Recently, we got to chat with Digimon Story: Time Stranger producer Ryosuke Hara, and we talked about the game’s development and main theme.
Following the game’s release date trailer at the June 2025 State of Play, we got to try out a quick demo of Time Stranger. This game has gotten a lot of fans excited, and based on what we’ve experienced, this is shaping up to be a great new series entry that fans will enjoy.
The anticipation for the game is in part due to the long wait for it. After all, the game was first announced way back in 2017. Given the fairly long development time, this was one of the questions we asked Hara during a media roundtable interview.
In response, Hara mentioned that the core theme of the game was one of the reasons why they took quite a long time to craft the game.
Hara explained:
The concept of Digimon Story: Time Stranger is the bond between humans and Digimon. So, it took time for us to develop this new game because we wanted to bring out this theme of the strong bond between humans and Digimon. We also tried to create a world focused on the Olympos XII. Although the whole process took time, we are very satisfied with what we have come up with.
Based on Hara’s answer, it seems that the long development time was mostly due to the team wanting to do the game’s core theme justice. While long waits for games can be concerning to some, the fact that the team is satisfied with the results should be great news for those who are highly anticipating this release.
While the excitement for this game comes mainly from long-time Digimon fans, Time Stranger is also made to be a great entry point to the series. Not only does it have a standalone story, but the entire experience was made to be quite accessible.
“There’s no need to have knowledge of the previous series before playing this game,” said Hara. “Even for first-time players, those who are new to Digimon, [we made it so that they] can also enjoy this game.”
We can’t talk about the story much as that wasn’t the main aspect of the demo that we tried, but we can confirm that, as the Digimon Story producer mentioned, players won’t need to have played other Digimon games, at least in terms of gameplay. That’s because the game’s turn-based combat system, with its focus on elemental weaknesses, should feel quite familiar to anyone who has played JRPGs.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 3, 2025.