Digimon: Cyber Sleuth is the first monster capture game I’ve played fully since Pokemon Fire Red, and it definitely made me feel like I’ve been missing out.
I was looking for a game to scratch my RPG itch, and this definitely satisfied my cravings. It’s for sure a game I’d recommend.
Story
There’s a digital space that’s been created for everyone around the world to stay connected in the form of avatars. The only downside is that, for an unlucky few who enter, their physical bodies are put into a coma. This happens to your character also but there’s a plus side, a digital version of yourself appears in the real world which can jump between the real world and the digital. You’re quickly recruited by a detective agency to investigate the comas, your ability to jump into the digital world at will being the main reason. Soon after entering the digital world you obtain the ability to capture Digimon (Thank god for that) and the story goes from here, focusing on the colliding of the digital and real world. Along with this story there’s a lot of…. Japanese-ness for lack of a better word… There are some truly terrible filler quests which consist of ‘looking for the best restaurant’ for example, which can be frustrating when all you want to do is level up your Digimon. There are also side quests such as finding a Digimon’s missing item or defeating the bad hacker, these become a bit menial later in the game as they’re more often than not super easy and don’t add many experience points. Overall however the story line is enough to keep you chugging along and there are some really great humorous moments and some very cool (although not many) anime cut scenes.
Graphics
Nothing to complain about here but also nothing to rave about. The general graphics are fine in the open world, pretty basic, it is pretty cool that whichever Digimon you choose as your main 3 follow you around. A lot of shortcuts are taken where dialogue mainly consists of a static image of those involved and lots of text. It’s a standard anime art style for a video game which works for what it is and adds to the fun Japanese feel of it all.
Gameplay
The combat again is pretty standard for a turn based monster capture game. You can choose to attack or defend and you have a selection of different special moves for each digimon which are learnt by levelling up. Different types do more or less damage to others which you need to pay close attention to when facing some of the tougher enemies, you can’t necessarily just have lots of strong digimon in one type.
Where i really got addicted to the game was levelling up/grinding. I became so addicted to getting my digimon to their max levels and their highest digivolution that nothing else seemed to matter, every time i entered a tough area i grinded the enemies there so i would level up as much as possible. It’s also not as simple as just levelling up and then you have the better one, if you’ve played any digimon game you’ll know, you have to fulfil certain criterias for a certain evolution and to achieve this you’ll often need to digivolve then de-digivolve. Figuring this out becomes very fun and addctive.
Managing your digimon is really fun, you have memory for your main party which you increase as the game goes on, within this you need to decide who to keep (different levels take up different amounts of memory). Additionally to this you have a cyber farm where you can train digimon, instruct them to craft items or find new cases. This helps with the leveling up and allows you to constantly rotate your roster.
I thoroughly enjoyed this side of the game. Figuring out who i wanted to take with me and who was worth levelling up.
It’s a really great monster capture game with fun combat and a lot of reason to grind and level up your Digimon. The story line is enjoyable enough and gives you a good reason to play the game through. There are definite frustrations with filler quests and the game sometimes making you pointlessly traipse to one area and making you immediately go back. I’m nearly at 40 hours and think i’ll probably finish it after the main story line.
7.5/10