Digimon Story Time Stranger On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Digimon Story Time Stranger, from developers Media.Vision Entertainment.

The Digimon Story series of games has been reasonably well received, i have Cybersleuth myself. so i personally was interested in checking out the latest game in the series. as far as i'm aware, the games may not be tied together via story or location but i can't say for sure so please let me know in the comments how these games tie together, if they do.

This is a long demo that seems to take place from the start of the game. what's nice is that the game clearly tells us the save will carry over to the purchased copy of the game more than once. this video starts with the first message and ends with the message being repeated. What's also nice about this demo is that when you complete it there's a trailer for the game showing off many locations and a lot of Digimon.

We get to do the game's tutorial but it's presented in an old way. there's text on screen and when there are pictures used they're not gifs or videos. the tutorial feels basic, more so in comparison to many games i've played over the last couple of years. at least we're given a chance to use what it's telling us more than once. the game also reminds us to do a few different things. But the tutorial really doesn't cover most of the game's items.

Graphically, the game's main characters and Digimon look nice. but everyone else has no faces and their clothes are typically one color plus that color with shadow. thankfully, with these cut backs and more, the game does seem to run stable and i found the controls very responsive. it seems like a fair trade off, but the bright areas of the game might be a bit too bright for non-HDR tv's.

I think the demo fails to provide the "hook" to draw players back to it. it's a long demo, but i couldn't tell you the game's story or what seems to be a time travel mechanic. i don't think it gives enough hints as to what could be happening either. if i had to guess, the events at the start of the demo were "now" and the events at the end of the demo were before the wall was erected and a loop exists between these two points in time. i say it in the video that there was a better moment to end the demo because it would've left the player wanting to know what happened.

I do think this demo is worth checking out and it's possible your playthrough might be a little different to mine because of how the evolution mechanic works. i know i enjoyed the game enough to Wish List it.

Demo Play Thursday - The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.

This video is longer than many of the other Demo Play Thursday videos as this demo, and most likely the game too, had a weird mechanic in that it's almost impossible to pause the game during the story telling. I say almost as the player can turn off the auto play of the story but this doesn't give the player access to any of the menus. as you'll see in this video, i was only able to access the menus at very specific points. the start of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is a very long story sequence with only a couple of moments where the player has control. i don't know if this will be the case going forward in the game, but as someone who's not played many visual novel style games this was the first time i've encountered such game design.

Now with that out of the way, i really enjoyed my time with the demo for The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. i liked the music, i liked the art style, and i especially enjoyed how the game didn't bog it self down with backstory and world building. the demo starts with an apocalyptical event taking place, goes back in time to shortly before it, and then carries on from the event. i wasn't expecting some of the scenes we got or how gruesome some of them were. but it didn't take me out of the story telling either.

graphically, other than some banding i think it holds up well on Switch. but with how long some of the story sequences are, it was disappointing that the game was unable to turn off the Switch's Screen Dimming feature which other games like Loopers has done. You'll see it in this video where it catches me out a couple of times and you may also hear the analogue sticks being pressed but nothing happening on screen as this was my attempt to prevent the dimming.

As a demo, the game doesn't have a link to the eShop page on it's home screen. As a story focused game, the demo has a bigger role to play as it has to try and sell the game's story and hook into the player so that they would want to get the game to carry it on. For me, i was interested in the story enough to want to know more.  as i didn't finish the demo, i don't know if it ends on a cliffhanger. but i feel like i've seen a lot of what the game has to offer, initially at least, to want to keep playing it. i'm not just curious as to where the story will go, i'm also interested in the character interactions and the world in general.

The demo for The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy isn't the best demo i've played, but i'm glad i've played it. i was curious about the game before i played it but it didn't really grab me. i would probably have done nothing more than Wishlist it. but now i've played the demo, i'm much more interested in it, even if it does have some quirks that could get annoying down the line. i'd recommend people giving it a go, just beware it's age rating does seem well earned.