Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory released last week, and this game mostly improves on the already solid RPG formula used in its prequel, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. While there are many monster-collecting RPGs out there, Digimon is most often compared to Pokemon. The two series started at around the same time, and with so many stylistic similarities, comparisons are unavoidable. Pokemon clearly wins the video game battle from a sales and popularity perspective, but that doesn’t mean that the series can’t learn anything from the recent Digimon Story titles.
Better Side Quests
What Pokemon Can Learn From Digimon Story
While Pokemon has a few good side quests throughout its history, most of the franchise’s world-building comes through the main storyline. On the other hand, both Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory are filled with side quests. Not every side quest is a narrative masterpiece, but enough of them are engaging side adventures that add more context to the games’ world. Cyber Sleuth is built for this type of side quest, but there’s no reason that Pokemon couldn’t adopt a similar “job board” mechanic.
Digimon Story makes quests worth the time, and both EXP and items are often given for completing them. However, the rewards are not the only aspect of Digimon Story’s side quests that attracts players. These mini-stories add up to be just as impactful as the game’s actual storyline. Many Digimon are featured throughout the side quests, and by putting more Digimon in the spotlight, more of Digimon’s expansive lore is shared made known to the player. Pokemon, a series with such a large cast of critters, would surely benefit from having its lesser-known Pokemon fleshed out. As it stands, only a handful of 802 Pokemon ever receive significant attention, and side quests similar to Digimon Story would be a great way for GameFreak to fix that.
This post was originally written by Sean Pyle.
