digimon story

Digimon Story is a line of JRPG games that started with the titular Digimon Story for Nintendo DS (aka Digimon World DS over here in the English world). I've actually played through the majority of the games, and I feel like I have too much to say about them lol so I made a dedicated page.

Anyway, here are my experiences with these games:

Digimon World DS

Digimon World Dusk

Lost Evolution

Cyber Sleuth

Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory

Time Stranger

WIP page so far. I'd like to add more screenshots and show off my teams whenever I remember...

Digimon World DS

Digital monster? What's this about?

Round 1: Main game content

Completed: September 2024

(Note: I had written this after I finished the game and was pissed off LOL)

I was obsessed with this game as a kid. As an adult, it fuckin sucks.

The maps are atrocious, the writing is terrible (not that I expected much from a kid's game in the first place), and the selection of Digimon available is just... weird and so limited. It also features the Savers mons on the title screen but literally none of them have their full evo lines, they cut off at Perfect level??

I was only able to make it through this nightmare thanks to the continued existence of GameFAQs, of which I am grateful to still exist. The only reason I was able to make it through the game was thanks to this beautiful piece of 2006 history by catprog:

So I am immortalising it here 20 years later in case I ever need it again and GameFAQs ceases to exist. FUCK THE PACKET SWAMP DUDE. I beat this game when I was a kid and I have no goddamned idea how.

I actually cleared this in about 10 hours straight? I somehow got reeeeally sucked into this game on a long weekend that I had off one day, so I just stayed up all night playing until I couldn't anymore. Admittedly I did end up using cheats to boost EXP and shit, but it was for the best bc I just don't have time for games like I used to.

Round 2: Post-game content, 6+ months later

Completed: May 2025

I'll be real with you: I hadn't been playing to go back to this at all, but I was watching videos late at night one day and stumbled upon this video titled "Do You Remember Digimon World DS?" by Echonox, which inspired me to look up what I missed for post-game content.

(For context, I cleared Digimon World DS last year after being reminded that Digimon exists at all, and I somehow cleared it overnight in a 10 hour frenzy on a long weekend back in September. This burned me out immensely LOL and I had a lot of stuff that I didn't like or found weird, so I never did any of the post-game stuff.)

Anyway, I was looking through someone's 7DL quest video when I noticed some very interesting lines from Lucemon:

Lucemon CM: Now, come to the Core Field. Lucemon CM: I'll kindly keep you company...

And because I have severe, debilitating brainrot, I'll do anything I can to spend some quality time with Lucemon-sama, so of course I had to pick up my DS again for a round 2. I want him to keep me company...

Anyway, I somehow ended putting in another 8ish hours into this game? Some notes for that:

I actually had a lot of fun collecting and raising new Digimon! However, I will note: I do use cheats to boost EXP bc this would make me wanna die otherwise.
There's a lot of re-exploring maps when you're going to fight the 7DL, so I actually used the random encounters to farm EXP and train my entire team to aptitude 99! So that was cool.
When I made it to the Core Field for Luce, I didn't know how to leave after the fight, so I just kept walking and it took me to the end of the map, where I found out you can rematch Chronomon??
He was actually weirdly really high level so he was actually a decent fight, and I found out for literally the first time ever that you can actually get his scan data this way. I HAD NO IDEA. He comes as apt 99 by default, but unfortunately his stats are kinda ass compared to any other apt 99 Digimon you can train yourself.
I encountered a rare bug where your Digimon will sometimes have their stats reset to 1 point when leveling up -_- My Seraphimon, who I had just gotten to apt 99, was victim to this. Because I noticed too late I could not save him by resetting, so he was permanently retired to the farm. RIP
The Culumon you get for completing the 7DL quest is unironically probably the best free scan you get in the game, he's weirdly OP as fuck compared to Chronomon and Beelzebumon who get stuck with mid stats.

My team by this point

My DS team
Dorugoramon, Diablomon, MetalGarurumon
MetaGreymon, Culumon, Kuzuhamon

I think Culumon was a random mon I tagged in near the end, I have no idea who took up that spot prior though. Possibly my retired Seraphimon...?

Digimon World Dusk

Mechanically this is almost identical to World DS, except this one is actually wayyyy better and more polished. It fixes almost every issue I had with World DS... except for the maps, which are still atrocious. It is what it is, I guess.

First and foremost: if you decide to play this game (or Dawn) nowadays, please use DWDDRandomizer to add the QOL patches to this game for faster text, faster movement speed, and increased EXP to make the game less painful (the randomiser stuff is optional). You also have option to reduce random encounters, but tbh I don't have a problem with them and I found it reduced them so much that I never got any... which can turn into a problem real quick once you realise how much grinding this game requires.

Anyway, Dusk is a HUGE improvement over Digimon World DS, fixing a lot of the issues I had with the lack of Digimon and many evo lines being ass or just plain non-existent. It's still very mid at the end of the day, but I do still really like this game and it improves on both the writing and monster collecting aspects a lot.

The maps are still terrible however, and I hate that they kept in stuff like the shitty swamp maps with annoying warps. Ughhh. Every single map is also a maze, but thankfully they actually added in a feature where you can touch and drag the screen to view your surrounding area -- this is an absolute lifesaver as there are otherwise so, so many dead ends for literally no reason. However, this plus the patch for increased movement speed (and less encounters should you desire) pretty much saves the game from otherwise being an aggravating disaster.

If you're going to play this yourself I honestly recommend Dawn for a better experience, as the initial map for Dusk is a fucking sewer puzzle maze, and it SUCKS. Dawn has a completely different initial map that isn't the fucking shitty ass sewer. Seriously, skip it, your life will be better for it.

Anyway, since I actually beat this already as a kid and it has some of my fav mons available, I decided to do something different for my replay and I decided to get a bit cheeky, and using the power of fucking around with ROMs and cheats on my 3DS + trading with my original cartridge on my DS Lite, I just gave myself Lucemon FM from the start of the game lmao. My personal trade-off for this was that I would not use any other Digimon until it became not viable/possible to continue like that, and it was actually pretty fun and it was nice solo adventuring with him... your Digimon actually follow you around on the map, so it was pretty nice ='w'=

However, this did not last long bc this game is actually a major grindfest. I'll get a screenshot of my full team later, but I completed the main game, and still have yet to do the post-game content... that will be a future part 2.

My team by this point

My Dusk team
Lucemon FM, Dorugoramon, RiseGreymon
Dianamon, Black Weregarurumon, Pharaohmon(??)

Most of my team members are not fully evolved or reasonably leveled from me apt grinding to hell and back. Not gonna lie... I have no idea why Pharaohmon is here though. I don't even remember him or what his purpose was. I'm guessing I was apt grinding something...??

Post-game content

One day...

Lost Evolution

Digimon Story Lost Evolution

(Written: 30 November 2025)

So this one was never was never officially released in English, but there was a complete fan translation released in 2023 so this is actually fully playable.

I actually went in with high hopes for this bc it starts off strong -- it has all new sprites, seems to have more characters that are developed and elaborated on, and a bigger focus on story. Then I entered I think the second area of the game, and then it hit me:

This shit... is so ass.

Lost Evolution utilises the same sprites from the past 2 games, but is immediately more egregious about it by REUSING THE SAME AREAS FROM DUSK AND DAWN. I assume it was ~~to cut costs~~ to create a sense of story consistency between the games, but holy fuck. I went in to Lost Evolution right after completing Dusk, and it made feel like Bandai just smashed my skull in with a metal bat considering the Dusk/Dawn maps are already just edits of the World DS maps.

Lost Evolution also introduces some gross changes to the menu system that piss me off -- evolutions can no longer be done through the normal Digimon menus, and instead can only be done at your home base which is AWFUL. This change also persisted into the later games like Cyber Sleuth, and it never stopped pissing me off.

(And when the ability to evolve your mons was finally added back to the menu in Time Stranger, people praised it as a huge QOL improvement. I will never understand why they removed it.)

They also locked evolutions behind a "digiplate" system, in which you have to find items (kinda like fossils) that must be cleaned and restored in order to unlock evolutions for your Digimon. I originally found the plates super annoying, but they grew on me over time, though there's still way too many unskippable animations for the results that makes it incredibly grating. A lot of plates are also only available as random drops which is a huge pain in the ass, never mind that some Digimon also require multiple plates to be unlocked. Shoutout to this guide for saving my ass when I was trying to get my beloved Lucemon.

Other things to note:

There's a lot of weird UI changes in general here. They completely revamped the battle UI and made it d-pad controlled, and it's very odd
There's only like 1-3 random encounter variations per map area, so you see a lot of the same battles over and over and over again
The maps are still very confusing. They are actually slightly edited from the prior versions so I guess at least it's not 1:1 copies, but there's still a lot of dead ends, and that combined with the lack of enemy variety makes some areas incredibly painful to get through
This is just a personal gripe, but the Lucemon line is weird as usual. They still don't have child Luce or Satan mode so he just evolves from Angemon/Devimon, and then evolves into either Demon or Barbamon which are both icky choices :(
Speaking of Lucemon, my Luce came from a Devimon line, and while I was grinding out aptitude I ended up evolving him into Lilithmon which is where he ended up spending a good chunk of his life first. Or maybe, she? Is this my only female Lucemon...?

Anyway, I spent a shit ton of hours in this game. I never actually ever ended up finishing this game (yet?). I think I got through like 90% of the game, then out of nowhere they drop this absolute bullshit on you where suddenly to progress you need to farm an insane amount of tamer points -- which have never come up in the game prior to this. I think had like 30-40k tamer points, but the requirement to continue progressing was like. 60k? And at that point I finally realised it wasn't worth my time to continue, so I gave up.

I have no idea if I'll ever return to this one, and tbh I mostly consider it "finished" in my head bc I spent so much time on it just to get cockblocked by some absolute garbage.

My team by this point

My Lost Evo team
Demon, Holydramon, Dorugreymon
Metalgreymon, Black Tyrannomon, Plesiomon

So... when I went to take this screenshot, it looks like my Lucemon wasn't even Lucemon LOL. Apparently I had given up mid apt grind, and I couldn't even degenerate her bc of the requirements, so she just gets immortalised as Demon for now ig.

Cyber Sleuth

I became aware of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth once it hit Steam, and I received it as a random Steam gift from an old Twitter mutual of mine back in 2020 (thanks Viva!!). I played it for a few hours, made a rough mental plan of what mons I wanted, started grinding, and then as with every game I've ever played, I stopped playing it.

I finally ended up coming back to it in 2024 after I finished the main story content in World DS, and wow was it crazy seeing the improvements in this game. It's still not perfect or even great, but it's good enough and I enjoyed my time.

(I'll write my thoughts proper at some point...)

Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory

A really solid follow-up/addition to Cyber Sleuth.

Hacker's Memory is a huge improvement over CS that fixes a lot of issues that I had with that game. The writing and characters are way better (Erika my beloved), the story is more engaging and thought out, quests try not to be the same repetitive garbage, and they even try to have more variety in the world. I also really like the OST additions here.

The majority of assets are just copied over from CS, and it really does feel like DLC turned into a standalone game. And it's a fine standalone game despite this, but going into the exact same maps as before does feel kinda disappointing (especially when the same areas in CS were already used over and over and over... I've had enough of Kowloon).

However, for better or for worse this is a side story to CS, and as such it very much expects you to have played and completed CS as well. There's a lot of shared characters and events (including major plot points, like when Digimon start roaming the real world) that are presented with no context or explanation, and there's a very obvious expectation that you're supposed to know what happens already -- if not, this game is probably at least 70% unexplained nonsense.

It's kinda of a shame bc I wish I could just recommend that people skip over CS and play this instead, bc it fixes almost every annoyance I had with CS and it's a much better game as a result, but unfortunately you can't.