Digimon Story Time Stranger

Digimon Story Time Stranger is the best monster collecting game I have ever played. The story itself starts quite interesting. The second half drags on a little bit and some decisions regarding some story parts of the game were exhausting at times because you felt like in the movie groundhog day doing the same stuff over and over again. Also, as a completionist, I felt that the side missions didn't respect my time. Many side quests were of the type "talk to X and either find something or fight someone". But due to the slow movement and the suboptimal fast travel systems it always felt like a chore to go through the numerous regions. Also, the number of side quests you are confronted with at the end is ungodly. It felt like half of my playtime was spent on side missions I received literally before the final mission. A major positive point are the digimon. Collecting and digivolving them using various evolution paths was motivating and even in cases where I got an evolution that was basically useless I enjoyed the discovery of the new digimon nonetheless. The fighting system is not too complex yet offers a range of strategies that can be used. Especially the animations of the special attacks were designed with so much attention to detail it puts everything the pokemon franchise has thrown at us in the past 20 years to shame. Also, works great on Linux (aside from frame tearing which I was not able to resolve, unfortunately). I can only recommend this game to everyone who enjoys monster collecting games.