14 DAY TRIAL // 
The sequel to the game with the (almost) same name, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory expands on the original to offer a more complete monster catching experience. But does it live up to fans expectations or it's just a cash grab in disguise? I'll try to answer these questions and a lot more in my review, but feel free to ask me anything in the comments.
First off, there are a lot of similarities between the game launched two years ago and Hacker's Memory, and it's not just the graphics or artwork that's been reused, but the music sounds almost the same. Since I'm a newcomer to the series, I had to do some research to confirm it.
To some extent, I wouldn't say that's a bad thing since Hacker's Memory is meant to continue the story, or tell a completely new one in the same universe, from the 2016 game. A two-year development cycle might be too short for a small team to replace all assets, but an upgrade can be done.
Developer Media.Vision seems to have improved on the previous title, but visually there are very little changes, so if you've played the first Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth game, you won't have any surprises there.
Story
Although Hacker's Memory comes with a completely different story, some characters from the original game appear again. If you haven't played Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, you won't be able to recognize them, so you'll be missing a little bit of flavor, but nothing crucial to the story.
Unlike the first game that featured a female protagonist, in Hacker's Memory you'll be taking the role of Keisuke Amazawa (or whatever name you decide to give to your character), a young student who's looking for the hacker who stole his EDEN identity card.
For newcomers, EDEN is the virtual recreation of the physical world. Fully connected to the internet, people can log in as avatars and roam EDEN as they would in the real world. However, unlike the real world, EDEN is populated by little creatures called Digimon Monsters, which can be caught using Digimon Capture programs.
In order to discover the hacker who stole your EDEN identity, Keisuke joins some kind of white hat hacker group called Hudie. Before becoming a full member of the group, you must prove your worth in a series of tests that involve fighting a few other hackers.
For that purpose, you're given one Digimon to help you take on some of EDEN's inhabitants. Slowly, you'll form a band of really nasty monsters with various abilities that will make it easier for Keisuke to overpass any obstacle thrown by the developers.
Obviously, some grinding is required until your Digimon monsters are upgraded to a decent level, but that's not bothersome at first. Besides the main story, Hacker's Memory offers a series of side quests grouped as “contracts,” which can be accessed via the the main PC.
These cases that require solving will reward you with in-game money and, sometimes, experience for your character and equipment for your Digimon monsters. They are not mandatory, but many of them are nicely written and totally worth solving.
I'm not going to spoil the story for you, but I can confirm that it's one of the reasons that you'll keep playing despite the grinding. I probably didn't get many of the references to the previous game, but those few that I got give the story even more flavor. So, yes, that's one more reason to play Hacker's Memory.
Gameplay
If you're a newcomer to the franchise, you'll be overwhelmed by the quantity of information you're thrown at the beginning. The good news is Hacker's Memory is taking it slow, so by the time gameplay mechanics will matter in the game, you'll know enough to get you through all the major fights.
Digimon Story has always been about catching little monsters that you can evolve, devolve or even mix each other to obtain terribly powerful Digimon. Each of these creatures have their own powers and abilities that you'll learn during your playthrough.
Hacker's Memory adds 85 new Digimon to the series bringing the total to 327. The previous game included 242, which are available in the Hacker's Memory as well, so you'll most likely recognize them immediately.
The battle system from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth makes a return in Hacker's Memory (watch the video), but developers have added a new type called Domination Battles. They are easy to understand, but hard to master. Surprisingly, it adds a new strategic layer to the game and somehow breaks the monotony specific to this type of JRPGs.
Speaking of monotony, Hacker's Memory requires some backtracking, which means encounters with other Digimon inhabiting EDEN might become a chore. It's true that you need these random encounters until you manage to evolve your team of Digimon, but after you open your Farm (a place where your Digimon can be trained) this will become a chore.
Thankfully, the developers have added Digimon that completely remove these encounters, so you can fully focus on the story. Also, there are specific Digimon that reduce the number of encounters to 50%, so if you still want/need to evolve some of your Digimon, you can put it in your party. I should also warn you that the lower the level of your Digimon (Rookie) the more often you'll have to fight random Digimon.
Graphics and audio
There's nothing special about the graphics and if you've played Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, you'll find little to no improvements. The same goes for the soundtrack, which seems to have been slightly reworked, but the tunes remain the same.
Hacker's Memory is more about gameplay and artwork rather than graphics, so if you've watched the anime you'll find it pleasing to the eye (I know I did). What I did not like is having to listen to the same tune every time I fight a random encounter, and since Hacker's Memory requires a little bit of grinding that could become annoying.
The Good
- Decent story
- More Digimon to catch
- Additional gameplay mechanics
- Solid turn-based combat
- Plenty/fun evolution/devolution paths
The Bad
- Grinding can become a chore if you let it
- No graphics/audio improvements over the predecessor
Conclusion
Gameplay-wise, Hacker's Memory doesn't bring too many new things to the table over the predecessor, but the improvements (Domination Battles, additional Digimon) included somewhat might justify its release.
Of course, if you're playing these games for the story above all else, Hacker's Memory will certainly reward you. One other thing that I consider a great move from Bandai Namco is making Hacker's Memory a completely standalone game with little to do with the previous title. That means that newcomers to the series will not feel confused because they didn't play Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth.
