I'm a huge Digimon fan, I've always loved watching the Digimon anime shows after school, back in the early 2000s, but I haven't really played many Digimon games over all these years, only one of the Digimon World games on PlayStation some 20 years ago (barely remember it). I didn't even know these newer games are a thing, I stumbled across it by accident, and I gotta say, I'm absolutely loving it.

But nostalgia aside, some info in case you're thinking about getting the game. This game is basically the Digimon Cyber Sleuth base game bundled with its only expansion - Hacker's Memory (and, yes, your character is both Cyber Sleuth detective and a hacker). It's sort of a combination of a creature collector/battler and a visual novel/RPG, I'd say. It's very similar to the Monster Hunter Stories games for example, but with more story and cut-scenes constantly thrown at you. You can collect different Digimon, then use 3 of them in turn-based battles, and after gathering enough exp. and meeting some other stats requirements you can evolve them into stronger ones. If you're familiar with Digimon, it's the usual baby > rookie > champion > ultimate > mega > mega+ evolutions, but DNA, Armour and other evolutions are available as well. The total number of Digimon that are available for you to collect and use is an incredible 341, and it includes classic ones such as Agumon and Gabumon, but also some of the newer ones (I believe it includes the majority from the shows Digimon Adventure, Digimon 02, Digimon Tamers, Digimon Frontier, Digimon Data Squad and Digimon Fusion).
To me, the collecting and battling part of the game is absolutely great, but I do have a bit of a problem with the way the game handles story and dialogue. The story of the base game and the expansion in itself are nothing extraordinary, but they're fine, however the way the game presents dialog is extremely annoying, not gonna lie. You basically have character dialog as text and you have to click to advance it. That in itself would be fine, however the amount of such dialogue you're forced to go through, even for some minor side quests, is absolutely too much. At times you're literally locked in and forced to suffer through some of the characters endlessly yapping absolute nonsense, some of which is very cringe as well. Whoever was doing the localisation from Japanese to English didn't really get a lot of the cultural references and specificities right, so a lot of the times you'll also be asking yourself what the characters are even talking about, because the translation not only fails to convey the original message, it doesn't even try to paraphrase or explain it so that it at least fits the dialogue. The game is also extremely bad at explaining where you need to go for your current quest at times, and doesn't tell you about some of the stats on Digimon and how they affect digivolutions. But regardless, those things might be a tad bit annoying, but the game is fantastic and really has tons of content.
As you can see, I'm nearly at 60 hours played at the time of writing this, and I'm still far from done tbh. I finished the base game and am currently only somewhere at the beginning of the expansion right now, so you'll definitely get a lot of play time out of this game, no matter your play-style. From what I can see, the game is currently on a huge sale with a 90% discount, so I absolutely recommend it, well worth it. Just watch a video before you get it or something, because, as I've said, the game is good, but it's also kinnda weird, and there are some irritating things about the game, so the game does take some getting used to as a whole.

All in all, very enjoyable game, and there's a new game coming later this year too. Not a direct sequel to the story, I believe, but the same style of game, with even more Digimon to collect, so there's that to look forward to as well!

(Warning, a LOT of yapping and probably bad grammer srry)

Before playing this game i had NEVER touched a single Digimon game in my life. When I was little I came across this series via the cartoon on Netflix and fell in love with it. funnily enough, I never knew that there were actual games made on it (I was a dumb ahh kid lol). I've mostly grew up playing pokemon games and while I do like them they've gotten a bit stale nowadays. For a long while I've always wanted to try out a Digimon game because the franchise holds a very special place in my heart. Then i came across cyber sluth, a game that I've had my eye on for quite some time... and on a 90% discount sale! After much consideration I decided this was a golden opportunity And i wasn't gonna waste my chance. so i bought it and gave it a shot and... im loving it so far!

The gameplay combat wise is super fun! i'm still getting used to certain aspects of Digimon but thats okay! Also slight note and i might sound crazy: this might be the only game that makes level grinding fun thanks to the whole Digievolve mechanic. Everyone likes to joke that Digimon is a Pokemon ripoff but i feel like Digimon is what pokemon CAN be if game freak LOCKED TF IN.


TL:DR Friendship ended with Pokemon, Digimon Cyber sluth is my new best friend now

This is fun to play but damn this long text chatting getting lame to play take for ever for the CS to leave