Whether you’re a seasoned Digimon veteran or a fan of the monster catcher genre biding your time until the release of Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is the perfect RPG to delve into right now.
Whereas Pokemon is simple to dive into — catch them, evolve them and train them to max power — Digimon can be more complicated to access for a series beginner. Unintuitive forked evolution trees and intensive personality training are just two of the hurdles, but mastering an entirely new slate of Digimon strengths and weaknesses is also tough.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger’s complex turn-based combat can be challenging, but if you build a strong team and use every tool at your disposal, even the toughest bosses will fall to your might.
If you put in the work to learn Time Stranger’s mechanics, you’ll discover a surprisingly compelling story centered around a time travel mystery that takes you to the end of the world. Here’s everything you need to know as you start the game.
Build a balanced team from the get-go
There are many considerations when putting together a team in Digimon Story: Time Stranger. You’ll want to balance it with data, virus- and vaccine-type Digimon — and be sure to include digital monsters with different weaknesses to cover a range of moves. You never want to put together a team that’s completely weak to one enemy. For example, if your team is packed with virus-type monsters, a single attack from a vaccine-type boss could wipe out your entire Digimon squad.
Certain Digimon species specialize in physical combat, with high attack stats and strong defenses, while others deal more magic damage and shrug off enemy spells. It’s worth building a mix of both to take advantage of different enemy weaknesses.
Convert Digimon at 200% data collection
Digimon are digital lifeforms, so you don’t catch them like Pokemon. Instead, defeating a Digimon adds some of its data to your Digivice — and once you’ve collected enough, you can convert it into a usable monster and add it to your team.
To successfully convert a Digimon, you need to fill the data bar to 100%. But it’s well worth it to hold off and keep accruing more data before converting it. Digimon converted at 200% data collection are significantly stronger than their regular counterparts and can often overpower others of the same species. If there’s a Digimon you seriously want to add to your team, hold off on converting it until you’ve collected the most data you possibly can.
Pay attention to Digimon personalities to optimize growth
Your Digimon’s personality doesn’t just affect flavor text and dialogue. The 16 personality types have distinct impacts on your digital monsters’ growth and development. Each personality boosts the growth rate of two separate stats, including attack, defense, magic attack, magic defense, speed and critical hit rate.
Make sure your Digimon’s personality is attuned to the stat growth you want to see for a particular role. Some digivolution options are locked behind specific personality types as well, so it’s worth matching your Digimon’s growth with the evolution tree you want to explore.
Outfit your Digimon with a full suite of moves and items
Digimon derive most of their power from leveling up and digivolving into more powerful forms. But all of the raw statistical power in the world won’t do much if your monsters don’t have any tools to wield in battle.
Each Digimon has four slots for learned moves and two for equipped items. If you want to add a Digimon to your team, it should have a full suite of tools to bring into battle. Moves and items can give a Digimon more versatility — helping them handle tough type matchups, cover weaknesses or gain crucial stat buffs for longer battles.
Make frequent returns to the In-Between Theater
The In-Between Theater provides eclectic entertainment beyond the boundaries of space and time. Once you open the first dimensional rift leading to this fine establishment, you’ll see them popping up around the map. This important place is where you’ll access the Digifarm, which is a source of passive experience points for up to 30 of your Digimon partners.
The Digifarm helps bring weaker Digimon forms up to speed, preparing them to undergo powerful digivolutions. But if you don’t pop in to reap the rewards of Digifarm training, all of that progress will be squandered. Visiting the In-Between Theater is a great way to bolster your team and shape up Digimon that are sitting out on the bench.
Hit the Shinjuku Underground between main missions
If main mission bosses are hitting too hard and the game feels chaotic, you don’t necessarily have to turn down the difficulty level right away. Take a breather before the next big quest and grind against rogue Digimon in the Shinjuku Underground. Tougher areas with more enemy types unlock later, but this is the best place to focus your efforts early on.
There are always enemies to battle here, so you can strengthen your team before the next roadblock. In addition to farming experience points, beating the digital monsters in the barren waterways will net you cash to buy health-restoring items and new Digimon moves. Combining these resources will help you scrape by any particularly difficult missions.
Be proactive and attack enemies first
Digimon speed stats determine the order of attack in battle, but that doesn’t mean combat opens up on equal footing. If a Digimon jumps you in the wild, it gets a free opening attack on your team. Losing health points or starting with a debuff can make battles significantly harder, so this should be avoided at all costs.
If you attack a Digimon before it has a chance to reach you, though, your enemies will be missing a chunk of their health bars at the start of battle — giving you a solid advantage in the ensuing fight. In some cases, your preemptive strikes will knock out substantially weaker opponents without a fight, circumventing some of the experience point grind altogether.
Use items early and often
Many turn-based RPGs will force you to give up a turn in order to use an item, but that’s not the case in Digimon Story: Time Stranger. Every time one of your Digimon gets to move in battle, you can use an item before executing an attack. That means you should almost always be healing up, alleviating negative status conditions and applying buffs before striking at your opponent.
Unlock Agent Skills as soon as possible
Shortly after visiting the In-Between Theater for the first time, you’ll unlock the ability to spend the anomaly points that you earn from completing main and side missions on Agent Skills. These powerful perks can help you level up your Digimon faster, learn special Cross Arts battle moves and maximize your stats.
It’s almost always worth spending your anomaly points on the skill tree as soon as possible to level up your Agent Rank. The game’s most powerful digivolutions are locked behind high Agent Rank thresholds, so it’s worth pushing to at least Agent Rank 3 early on to unlock your first batch of Champion-level Digimon.
Always have Cross Arts ready for a boss fight
As you duke it out with wild Digimon, you’ll power up ultimate abilities known as Cross Arts. Each move you make fills up a special meter, and you can unleash the Cross Art anytime after it’s ready to use. While the default Cross Art is a simple three-turn stat buff for your team, you can unlock other moves that deal massive damage, heal your Digimon and turn the tide of battle in other ways.
In prolonged boss battles, I can usually build up and use Cross Art abilities multiple times, but unleashing your ultimate move right at the start gives you a strong opening advantage. If you see a wide open area that looks like a boss room, it might be worth doubling back to take out some wild Digimon to fill up your Cross Art bar before venturing deeper into the dungeon.