The Digimon series has been around a while now, since the very end of the 1990's. To be around that long, they've had several different stories now. The first of the Cyber Sleuth games came out in 2015, and now finally we have the sequel, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory.

The graphics are pretty good. I’m not going to say outstanding, because there are some things that are not quite right (at one point I was standing inside the head of my Whamon), but it’s nothing that detracts from the game. They really went all out to create a real city when you’re in the real world. You can even go into a very realistic aquarium with schools of fish swimming around. I do wish you could have gone into more places, just because I like exploring, but unless the shop is pertinent to the story, you’ll only get to window shop. I like that when you’re in the digital world, things look just a bit different. You lose the flash, the random pops of colors and signs and people, but you gain a clean, crisp, digital look and feel. In the digital world, you can tell that everything is built on a framework, a grid-like mesh. Personally, I love the look and feel of the digital world.

Hacker’s Memory is entirely in Japanese with English subtitles. Because they don’t really speak during battle, other than a word or two from some Digimon, this works perfectly fine. You don’t even miss out on anything they’re telling you. While I can’t speak Japanese, I can tell you that the voicework is well done. They did a great job matching voices to characters, so that you aren’t even going to cringe when someone talks (except for maybe Jimmy Ken, but that’s just because he’s so annoying).

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory is the story of a guy who’s just trying to get his avatar back. In this world, you have a virtual reality called EDEN. Your avatar in EDEN is tied to your real-world self so much that you can access your bank records, personal information, and pretty much everything. The rules say that your avatar has to look like your real-world self, but that doesn’t stop bad people from doing bad things. Bad hackers are continually stealing people’s avatars and if you lose your avatar, it’s like losing yourself. Unfortunately for you, your avatar was stolen. Right after it happens, a mysterious hacker, who only goes by K, contacts you and gives you a name of a man he says stole your account, Shiga. You decide that the best way to get your account back is to go after the guy yourself. While that probably wasn’t the best idea ever, it does put you in the right place to meet Ryuji.

Ryuji invites you to join his hacker group, Hudie. You are hackers, but your code is to always do the right thing. Your job is to stop other hackers who are causing trouble in EDEN. Ryuji is your leader; Chitose and Erika are fellow team members. Lucky enough, your first job is to find Shiga and eliminate him from EDEN, so that he can’t cause more trouble. Most of your work comes from Zaxon, a team lead by Yuugo, with Fei as his second-in-command. They are a much larger hacker organization, but they are dedicated to protecting EDEN, like Hudie.

Pretty quickly into the game, you’ll buy your first Digimon. You get your choice to pick from Tentomon, Betamon, or Gotsumon. Each Digimon has a type and an attribute. It’s important to keep up with both and make sure that you use the right ones in battle. Battle in Hacker’s Memory is turn-based. The turns are based on the speed of the Digimon. During battle, you will see what Digimon is coming up next on the right. You’ll also be able to see your stats and your opponent’s stats. Every time you battle a Digimon, your scanner will automatically record data. Once that scan rate hits 100%, you can create them in the Digilab. After they have enough stats, you can use Digivolution or De-Digivolution at the lab as well. To get to the DigiLab, EDEN, and the BBS, you use a PC terminal. Mirei runs the DigiLab. If you ever don’t know where to go for the main quests, go talk to Mirei. You’ll spend a lot of time in the DigiLab, as you can do a whole lot of stuff there. You’ll be able to work with your Digimon in various ways, shop, battle, and even go back to cleared dungeons.

Hacker’s Memory is a combination of the main quests for information about your stolen account (and what’s really going on behind the scenes in EDEN) and side quests. You can select various cases from the BBS (Bulletin Boards). These will give you a variety of rewards and the experience is always a good thing. You can only take on one case at a time, unfortunately. This means you can’t find a whole bunch in the same area and knock them out quickly. Important cases have to be done so that you can keep going with the story, while normal cases are just side things. DigiFarm cases come from the DigiFarm and you can get to the DigiFarm in the DigiLab. You start out with one farm, but eventually you can get more. Each farm will hold 10 Digimon. You’ll also be able to expand the farms to level 5, but expansion doesn’t mean you can hold more Digimon there. It does allow you to add more plugins that are beneficial to training your Digimon.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory provides you with two difficulty levels: Normal or Hard. Personally, I felt like Normal was extremely easy, if you even pay half attention to using the right Digimon at the right time. As I mentioned before, Digimon have both type and attribute. These are very important to keep track of. There are four types: Virus, Vaccine, Data, and Free. Virus is stronger than Data; Data is stronger than Vaccine; Vaccine is stronger than Virus. Free isn’t affected by any type. If you attack a Virus with a Vaccine, for example, you will do double damage, whereas a Vaccine attacking Data will only do half damage.

There are nine total attributes: Neutral, Water, Fire, Plant, Earth, Electric, Wind, Light, and Dark. These can also have advantages over each other. Water is stronger than Fire; Fire is stronger than Plant; Plant is stronger than Water. Those three only affect each other. Then you have Earth, which is stronger than Electric, which is stronger than Wind, which is stronger than Earth. Those three only affect each other as well. Light and Dark are interesting in that they are each stronger than the other. If you use one against the other, they will do 1.5x damage. The Neutral isn’t affected by anyone.

Knowing which one to use is great, but you don’t have to memorize everything. When you target an enemy, they with either have a grey circle, a blue circle, or a red circle around them. Try and attack the ones that are red as you will do extra damage. Grey is neutral; and blue means you will do less damage. If your Digimon are at 0 HP at the end of battle, they get no EXP from that battle, but they will be revived to 1 HP after the battle. Your Digimon heal to full when they level up, so if you have one that has been hurt, you can switch them out with another member of the party during battle. You can only have three Digimon in battle at once, but you can have up to 11 in your party total (provided you stay under the total points). Taking more than three gives you a reserve if you get hurt or if you need different types/attributes.

Overall battle in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory is going to be your Digimon against either other wild Digimon or Digimon being controlled by other players. The wild battles are ones you will run into as you roam around EDEN. You’ll have to battle other players as a result of quests. These battles usually go until one side is beaten (hopefully not yours). You’ll also run into Firewalls that you have to get past. These usually aren’t too hard, but they can be tedious. You battle the wall as if it were a Digimon. Domination Battles are a bit different. You will have three people on your team against three on the other team. You have to move your characters (not Digimon) to hacking areas and take them over. Some points are only 1 point, some are 5, and some are 10. When you get the required number of points, your team will win. Be careful because you usually have only a set number of turns to do it in. There are also Territory Capture battles. In these, you need to control various areas of the map. You have to run around and take control of emblems before you try and take on the boss.

Overall, since this is a turn-based battle system, the controls are easy to use. You simply select what you want. My one major complaint in Hacker’s Memory is that you can’t turn the camera. I realize that takes a lot more processing power, but I like to be able to look where I want to look. Quite often, I had to run around a lot more than I wanted simply because I couldn’t look to the side. Especially in the maze type areas, I really wanted to turn that camera even just a bit!

Overall, I have really enjoyed playing Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory. I will admit it took me a little bit to get into it. For some reason, I had trouble at the very beginning empathizing with the characters, but as the game went on, I started to understand their reasons more and more. It’s one of those games that the more you play, the more you want to keep playing. I have not played the first Cyber Sleuth game, but I don’t feel like I really missed anything having not played it, so don’t let that concern you in the least if you want to start the series with Hacker’s Memory. If you’re a Digimon fan or a fan of turn-based RPGs in general, I highly recommend you check out Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory today!