Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Review (PS4)

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is a game I’ve been greatly anticipating since before it’s Western announcement because, as you may know, I love Digimon. A lot.

 

 

Cyber Sleuth is the game Digimon fans have been waiting for, and it’s a mature take on the series that’s primarily been aimed at children but always had darker undertones. Cyber Sleuth certainly isn’t aimed at children (Kyoko’s breasts are half exposed at all times!) with young adults seemingly being the target audience here. You can pick to be male or female (although it seems the dialogue was initially written for a male lead) and changes their name. I played as the girl who was given the name Ami. There’s a digital world called EDEN which anybody can use, but there’s recently been an illness related to it with people falling into a coma and not waking up, and Ami finds herself in the unique position that she’s in both worlds, and so it’s up to her to find out what’s going on.

 

Your character may not say much but you do get to pick a few choices and see what they’re thinking, but it’s the rest of the cast where the characters truly shine. Kyoko, boss of the Kuremi Detective Agency, hires you after finding out about your unique situation. She’s chill and laidback, confident that she’ll meet both her goals for herself and the agency. Your friends, the energetic Nokia and brooding but thoughtful Arata, are fellow EDEN users who are helping you to get your body back as well as to protect Digimon from being mistreated, and they’ll sometimes join you in battle. There are a few more colourful characters you’ll meet on your journey, and it’s fun to see how they progress the story and flesh out your characters. Even chatting to NPCs can be quite fun!

 

Cyber Sleuth 2

Cyber Sleuth is pleasantly traditionally turn-based, with three party members being able to attack, defend, use a skill or an item, or to escape from battle. Auto-attack usually means to have your party attack with their standard attacks rather than their SP consuming attacks but not here — your Digimon will happily throw their SP away instead! Other than that, the combat is solid, easily accessible and pretty to look at. It’s a fair challenge on normal although JRPG fanatics may want to opt for hard (or see how it goes as you can change difficulty in-game), and it’s clear that Bandai Namco and developer Media Vision have kept fans of the series in mind when creating Cyber Sleuth, helping it to appeal to those new to games or the genre and pleasing long-time fans, like myself, hugely.

 

A huge part of Digimon is being able to digivolve (evolve) into a stronger Digimon with even greater movies. You can digivolve and de-digivolve to find the perfect Digimon for you with loads of options at hand, and you’ll have to meet specific requirements to digivolve such as having a certain amount of health, strength or other various stats and, of course, being a high enough level. Any Digimon in your party will level up regardless of if they’ve been in battle or not, although some stats require them to be in battle. You can have up to 12 Digimon although good luck with that because your Digimon take up more space depending on their form so Champion takes up more memory than Rookie, and Ultimate more than Champion, etc. Digimon who don’t fit in your party can stay in the Digi-Bank or raise their stats on the Digimon farm.

 

Cyber Sleuth is somewhat open-world with multiple areas based on real locations found in Japan like Shibuya, Akibahara and Shinjuku. You can choose which area to visit although there isn’t a whole lot to do in each one, but they’re nice to explore regardless. It’s cool to see some areas that are merging with the digital world, and you’ll only be able to fight Digimon in a digital world. Although Cyber Sleuth can sometimes be a bit vague with where to go or what exactly you’re supposed to be doing, it doesn’t take too long to explore each area if Kyoko or Mirei aren’t giving you any clues.

 

Cyber Sleuth 1

This review is based on the Vita version which is the platform it was created for – and the only version available in Japan. It’s a perfect fit on the system and is well-optimised for it, proving that Pokemon aren’t the only monsters you should be carrying in your pocket. It looks gorgeous, has fantastic character design by one of my favourite artists Yasuda Suzuhito, creative dungeon design and the way that the Digimon themselves have been re-created is nothing short of amazing. It’s a beautiful game that’s managed to take what I love about Digimon and present itself in a way that can appeal to a much larger audience like the series truly deserves.

 

Despite some of the trailers featuring an English voice-over, there’s no English dub in the game. Only Japanese is available which is fine as I have no faults about the acting and I understand that releasing Cyber Sleuth in the West is perhaps one of the riskier moves that Bandai Namco have performed. But when a game is so dialogue heavy other languages would be appreciated. Regardless, the voice-acting and OST are both pleasures to listen to – the only thing I wish we had more of was vocal songs.

 

If people are expecting something along the lines of Digimon World on PS1 then they won’t find that here, but if you want a Digimon game with a solid and intriguing story, hundreds of potential Digimon to use in battle and gameplay and audio that’ll amaze you then you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you choose to not pick up Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. I’ve loved many Digimon games, but this is by far the best game that we’ve had in the series in a good decade or so (obviously, I cannot include Japan-exclusive games in my statement) and you won’t want to miss it.

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