Parent's Guide: Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory?

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory is a Japanese-style role playing game based on the popular TV show. The follow up to the original Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, you'll take on the role of Keisuke, a guy who's had his online account stolen and used to commit crimes, as he decides to take matters into his own hands, and joins up with a benevolent hacking organisation known as Hudie. Heading into depths of the virtual world of EDEN, it's up to you to face off against many an unsavoury individual, as you build a team of digital monsters, and use them in battle against other hackers. With over 300 Digimon to raise, evolve and battle (for more, be sure to check out our full list of all 340 Digimon in Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory), there's plenty of choice when it comes to building your perfect team!

While Hacker's Memory is technically a sequel, there's no necessity to have played the previous game, as, while a few references crop up, the story is a mostly separate affair.

How do you play Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory?

As a member of the Hudie agency, a kind of freelance police of the online world, you'll have your work cut out for you as you try to help out the various residents of EDEN, and gradually uncover clues as to who stole your digital identity. Generally speaking, you'll need to complete a certain number of side missions - known as BBS from the bulletin board they're posted on - to move the story forward, and get one step closer to recovering your lost account. Whether it's searching for a missing person, tracking down a hacking mastermind, or asking around for important info, most missions involve plenty of exploration, plenty of encounters with Digimon, and many a battle along the way.

Battles are exceedingly similar to Pokemon, with players taking it in turns with their opponents to attack, defend and use special moves. With a team of up to three Digimon fighting on your behalf, each with their own unique skills, attacks and abilities at their disposal, everyone's bound to have a favourite team that suits their play style. Digimon also fall into several different types, with a rock-paper-scissors style system determining theirs strengths and weaknesses - exploiting these, by attacking enemies with the types they're weakest to, will see you deal extra damage, potentially turning the tide in battle.

Occasionally, you'll find yourself taking on opposing teams of hackers in a bit of a different battle type known as a 'Domination Battle' - taking place on a board game-like grid, the aim of the game is to capture more squares than your opponents within a set number of turns to win, contesting squares with a regular Digimon battle along the way.

How easy is Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory to pick up and play?

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory has two difficulty settings - normal and hard, with the latter bolstering the power of your opponents in battle, rewarding you with more money and items when you win. Unfortunately, there's no way to dial the difficulty down, should you be struggling on normal, outside of simply fighting more battles to gradually power up your Digimon team.

With easy to pick up and play battles, fairly linear dungeons to explore, and a save system that allows you to save anywhere, Digimon Story is a game that's mostly easy to pick up and play. However, with no handy reminders or quest logs as to where you're meant to head next during story quests, you'll need to rely on following your nose if you can't remember what was said.

Hacker's Memory is also a rather text-heavy and story-driven game, voiced entirely in Japanese with English subtitles, which means you'll need to be quite a confident reader to get by, as everything is done through text only.

Sample Sentences:

• "So I need to gather information about Shiga from the hackers in Under Kowloon, then install malware when I find the suspicious person? This is my first job as a hacker. I've never done anything like this before, but I'll just get it done step-by-step."
• "I'll get straight to the case. I want you to punish an evil hacker in EDEN. EDEN is filled to the brim with hackers who view Digimon as little more than mere tools to do their bidding, as I'm sure you already know."
• "Just hurry up and find it. I heard an Airdramon has been seen on Under Kowloon Lv. 2. Get over there! I'm counting on you! I'll be waiting at the DigiMarket!"

On the whole, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory is pretty tame in terms of mature content. Battles consist of picking moves from lists, with monsters attacking each other with magical orbs, projectiles and sword slashes, accompanied by bright flashes of light and impact sounds, with the occasional pink blood splatter effect. One attack is called 'poop toss' and involves throwing pink poo at enemies, while another creature resembles a giant yellow poo.

Bad language is occasional and fairly mild, with sh*t and p*ssed appearing in the dialogue from time to time, while sexual content is limited to low cut tops on some female characters, and one scene in which a man pats a character's backside, with accompanying suggestive dialogue, such as "...wouldn't stop touching your body", "...something...had its hands all over that good-looking guy" and "That sinister threat, how it groped that guy…".

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4