Digimon Story: Time Stranger - PlayStation 5

Digimon has always kinda held second candle to the much more popular Pokemon series. Despite this, Bandai Namco always seems to deliver with their games. Without getting into spoilers, I will give the positives on this game, as well as one or two minor nitpicks. First, the positives The game has a deep and mature storyline, involving war between Digimon, references to death and loss, as well as the occasional innocent swear word (namely the D and H words). The game runs smoothly, though it is locked at 30 FPS on PS5, it does jump to 60 on the Pro model. The biggest praise, the Digimon collection and raising mechanics. Unlike Pokemon, you can raise a Digimon to have different stats (typical HP, Attack, Defense, and the like), but here's where it gets interesting. Depending on the stats your Digimon have, they can digivolve into different Digimon. Even better, to account for the different options when digivolving, you can also "de-dogivolve" to enable your Digimon to grow new stats and branch out to become a different Digimon. Also, the battle mechanics are top notch, as all Digimon don't only have elemental typing, but also one exclusive to Digimon, in the Data>Vaccine>Virus, as well as other types (spoiler territory, there) which allows moves and skills to deal up to 400% damage. This allows for all new methods of strategy and planning I've never experienced in an RPG before. Now, the few gripes. One, the main character isn't voiced, which is odd, considering whichever main character you *don't* choose does get a voice, as they take the role of the Operator, who essentially gives direction to you as the character whom you play. This usually isn't an issue for me, but I don't understand why they felt it necessary to have your character's mouth move when you make dialogue choices, only to have them be completely mute. Last gripe, as mentioned before, there are ways to raise your Digimon and their stats through a Digimon farm, where you can train Digimon in specific stat builds to get where you need them to trigger Digivolution, the problem.... You cannot see where your Digimon stats stand until you 1. Finish their training 2. Pull them out of the farm to see how much more they need to train to get where they need to be. I was able to manage this issue by making notes on my phone, but it was a little discouraging having to do extra homework to properly train my Digimon. Despite these issues, they don't take away from the experience. I've had "a-ha" moments, I've had moments of sadness and feelings, along with moments of frustration in the story that kinda force a battle because *plot*. I can't recommend this game enough for people who want a new twist on their monster collecting games.

great graphics..legit game has all the digimon.. not at all pixelated

Being a fan of the cyber story games, I was very excited to play this one with english voice acting and seeing how the gameplay really evolved from the old games. So far, i'm really enjoying the story and the gameplay. It's a very familiar with lots of life improvements, and seeing the digital world comes to life is very amazing.My only complaint is the frame rate on PS5 isn't what I thought it would be at.I really would have wanted a constant 60 fps, but we didn't get that. Excited to see all the digimons and unlock my favorite digivolutions!

this is the best digimon game, story and gameplay wise and it got a wide variety of digivolutions

Never thought I'd say this but pokemon has nothing on this digimon. The gameplay the visuals the story. This one is one for the books a must play