Modern Game Weekly - Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory

Welcome to Modern Game Weekly, this series will be focussed on more recent releases and is based around the 0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games series, with information on what the game is, the gameplay, story, critical reception and availability of the game. The story section will not be the entire games story, just a small section to give you an idea of the plot, spoilers will be kept to a minimum where possible.

The games chosen for this series are at random from my own ratings database, the database currently contains the majority of console releases from 2016 to January 2018 with the first group of 2015 releases just added as well as January 2018 releases, with each game rated and ranked. Each game has their own rating broken down into five different sections.

The first is the numbered ratings, this uses a scale of 0 to 100 with a total of 10 of these ratings. One of the things that a part of this rating are critic review scores, these scores come from all console platforms the game is released on.

So for example Okami HD, which was recently released on PS4 and Xbox One, as well as previously being released on the PS3, all three of these releases factor in on the games overall rating. As a result shoddy ports of a game will seriously hurt the games overall score.

The reviews section takes a total of 12 reviews for the game if that number are available, both the six best review scores as well as the six lowest scoring reviews for the game, this covers reviews for console releases only. Information here will not be full reviews but snippets that stand out from the reviews.

The Availability section works exactly the same with a look at how available the game is assuming they are not digital only releases, with retailers Gamedude, eStarland and Amazon.com, while Retrogames may feature as older games are added to my database, the site currently only covers games up to the Xbox 360 and PS3 era.

         

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory is role-playing game developed by Media Vision and published by Bandai Namco and is a part of the Digimon series that dates back to 1997. The Digimon series was first created in 1997 by a collaboration of people and companies with Akiyoshi Hongo, Toei Animation, WiZ and Bandai all a part of the creation of the Digimon franchise.

Hacker's Memory is the direct sequel to the 2015 released Digimon Story Cyber Sluth and shares elements and locations form this game. The game released in Japan on the 14^th of December 2017, with a worldwide release of the game coming in on Janaury the 19^th 2018, the game released exclusively on the Playstation Vita and PS4.

 

Notable people who worked on the game, Suzuhito Yasuda who worked as the main character designer. He was also a character designer on the 2009 released Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor, he moved up to being the main character designer on its sequel in 2015 for Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker. He was also a character designer for Caladrius Blaze and Groove Coaster 3Link Fever.

 

Tetsuya Ōkubo was long associated with the Wild Arms series, with Ōkubo working on the Monster Design for Wild Arms back in 1996, as well as sequels Wild Arms 2, 3,5 and Wild Arms XF. Since the Wild Arms series he has worked on the Chaos Rings games as a Producer, a role he also held for Tales of Zestria, Digimon Story Cyber Sluth in 2015 was the first time he directed a game, a role he would hold in it’s follow up Hackers Memory. 

 

When starting your playthrough of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory, you will have to choose your starter Digimon form a selection of three available, these are Betamon, Gotsumon, and Tentomon. While these three Digimon were featured in the previous game they however have a revamped evolution line for each as part of the new 80 strong line up of new Digimon in the game, bringing the overall total to 340 Digimon in the game.

Each of the Digimon in the game will have one of eight personaility, these are durable, lively, Fighter, defender, brainy, nimble, builder and searcher. A Digimon with a durable personaility will improve their HP faster than other Digimon. A Digimon with a lively personality will improve SP faster than others, a fighter will impprove their Attack faster, while a Defender personaility will improve Defence faster than other Digimon.

Brainy personality Digimon will improve their intelligence faster than others, while nimble Digimon will improve their speed a lot faster than others. The final two personalities Builder and Searcher provided better returns for the Development and Investigate commands.

Two important stats that need to be looked for are Cam, which is the friendship level between the player character and their Digimon this stat can be increased by using them in battle, performing combos will also give this stat a boost.

The other is the ABI stats, this stat is hard to increase as it only does so when your Digimon is either digivolving or de-digivolving, the amount the ABI increases is also effected by the level of your Digimon, the ABI stat is also needed for certain Digivolutions as well as affecting the maximum extra stat points you can gain when training.

Combat in Digimon involves the player character using up to three of their companion Digimon as they face off against other Digimon. The game used a turn based battle system, so once a battle begins down the right hand side of the screen will be the turn order, with a small icon for each of the combatants the battle order Is dictated by the speed stat of each Digimon.

On the left hand side of the screen you have the action wheel, this has four main sections, going clockwise these options are Guard, Skill, Change and Item. There are also two sub options, the first is Escape which is done by using the R1 shoulder button, there is also an option to automate your Digimon’s actions with Auto mode.

Just to the right of the option wheel at the bottom of the screen is your Digimon’s stats, this section shows the Digimon’s name, their level and HP and SP points, the latter two being hit points and skill points. As you would probably expect skill points are used when using a skill, when accessing your Digimon’s skills an additional window will open showing their available skills, next to the ability will be the skill point cost to use them. Above the skills will be a short description of the type of skill, the damage it will inflict.

The item option is pretty much self explanatory, the guard option causes your Digimon to defend it’s self when attacked this reduces the damage received by half, the attack option is a simple basic attack. And  finally change which allows you to swap out your current Digimon for one of your backup members. 

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory is set in the same world as the original Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth which was first release back in 2015. The game is set in a near future version of Shibuya also known as Shibuya City, a ward of the City of Tokyo.

A new advanced form of the Internet has been developed, known as Cyberspace Eden, in which users are able to physically enter the internet. The story of Hacker’s Memory revolves around a young boy named Keisuke Amazawa, who’s account is stolen in a phishing attack.

After the identity theft has occurred Keisuke is left accused of a crime be did not commit, he joins up with a group of hackers known as Hudie, and begins his journey into the depths of Eden to find the real culprits and clear his own name.

The Cyberspace Eden is also the home to creatures known as Digimon, who Keisuke will befriend along his journey, also joining Keisuke on his journey will be another member of Hudie, a shy and reclusive girl named Erika Mishima, who has a genius mind and is able to link directly into the Cyberspace Eden, she is joined by her Digimon Wormmon.

In addition to the new characters some from the original Cyber Sleuth game such as Fei and her Digimon Vespamon who were a member of the hacker group Zaxom will also appear, quite a few of the original areas that were visited in the original Cyber Sleuth game make a return in this game as well.

Starting with the Zero2Zed rating for the game, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory started off solid first half, with ratings coming in at an 87 with the remaining ratings all coming in at an 80. The second half of the games ratings took a bit of a dip with a couple of 65s and three 70 ratings.

Critic reviews play a major part in this scoring system and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory generally has done well so far when it comes to critic reviews, the game while only getting one critic score above an 80, the game did well at the other end of the review scale as of the 7^th of February with the game not scoring below an above average 65.

Grading wise the games second half grades range from a C+ for the 70 rating, a couple of C ratings for the 65 ratings, while the first half grades are B grades for all bar one, with the game receiving a B+ grade for its 87 rating. Overall the game currently has a rating of 747 which averages out at a 74.7, this converts narrowly to a Grading rating of a B-. These rating are not finalised at the time of writing with the game only releasing on the 18^th of January 2018.

On to the first of the critic reviews which comes from Meristation who said the game followed the same steps as the previous game, but at the same time going one step beyond. The reviewer called the combat system great, combined with a interesting story and characters, the reviewer also praised the games better pacing on completing side quests in their 87 rated review.

GameSpew reviewer was one of many 80 ratings for the game with the review falling in love with the game after just a couple of hours with the reviewer finding it hard to put down. Playstation LifeStyle praised the way the game handled its characters with care and affection. The reviewer also praised the dungeon crawling elements calling them excellent, without the having familiarity with the past game, they did however also comment on this saying it may alienate potential players.

We Got This Covered are up next with another 80 rating, the review calling Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory a blast to play and gives the player plenty to do. The reviewer did have criticisms for the game one of the major ones was the main character Keisuke doesn’t make for the greatest of heroes, one of the major issues for the reviewer were the moronic expressions from the character which the review found a bit tiresome after about 10 hours.

The review did however praise the other members of Hudie, the reviewer finding that they had some truly off the wall moments. Concluding the reviewer said that you should play the first Cyber Sleuth game in order to get the various nods and references from the first game.

GameSpace called the game great with a great story worthy of playing if you feel It might not be your cup of tea. The review continued by saying that if you are a fan of Digimon like the reviewer I won’t have to tell you the fun in being able to play another Digimon RPG.

The next review comes from Game Revolution, the review calling Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory a refined version of the original Cyber Sleuth, with an engaging new story. The reviewer did however say this maybe a deterrence with the game largely unchanged, however the reviewer did find that the core gameplay hook is still there with some much needed improvement.

Moving on to the bottom end of the ratings scale we find PSX Sense scoring the game at a 70, the Dutch publication who called the game the same old, same old. The reviewer saying that Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory delivers more of the same and is therefore more than good enough. The reviewer did however find the slow start to the game did hurt the overall experience.

Heading over to Italy and Eurogamer.it who also scored the game at a 70, the reviewer commented on the environments and 3D models being the same as the previous game, the reviewer found the story to be afflicted by a lot of exhausting dialogue and narration only enjoyed by the young games. The reviewer did however praise the growing and combat system calling them solid and funny. Concluding the reviewer recommended the game to all Digimon fans.

3DJuegos another publication who scored the game at a 70, the reviewer praising the games abundant digital worlds to explore and creatures to collect, as well as having engaging battles. Concluded the reviewer found the game to be not the most original game around, but is a good one all the same.

AreaJugones also commented on the similarities between the first Cyber Sleuth game, calling it basically the same game, the review continued by saying the game features no improvements and seems to have been created for the Playstation Vita, concluding the review found the Playstation 4 version a missed opportunity.

The penultimate review comes from Hobby Consoles found the game will be to the liking of fans of either Digimon or the original Cyber Sleuth game, the review finding the Digital monsters to be the stars of the game. The reviewer did however like previously covered ones found the game to be almost identical to the original game, they also found the game for a JRPG to be pretty average in their 65 rated review.

The final review and the lowest scoring review for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory and comes from SpazioGames. The reviewer rating the game at a 65, and finding the game brings back too many elements from the previous game. Concluding the reviewer found in the end it feels like the developers forgot to give their new creature a personality of its own.

 

This is the part of Modern Game Weekly where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk for older generation titles and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

 

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who sadly don’t yet have the game listed on their website. So moving on Retrogames.co.uk are also a no go for this game with the site only stocking titles up to the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, so we head over to eStarland.com.

Here at eStarland.com we don’t find any used copies of the game available as of writing this, a new copy of the game can be purchases from them though, with a price of $57.95, this price has been marked down from the list price of $59.99. Also on offer is a trade in for the game with eStarland offering up to $36 for a complete boxed copy of the game. This price will go down to $23.40 if you are trading in the game as a disc only copy.

Moving on to Amazon.com where we find that this game being a recent release in the west has only a handful of used copies currently available. The first used copy on offer which is priced at $47.90 which converts to £33.69 in the UK can be ignored, the description stats that the case comes with large cosmetic damage.

The next cheapest used copy is one of four copies shipped by Amazon, these are either in very good or like new condition and are priced at between $52.69 and $53.89. It will be more worthwhile to opt for the cheapest new copy however, this copy even with shipping costs added in comes to $49.99, which converts to $35.16 in the UK.

From here priced for a new copy of the game rapidly pass into the the mid to high $60 range, with the vast majority of copies peaking around the $76 mark. Some new copy priced do however go well beyond this point, these copies are on sale for $140 and up with priced peaking at $175.37. These higher than normal priced copies seem to be limited to imported copies from Japan.

Written by

P J Gibbon