With the return of a classic monster-taming RPG, Digimon Story Time Stranger is the most recent entry in the Digimon Story sub-series. A traditional turn-based RPG with a diverse roster of Digimon to both battle with and explore different evolutionary paths. Along with that, you are also presented with a story that follows the conflicts and relationships between humans and Digimon.

A Brand New Digital World

Similar to many RPGs, you choose either your male or female-presenting protagonist. The interesting thing about them is that you can change their first names, but not their last names. This signifies you are not just playing as a silent protagonist who was just dropped into the story. Your relevance as the protagonist is that you are related to an important researcher named Dr. Yuki. He was said to be involved with the study of Digimon, which in turn, comes back to the protagonist using them in battle. Without getting into too much comparison to Pokemon, you similarly have the choice of picking one of three starter Digimon. From there on you, explore the ruins of a walled off sector of Tokyo with hostile Digimon to fight. After defeating one of the bosses of this area, you are transported back in time 8 years and attempt to stop the event of Digimon appearing in Tokyo.

Along with time traveling, you also get to experience traveling to the Digital World. This is the world where Digimon come from and where you’ll spend a majority of the game’s story in. The various areas of the Digital World are some of the most unique locations in a monster-taming RPG. There are entire societies built in these areas with Digimon who fit perfectly in them. The train Digimon, Locomon serves as this world’s method of transportation for all Digimon and the player. Those who have been longtime fans of the franchise will appreciate the level of detail in these areas and the various NPC Digimon to interact with. And I would even say that may apply to new players as well just based on the liveliness of the Digital World.

Digitize into Battle

As previously mentioned, once you choose your starting Digimon you are thrusted into three different fights. Upon entering your first battle, the game teaches you about the Attribute system. Although there are seven Attributes, four of them are just neutral in the overall system. The main three are Vaccine, Virus, and Data. These Attributes work like Rock, Paper, Scissors. Digimon with the Vaccine Attribute do more damage to Digimon with the Virus Attribute. Inversely, Vaccine Digimon do less damage to Data Digimon. To add on to this game’s battle system, there are also elemental weaknesses and resistances. The only type in this game’s case are the Attributes. There are no “Fire Type” Digimon because every Digimon has their own unique weaknesses and resistances.

Battles are done with three of your Digimon being active in the fight with three more in the reserves that you can swap with mid-battle. You may also have guest party members that help you and they change depending on where you are in the story. The game uses a turn order system to show who and when certain Digimon can act. This can be influenced by applying certain buffs or debuffs, as well as certain moves and passive abilities that allow a Digimon to act first or last in the turn order. One of the most important aspects of this combat is preparing your team for the right situation. Team building is quite interesting as you need to always account for the different Attributes of your Digimon and the enemies. One of the safer team comps that I found most effective was having a team of 2 Vaccine, 2 Virus, and 2 Data Digimon. However, it is usually unfortunate if you’re in a boss fight with a Data Attribute Digimon and your Vaccine Digimon are afflicting less damage and taking more.

Talking about the Digimon themselves, this game is incredibly unique with how it handles Digivolving your Digimon. Digimon are not subject to one Digivolution line. I would describe Digivolution as a sprawling web. Along with Digivolving, you can De-digivolve your Digimon, in which you can revert them back to a prior stage of evolution. This can be done to explore more Digivolutions paths and raise their stats.

Train and Explore

Aside from battling and experiencing an engaging story, there are many other side activities that add to this game’s value. One of the game’s most important, yet optional, features is the Digifarm. You can leave a certain amount of Digimon in your Digifarm and do one of two activities with them. One of them is training your Digimon to raise a specific stat. The more effective the training item, the more real world time it takes for them to finish. The other option is to feed your Digimon to raise their Bond stat. Every Digimon has their own food preference, so you’ll need to go through some trial and error to find out which ones they like over others. 

It’s not an RPG without a side mode to kill time in. Early on, you can play a side game called Jogmon. You use cards to battle opponents this time around. The mechanics are very simple as they use Attributes system for battling. You can collect cards by taking cards your opponents have used or you can buy them from certain shops. My biggest gripe with this side game is that it is very luck based. You can use a card that has an advantage in both Attribute and power level and could still lose that interaction without knowing what the chance of losing was. At the very least, I can appreciate that both the Digifarm and Jogmon draw inspiration from Digimon’s roots as a virtual pet toy.

Conclusion

Without going on for too long, I could talk about this game forever. This coming from someone who is a longtime fan of the Digimon franchise. Though for those who are new and want to try out a different style of a monster-taming game, I cannot recommend Digimon Story Time Stranger enough. Much of the discussion online of this game comes down to the comparison of this to Pokemon. It’s been over 25 years since these franchises began and there is still discourse about the two. A favorable comparison I would give to Time Stranger is the Shin Megami Tensei series solely based on the gameplay. Regardless, this is a solid monster-taming RPG with a diverse variety of Digimon to Digivolve and fight with. 

Blood of Mehran is awful. It’s awful in a way that I didn’t think was possible anymore. It’s like a sloppy PS2 action game that was cobbled together to cash in on the God of War/DMC craze of 20 years ago, hoping to trick edgy teenage boys with a sick ass cover and the promise of gnarly dismemberment. But now it’s 2025, gaming has grown up and so has Kratos; now a single widower with a BOY. He’s still capable of disembowelling monsters and NPC’s he finds annoying, but it’s now in a package clearly inspired by the AAA over the shoulder cinematic storytelling that The Last of Us (whether you like it or not) has set as a gold standard. Based on Persian mythology, and made in Iran by a very small indie team, Mehran is clearly trying to be the middle eastern modern God of War/Assassin’s Creed; a noble endeavour. But good intentions aren’t always enough.

I honestly don’t know what the plot of the game is, its storytelling is so poor. Mehran is a retired warrior whose wife and daughter are murdered by the order of the corrupt King of the land. Why? I don’t know. The game opens with a recount of their culling, told through a cliche sequence where Mehran walks through the ruins of his homestead and the transparent ghosts of that night slowly manifest; the screen is filled with fire and alpha effects, the dying screams of his family echo through the night. The problem is that it’s unoptimised Unreal Engine 5 and all this grief causes the frame rate to tank to the low 20s. 

He’s thrown in prison and then breaks out and this escape serves as your tutorial area, aka the thing that gets the player hooked. And it’s bad. Character models are, without any hyperbole, early PS3 quality, bug eyed with smooth skin and awkward movement. Mehran sprints like a constipated caveman and when you move around in a circle, his feet just glide along the floor like an Oblivion character. Lip synching is seemingly non-existent, almost as if they were ashamed to time it with the wooden voice acting, the worst performance being Mehran himself. We have a game where our main character looks, moves and sounds terrible. Off to a great start.

Then you get to the combat. It’s 2018 God of War but rubbish. Throw any criticism you want at the direction GoW has gone in and the modern “cinematic” style of gameplay, but you can’t deny the effort that’s gone into the animation, sound design and responsiveness in those titles. You’d probably appreciate it more if you played this. Fast attack, strong attack, parry and dodge, press the two sticks to go into Rage Mode, you know the bloody drill. But imagine that running at like 23fps with input lag, missing/cut off sound effects and wooden animation, topped off with a nauseating motion blur effect that can’t be turned off because the toggle in the options is broken. It’s like if someone made a NINTENDO HIRE THIS MAN tech demo into a game.

Okay I’ll play devil’s advocate for a bit, I have a few nice things to say. When not in motion and at a distance, environments can look kinda nice. Textures can be somewhat decent and it seems to have some kind of Ray Traced/Lumen reflection system (probably explains why the frame rate can barely reach 30). It also has a pretty sick opening cinematic that looks nothing like the actual game, which they proudly display on their store page to lure in the Assassin’s Creed audience. Lastly, the music can be nice sometimes, mainly when it’s emulating a classical Persian sound and not when it goes techno for some reason.

I do not recommend buying Blood of Mehran. They’re asking £21 for this; you can get a modern Assassin’s Creed or Dad of Boy for cheaper than that. I could barely stomach 2 hours and in that time I learned all I needed to know. It’s not even bad in way that’s entertaining or campy, it’s just mediocre at its core, kinda nostalgic in a weird way, like a clumsy PS2 game that’s been given a fan made texture mod. Both the gameplay and storytelling are beyond archaic and it has no place to stand in an industry with increasingly high standards. Sat next to me when I was playing it, my flatmate said it “looks like a mobile game from 2011”. And he’s right. 

I’ve lost count of the nights I spent hunched over the 2004 classic VTM: Bloodlines, losing myself in the world, creating new characters and exploring all the possibilities in dialog and story. This was the game that shaped my love for that strange, sticky mixture of gothic roleplay and urban noir. And of course, vampires. When Bloodlines 2 was announced, multiple times, with multiple cancellations and delays I knew it wouldn’t live up to the original masterpiece. But I had to give it a go.

Admittedly I went into Bloodlines 2 expecting a disaster which did the game a favour because I was pleasantly surprised. It may not be on the way to be a critically acclaimed RPG but it sure is a good vampire power fantasy.

How does if compare?

Let’s start with the writing and the characters who are often well written, interesting as well as a great addition to the Elders story. Conversations are often sharp, realistic and with vampires who drip personality. At its best the game channels noir and gothic melodrama in ways that feel genuinely of the World of Darkness, and the voice performances are frequently excellent. Those late-night bar conversations and the chilling one-on-ones with powerful figures are the moments when the game remembers what made the original special and actually doubles down on it. The narrative and character work are highlights.

However the character building suffers greatly. This is where the disappointment bites. In the original Bloodlines, the character sheet, stats, and skill spreads mattered, they were how yours to adjust and create the vampire you wanted to play. In Bloodlines 2, you can choose a clan (Which hardly matters) , and within an hour or so players will max out their starting clans abilities. But then with the lack of more ‘powerful’ abilities but still throwing harder combat scenarios at the player Bloodlines 2 somehow makes the main character feel weaker as the game goes on. This is due to fewer branching systems, less granular skill specialization, and a much smaller feeling of consequence in spending skill points. You still have stealth options, and a choice of approaches to most encounters, but those choices rarely feel as mechanically meaningful as they used to. The game nudges you toward a handful of viable playstyles rather than letting you craft oddball builds the way the original did. For a fan who equates roleplaying with mechanical breadth, that narrowing is a real loss.

The gameplay.

Bloodlines 2 is split into two major gameplay sections which interchange every time the player rests. The main story including Phyre, and elder vampire nomad and Fabien, a detective reduced to a voice in your head.

Phyre is where it’s at for players to awaken their disciplines. Combat is serviceable in short bursts but rarely satisfying for long stretches. It’s often clunky, with repetitive encounters that don’t reward clever build decisions the way older CRPG systems did. The disciplines can be fun, there are neat, vampire-y tricks to employ but they’re boxed into a more action-oriented loop that sometimes undermines the feeling of being a cunning, ancient predator. If you liked pacing that pivots between tense social encounters and strategic fights, the balance here leans toward plain action in ways you might not enjoy.

One area where Bloodlines 2 surprised me was in its investigative bits. These are sequences that play like small puzzle-box mysteries , sifting through scenes, piecing together memories, and manipulating objects as well as kindred with disciplines. These detective moments can be interesting, blending the setting, the protagonist’s fragmented perspective, and the fiction’s darker intrigues into something that feels closer to the intellectual satisfaction of an RPG than the combat sections. They’re not always perfectly executed, sometimes leaning too heavily on guided solutions, but they genuinely recapture the investigative vibe that made the first game’s side-quests and main beats so memorable.

World and atmosphere

Seattle looks moody and neon-kissed in the right moments. The set-pieces, dive bars, snow-littered streets, opulent vampire dens are often gorgeous and atmospheric. But the city can also feel a bit sparse and recycled; there’s an intermittently empty quality to the world that diminishes the sense that your choices change the social fabric of the Masquerade. This is a visual and tonal success most of the time, but not always the lived-in playground the first game felt like

One of the most painful shifts for long-time fans: choices rarely land with the weight they used to. Dialogue choices can be brilliant and fun, and some branches do lead to distinct scenes, but overall, the scope of meaningful divergence is smaller. The feeling of shaping a personal legend in the city is reduced. That reduction is the core of my gripe: strip the mechanical meat and you’re left with a lovely theatrical body, but there’s less under the surface to role play with.

My conclusion

If you come to Bloodlines 2 purely for a moody, well-acted vampire story and some clever investigative beats, it’s worth the time. If you come for the old-school, systems-forward roleplaying that made the original a cult classic, you’ll have to make do with the first game. The mechanical scope has been narrowed, and the promise of freedom is more about moment-to-moment play than the long arc of building your unique vampire. In short, it’s a respectable vampire game with sharp writing and a few memorable moments, but it shouldn’t be wearing the “Bloodlines” badge.