Being a Digimon fan in a world of Pokemon can be rough, especially when one series figured out the right game formula pretty quick while the other has been struggling with finding its groove for years. Thankfully Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth doesn’t falter (much) and paints a bright future for Digimon fans.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Developer: Media Vision
Price: $60 (PS4) / $40 (Vita)
Platform: PS4 & PS-Vita
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 copy for review
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth opens appropriately enough in a VR chat room. You’re quickly introduced to most of the main cast of characters with the plot moving at a snail’s pace to get to the meat of the game which is the Digimon fighting. The story is definitely interesting, and even deals with some surprisingly mature themes, but it takes too damn long to actually get to that point. For the first ten or so hours you’re simply working your way through uninteresting detective cases that drop minor clues to future plot points while characters spout almost nonsensical expository dumps on you. It’s frustrating because the actual Digimon part of the game is really fun, but for a good chunk of the game the actual cyber sleuthing trudges along until it eventually gets the ball rolling.
Unfortunately the game doesn’t really live up to the expectations that its subtitle “Cyber Sleuth” implies. You’re not actually solving cases by collecting evidence or figuring out puzzles. Your character is simply hired as a detective with a specialty in cyber crime (hence the name cyber sleuth) and the cases are linear affairs. Each case plays out the same with its initial expository dump to inform you what the case is about before it tosses you into a fairly linear dungeon where you’ll complete the quest by beating whatever digimon is at the end. The game also suffers from a silent protagonist who does not speak with other characters but actually speaks when alone. This makes the awkward pauses even more awkward when your character is already established as able to talk. This leads to many moments where an NPC asks you a question you know the answer to and after an awkward silent stare the NPC simply regurgitates the answer back at you in the form of a question. There are also dialog choices that don’t actually give you new conversations which really makes me question why they implemented all this stuff instead of just allowing your character to speak 24/7.
If you’ve played any JRPG in your life then you know exactly what to expect from Cyber Sleuth’s combat. It doesn’t do anything radical to mix up the formula, but it has enough interesting mechanics to keep things from getting stale. The first thing it does is take the typical “water beats fire” system but makes it twofold. Each digimon has an attribute (data, virus, or vaccine) and attacking an enemy with a weaker attribute will deal double damage. There are also elemental types for each Digimon which adds an extra 1.5x damage meaning if you pick your teams correctly you could be doing up to 3.5x damage against your enemies. Of course this works against you as well and you really don’t want the AI to be dishing out that much damage against your Digimon. The neat thing about this system is that it can put you in a battle where you’re up against a Digimon that has a stronger attribute than yours so you’ll be doing 2x less damage but if your Digimon has a special ability of an elemental type that’s stronger than the enemy then you can mitigate some of that damage loss to simply .5x damage. The game helpfully visualizes this by having your cursor glow a faint orange when dealing 1.5x damage, red for double damage, or teal and blue for less damage respectively. These colors can unfortunately be a bit hard to make out at times due to the colorful glow of the environment and sometimes the elemental type of a digimon (signified by the color of its attribute so if it’s a red virus symbol then it’s a fire type or green for plant) can be especially hard to make out with some colors being a few shades too similar to each other. This isn’t a major issue since you just have to keep an eye out for it, but it’s kind of frustrating knowing that this could have been alleviated by picking some slightly better color choices. Besides that, there’s also a combo system built into the game that will allow other Digimon in your party to attack alongside each other in the same turn and deliver various buffs like a health boost or extra attack damage. Cyber Sleuth’s combat isn’t a complicated system, but it keeps you on your toes and it feels good going into a battle and doing massive amounts of damage against an enemy who might’ve been giving you trouble before. It also features an online arena where you’ll be able to fight other players but it’s not really the main focus of the game.
As fun as the combat is, the bulk of your enjoyment comes from collecting all the various Digimon and building your dream team. Acquiring Digimon is as easy as simply viewing them in combat. Each time you fight a Digimon you’ll automatically scan a percentage of them and once you hit 100% scan completion you’ll have that Digimon available for you to automatically convert to your team. The game spices this up by rewarding patient players and letting you wait until you’ve hit 200% scan completion which then rewards that Digimon with much better stats than it would have initially had. What’s perhaps my favorite part of Digimon is its nonlinear approach to evolution. Unlike Pokemon, each Digimon can evolve into multiple creatures and you can also de-evolve them back into previous forms with your stats and skills unchanged. Each form also has a certain level cap it can reach and other evolutions have level or stat requirements before you’re allowed to evolve into them. Herein lies the strategy of evolving your Digimon to a certain point that you’re happy with, de-evolving them to a previous form (which raises the level cap) and doing the process all over again. It may sound like a grind, but it’s really an addicting process getting your Digimon filled with moves from other forms they would have never acquired if you evolved them straight. It also helps that experience comes fairly easily in large amounts so a single fight can take a recently de-evolved digimon from level 1 to 15 plus there are plenty of ways to speed up the leveling process. This nonlinear approach to evolution also makes acquiring the Digimon you want a non issue as well. Instead of going to a specific dungeon where the Digimon you want spawns, you can simply acquire a Digimon that’s on the same evolution path as the one you want and just evolve/de-evolve until it turns into the one you crave. The glossary will show you the path a specific digimon can take so you can easily plan out how you need to train a Digimon to reach the point you want it to.
Considering there’s over 240 Digimon in the game it’d be insane to think you’d have to amass that collection by only using the Digimon in your party so that’s where your digi-farm comes into play. While you’re out working your way through digital dungeons, any Digimon not in your party can be placed in one of your various farms which can house ten Digimon each. Here your Digimon will level up on their own and you’ll get helpful notifications once they’ve hit their max level so that you can hop in to evolve or de-evolve them. Besides that, you can also set them to train to increase their stats, develop rare items for you, or discover side-quests for you. You’ll eventually get into this groove of running a dungeon and checking on your farm as you plan out evolutions and set tasks for your Digimon. This all makes for a super engaging system that will have you spending hours just to build your dream team.
The Final Word
Despite the game’s plot taking hours to reach the point where it actually becomes interesting, it more than makes up for it with the core combat itself being top notch and the addicting Digimon training.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
