Cool game but I cannot recommend it as it doesn't contain Kiwimon (as a playable Digimon, a medal of the little guy is obtainable in the game, which makes this game superior to World Next Order)

You need to be a big Digimon fan to enjoy these games. Sadly they get very little right technically, mechanically and story-wise.

Starting off with the technical side: The port is horrible. Locked to 60 fps, can't change settings until you pick a game, said settings do not apply to the main menu of the game so you get blasted with the menu song at 100% volume every time you open the game, the control scheme is horrible and the mouse functionality is nonexistant (you can click to accept but your cursor won't select options).

Mechanically, battles are a slog. If you play on "normal" mode, you can clear most stuff with basic attacks (with some hp-sponge bosses from time to time), while hard mode is just hp sponge galore. Battle balance is awful, the mix of defense-penetrating attacks and high defense digimons renders most endgame mons useless because you'll be tickling bosses in lategame if you aren't using def-pen skills (you can download the Ultimate Digimon Pack mod for more variety i guess)

Finally, story-wise, it's fine, it touches some more mature themes like existential crisis, loss and some other stuff (sorry i forgot) but getting there is so PAINFUL. Story progression takes you from filler to filler to filler to some interesting story to filler to buying groceries for the cute digilab lady to filler and only starts picking up at around chapter 13~ out of 20 (cyber sleuth) or 18 (hacker's memory), you keep getting taken out of the story by useless fluff which makes you wonder if you really want to go on. The endings might gaslight you into thinking you played a mediocre at worst game but it's all an illusion, it's bad.

Eden metaverse design is pretty boring too, and the backtracking is insane. Hacker's memory adds some QoL stuff like a faster walking speed hack and a free return-to-entrance hack... which weren't ported to Cyber Sleuth for some reason (there is a mod for this too!).

All in all, this is a bad rpg being "carried" by a dying IP that can't quite get anything right (the more recent Digimon Survive sucked even more than these games!). Hopefully Time Stranger will be better, but honestly my expectations are really low.

Final Score: 4/10.

you like persona like gameplay? great think of that and add digimon.

the evolution is very complexe and you can tailor your team precisely how you want