Review: Digimon Story Time Stranger (PS5) – Monster Taming RPG Squanders So Much Potential

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The core of Digimon Story Time Stranger is fantastic.

Just like in the Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth games, the core of this eagerly anticipated RPG shines when it comes to finding, training, and evolving your Digimon. It’s this system where the game truly stands out.

However, Time Stranger frequently hinders itself, prioritizing a straightforward, narrative-focused approach over its remarkably engaging core gameplay. This consistently restricts how much freedom you have.

You take on the role of an Agent, a highly trained operative within a clandestine organisation that investigates ‘anomalies’. Essentially, whenever something strange and unexplained happens, it’s your duty to investigate and document the event.

The game begins with you looking into a strange event happening in downtown Tokyo – a place that experienced similar oddities in the past. It’s a captivating start, and you quickly encounter the enigmatic Digimon themselves.

As the title Time Stranger implies, the story revolves around jumping between different timelines, largely controlled by the unpredictable anomalies happening around you. Though time travel stories can be difficult to execute well, this game eventually delivers some interesting surprises and unexpected moments.

Right from the start, before the game’s introduction even begins, you’ll spend roughly ten hours doing rather dull detective work, exploring the streets – and even the sewers – of Tokyo. The story follows a predictable path, and repetitive, unengaging side quests might make you wonder what the game is trying to achieve.

So, throughout the game, I’m building up a team of Digimon to fight in turn-based battles. Honestly, the urge to just grind for levels and see what my partners can do is really strong. But the biggest problem? I barely get a chance to actually *use* the RPG stuff the game offers. There’s this one sewer area I keep going back to, and that’s pretty much it. I wish there was more space to experiment and play around with everything!

Thankfully, the game improves significantly when you enter the Digital World. Unlike the often-repeated settings based on our own world, the Digimon’s home is beautifully and imaginatively designed. These areas are filled with diverse creatures and strange buildings, making it perhaps the most believable portrayal of the Digital World ever seen in a Digimon game.

Visiting these locations for the first time is a real treat, and Time Stranger finally feels like it’s getting on the right track. Plus, a large number of new Digimon are added, greatly increasing your options for building a powerful team.

There are actually more than 450 Digimon to collect in the game, giving you a huge number of choices. However, to see even a portion of them, you’ll need to use Digivolution effectively-which means leveling up, evolving, and sometimes even de-evolving your Digimon partners.

You’re always faced with decisions to make. Each ‘mon’ has a unique way to evolve, with many different paths available based on its current stats. This starts the process of leveling up-but it’s a fun process, because the Digivolution system gives you a lot of freedom. It’s a really engaging system!

There’s always something new to discover, and as mentioned, that’s the real joy of Time Stranger.

However, players get frustrated because the game doesn’t often allow them to truly interact with the challenging tasks it presents. The way dungeons are designed – focused on story but limited in scope – is a major problem. Having to repeatedly run back and forth to restart enemy encounters is an unnecessarily tedious process.

Time Stranger is really hoping for a randomly generated dungeon – similar to Mementos in Persona 5 – where players can deeply engage with the game’s mechanics. However, instead, you’re limited to brief corridors that only just have enough space for your primary Digimon team to develop – let alone the many hundreds of creatures you can carry as reserves.

The turn-based battles are well-made, though not particularly groundbreaking. They use the classic Digimon weakness system – similar to rock-paper-scissors – but are made more interesting with additional elemental weaknesses, short-term buffs, and various status effects.

The most important thing is to build a team that’s well-rounded, covering a variety of Digimon types and their skills. You also need to consider how stats are distributed. For instance, if you encounter a very tough, defensive enemy, they’ll be able to withstand physical attacks – so you’ll need a teammate who’s strong with magic to defeat it.

Time Stranger’s battles can be quite complex, which is why having a large group of Digimon is usually helpful. Especially boss fights, though, can be really challenging and often cause problems.

Most players feel like bosses have way too much health when playing on the normal difficulty. While special abilities can sometimes split these fights into easier parts, they can still be really frustrating and require a lot of patience.

The main issue is this: if your team isn’t prepared with the right Digimon to counter each opponent, you’ll face a really tough time. Throughout the campaign, we often got completely stuck on bosses because we hadn’t included a very specific type of Digimon in our team.

At this stage, you’re either using up all your healing potions in a long, drawn-out fight, or you’re switching the game to an easier difficulty. Alternatively, you might reload an earlier save file to change your team composition-but that will mean doing a lot of repetitive tasks, and as we’ve discussed, the game actively discourages that approach.

You might assume Time Stranger seems like a difficult game, but as we mentioned, it actually does a lot of things well. It’s just really disappointing that so many of these good parts aren’t developed as much as they could be.

And on the subject of what players deserve, those with a PS5 deserve a smoother gaming experience. Surprisingly, Time Stranger is limited to only 30 frames per second on both the PS5 and PS5 Pro.

While not a complete deal-breaker considering this is a turn-based RPG, the game surprisingly suffers from frequent frame rate drops. It has trouble consistently hitting its 30fps target when not in battle, and though performance doesn’t crash entirely, these dips result in a frustratingly stuttery experience. It’s a shame because it impacts the overall adventure.

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2025-10-01 17:09