Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (PS4, Vita) aka Shin Digimon Tensei

[Hobo Elf]

I've seen people bring this game up every now and then on the internet and since I was never really that into Digimon I didn't really pay much heed to it. Anyway, I was just looking at some videos on youtube because and was slightly surprised to see what the game was like. The gameplay and overall feel of the game looks like it's targeted at the mainline SMT niche, although you can be the judge of that. The below video shows gameplay.



The game is released in the US and Europe in February 2016 so it's right around the corner. Might be something interesting to pick up for us with a PS4. 2016 is looking to be a great year for weeb games.

 

[CryptRat]

Thanks, it looks like a DQ Monster Joker but for a home console. I'll play that someday.

 

[deuxhero]

I forgot about this. Maybe it's good and I'll have another game to add to my PS4 collection.

 

[Siveon]

Kinda bummed that the PS Vita version isn't physical, but I used to love watching Digimon as a kid, and the game looks very solid, I might try it out.

In the mean-time, the PSP game (Re digitized) was fan-translated. I should try that out sometime.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Why is there Devil Survivor 2 protagonist on 1:02?


I found some other shit that looks almost the same as DeSu1, is it good?

 

[Viata]

Why is there Devil Survivor 2 protagonist on 1:02?

It's the same artist.

I found some other shit that looks almost the same as DeSu1, is it good?

Also the same artist and a pretty good game. If you have played the Digimon World game for PS1, this game is a spiritual sequel for that game. Also uses the same "taking care of your digimon" system.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Also the same artist and a pretty good game. If you have played the Digimon World game for PS1, this game is a spiritual sequel for that game. Also uses the same "taking care of your digimon" system.

I haven't played any Digimon / Pokemon shit in my life but if this geam is gud... artstyle is much more tolerable than that one in fukken Demikids (MC is just a DeSu MC) and there's even a Lili from Tekken as demon tamer... but what has it to offer for SMT crowd? How's combat system? Are the demons in there recruitable, is there any kind of fusion?

 

[Viata]

If you are looking something like SMT in Digimon, you are on some heavy drugs, mate. There's nothing of SMT in Digimon(maybe fusion, but I only remember Digimon 3 having it). No recruitable, your digimon dies, reborn and can now become a completely different digimon depending on what you train him. Combat system is your digimon fighting while you only order him(if he got high int, you can choose what attack he uses) and send items to help him.

 

[deuxhero]

I played it, I'd say it's a solid 4/5 experience

edit: To explain more I'd say that it's not really closer to SMT than any mons game beyond the Tokyo setting.

Gameplay has some nice teambuilding mechanics. The oddball skills are surprisingly useful. One interesting thing is the status inflicting moves all deal light damage and the status healing moves and effects all heal light damage. This means you never truly waste a turn if a status effect doesn't take hold, and you never have that annoying thing where you have to heal a guy of poison then heal the small damage the poison caused.

The tone manages to vary wildly without losing impact from it and the characters are well characterized and quite likable. I particularly love one of the recurring bosses who's a shitposting douchbag hacker rockstar.


Story is pretty compelling, genuinely do want to finish the game to find out what the secrets the main characters are looking for are.

Unfortunatly it's SUPER easy on normal and on hard you're pretty much forced to abuse a handful of moves to get anywhere. Digimon evolution/devolution paths and learn lists don't really make much sense and are guide dependent. The translation is normally fine (no memes or nonsense lines, several character quirks are preserved without screaming the work is a translation), but there's clear signs it did not get as much attention from editing as it should. Like I've seen a characters nickname change twice in the same conversation (and more instances beyond that) despite the voice acting saying they're all supposed to be the same pet name and ばけもの (That monster) is repeatedly mistranslated as Bakemon (ばけもん) so characters repeatedly mention it despite that digimon being nowhere in the scenes. The dungeon design is so far pretty lacking, with the puzzle consisting of using your abilities at the clearly marked locations and light mazes.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Also the same artist and a pretty good game. If you have played the Digimon World game for PS1, this game is a spiritual sequel for that game. Also uses the same "taking care of your digimon" system.

I haven't played any Digimon / Pokemon shit in my life but if this geam is gud... artstyle is much more tolerable than that one in fukken Demikids (MC is just a DeSu MC) and there's even a Lili from Tekken as demon tamer... but what has it to offer for SMT crowd? How's combat system? Are the demons in there recruitable, is there any kind of fusion?

Combat has a very SMT-like feel to it with familiar skills / spells and the importance of buffs / debuffs to the point where they can make or break boss fights. And it's all about creating digimon with diverse move sets and having the right digimon in the right boss fights to exploit weaknesses or get rekt because the boss does 3x more damage to your digimon and kills them in one hit.

There's no fusion but there's evolution/devolution where Digimon have horizontal and vertical evolutionary paths. Vertical paths are usually linear upgrades, more or less, for your digimon, and the horizontal ones are when it can change in to a different line of digimon. The idea is that you're supposed to go up and down and side ways and frontways to get the skills you want learn from the different evolutions and then devolve and evolve into the final Digimon you wish to keep because of looks, the digimon specific skill (they all have one signature move) and/or resistances.

As deuxhero said, the dungeon design is pretty poor. Such is the tragedy of making a full 3D game for a handheld, unfortunately (this is a game developed for the Vita and ported to the PS4).

One of the true highlights of the game for me was the soundtrack, which was composed by Masafumi Takada, probably best known for God Hand and No More Heroes.

 

[Viata]

This is for the cyber sleuth, no? I thought he was asking for the psp one that he posted before.

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's possible. I just woke up,saw the post and thought it was about Cyber Sleuth.

 

[an Administrator]

Oh it's Digimon.. Childhood memories....

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I thought he was asking for the psp one that he posted before.

Yeap, PSP fan-translated one. VITA games I shall play in 2025 on emulator on PC.

 

[Abu Antar]

Trailer for the sequel:


The original game is supposedly included with a purchase. Don't know if that will be on a disc or a digital code.

 

[deuxhero]

I think that is going to be Japan only. The PS4 version was never released over there.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

The only Digimon Game I ever played was the DS one, Digimon World Dusk? I remember it being a nice SMT-lite sorta game. One thing I remember sticking out was that Digimon games are weird in the monster design, they are even less internally consistent in style than SMT.

 

[MpuMngwana]

This is getting a PC port, along with the sequel.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Wonder if they fixed the translation yet. The translator was lazy and used machine translation for all the side content, so it ended up being horrific nonsense.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Thou must wear big gloves, big floppy boots, and goggles to play this.

Well... goggles at least.

 

[lightbane]

Drat, a RPG about Tamers would be awesome, that show was Lain for kids (allegedly).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I really didn't try pokemon much beyond a few battles. I dunno why since combat was shining force-like. I did try spiderweb softwares Geneforge. I like a little bit of tactical battlefield. Some games look like they have a battlefield but its just animation sprites (one game had mobs jump all the way over attack pcs and bounce back. PCs did the same... it looked a little lame tbh).

When i first saw the cartoon i knew it'd be kiddo but there are some darker themes so .. :/. There isn't much for weird cyber hacking and i can't say any of the human protagonists died. Odd no adults. You get sort of a bible rapture vibe how the kids just fall into a crevasse of digital shit.

Oh! I got it.

Spoiler

THIS WILL HAPPEN IRL WHEN 5G IS TURNED ON ALL OVER THE WORLD!

Grab your goggles, and oversized gloves and boots now!

 

[lightbane]

Oh! I got it.

I wish 5G caused the Digital World to spontaneously erupt into the Real World and viceversa, instead of spreading cancer by airwaves everywhere. Also, are you talking about the original Digimon season? The first cartoon was quite dark indeed, the 2nd one was shit, and Tamers (the third one) is the darkest and the best season. All others are shit usually.

As for the game, it's allegedly more mature than it seems. It helps that it uses an art style similar to the MegaTen games.

 

[Twizman]

How's the difficulty balance in Cyber Sleuth? From memory I saw it described as cakewalk with random boss battle difficulty spikes. Also how much inane dialogue do I have to put up with - I don't mind mashing through a decent bit. Seems like it all depends on the hard mode for me (if it's in this version).

Love some of the music :D

 

[Vorark]

I played through the normal difficulty and the tougher encounters were the Seven Demon Lords and Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. What is indeed unbalanced is the hard mode, it's just as you mentioned: fair random encounters and brutal bosses.

About the the dialogue, there's a bunch of fluff but most of it is entertaining to read, some even heartwarming. However, as mentioned by Hobo Elf, the translation is piss poor: your PC will be misgendered, one character keeps talking about "bakemon" and there are weird phrases here and there, yet nothing makes the story unintelligible. No idea if Scamco Bandai will be arsed to improve it.

Can easily recommend these games to digimon and monster raising fans in general. If were are lucky, this will be a port of the international version released in Japan.

Alphamon best digi!