The only issue I have with the story goes into the gameplay,
in that the difficulty has a lot of newb traps in it, many for the sake of the
plot. There are many “But thou must lose” battles where I’d have rather a
cutscene because one or two are fine, as they can show how threatening the
opponent is, but around the middle of the story the game will use them a lot.
One of which did actually let me damage the enemy, a higher form of Eaters
known as Eater Eve, it was a damage sponge, ripping my team in half, I almost
had it killed, and then a cutscene played, not letting me have the loot and
experience I wanted. That one was the worst of it because not only are Eaters
always damage sponges, but they have no weaknesses, and many love to have OKO
moves, one even had a move that disabled all my active Digimon’s special moves
at the start of the battle, making an already long fight go for even longer.
The game’s difficulty curves also mean the game expects you to grind,
especially because of the mechanics for Digivolution, I’ll get back to that
one, but the problem with that is that there are never really any good points
to grind because unless you have two Neutral Digimon, allowing you to force
encounters, the standard encounter rate is pretty small. Either the RNG gods
were smiling on me, or being jerks to me, but there were times where I went on
large stretches without encounters.
The basic battle mechanics are solid, with the best way to
describe it being Pokemon Triple battles with two layers of Rock Paper Scissors
combat, one for the element (Fire, water, thunder ect) and one for the type
(Data, Vaccine, Virus or Neutral). You also have a standard attack and special
moves that you can customize out of battle, that use power points. You can have
up to 11 Digimon with you at any time, with three in combat. Each Digimon gains
experience when you battle, but only the three in the battle will get boosts to
their Friendship points, one per battle, allowing you to easier perform combo
attacks, which are random at best. You can’t really mess up most stats for
Digimon, as all you need to do is level up more then the original level
requirement to get the stats needed to Digivolve if required. Now, on that
note, how does Digivolution work? Well, like in the show, the higher state
you’re in (Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, ect) The stronger you are. But you have
a finite amount of space in your storage boxes and party, and bigger Digimon
need more space, so it becomes a balancing act of if you want stronger Digimon,
or more Digimon. Don’t worry, there are expansion upgrades. As you Digivolve or
De-Digivolve, you raise a stat called the ABI stat, WHICH CAN F*!) RIGHT OFF! I
hate this stat. Ok, as I said earlier, you need specific stats to achieve some
Digivolutions. Two problems, first, the ABI stat is used for some, especially
Ultimate to Mega level, and it can only be boosted through Digivolution and
De-Digivolution, so if you don’t have a high enough ABI, back to grinding with
you, and send them back to bouncing between early stages until its high enough.
This pissed me off because of a few big examples, all of them going from
Ultimate to Mega. A lot of my party didn’t match the ABI requirements late into
the game, forcing me to do a lot of grinding, Palidramon being the worst of
them all because not only did I have to go back, if you DNA Digivolve, you only
get one of the two used back. Not to mention, when you change formes, you go
back to Level 1 every time, and the higher the stage you want to go, the harder
the requirements are, which can mess you up because unless you’ve seen the
species, what Digimon you get when you Digivolve or De-Digivolve is hidden
until you do it. Example: If you had an Agumon and wanted GeoGreymon but got
Greymon, you have to go back to Agumon, which will take you back to level 1,
and try again. There are ways around it, as DNA Digivolutions and Digivolutions
that need items are a clear tell who you’re going to get, but that only helps
so much.
Also, not all Digimon are in the game, there are many that
are missing. Most of the anime Digimon are here like the partners, mukes and
villains. But not all of them. Only three DigiArmor eggs are in the game, being
Courage, Destiny and Miricles. All the others aren’t here meaning the Digimon
that need them aren’t here either. The Spirits from Digimon Frontier? Missing.
Some Digimon are also missing some of their evolutionary lines, like Lopmon. To
compare it to Pokemon, at least all the Pokemon are inside Sun and Moon, and
it’s possible to get all of them. There’s no way to get all the Digimon in
Cyber Sleuth to my knowledge.
One technical issue I have is Localization. This feels like
a game localized quickly for the sake of a quick buck. I played as the female
avatar, Ami, because I thought her design was better than the males one, and I
do have to say not in “that” way for a reason, more on that later. A thing I
have gone on record saying to friends? “She’s had her body digitized, she
hasn’t had a sex change”. The game forgot to localize the female avatar
specific wording, as characters would at times refer to Ami as a male, and it
makes some cutscenes interesting, as there was one mission where a sales person
was trying to sell me a life like (also known as a model reuse) a character
known as Nokia. Because I was Ami, he came off as thinking Ami was a guy who
thought with her pelvis. Nothing against same sex couples, not saying Ami’s not
a Lesbian, just that the game didn’t. Another thing would have to be character
designs, as in standard anime fashion, the girls are all wearing clothes that
would make you question how comfortable they are, and are completely
impractical. Number one example would be Nokia, who I swear is only wearing a
third of a dress. It’s supposed to be a dress that has string bridging gaps
between two pieces of fabric, one for the front, one for the back. But because
she’s wearing a Jacket which may as well be the back of her dress, you can see why
I say that… right? Also, side not, going back to the story, Nokia’s a cheater.
You’ve had those moments in games right where something to do with the story
has gone against the mechanics of the game? Well, Nokia has an Agumon and a
Gabumon. First battle, they Digivolve into Wargreymon and Metal Garurumon, at
level 50. At this point I only had ultimates so I called cheater then,
especially because to Digivolve in the game, you have to go to an easily
accessible “Digi-Lab”. Next battle you see her do, she fuses them into Omnimon.
Not only does she break the rules of the game once, she does it twice in a row.
That’s bu**@)!^. The character designs are a to each their own thing, you’re
either going to enjoy them, preferably in a tamed way, or you’re not. Will say
though that the other side of the presentation, the music, is really good.
Dashing through Kowloon isn’t the only song from Cyber Sleuth that made it into
the playlist.
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| Ok, here's another example. Who goes to work but forgets to wear pants, and a bra? I swear this isn't a porn game |
The best way to describe Cyber Sleuth would be that its
easy, but loves its difficulty spikes, almost to an obscured point. When a
DemiDevimon is as hard to take out as two forms of Starmon and a Justimon
barely a few chapters later, if that, you have a bad difficulty curve. The game
itself was still fun, as I did enjoy the story, and kept playing just for the
story. But the missions are easy, most side quests are mandatory for
completion, and the games love of damage sponges and “But thou must lose”
moments bring the game down several notches. Good for beginners to Digimon,
provided game balance is tighter in other entries. I’m pushing the Adventures
review foreward a week, so the Emerald Arc is next week, because the week
after, I’m going back to Hyrule. All aboard the hype train!
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| Yeah all these screenshots come from the PS4 version. If you had to choose between the two consoles purely on visuals, be honest, which would you pick? |
Oh yeah, totally not the bad guy by the way, I'm just going to call him Kurata 2.0
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