Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Review - An Investigation Into The Digital World of Roleplaying Games.
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch 2 (Backwards Compatibility)
Also On: PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Developer: Media.Vision
Release: March 12th, 2015
Rating: Teen
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is a role-playing game, played from a third-person perspective where players control a human character with the ability to command Digimon, digital creatures with their own unique abilities who do battle against other Digimon.
While major spoilers will not be revealed during this review, some photos may contain plot elements that are best avoided if you want a clean slate heading in!
No multiplayer content was considered for this review.
At the end of 2024, I made a New Year's Resolution that I was going to begin broadening my horizons by trying new things.
I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and explore things that I may have missed in the past because I let my tastes and familiarity dissuade me from breaking out and discovering new favorites.
This included trying new foods, listening to new music, reading new comics and books, opening my mind to new ideas and beliefs, and of course, playing new video games.
One genre that has always made my brain immediately zone out is JRPGs.
Don't get me wrong, Pokémon has been a staple for me since I was a kid and Inindo: Way of the Ninja on the Super Nintendo was one of the first games that blew my mind due to its scope.
But something about the genre, likely the monumental amount of time it takes to roll credits and the convoluted and confusing story beats, has always left me ignoring these titles as they release.
Yet in sticking with my resolution, when I saw a Bluesky post that Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition was on sale for the Nintendo Switch for like $3, I couldn't pass it up.
I'd already cleared all the Mario Kart World Grand Prix tracks and put an additional 15 hours into Pokémon Scarlet thanks to the next-gen upgrades, so my shiny new Nintendo Switch 2 needed SOMETHING to get me back on it.
And so, our story begins!
The beginning of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth didn't hook me right away, in fact, I almost put the game down after about 5 hours of playtime.
While I considered myself somewhat of a Digimon fan after growing up with the Tamagotchi-like devices, watching the anime during its first season, and playing the hell out of the fighting game, Digimon Rumble Arena, on the original PlayStation, the actual world of Digimon and the themes it pursued were foreign to me.
My expectations were closer to the Pokémon titles. I thought I'd show up, capture some Digimon, beat up some bad guys, and head home.
... but as it turns out, that is not AT ALL what Digimon is about.
As you can see in the above screenshot, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth did NOT shy away from adult themes.
There's plenty of sexual innuendos, sure, but there are also a lot of heavy themes in the game including loss and mourning.
There is even a story beat that ponders the role of some omnipotent being in relation to everything that has unfolded up to that point!
Suffice to say, I didn't really know what I was getting into with this game, but the more I played, the more I liked it.
As you start your journey, you pick a starter Digimon, but the choice doesn't matter much since you can find and create the other digimon you missed out on within an hour or so of playing.
Early in the game, you become the assistant to a character named Kyoko, a detective in Tokyo who takes on any and all cases that come her way.
As you progress through the story, you rank up your "Cyber Sleuth" rating by completing these cases as they come in. While some cases are mandatory to progress the story, others are optional, and they often lead to humorous or meaningful conclusions.
You obtain Digimon by encountering them several times in EDEN, a manmade digital metaverse very similar to real-world modern attempts at the environment.
Each time you encounter a Digimon, you scan them and a percentage meter fills up. Once that meter hits 100%, you can go to DigiLab and create that Digimon using the digital data you've scanned.
However, if you want a more powerful version of said Digimon, you can wait until you've scanned them up to 200% and then they will be generated with higher stats.
You then level up your Digimon by keeping them in your party or by leaving them at the DigiFarm in the DigiLab, where you can assign tasks for the Digimon on the farm such as training to level up their abilities, developing new items which have different rarity levels depending on how much money you put into the development process, or you can have your Digimon investigate to find new cases and items.
Unfortunately, all of the cases that I found through the investigation task ended up being pretty boring fetch quests in low-level areas that provided very little challenge or reward, so I wouldn't recommend pursuing that path too much.
Once your Digimon reaches a certain threshold, either by leveling up or by achieving certain stat levels, you can Digivolve them into an even stronger monster.
Keeping in line with the show, some Digimon benefit from Digivolving, then De-Digivolving back down to a lesser form, which allows their stats to go even higher and that then allows them to reach even stronger forms.
The battle system in Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth is very much what you would expect from a traditional JRPG and that can be very exciting or disappointing depending on what type of gamer you are.
The encounters are completely random while exploring dungeons. Enemies will appear every so often while you're taking steps and at times this can be pretty overwhelming or exhausting when you're just trying to figure out a puzzle or make it to the next area.
Thankfully, while in EDEN, you do have access to some unique abilities that allow you to traverse the world a bit easier. One of them is the ability to reduce the encounter frequency and while this ability doesn't completely stop the encounters, it does reduce the friction they cause by a significant margin.
The typing and effectiveness chart of Digimon was a significant hurdle for me as well. I would sometimes find my attacks doing 0.5x damage to an enemy regardless of which of my 3 Digimon on the field were attacking.
It took me a while to realize that this was due to my Digimon being a certain 'type'.
For example, my most used type was 'Vaccine' which is strong against 'Virus' type Digimon, but weak to 'Data' type Digimon.
On top of this, all Digimon have 1 of 9 attribute types.
- Fire
- Water
- Grass
- Earth
- Electic
- Wind
- Holy
- Dark
- No Type
Some of these types are weak against others, some are strong against others, and some have no positive or negative effect at all.
I'm a little ashamed to admit it but it took me over 25 hours of playing before I realized that the reticle when selecting a Digimon to attack would show a different color based on the effectiveness of the attack you were trying to use.
- 🔴 meaning the attack would be super effective.
- 🔵 meaning the attack would be ineffective.
- ⚪ meaning the attack would hit as normal.
All of this proved to be a lot for my aging ADHD brain to retain, so I ended up downloading a graph I found online and saving it to my phone for easy reference. Just in case anyone else decides to give the game a shot, I've provided a copy of the graph below!
All-in-all, the battle system was servicable and I did find myself getting really into it in the last 6 or so hours of the game when I found a way to get my WarGreymon to hit extremely high with buffs from my MetalGarurumon and HerculesKabuterimon, but it definitely wasn't the reason I stuck around.
In fact, none of the gameplay systems were why I stuck around.
I wasn't a big fan of the fixed camera angles, the dungeons were mostly boring and bland until the very late game, the Digimon that inhabited each dungeon tended to repeat far more often than I cared for, and fast travel was nearly non-existant with some quests requiring me to go way off the beaten path to talk to an NPC or pick up a single item and then make my way all the way back. It felt like a chore and wasn't very fun to do.
However, the story and characters were absolutely the stars of the show.
As I mentioned at the start of this review, I almost gave up on the game about 5 hours in because I found myself getting bored of traveling back and forth over and over again.
But ultimately, I kept pushing through and after 40+ hours before the credits rolled, I am happy to say that I really enjoyed my time with the game.
The characters all had great personality, even when the dialogue text often had bad translations. Those that had voice acting were incredible even though all spoken dialogue was Japanese and I couldn't understand a single word they said without subtitles. The emotion and impact in their performances came through strong.
I found myself constantly thinking about the game over the course of day while working, wondering what would happen next, or how the events that were unfolding started in the first place.
I grew attached to my friends and deeply wanted to see them overcome their struggles and better themselves.
This story has a lot of growth for the entire cast and I found myself tearing up a handful of times as major story arcs unfolded.
Ultimately, I got much more interested in the world of Digimon and even bought a few trading cards that feature characters from this game series and found myself getting really excited when I pulled someone I now have fond memories of.
Because of this, I believe that this game is absolutely worth playing for anyone who is even remotely interested in the Digimon franchise, or is looking for a cheap and meaty JRPG to bite into.
The version of the game that I purchased includes the sequel, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory, and while I absolutely have to take a break by trying out other games before committing another 40-50 hours to this one, I do plan to return to this world and see what else it has to offer.
A new game in the franchise, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, is set to release on October 3rd 2025 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows platforms - so now is as good of a time as any to dive in!
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth is a fun but flawed adventure with an excellent story and wonderful cast of characters that is brought down by its generic systems and world design.
Despite its flaws, I am glad that I finished the game, and I look forward to playing the sequels in the future.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Excellent Story | Bland Dungeons |
| Memorable Characters | Static Camera |
| Great Soundtrack | Songs Repeat Often |
| Wonderful Voice Acting | Poor Translation at Times |
| Meaningful Main Quests | Boring Fetch Quests |
| Entertaining Side Stories | Generic JRPG Mechanics |
| Adult Themes | Very Bright and Loud Menus |