” part of the game comes into play from the first chapter. A fateful meeting with detective Kyoko Kuremi really sets things into motion. Shortly after an incident occurs, you become the assistant detective to Kyoko and begin working at the Kuremi detective agency where you become known as the cyber sleuth and start handling cases given by various characters throughout the game. All the while trying to figure out the mysterious affliction your character is dealing with.

The gameplay takes a pretty simple course from here. Go to the board, pick a case, they’re color-coded with red being the story essential ones, and other colors like blue being side-story material. Besides the digilab, the detective agency (which is right next to it) is the other place you’ll be spending a bit of time. Pick a case, solve it, move on to the next one, it all becomes one smooth transaction you’ll become quickly accustomed to as you progress. This is one aspect I feel the game has done quite well, nothing too complex, before accepting the case you’re shown the items you’ll get and who and where to go to start it. Keeping it simple and sweet they’ve done that here. Looking at the whiteboard with the cases and seeing them completed and moving on to the next one gives you a real sense of achievement and completion. Having a case not finished starts to feel like a stain on a perfect track record.

The cases themselves mostly revolve around going to the specified npc and them telling you a short background on what’s the problem then you going into the virtual world at some area and defeating a digimon, collecting an item for them, or answering some questions based on in-game information. Basically, fetch-quests and kill quests for those used to RPGs. Once again, pretty simple and efficient. In some cases they’re even directly bring you to the npc so you don’t have to look for them. Great. As you advance further through the various chapters you unlock more areas to explore both in the real-world and the digital-world. The game culminates in a pretty typical happy ending, and seems to be leading towards a sequel of sorts maybe.

Pros:

Interesting take on the elemental+rock paper scissors combat system

Ease of access to any previously explored area, no need to spend lots of time backtracking.

Wide variety of digimon and skills to use, pretty satisfying to collect digimon.

Cons:

No English dub.

Difficulty spikes that can have you stuck grinding levels for a while.

Complexity with digivolving and maximizing your digimon’s efficiency.

No backlog and no way to fast-forward through conversations. Meaning you’ll have to continiously press a button in order to skip dialogue and if you want to go back to a message you missed or want to re-read you’re pretty much out of luck.

The Verdict is In

Overall, visually the game is nothing to take a second look at, although to be fair the PS4 version does look a bit better than the PS Vita so if you want to maximize graphics and all that then definitely get the PS4 version. Not much else difference between the two. Easily can spend a lot of time into it, usual JRPG time-sink especially if you want to collect all the digimon and digimon medals as well as all the trophies. Trophy hunters and completionists will be happy to know that you can very well get the platinum trophy in one playthrough if done right. Also there’s a new game+ where you get to carry over all your digimon and pretty much everything except key story items and things of that nature.

Simply doing the story would probably run you about 40-50 hours or so. I put in about 100 in my run on story mode doing nearly ever case available as well as plenty hours grinding levels and collecting digimon and trophies but not 100%. This is a game I would certaintly recommend to fans of the Digimon series or JRPGs in general. If you’re not sure about it though like I wasn’t then I recommend getting it on a sale or used since the PS4 version had a physical release. For non-fans of JRPGs or games of this type it’s nothing amazing enough that’s going to change your minds. However for those on the fence, this could very well spark your interest and keep you entertained for a good amount of time.

Have you given the game a spin? If so what do you think about it? Feel free to discuss below in the comment section.