Technologies

Digimon Story Time Stranger Preview: Can It Beat Pokemon at Its Own Game?

The next Digimon roleplaying game is shaping up to be its own blend of complex turn-based combat and monster growth.

I’m halfway through my three-hour demo playing Digimon Story Time Stranger when I finally muster the courage to de-evolve one of my most powerful monsters. Why? So I can build them back up from level 1 to be even stronger — and grow them along a different evolutionary path. For casual players, this may sound excessive. For hardcore roleplaying game fans keen on building their fighters to the peak of performance, these expansive possibilities are exactly what they’ve been waiting for.

Digimon Story Time Stranger, from publisher Bandai Namco due out Oct. 3, is the next game to explore the Digimon franchise. While Digimon’s digital world and quirky monster design have always given it a unique flavor, it’s always been in the shadow of Nintendo’s cultural colossus Pokemon, which reigns supreme in the monster-collecting RPG subgenre.

But Digimon Story Time Stranger introduces enough ways to alter and grow its monsters that it could step out on its own as a robust alternative to Pokemon. There’s a complex battle system for calculating weaknesses, myriad items to equip that give different attacks and a host of ways to build stats. All of that combines for a rich depth of combat with quality-of-life considerations that remove some tedium from the level-up grind.

Digimon Story Time Stranger’s plot feels like anime

Players will have plenty of time to dig into those complexities when playing through Digimon Story Time Stranger, which is set in modern-day Japan. Players take on the role of an agent of ADAMAS, an organization exploring anomalies, which generally means the appearances of digital lifeforms wandering into our world — the eponymous Digimon.

In my demo, I played through the first hour of the game in which my agent fought enemy monsters while exploring a walled-off section of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. In the chaos of meeting a mysterious girl and being saved from a giant rampaging Digimon, my agent got sucked into the digital realm. That’s where you’ll find the game’s main conflict: a war between more benign monsters living in harmony and a bellicose faction of Digimon called the Titans.

In the full game, players will have to tour the digital realm and quell conflicts between the two sides in around a dozen areas, all while growing a fighting team. I got a tease of the machinations happening in the background as a cutscene revealed a few posh children (who may be more powerful than they appear) speaking about the war, suggesting they could be manipulating the greater conflict from afar.

Based on what I saw, the game’s story feels like an anime plot, and likely lasts dozens of hours. I didn’t play enough to speculate on where it’ll go, aside from leaning on familiar tropes like building friendships and turning enemies to allies, but I dug deeply into the gameplay enough to seriously recommend Pokemon players give Digimon Story Time Stranger a solid look.

Digimon Story Time Stranger’s deep systems should appeal to Pokemon diehards

While I’m more of a casual Pokemon fan, I know the fanbase has a core population of players who strive to breed, raise and train their monsters to their absolute limits of stats and power. They’re the fans I’m talking to when I say that Digimon Story Time Stranger has the complexity to give Pokemon a run for its money among the hardcore monster-training demographic.

First, there’s the turn-based combat. Digimon have a series of moves keyed to 11 elemental types — fire, water, earth, dark, light and so on. Use the right attack and it’ll get a damage boost, perhaps to 200%. Each Digimon also has a digital identity, mainly split along three types: data, which are weak to viruses, which are weak to vaccines, which are weak to data, in a rock-paper-scissors sort of cycle. If you combine these with the right attack from the right kind of Digimon type, you can boost damage up to 300% — and beyond.

Thankfully, the game has several ways it eases the rougher parts of this complexity. You can use items or switch Digimon without using a turn. Your agent character also has powerful Cross Arts with varying effects like dealing damage or boosting your monsters’ defense and attack. When you’re out of battles, you can just stand still for a moment to recover your Digimon team’s health and special attack energy, with no need to waste items. And you can even ride some Digimon to travel faster.

But growing your Digimon is a whole other level of complexity that gives hardcore players a lot of options. First and foremost are the evolutions («digivolutions» in the game’s parlance): When your Digimon satisfies certain requirements, like having high enough stats, you can transform them into a more powerful monster. While Digimon’s eclectic creature design means you could be evolving, say, a fluffy mammal into a battle tank, there’s no denying how much more effective that stronger monster will be.

You can also go the other way, de-evolving them back to their base form in order to transform them during a second evolution that may learn different attacks or have other advantages. With four tiers of forms and multiple options at each, there’s a lot of ways to transition the same monster up and down the evolutionary tree.

You’ll want to stick with the same monsters, too. The more they fight for you, the stronger their bond will be, allowing them to keep stat bonuses even when evolving or de-evolving. This is complicated by the way you get Digimon in the first place: Defeat enough of the same monster in the field and you’ll be able to generate one of your own. But you may want to hold off, as defeating twice as many means you’ll be able to produce one with an even higher level cap (from 20 to 25, say) and more maximum stats. You may be torn between a monster you caught earlier and one you can generate later that’s more powerful.

Complicating this even further are personalities, affecting which stats grow faster when leveling up. These can be viewed on a 4×4 grid on a Digimon’s status screen, and certain items can shift their personality.

The consequence of de-evolving your favorite monsters is that they’ll drop to level one, keeping only the stats bonuses from your bond with them. But you can stow them in a Digifarm to have them passively level up as you go about your adventures, returning them to fighting potency over time.

These are just the basics of Digimon Story Time Stranger that I got to see in a few hours of playtime, and while the game’s differences from Pokemon may be a bit jarring to fans of that franchise, its depth should be tantalizing to the monster trainers out there. Since the next Digimon comes out Oct. 3, that gives folks two weeks to try it out before the upcoming Pokemon Legends: Z-A is released on Oct. 16.

Digimon Story Time Stranger will be released on Oct. 3 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Technologies

Apple’s iPhone 17 Event Is Today. Here’s How to Watch

Apple’s «awe dropping» keynote is hours away. Here are the products and updates we expect to see.

Apple’s annual fall iPhone launch event is here. The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT. Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 17 lineup, which could include a slimmer version of the phone, as well as the Apple Watch Series 11 and the AirPods Pro 3.

The invite, which Apple sent on Aug. 26, shows the title «awe dropping,» with a dynamic Apple logo that seems to reference Siri’s colorful glow.

There’s also an interactive element when you view the invite on Apple.com. With a finger (phone or tablet) or a mouse/trackpad pointer (computer), you can move across the logo and watch the colors go from a cool blue to a vivid orange, possibly evoking the Liquid Glass design element in iOS 26, which exhibits light-bending qualities across apps and functions. You can read more theories about what the fall event invite might signify.

The keynote will be held at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. CNET will be covering the announcements live, so be sure to follow along.

Get ready for an awe dropping #AppleEvent on Tuesday, September 9! pic.twitter.com/uAcYp2RLMM

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 26, 2025

How to watch Apple’s iPhone 17 reveal

Technically, Apple has yet to confirm the iPhone 17, but the company typically unveils its latest handsets at its fall event.

You can tune into the iPhone 17 event by watching the official livestream on Apple’s website or via the livestream on Apple’s YouTube channel. Those streams are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. CNET’s reporters will also be on the ground and bringing you all the updates.

What might Apple be cooking up?

Rumors for the upcoming slate of iPhones have been plentiful. Stealing the spotlight is the supposed iPhone 17 Air, which could follow in the footsteps of Samsung’s sleek Galaxy S25 Edge and have a slim profile and lightweight design. The Pro model could get a scratch-resistant, antireflective display and an 8x telephoto lens, and the Pro Max could pack a bigger battery. The baseline iPhone 17 could also boast a higher refresh rate. It’s possible that all the phones may include an Apple-developed 5G modem called the C1 chip, which debuted on the iPhone 16E, as well as in-house Wi-Fi chips.

We also expect to learn more about the public rollout of iOS 26 later this fall. The new operating system features a Liquid Glass interface that brings a more transparent, lens-like look to the iPhone and other Apple devices. The Camera app also gets a more minimalistic design, Messages lets you create polls in group chats and a new screening tool can better detect spam texts. You can check out all the features coming to iOS 26.

Will there be a Siri overhaul?

What we might not hear as much about is the updated version of Siri that Apple unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference last year. The smarter version of the AI assistant has faced repeated delays and may not arrive until next year. But Apple could discuss other Apple Intelligence updates and features arriving on its new devices.

Watch CNET’s livestream

CNET’s reporters will be on the ground, bringing you all the latest updates and impressions of whatever Apple has in store. You can watch our livestream here starting at 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET:

Technologies

Hollow Knight: Silksong Includes a Secret Konami Code Easter Egg

Don’t try to enter this code unless you want a serious challenge.

Hollow Knight: Silksong isn’t an easy game, but that difficulty is one of the reasons why fans love it. There are likely some in the fanbase who might even feel it’s too easy, and for them, developer Team Cherry added the most famous of cheat codes to the game, although it doesn’t give you 30 lives.

The famous Konami Code, best known for its inclusion in the NES game Contra, does work in Silksong, but it will make the game far harder, not easier. The secret was found not long after the game came out on Thursday over at the Silksong subreddit. A variation of the code can be inputted in the Extras section of the title screen to unlock the Steel Soul mode on a new playthrough. The description of the unlocked mode says, «No reviving. Death is permanent.»

As the description suggests, Steel Soul is a permadeath mode, meaning that once you die, it’s game over and your save is wiped. Considering how difficult Silksong has been even for veterans of the Hollow Knight, this option is truly for those who want the highest of challenges. It appeared in the original Hollow Knight as an optional setting made available after beating the game, but Silksong players just need to press a few buttons on the menu screen to unlock it.

The code needed to unlock Steel Mode in the Extras section of the title screen is Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right. For consoles, you will need to use the respective controller’s Dpad, while PC requires either using a controller Dpad or the arrow keys on the keyboard. There are no additional buttons to press, and when inputted correctly, the screen will flash. To activate the new much harder difficulty option, back out of the Extras screen, select Start Game, pick New Game and that will take you to the Mode Select screen where Steel Soul is now available.

The Konami Code was first used in Gradius, a shoot ’em up game made by the company and released for the NES in 1986. The full code is Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, and Start on a controller and was programmed into the game’s code by developer Kazuhisa Hashimoto as a way to test the game easily, as it added all the power-ups to the player’s ship. Hashimoto had mistakenly left the code in the NES game, and it was eventually discovered by players in the U.S.

The Konami Code is mainly remembered for its use in 1987’s Contra for the NES, which gave players 30 lives to start the game with. It has since been used in other Konami games and paid homage to by other game developers. Tech companies such as Google and Facebook have also used the code as an Easter egg in their different services over the years.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on PC, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, PS4 and PS5. It’s also available for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, Sept. 9

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Sept. 9.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Britney Spears fans, you’ll find one of her hit songs in today’s Mini Crossword. And cookie-lovers, one of our favorites is in there, too. Need answers? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.