Having finished both halves of the Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition, my opinion is over all positive. The first Cyber Sleuth is fun, offers a variety of Digimon (though is perhaps a little too dependent on partner Digimon from the various anime seasons), and has a fun story. The writing isn't Shakespeare, but it's enjoyable. In a lot of ways the games main story is very much like playing a season of the show, which I intend as a compliment. The narrative is consistent, and progresses. Several of the side-quests also maintain their own consistent, albeit shorter, narrative. The combat is by no means difficult, but is enjoyable enough, and the short skill cutscenes for a digimon's main skills is entertaining.

Hacker's Memory is where things fall apart a little. The game adds a lot, most of it not good. It did add several Digimon (now available in the first Cyber Sleuth via this edition) which is great. The problems lay elsewhere. Accessories are largely pretty lazy, limited to hats that don't really fit properly. They're also deeply under utilized, mostly only available through the online colosseum (ironically you'll only find a match against NPC opponents) via events and the coin shop. Dominion Battles are clearly meant to add spice and a "team" feel. They mostly just drag on, and aren't actually any more interesting or strategic than a regular battle. Related to Dominion Battles are the "Good Impression Events", little scenes you get with various NPCs when you bring them to enough Dominion Battles (or on certain quests). In theory they're meant to flesh out NPCs, and show their growing trust in the protagonist. In practice the writing is lacklustre, doesn't effect the story at all, is a pain to grind, and the reward isn't remotely worth it (a single use healing item). The reward probably should have been either a unique accessory or a piece of equipment. The narrative for Hacker's Memory actually starts pretty good, but quickly goes down hill around halfway through. It often feels disjointed and patchwork, with major events only feeling loosely connected to one another, and the groundwork overtly reliant on having played the first Cyber Sleuth (even though the further you go the less Hacker's Memory really has to do with it, despite being a side-story). To use a phrase a friend coined for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Hacker's Memory reads kinda like bad fanfic. Combat is...it feels like the developers heard people didn't consider Cyber Sleuth's combat "challenging", and instead of making it interesting, they just made it a slog, often employing a strategy I refer to as "Oh so you wanted to play the game? Nah". I started by genuinely enjoying Hacker's Memory, but by the end I was frustrated and just glad it was over.

Over all, would I recommend buying and playing this? Absolutely. I'd just mostly only recommend playing the original Cyber Sleuth, and not Hacker's Memory.

DOn't overthink, best all around digimon game, story is silly but it is not bad, likeable characters. A lot of funny scenes, a lot of mechanics and a lot of digivolve and undigivolve for ABI.

This is the successor of dawn and dusk but much and much better. I like survive but this is the best digimon game by far,

Are you a die hard digimon fan? If not, there's other games that'll scratch the JRPG/Monster Raising itch out there, that do just about everything Cyber Sleuth sets out to do and far better. While the game isn't horrendous (outside of two categories I'll mention later), its ultimately bland and fails to excel at anything it sets out to do. This may be a result of being developed for a handheld first and foremost, but just about everything it does sets it as awkward or clumsy in execution.

Story wise: Cyber Sleuth and especially Hacker's Memory continually jump over the line between wanting to be taken seriously and have adult tone and questions, to juvenile humor (most of it revolving around poop). Because it can never nail its tone or decide just what exactly what it wants to be, the stories themselves suffer. Likewise the dialogue also suffers from a fairly shoddy Japanese to English Translation. As a result of the poor translation, inconsistent tone and lack of any real characterization of the leads, its hard to care too much about what happens.

Gameplay: Playing Cyber Sleuth, if you've had any experience with Pokemon or other rpgs, will feel like an old blanket you had as a child wrapping around you. Its nostalgic, but that's a major problem. It reminds you of other, better games with deep systems and more options. Cyber Sleuth sadly has VERY little in the way of mechanical depth. It all comes down to Rock, Paper, Scissors at the start of the game, but by the end of the game, there's really only about 20 viable options out of the 336 digimon presented to you in game. (There are technically 341, but I'm not counting the NX-mons).

Sound Design: It's hit or miss. Some of the tracks are bangers that will make you go looking for the OST. Others have you reaching for the audio to turn it off completely. On another note, headphone players, DO NOT WEAR YOUR HEADPHONES WHEN YOU BOOT THE GAME. It does not save your sound settings for the start screen and it will make them bleed. Likewise, even with all audio settings at 10%, I still found the game uncomfortably loud.

Characters: Hard to care about most of them, Very one note or tropey, which isn't always a bad thing, but when its your entire cast....yeah. Also, for Gods sake, can we not put the 15 year in a Nightie for the entire game? (and for that matter, can there be more than one female member of the cast that doesn't look like a prostitute?)

Other Issues: There's no escaping this one. Cyber Sleuth is PADDED and there is next to ZERO Environmental design going on in this game. Nearly every map looks the same, made even more annoying by how often you're going to be back tracking through them. And even more, you're going to grind, and constantly grind if you want to get anywhere in the game. EXP gain is PAINFULLY BAD, unless you happen to know of one digimon and one item that gives you way more Exp. The item is locked behind RNG, that is only "Acceptable" after about the mid-point of the game. The digimon?

A literally pile of Platinum Crap. Enjoy the next 50-80 hours of not getting to use the digimon you like, because you need that EXP boost and instead being forced to watch the wiggly pile throw his own poop.