I got this game with the intention of playing through it with my wife. Since she was at the helm for the entire game, these are her thoughts:

"At first glance, this game should have been a wonderful trip through my nostalgic feelings for the Digimon franchise. Familiar faces, goofy attacks, all the bells and whistles of what made Digimon great. What I got, however, was nothing short of a pedantic slog of an experience.

"The digivolution system is almost entirely nonsensical, where you'll get a Digimon and think "oh, they're supposed to digivolve into this other one that I REALLY want" but the digivolution trees just send you on this weird rabbit hole. Plus, the system of needing to digivolve, then de-digivolve, and then digivolve them again to HOPEFULLY get the Digimon you ACTUALLY want is just useless padding and doesn't enhance the gaming experience. It instead makes it arbitrarily frustrating and acts like more of a timesink than anyone should be expected to endure.

"Storywise, the direction is all over the place. The game attempts to be this deep philosophical dive into metaphysical terminology and spaces, but really, it's just another 'we have to save the world because humans screwed up' that gets wrapped up in tons and tons of random battles. The game is built around annoying grinding and leveling and de-digivolving. I spent 77 hours playing something that really should have only taken half that time.

"I would also question why only a select few shops sold actually relevant and necessary items, like revives and stat boosters, especially near the end of the game when you really can't leave to go to other areas. You essentially get locked in during Chapter 18 and have to hope you have enough of those items to get through the final dungeon and both phases of the Final Boss.

"To summarize, the game felt much longer than it needed to be. It felt like watching a movie you could see all the plot beats for, but you can't leave and have to sit through it for another 2 hours while the movie acts as though it's super clever. I would only recommend this game for people who have a lot of time on their hands and not much aspiration to do anything productive for that day. I'd rather watch a marathon of Angela Anaconda than play the Hacker's Memory part of this.

The turn based combat is pretty simple but very intuitive, dynamic and fast paced compared to previous turn based Digimon games since the PS1 days. It feels like a very straight forward evolution of games like DW2, DW3 and the DS Titles with some SMT / Persona influence. Collecting and managing mons can get a bit grindy but it still a very enjoyable experience due good variety to engage with the system mechanics and decently expansive evolution trees.

The thing I dig the most about this game tho is how it taps into a wide range of themes within its writing, it can vary from pure nonsense (and hilarious) japanese humour to complex social problems or some deep web creepy stuff (really, there are some crazy sub stories out there in this game).

I just really appreciate how Digimon always had something to say about plenty of complex human / society problems since the animes, even if it doesn't get as deep as something like SMT / Persona games when talking inside the JRPG spectre, but it's really nice to see that the series still doesn't play the safe route of writing stuff that appeals mostly for kids, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it feels refreshing when compared to other similar games / series.

Now, when is the next Cyber Sleuth game coming out? I'll probably be there day 1 if it happens, this is the good stuff 👍

insert good review here

I like Digimon, enough said.

Have fun grinding exp for 30 hours just to do a POE moment so I can get 3 ulti

It's a fun game! The story is long, but the side quests keep you engaged. I recommend if you want to play a game long term.

The peak of RPG style digimon game that started with Digimon World 2, it has a few issues but this series has come a long way in the past 2 decades. If you like RPG's, pokemon, persona, and anime, youll thoroughly enjoy this game.

My only issues are the simplicity of the ABI and digivolution systems, and the farm being bare bones compared to how it used to be. That- and no cutscene skips or textskipping, the bizarre conversation at times, stereotypical archtypes of characters popular in anime and video games that doesnt do anything special with those concepts.

My nit picks are the lack of custom character creation for having a silent protagonist besides outfits, have little oufits, the lazy accessory system for digimon, and lack of the digital world in game.

Solid 7/10 that can be elevated even higher quite easily with their next game (if it ever comes out). Thy just need to make a more meaningful digivolution system to make it satisfying to get those endgame mega digimon, a character creator if its another silent protagonist, and like many modern Bandai games, let us put accessories anywhere on our digimon and customize it.

Honestly, these were the best Digimon games that have come out. The Cyber Sleuth experience was MUCH more of an experience that I'd been looking for in Digimon games in the past but either had to settle or just kinda deal with what was available.

Okay so I don't think that my feelings are gonna change regardless of how much more I play, so here are my simple thoughts on the game:

Tl;dr- I recommend the game for big Digimon fans, NOT for RPG fans, this game is a terrible to navigate RPG, but a great Digimon building/collecting game.

-Great Digimon game with fun battling that you'd expect with various cool Digimon from across the spectrum
-Has some cool mods available( I'm not using any but there are some neat ones for those that want more Digis in their game)

-TERRIBLE RPG in terms of:
-major lack of quality of life pretty much everywhere
-Needless backtracking
-Tedious grinding without cheesing the game
-Dialog that could be cut in half & still accomplish the same thing in the end
-The lack of a proper full map in dungeons to refer to, the best you get is a mini map that is okay at best, & the lack of direction to help the player figure out where to go that boils down to "If you don't know where to go, go talk to an NPC that is likely a bit out of your way for help on where to go, but she won't always actually tell you where to go."
-What kind of Detective/Slueth DOESN'T keep a notepad to write these things down?!
-The ABI(Ability) system is just not good, it makes getting better Digimon & higher levels available needlessly tedious without (again) cheesing the system.

like the game because there are a lot of digimon you can go for however there are some things thats not so good... (now my points sound like it would be a bad review but i really like this game a lot for all the digimons in it also all the other digimon games for pc is way worse)

1: Remember to save if you die you can go hours back in the game because auto save is not really a thing (got send back to the last checkpoint when i died which was 3-4 hours back)

2: im really missing some Digimon like MaloMyotismon, Mummymon and Reapermon

3: the ABI system takes forever to get to the digiomn you want (need to get a rookie to champion and dow again multiple times thats like 30 levels X10 taking forever)

4: Memory slots which defines how many digimon you dcan have with you and how big they can be... it would be fine if not for need specific digimon to do various like running fast (virus rookie type) and encounters (free rookie type) and you only have 20 slots to start with (4 digimon at rookie class and you can have any champions) this is anoying cause now you need to have 2 digimon with you that does not do the fighting (unless the digimon you go for are the classes you need) and you need those 2 powers to get through the game faster which i will cover in the next point.

5: the maps are too big/or do not have enough spawnpoints or digilabs it take forever to get to one side of the map to the other since you move so slowly and there is only spawn points at the start of the zone (or a litte outside of the zone) so farming is anoying as hell also when you are done you need to go all the way back to start to digivolve (really the digilab should have been a thing you could acces at any time)

6: now you have these dungeons which farming a lot faster so maybe it would not be so bad with these large maps... if not for the fact that they are low level compared to the maps so they are not even worth it most of the time exept in the Cybersleuth, in hackers memory you get no dungeons at all for a long time and when you do as said they are really low lvl for that reason i did never finish hackers memory (did complete cybersleuth and to chapter 17 in hackers memory) cause it took too long to grind, did try again while writings this review