Digimon Story Time Stranger
Digimon Story Time Stranger, often shortened to Digimon Time Stranger, is a turn-based RPG about recruiting, raising and fighting alongside Digimon. Media.Vision developed it, Bandai Namco Entertainment publishes it, and it is the seventh game in the Digimon Story subseries.
Its plot stands on its own with a new cast and setting, which makes prior knowledge of Cyber Sleuth or Hacker’s Memory unnecessary. You take the role of an agent working for ADAMAS, a covert bureau that looks into anomalies in Tokyo, and the case at hand soon spreads across two worlds and two points in time. PC players get it through Steam, and console versions exist for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- A fully voiced cast, in English for the first time - This is the first Digimon Story game with an English dub, and the original Japanese voices remain available as an alternative. On-screen text comes in 11 languages. Masafumi Takada, composer for earlier entries, returns for the soundtrack, while Reche sings the theme song “Wherever You Are” in both Japanese and English.
- Battles that respect your schedule - Grinding is part of any monster-raising RPG, but Time Stranger trims the busywork:
- Battle animations run at 2x, 3x or 5x speed.
- Auto-battle hands routine fights over to your team.
- Field attacks knock out weaker wild Digimon before a battle screen ever loads.
- Digimon sitting in storage still collect a reduced share of EXP, even when they never leave the bench.
- Two worlds with room to roam - Shinjuku and Akihabara are rebuilt at a far larger scale than the compact Tokyo districts of Cyber Sleuth, and the Digital World contributes forests, waterways and abyssal zones of its own. DigiRide speeds up travel: four-legged partners such as Garurumon carry you on their backs, humanoid ones scoop you up in their arms, and Beelzebumon brings his motorcycle.
Story and Lore
Tokyo is the starting point. Sent into a sealed-off Shinjuku to investigate an anomaly at the top of ADAMAS’s threat scale, your agent runs into an unknown creature – a Digimon – moments before an explosion levels the district. That disaster becomes known as the Shinjuku Inferno. The agent then wakes up eight years earlier, with a chance to learn what caused it and keep both worlds from collapsing.
Early in the investigation, a space-time rift pulls the agent, a schoolgirl named Inori Misono and her partner Aegiomon into Iliad. This Digital World borrows heavily from Greek and Roman mythology. A Digimon faction called the Titans is tearing it apart in a civil war, and the fallout leaks into the human world as the very anomalies ADAMAS has been chasing.
A few terms come up constantly:
- Digimon: ADAMAS reports classify them as phase electron life forms, made of organic matter and electric signals at once.
- Anomaly classes: incidents are graded by severity, and both Inori and Aegiomon end up flagged as Class A anomalies.
- Past and present: whatever the agent changes in the past persists once the story returns to the present day, and the second half of the plot is built on those consequences.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Building a team
Your first partner comes from ADAMAS, which offers a choice of Patamon, Gomamon or DemiDevimon. Wild Digimon roam the field as visible symbols rather than random encounters, and every fight against a species pushes up its scan rate. Once that figure reaches 100%, its data can be converted into a Digimon of your own. Holding out until it nears 200% produces a noticeably stronger one.
Turn-based combat
Three Digimon fight at a time, with three more in reserve that can swap in without costing a turn. Story guests occasionally join and act on their own. Damage comes down to two overlapping systems:
- Attributes: seven in total. Virus is weak to Vaccine, and Vaccine is weak to Data.
- Elements: 11 types, Fire, Water and Plant among them, each with its own resistances and weaknesses.
With a favorable Attribute and Element lined up against a target, damage can climb to 300%; the wrong pairing cuts it to 50%. Exploiting weaknesses also charges your Digivice with CP. Spend it on Cross Arts, agent techniques that fuse the Digivice with a Digimon’s power for buffs, defensive effects or follow-up attacks.
Personalities and Digivolution
Every Digimon carries one of 16 personalities, sorted into four groups. The group decides which stat grows fastest (Valor: ATK, Philanthropy: SPI, Wisdom: INT, Amicability: DEF), and the specific personality layers a secondary stat on top. A Daring Digimon, for instance, develops both ATK and DEF quickly.
Personality matters for Digivolution as well. Paths branch instead of running in a straight line, and the requirements for a form can include stat thresholds, a particular personality or a minimum Agent Rank. De-Digivolution returns a Digimon to an earlier stage, which opens the door to rerouting it toward a different Mega. DNA Digivolution, merging two Digimon into one, is also part of the system.
Agent Skills, gear and the Digifarm
- Agent Skills: Anomaly Points earned through play unlock passive perks such as faster EXP gain, easier Digivolution or bonuses for one personality group. Agent Rank climbs with missions and story progress, and higher ranks make more Cross Arts available.
- Attachment Skills and equipment: skills slot in freely to change a Digimon’s attack element or grant extra abilities, while equipment boosts stats and resistances.
- Digifarm: a base where Digimon train without you. Food deepens Bond, training items target specific stats, and farm items decorate the space.
Characters and Factions
Main cast
- Dan Yuki / Kanan Yuki: the two selectable protagonists. Whichever one you skip stays in the story as your operator, relaying instructions from ADAMAS headquarters.
- Inori Misono: a kind-hearted high school student whose past ties her to the crisis.
- Aegiomon: Inori’s partner Digimon, who fights beside your party as an extra, computer-controlled member.
- Dr. Yuki: the protagonist’s adoptive father, founder of ADAMAS and the researcher who first documented Digivolution.
- Kosuke Misono: Inori’s father.
- Shoita Kuroi and Asuna Shiroki: fellow ADAMAS agents.
Factions
Inside ADAMAS, Digimon are treated as both a suspected cause of world-collapse events and the best available weapon against them. Iliad answers to the Olympos XII, twelve deity Digimon named after Roman gods; Junomon, Merukimon and Minervamon are among those the agent meets. Their place in the story mirrors the Royal Knights’ role in Cyber Sleuth.
Opposing them stand the Titans. Their campaign against Iliad’s guardians is what pushes the Digital World toward collapse, and stopping it becomes the agent’s central task.
Editions
Three digital editions cover most storefronts:
- Standard Edition: the base game.
- Deluxe Edition: base game, Season Pass (Additional Digimon & Episode Packs 1–3 plus the Golden Moai farm item) and the Costume Cyber Sleuth Set.
- Ultimate Edition: all Deluxe content, plus the Costume Pack (Swimwear, Chosen Children and Digimon Costume sets, each with a side mission), the Costume Public Safety Suit & Special Supplies Set, the Cyber Sleuth BGM Pack and an early unlock of special Agumon and Gabumon whose conditions for Digivolving into specific forms are already met.
Each Additional Digimon & Episode Pack brings five new Digimon and a story episode. On Nintendo platforms, the two upper tiers carry the names Digital Deluxe and Digital Ultimate. Collectors had a fourth option through Bandai Namco’s European store: a Collector’s Edition pairing the Ultimate content with a 15 cm Jupitermon: Wrath Mode figure, an artbook, a metal case and premium trading cards.