[REVIEW] Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth

 Digimon is one of those enduring franchises. It’s been around since the 90s, has reached people in many different forms, is often considered a cheap Pokemon ripoff, and it’s still going strong today. I’ve been a fan of the franchise for years, really, almost back to its North American inception, and over time I’ve come to understand that it has a lot of very good and very unappreciated video games. So when Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth came out, despite its mouthful of a name, I was excited to play it.

 Released in 2016 for the PS4 and PS Vita, and then in 2019 for Nintendo Switch and PC, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth opens with a near-future Japan in which most people have access to EDEN, a sort of full-immersion virtual reality Internet. As the Goggle Boy protagonist (though you can also be a Google Girl, if you choose), a freak accident in a dangerous area of EDEN causes you to lose your physical body, and now you have a virtual body that, for all intents and purposes, functions the exact same way as your old one only now you don’t need an avatar to represent yourself online.

SMT MEETS .HACK//, AND BY DAMN, IT WORKS!

 Your body has survived, but it’s now in a coma, along with several other people who also fell comatose after mysterious accidents in EDEN. It’s up to you to uncover the truth about this illness, as well as discovering why the virtual world is gradually infringing on the physical world, and let’s not forget, there are also powerful Digimon who want to wipe out humanity.

It’s not just a simple good-vs-evil issue, either. That’s a far too simplistic problem. The company that owns EDEN, Kamishiro Enterprises, is run by people who are actively encouraging the digital encroachment, working toward the destruction of the physical world alongside certain Digimon. Said Digimon believe that humans should be punished for starting the destruction of their own Digital World, and chillingly, they’re not wrong.

The problem with writing this review is that I have to condense a very complex plot into a few paragraphs without giving away so much of the plot that nobody has any more interest in playing the game for themselves. Trying to do that will inevitably come across as incoherent and garbled and at best, a skeleton of the true thing, missing much of the meat that makes a game full and complete. But at the same time I don’t want to give people too many spoilers, nor do I want to make this review ridiculously long.

So it is with Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. If you know little about the franchise, you might see the game and think it’s a light detective game with virtual monsters. Pick it up and what you’ll get is a bit of a slow burn game that has common themes with the .hack and Shin Megami Tensei series. Ignore your preconceptions; this game is mature and engaging, emotional and gripping. It’s worth taking the time on, even if you’re a bit ambivalent at first.

WHAT ARE THESE STRANGE CREATURES?

 
Digimon themselves are seen initially as manifestations of hacker tools within EDEN, but it’s later uncovered that they’re living creatures in their own right. Some fight for you. Some fight against you. Some are generated from collected data and have an automatic loyalty to you. Battles are, naturally, fought by your Digimon partners, with their varied elemental abilities and stats.

As far as the battles go, they are fairly standard JRPG fare. Turn-based, random encounters, lots of level-grinding for experience, levels, and money. It adds nothing new, nothing unexpected, and the only thing to adjust to is the elemental types. And that’s not exactly difficult. On one hand, it’s a shame to see such potential get wasted, when so many interesting battle systems could have been used beyond a very old-school, “line up and attack each other one by one.” On the other hand, it’s a very intuitive system that has a solid grounding in countless games that came before, so it comes across as comfort gaming rather than a lack of innovation.

The innovation really comes to play in the acquisition and evolution of Digimon. One Digimon can turn into a variety of others, and you can evolve or devolve them once requirements are met in order to build stats and gain attacks at particular Digimon might not otherwise have. It’s actually quite an addictive process, and it can be enjoyable to meet those goals and see what powerful monsters you can unlock for battle.

SO MANY THINGS TO DO

Aside from a brilliant story and a standard battle system, there’s plenty in this game to keep completionists very happy. There’s a Digimon Field Guide to complete by acquiring every single Digimon in the game (some of which are very complicated and time-consuming to get), 500 Digimon medals to collect, and both an offline and online coliseum where you can battle your Digimon team against others.

But the true gem is the sheer number of end-game content. They’re available as free DLC, and there are a number of challenging quests to complete. Personally I find them a bit of a mixed bag, because while the challenge is wonderful for bragging rights and game completion, the experience and challenge they offer makes the game’s final boss boring in its lack of comparative challenge.

That being said, given the way the game ends, it wouldn’t be feasible to have those quests be post-game events, so there really is no other better place for them. They’re very enjoyable for the challenge they provide, but that drawback leaves the final battle feeling flat and dull, even if the story’s culmination is still well done.

So is Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth worth playing? Absolutely! Doubly so if you’re already a fan of the Digimon franchise or JRPGs. As I said earlier, the game itself is a bit of a slow burn, starting off teasingly and almost tangentially before suddenly ramping up in excitement. It’s good to be patient in order to get to the real meat of the game, though I can see why that slow burn might cause players to turn away, thinking there’s nothing better ahead. Some chapters of the game could have been entirely removed and it wouldn’t have made a difference. From a storytelling perspective, it could have stood tightening, but it still wasn’t bad. From where I stand, I loved the main story, and the comfortable aspect of the battle system, the anime-style graphics, and the Japanese language track. I’m already excited for the sequel. This is one game that deserve more praise and recognition, and it wears the Digimon badge proudly.