After missing chances left and right to get my hands on a preview of Digimon Story: Time Stranger at PAX West 2025, it finally happened. Thanks to Bandai Namco, I was able to get a four-hour Digimon Story: Time Stranger hands-on preview This game is my second most anticipated title of the year, with the only one above it being Trails in the Sky First Chapter.
Digimon Story
The Digimon story games originated from the PS Vita title, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. It was also released on PS4 on the same day, but it’s clear that the foundation of the game was built for the Vita. It was an amazing experience, and it was filled with a ton of love for the Digimon series. Later on, it received a sequel known as Hacker’s Memory.
The main crux of these games was JRPG turn-based mechanics, with Digimon monster taming. They also dealt a lot with the digital world and how it affected the real world. Something I love a lot with the .Hack games from Bandai Namco and Cyberconnect2.
To sum up my experience, I am a casual Digimon fan but a hardcore Digimon Story fan. I do love Digimon, and I do remember it fondly, but I haven’t kept up with absolutely everything, though I did get a chance and really loved playing through Digimon Survive.
Time Stranger
You are an agent working with a company called ADAMAS. We got to experience the very beginning of the game, and we were asked what avatar we wanted to use: The girl with the hat or the guy with the goggles. Whoever you choose, the other person will be your virtual operator in explaining what is going on in the game. You also get asked if you want the story difficulty, balanced difficulty, or hard difficulty. I chose balanced for my playthrough.
The avatar we didn’t choose shows up on our phone at the beginning of the game, asking if we are heading towards an anomalous phenomena. Anomalous phenomena are described as earthquakes or mysterious monsters that just appear out of nowhere. One thing that is immediately apparent is that there is a budget behind this game. There is actual voice acting, and the graphics look amazing. Bandai Namco had us play on Razer laptops running the game at 4K, outputting to an HP Omen 4K monitor. It was running at a consistent 60 FPS.
I reached a line of protestors trying to get behind a wall that was erected by the government to hide something. After the main guard gets distracted by a woman in the crowd, I made my way to a staircase that takes me to the sewers below the wall. It is there you are introduced the Digimon or Digital Monsters. The operator can send you one of three Digimon they have available at their disposal. The three they give you the choice from are Patamon, Demidevimon, and Gomamon.
I chose my favorite rookie Digimon, Patamon, and gameplay can now begin. You start by fighting some other Rookie Digimon. This is where the game teaches you about the Digimon attributes. The main rock, paper, scissors elements are from the original Digimon Story games. Vaccine defeats virus, virus defeats data, and data defeats vaccine. The difference is that there are now four other attributes to pay attention to. You have Free, No Data, Variable, and Unknown. In the original Digimon Story games, all In-Training Digimon were free attributes, which meant they weren’t strong or weak against anything.
Patamon gets the air shot skill, which doesn’t just deal data attribute damage, but also deals wind element damage. Digimon can be weak to the attribute but strong against the element or vice versa. If you can use a weak element with an attribute Digimon that is strong against the opposing Digimon, you can dish out some serious damage. After you are done with some manual battles with Digimon, you get introduced to a new mechanic. Letting the Digimon surprise attack the other Digimon on the field. This can just defeat the Digimon outright or have the enemy start the fight injured. The Digimon that attacks is automatically selected based on the Digimon in your party that is strong against the Digimon that you are attacking.
Afterward, debris falls on the path ahead of you, but you can now use your Digimon to attack the debris. You get surprised by a giant Digimon and have to run away. This is where you meet Inori. If you were following my coverage of Digimon Story: Time Stranger or watched the trailer released for the story, you will know she eventually becomes bonded with Aegiomon. Inori seems to know you, and the operator lets you know that Inori is whitelisted, so she can send requests specifically to you, but they don’t know why.
As you run off from the giant Digimon, you can now explore the area around you. There are chests and things you can grab to add to your inventory. One such thing is an attachment skill. These you can equip to your Digimon to use that skill during combat.
Leaving The Sewers
As I reached the open area of the sewers, MetalGreymon, which was the giant Digimon, caught up to me. Before MetalGreymon tries to fight Patamon, a new Ultra Digimon takes the stage as Omnimon shows up to protect my Patamon. Inori gives me a bunch of HP capsules as I learn that I can use items and attack on the same turn. Patamon’s attack basically does nothing, but luckily, Omnimon uses Transcendant Sword to dish out a ton of damage every turn.
MetalGreymon kicks the bucket finally, after a few turns of healing Patamon and letting Omnimon carry the fight. MetalGreymon turns into red data cubes as he loses. I leave the sewers and make my way to a building in shambles that is said to be the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
This is when the scan mechanic finally comes into play. In the Digimon Story games prior, when you fought and defeated an enemy Digimon, you were able to get a percentage scan of them on your person. Now that scan technology was unlocked for me in Digimon Story: Time Stranger. You can fight a bunch of In-Training Digimon in this building and convert that scan into your party. The percentage needs to be at 100% to be converted into your Digimon party, but if you wait a bit until the scan is 200%, then you can gain stronger Digimon by converting that data.
I took a little longer here than probably most of the people at the preview, solely because I wanted to add so many Digimon to my party. Plus, due to the personalities and the giant amount of Digimon you can Digivolve to, it is encouraged to grab duplicate Digimon. This is also where it is wise to learn how to build up your party.
You can have six Digimon in your immediate party, with three of them on the front lines. You can also have up to three guest Digimon. You can swap out your active Digimon with any of the ones not on the front line in your party. I would recommend having at least two of every main attribute in the party. Guest Digimon, you can’t control and they will do whatever move they want.
I broke down some walls, grabbed some treasure chests, and made my way through the building. I also got some equipment from some of the chests that I could find in the building. Equipment can be put on your Digimon to increase their base stats. Even though you can’t have all your Digimon in your party, even in reserve, they can get experience points. Focus on the team you want to build in your six slots and don’t worry about not having strong enough Digimon with the other ones, as they will also start gaining levels if you are grinding through some Digimon to scan.
Another giant Digimon blasts away the floor you are running on, and now you have to find your way to get across to the next building and follow Inori. I had to find Biyomon by breaking down some more walls and going around the hallway to get where they were located. This is when it gets very apparent that they may look familiar but the voices for these Digimon are very different. Biyomon had a deep voice for such a cute birdo.
Sadly, Biyomon was correct in saying they couldn’t carry me over to the other side as they got close, but fell to the ground. Now I had to get back up by finding the stairs. In this next section, there are a lot of Digimon, but many are lying on the ground, collapsed. This is when I discovered a very annoying Digimon in the wild, Kurisarimon. It uses a move called Data Crusher that has a chance at pixelating your Digimon, and that makes it unable to use skills.
This is also a place where I took longer than probably everyone else, as I was working on converting more Digimon and getting all of my current Digimon to level 5. This is also where we got access to Digivolution. Now we can Digivolve our In-Training Digimon we converted, and I went straight for Agumon.
Thanks to Kurisarimon, I also got to see the dying spurs. If a Digimon in combat takes a hit that doesn’t knock them out but gets them close, they muster their strength on their next turn, which increases their stats and their critical attack chance.
Digimon Digital Monsters
Just like in the prior Digimon Story games, Digimon might send you messages on your mobile device. You can respond to them, and it can influence their personality. The personality types are on a T-chart graph. On the left side, you have Understanding, and directly opposite of that on the right side is Heart. The top is affection, and the bottom is companionship.
Based on the Personality type of the Digimon, it can affect their growth during leveling up as well as their passive buffs. You can influence the Digimon’s personality by talking to them or responding to their messages. If you stay still in an area for long enough, you will activate regeneration mode. It passively heals all your Digimon, and it also allows you to talk to the ones directly in your front line.
If you feel like you have too many duplicates, you can turn them into experience points for another Digimon. The last Digimon was taking its time leveling up to level five, so I decided to just convert one of the In-Training duplicate Digimon I had into experience points to the Digimon lacking behind in experience points.
After my front-line Digimon were level five, I made my way to the roof to find a giant battle of Digimon above the building. A stray Kuwagamon leaves the fight to find its place, attacking us on the roof. That is when I unlocked Cross Arts and was able to use it to increase the base stats of my front-line Digimon. Cross Arts is when you use your receiver to activate a buff or a debuff. It requires the circle gauge on the attack HUD to be full, and then you can activate it.
It was good that I could change Digimon during combat since two of the three of my starting lineup did very little damage to Kuwagamon. I switched to other Digimon to get ones that could target the boss’s weakness.
Kuwagamon is then defeated and turns into red cubes. A figure in black then appears as a vortex comes out. Two giant Digimon start to clash as the black figure goes after Inori. As these giant Digimon fight, an explosion of white appears on top of the government building and sends everyone around into a white void. When your character reappears, they are next to three Digimon guarding a white egg. The black figure goes after it, and as you try to stop them, the egg explodes, and you travel into yet another void. There is a bit more we were able to explore, but for the most part, this is where the first section of the playthrough ended.
The Abyss
The next section we were allowed to play has us in the Abyss. We have a bunch of Champion-level Digimon and can even have the option of moving faster by letting a Digimon carry us. We have a guest Digimon of Aegiomon who follows around Inori. She has a name now instead of girl who needs to be protected. We can go straight to where we are supposed to go or explore the Abyss. In the Abyss we can go to the In Between that has facilities to explore. The important one was the Digifarm. The Digifarm was in the old Digimon Story games, but this time it is expanded. You can place a tile down for a specific Digimon and even place a training area that will enhance their level, and even affect their personality type.
Your objective is to talk to Shellmon, who is hiding from everyone and needs medicine. When you find them, they are hiding a Divermon that is part of the Titans. The medicine they needed was really for this Divermon, who was hurt. Once healed, the village gets attacked by the Titans.
If you are being carried or riding your Digimon and you hit an enemy Digimon, then it acts as if that Digimon attacked the enemy, and it deals damage before combat starts. So you don’t have to lose momentum by using a Digimon Attack with the trigger.
Once Divermon figures out the scale of the attack, he wants to join you as a guest and talk to the boss of the Titans, Sharkmon. You now have two guest Digimon in your party with Aegiomon and Divermon. Negotiations do not go over well with the generals of the Titans, the Dragomon. War with the Titans is now in full swing as they trap the village, and it is up to you and Divermon to go straight to Sharkmon.
After you make it down to Sharkmon by getting even more help with Submarimon. With Submarimon, you can go against the current in the water. Now you can travel straight to Sharkmon. Sharkmon does not like Divermon’s attempt at stopping the battle, and thus, you have to fight him with everyone. Even with having three guest party members now, it is still a bit of a challenge. At times, Sharkmon will tilt his head down as he prepares a massive attack to hurt your party. For you to stop this big attack, you have to attack his head and defeat the individual health of the head.
This giant fight with Sharkmon is where the demo ends. It may not sound like a lot, reading these words, but this section was where a third of my playtime was spent. I spent a lot of time exploring and going around, trying out different party types, and even used one of the Digimon that had a variable attribute. There were a lot of In-Between spots you could find as you traversed the Abyss. You won’t have to worry about not having a spot to go to the Digifarm, with how often they come up.
I am so excited for the release of Digimon Story: Time Stranger. I spent about three and a half hours in the game, and all I wanted to do after the fact was play more Digimon Story. October is a crowded month for video games, but I do think this is the one to get for that month.
Digimon Story Time Stranger will be released on October 3rd, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can also read our preview of the game from Anime Expo!
