This weekend at Anime Expo 2019 in Los Angeles the "Future of Digimon" panel gave Digimon fans a lot of news about upcoming projects including some on upcoming and re-released titles. For a while, between the years of 2008 and 2012 there were a number of Digimon games that were released but that unfortunately never made it out of Japan. With news of some titles getting released for more platforms and further discussion on the games that are coming out it's great to see a resurgence in the popularity of Digimon.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory will be released as part of the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition on Nintendo Switch and PC this October 18th. The Cyber Sleuth series of games are JRPG's set in a world where players can log in and move around the internet as digital representations of themselves. When in the digital world hackers make use of Digimon to work their ways into secure systems. These two games, Cyber Sleuth, and Hacker's Memory aren't sequels to one another but instead present two concurrent stories set in the same world. You'll experience common locations, Digimon, and characters from both stories even though they don't exactly overlap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOpjwvu05xE
In Cyber Sleuth you are the assistant to a digital detective, it's your job to log into the digital world and attempt to solve the mystery of the strange squid virus that seems to be appearing. Hacker's Memory has you play as a new recruit to a hacker group called Hudie, you take on missions to grow. As you progress through the game you also begin to learn more about what was going on behind the scenes in the original game. The first game has over 200 Digimon available to tame and if you have save data recorded you can import it into the second game to fill out your list of known Digimon and their evolution requirements.
The rest of the news from the "Future of Digimon" panel is a bit mixed though as it was announced that the upcoming Strategy game Digimon Survive is still coming but has had to have been pushed back to 2020. While we've learned about the different characters and some gameplay elements in the past at the panel the 5+ minute opening sequence was shown. This opening has yet to be found streamable online though so we'll likely have to wait a while longer for that. In the brief Q&A session, it was detailed that Survive will take place not the real or digital world but a new one.
As a final piece of news there is a new Digimon Story title in development, this game was very briefly brought up before the release of Hacker's Memory as a way to assure fans that while there wasn't too much in terms of new content that it was a good stopgap leading into the next game in the series. This Digimon Story game will have nothing to do with the Cyber Sleuth games but if it has the "Story" title then we can assume that it will also be a JRPG. More news on this Digimon Story game and Survive will be revealed at a later time.
Are you as excited as I am to hear about upcoming Digimon titles? Are you excited to try Cyber Sleuth on PC or Switch? What kind of Digimon do you want to see appear in the next Digimon Story?
