Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth first came out in Japan nearly a year ago, and it’s finally made its way westward on both PlayStation 4 and Vita. After logging about 12 hours in the game so far, I can say with confidence that it was worth the wait.

In Cyber Sleuth, players assume the role of an amateur hacker who becomes enveloped in a massive digital conspiracy. The setting features an online realm called EDEN, where people can connect and interact with one another via avatars. One day in EDEN, the player and two of their friends are contacted by a mysterious hacker who grants them the power to capture Digimon – digital monsters that roam some of the more dangerous parts of EDEN.

After learning how to interact with the Digimon, the player is attacked by a monstrous creature called an “Eater,” which consumes part of their data as they attempt to log out of EDEN. This event leaves the player’s mental data separate from their physical body, and allows them to manifest in the real world and in EDEN as a half-digitized body while their actual real body lies in a coma. They’re contacted by Kyoko, head of the Kuremi Detective Agency (thus the “Sleuth” part), and start to investigate the Eaters and the outbreak of “EDEN Syndrome.”

The game is the latest in the Digimon Story video game series and thus plays very similar to other entries. The first Digimon Story games were released in the U.S. as Digimon World DS and Digimon World Dawk & Dusk on the Nintendo DS handheld, with the latter having launched in 2007 – so it’s been a while since these games have been seen stateside. Two other games in the series (Lost Evolution and Super Xros Wars) came out in Japan in that time but never made their way to North America.

Though it clearly ties into the larger Digimon media franchise, Cyber Sleuth is a standalone story, making it fairly accessible for gamers who may not be as familiar with the Digimon anime series. The game actually does a fairly solid job at introducing the concept of the Digimon themselves, the Digital World, and so on, for anyone who hasn’t seen the show before. That said, it’s probably easier to jump right into the game if you’re already a fan of Digimon; with the various types and alignments (and how they impact each other), the battles can be somewhat confusing if you don’t familiarize yourself with them.

Cyber Sleuth is a really solid Japanese-style turn-based RPG with an easy learning curve. There isn’t really anything out of the ordinary for gamers who have played JRPGs before (like a Final Fantasy or even a Pokémon title). The character designs are also really fun; they’re done by Suzuhito Yasuda, known for his work on Shin Megami Tensei titles and on the anime series Durarara!!. I think the character renderings are some of my favorite in recent memory. With a couple hundred different Digimon in the game, it’s easy to see where they could have just cheated, but every ‘mon has their own personality shine through.

If I have just one gear to grind here, it’s that you can’t change the camera angle in-game. This is somewhat frustrating, especially for the current generation of gaming, and I’m not a fan of basically having to rely entirely on the mini-map at times to know where I am. But beyond that, everything here is really solid. I’d probably recommend this game more to people who already are into the Digimon franchise, but it’s a great game for anyone just looking for a solid RPG to kick off their 2016 gaming.

-Carrie Wood