You need to be a big Digimon fan to enjoy these games. Sadly they get very little right technically, mechanically and story-wise.

Starting off with the technical side: The port is horrible. Locked to 60 fps, can't change settings until you pick a game, said settings do not apply to the main menu of the game so you get blasted with the menu song at 100% volume every time you open the game, the control scheme is horrible and the mouse functionality is nonexistant (you can click to accept but your cursor won't select options).

Mechanically, battles are a slog. If you play on "normal" mode, you can clear most stuff with basic attacks (with some hp-sponge bosses from time to time), while hard mode is just hp sponge galore. Battle balance is awful, the mix of defense-penetrating attacks and high defense digimons renders most endgame mons useless because you'll be tickling bosses in lategame if you aren't using def-pen skills (you can download the Ultimate Digimon Pack mod for more variety i guess)

Finally, story-wise, it's fine, it touches some more mature themes like existential crisis, loss and some other stuff (sorry i forgot) but getting there is so PAINFUL. Story progression takes you from filler to filler to filler to some interesting story to filler to buying groceries for the cute digilab lady to filler and only starts picking up at around chapter 13~ out of 20 (cyber sleuth) or 18 (hacker's memory), you keep getting taken out of the story by useless fluff which makes you wonder if you really want to go on. The endings might gaslight you into thinking you played a mediocre at worst game but it's all an illusion, it's bad.

Eden metaverse design is pretty boring too, and the backtracking is insane. Hacker's memory adds some QoL stuff like a faster walking speed hack and a free return-to-entrance hack... which weren't ported to Cyber Sleuth for some reason (there is a mod for this too!).

All in all, this is a bad rpg being "carried" by a dying IP that can't quite get anything right (the more recent Digimon Survive sucked even more than these games!). Hopefully Time Stranger will be better, but honestly my expectations are really low.

Final Score: 4/10.

you like persona like gameplay? great think of that and add digimon.

the evolution is very complexe and you can tailor your team precisely how you want

Combat is Good.

Story is Bad. (Long, Dull, Boring, takes away immersion constantly every step of the way)

There isn't any quest markers or any pop up notifications that tells you make your way to (Specific Location)

The map itself is utterly pointless because it's just a PNG, Kyoko and Mirei are supposed to provide helpful hints incase if you're ever lost or stuck. But 2/3rds of the time they pretty much say "Figure it out yourself"

It felt like Chapter 10 - 13 was a big nothing burger in terms of progression It honestly could of been 1 or 2 chapters instead of 4. Besides the fact that Nokia did practically nothing and was able to get War Graymon and Metal Garurumon, then almost immediately after Omnimon. Again she ate a nothing burger and got Omnimon which did happen in the game.

I was already working on obtaining Omnimon on my own, The game let's you command Nokia's Omnimon as well as it being in your party for a short period of time. It kinda took away that hype for me to obtain my own Omnimon. I only have Were Garurumon and Metal Greymon at the time Nokia had obtained her Omnimon. Kinda lame.

Expect to use a 3rd party guide more than half the time throughout the playthrough, even when you're paying attention to the games story. It creates very vague hints as to where you should be going. And other times the game will just instantly take you to the quests location.

Unskipable cutscenes (if you even want to call it that) most of it is just characters gesturing and standing while a Dialogue box appears below. With no way to increase the speed, or to outright skip it entirely.

I swear there was a cutscene that was probably at least 15 minutes long. And if you weren't going to read it. It was 10 whole minutes of you pressing the same button over and over.

I don't mind reading. I play a lot!!! Of RPG's... But usually with Role Playing Games there is some sort of middle ground between combat and story, and character interactions.

What could fix this game is Quest Markers, an interactive map with layers and the ability to see NPC's in the map and to see some sort of icon indicating they have a quest for you. Reduced character dialogue with their personalities intact. I feel like the entire cast of characters could lose at least several pages of dialogue in total and it would be a bit more tolerable. Also could of included the option to skip dialogue.

The Combat is the bread and butter of this game. However the story does it's very best to hinder that aspect as much as possible throughout the entire playthrough.

I truly hope that TIME STRANGER will have some QOL improvements that are specific to the issues this game has.