Parents' Guide to Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory

While this adventure takes a more mature spin on the franchise and the characters of the digital world, it also feels a bit repetitive and unoriginal. When the first Cyber Sleuth game came out a couple of years back, it took the popular series that fans grew up with and crafted a Digimon adventure in a world that grew up along with them. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory dives back into that world with a brand-new story and a fresh coat of paint. For newcomers to this grittier side of the Digi-verse, the game feels unique and special, like a shot of adrenaline to the franchise. But for fans of the first game, there's also an overriding feeling of déjà vu just under the surface. While it's not necessarily a bad thing to revisit the past and see callbacks to the first adventure, the overall gameplay and flow can't help but feel repetitive to returning players.

The core gameplay remains relatively unchanged from the first game. This means that there's still a lot to do at any given time. Whether you're pushing the story forward, working on side quests, raising and training your army of Digimon, or simply duking it out in the virtual world and grinding for XP, there's not a lot of downtime in the game unless you're specifically avoiding finding something to do. While the visuals have improved somewhat over the original Cyber Sleuth, it's still not exactly pushing the hardware to its limits. Moving around is still a bit stiff and wooden, though the action scenes in the turn-based battles are anything but. While Hacker's Memory does manage to maintain the overall feel of the original adventure and is a great entry for those who missed out the first time around, this sequel's lack of any real standout or finely tuned features may leave Story veterans with a case of "been there, done that."