Developed By: Media.Vision
Published By: Bandai Namco
Category: RPG
Release Date: 10.02.25
Price: $69.99
*Game Download Code graciously provided for the purpose of review
I’ve always been a big fan of the Digimon franchise. I never liked it as much as Pokémon, but I loved the games and anime going all the way back to the original Digimon Adventure anime. For a while, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth was one of my favorite Switch games. I knew that I wanted to play Time Stranger, but a few things were stopping me until I was able to pick it up recently for the Steam Deck.
Because I played Cyber Sleuth, I had an idea of what I was getting myself into. But I was still blown away by how good the game was. First you pick a gender and name for the protagonist and then you’re thrown into an investigation of anomalous phenomena. This version of the world had an apocalyptic event that destroyed most of Tokyo.
During your investigation, Digimon begin appearing in the real world and you’re contacted by someone who seems to know you. Unfortunately, a big battle triggers a second apocalyptic event, and you’re sent eight years into the past. Now it’s up to you to prevent both apocalyptic events from happening, while trying to get back to the present at the same time.
The story itself is really good, and long too. But, while I did really enjoy the story, the RPG mechanics and overall Digimon feel were the best parts of the game. You’re given a starter Digimon and you battle others. You have simple attacks and a variety of skills that each Digimon can learn. When you beat a Digimon, you scan them so that you have data on them and the scan percentage goes up.
When you defeat multiples of the same Digimon, the scan percentage keeps going higher and higher until you can summon your own when it reaches 100 percent. Or you can keep scanning until it reaches 200 percent, which means the version you summon will be the best. If you can get Digimon that easily, you’d think there’s no reason to keep summoning, but you’d be wrong.
You can feed Digimon you don’t want to the ones you want to build and they get extra EXP. This is great for leveling up quickly. Your Digimon can also learn skills from the Digimon that are sacrificed. Another reason that you want to summon a bunch of Digimon is because of the crazy digivolution system. When a Digimon hits certain requires, you can digivolve them into a better Digimon. But each of the lower tier Digimon can evolve into multiple Digimon.
So, if you want to collect all the Digimon in the game, you need to summon multiple of the same Digimon so that you can follow each digivolution path. You can also revert Digimon back to previous forms. This creates a crazy flow chart with hundreds of digivolution paths for you to follow in order to get the Digimon that you want.
Scanning all the Digimon required to pull this off isn’t hard either because battles are simple and lots of fun. When you enter a battle, you have three main Digimon in the battle and another three on the sidelines that can be swapped in and out of battle as needed. Each Digimon has a standard attack and a bunch of skills that can be used in battle. There are also agent skills that you unlock by doing missions that help in battle.
Each skill has a type like ice and fire and once you use a move for the first time against a specific Digimon, the data of that type is stored permanently. Whenever you battle the same Digimon, it will tell you if that type does extra damage, less damage, or no difference. This is very good alternative to having to remember type matchups like in Pokémon. It’s also very easy to heal in this game, which makes it more accessible to newcomers.
Using items doesn’t use up a turn. You can use a healing item and then use an attack like normal. When you’re not battling, you can also stand perfectly still for certain amount of time and all the Digimon in your party will be automatically healed. You can choose a hard difficulty if you want or opt not to use these accessibility options. But all these special features along with the really cool auto battle feature makes the game easy for anyone to pick up.
The game is already complex enough as it is between its story and insane digivolution system but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are agent skills that you can unlock using agent points, and these give you a bunch of buffs. But the skill tree for each type is insane. There are more than 100 upgrades to unlock. There’s also a card game you can unlock later on and a DigiFarm where you can train and interact with your Digimon.
With this many features and mechanics, you’d think that the game would be as long as Fire Emblem Three Houses. But can you actually play the game that long on the Steam Deck? The game looks very good on the Steam Deck. I’m sure if you’re playing on a regular PC, the game will look and run amazingly, but it’s still very good on the Steam Deck. The animation is good, character models are good, there are lots of detail and color everywhere.
If you’re playing portable, the game looks great and has very few issues. I did occasionally see a few lag issues where there was a slight delay between input and execution. But there was nothing major. If you’re playing the game docked and with a controller, the game looks better on a TV, and the controls are even smoother. My only complaint when it comes to playing docked is that there’s no button to bring up the map.
It simply doesn’t exist on the controller that I was using, so I had to remove a button that was already pretty important to map that button to maps. There were also a few times where the Steam Deck would just crash when I was excessively battling. It only happened when I was speed battling like 3 or 5 battles per minute and was rare. So, I don’t think it’s that big of an issue.
Another solid feature of Time Stranger is the insane sound design. First off, there’s a ton of voice acting. Not all lines are voices, but all the main and supporting characters have tons of voices lines. I kept hearing voices that I recognized too and was so happy to find out that some actors that I liked were in the game. This included the likes of Joe Zieja, Cristina Vee, and Amber Lee Connors.
The Digimon themselves have occasional lines too, and the developers spared no expense when picking some of the coolest voice actors for them. But as much as I loved the voice acting, the music was even better. The soundtrack is huge and many of the songs are cool or play so often that they immediately get stuck in your head. There’s also an option to pick and choose which songs play in certain areas if you want to hear certain tracks more than the official ones.
Lastly, there’s a DLC pack you can buy that adds even more songs. All the ones in the soundtrack are officially made for the game, but the $20 DLC pack adds 16 songs from various Digimon anime. I think it’s way too expensive and the official soundtrack is great as it is. But some diehard fans of the series might get a kick out of it.
Digimon Story Time Stranger is one of the biggest games that I have ever played and it’s one of the few games that are worth $70. The game simply has an insane amount of content. Just the sheer number of Digimon and the methods of collecting and training them is crazy. I spent way too much time grinding and digivolving until I had the perfect team.
Then you have all the story content. During my first day, I played through the first six chapters, and that took me a little more than five hours. The entire game has 42 main chapters. Blazing through the story without doing any grinding or extra stuff could take you anywhere from 35 to 40 hours. Adding in 70+ side missions and all the extra stuff can bring your total playtime to way over a hundred hours.
Is it worth getting? Absolutely. Digimon Story Time Stranger has one of the best storylines I have ever seen in a monster catching game and it’s incredibly fun. It’s honestly the best monster catching game I have ever played, the best RPG I have played in 2025, and it’s already one of my favorite games of all time. You need to play it.
5/5
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