MeinMMO editor Nikolas Hernes grew up with Pokémon like many in his age, but the recent games did not convince him. However, the perfect alternative from the competition finally gets a sequel after 8 years.
In my circle of friends, it was usually said: Pokémon has the better games and Digimon has the better anime. I agreed for a long time, especially since I still find the third season of the anime fantastic. As a teenager, the cool, edgy
designs of the digital monsters were simply more appealing.
On the other hand, I devoured the Pokémon games. I played Pokémon Emerald at least 8 times. But at some point, the games became increasingly trivial, and Scarlet and Violet were a huge disappointment for me.
After I had almost forgotten about Digimon, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth was released in 2015 and completely consumed me. It was only on the PS4 and 2 years later as a duo with the spin-off Hackers Memory that I invested over 200 hours into the RPG on the Nintendo Switch. There was a long silence regarding a sequel.
But then, at the State of Play 2025, Digimon Story Time Stranger was announced and I was overjoyed. I will explain to you why you should be more excited about it than the new Pokémon after the trailer.
The best of Pokémon and Persona
What makes the Digimon Story series so good? Like Pokémon, the Digimon Story series is a monster collecting game. In Time Strangers, you will be able to catch
over 450 Digimon. Unlike in Pokémon, where the creatures have fixed evolutionary paths (sometimes 2), Digimon relies on entire digitization trees.
A Digimon can evolve into multiple Digimon if certain conditions are met. At the same time, you can also devolve Digimon. This is important for unlocking new Digimon, but also for fulfilling specific conditions. Sometimes you can only increase a value after evolving and then devolving the Digimon.
This reminds me of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei
series. I love spending hours in the evolution and improvement menu, contemplating what to do next.
A lot of fun comes from the quirky designs of the Digimon. They don’t just look like cute animals, but often resemble Legos, muscular dinosaurs, or sexy angels. You have to appreciate this design philosophy, but the contrast between, this is the coolest design ever
and what kind of beast is that
, sparks my desire to explore.
The beauty of leveling up also lies in the comfort features. You can speed up the turn-based combat and ensure that you can level up and digitize quickly without having to endure an incredible amount of time and tedious battles.
The sequel looks promising, seems to address weaknesses
Why am I so excited for a sequel? Cyber Sleuth and Hackers Memory also had weaknesses. Since you are only traveling in a digital world, there is hardly any variation apart from occasionally visiting Tokyo. However, in the Time Strangers trailer, you can see more diverse areas; I think we will see more of the Digiworld.
This also opens up more opportunities for the story. Although we see another city, there is also a glimpse of a possible Digimon invasion.
Another promising aspect: More Digimon means I can grind more digitizations, and team building will also be expanded.
Unlike in Pokémon, you always fight with 3 Digimon on the field. Some abilities are also based on this, which expands team building.
But there is also a small disappointment: The game doesn’t really look better than its predecessor after 8 years. While the cel-shading anime look is timeless, I still would have wished for a jump in quality. At least the Digimon look crisper
and more detailed in comparison.
However, it is still unclear when exactly the game will be released. It has only been announced that it will be released sometime in 2025. Are you looking forward to the game or do you not care about Digimon? Feel free to tell us in the comments. MeinMMO editor Benedikt Grothaus would probably be more excited about a new Monster Rancher: A forgotten RTL2 anime outshines Digimon
