Video Game / Digimon World Dawn/Dusk

A pair of games for the DS and the sequel to Digimon World DS/Digimon Story, Digimon World Dawn/Dusk (originally known as Digimon Story Sunburst/Moonlight in Japan) puts you in the shoes of a member of the Light Fang or the Night Crow, two rival teams who raise and battle Digimon in the Digital World. The annual tournament is cut short by a mysterious viral assault, severing all contact between the two teams and leaving both Sunshine and Darkmoon City scrambling to rebuild and figure out just what caused the incident. Naturally, both sides suspect the other had a hand in it... and naturally, it falls to you to find out the truth.

Like Digimon World 3, there's plenty of Fanservice, with dozens of Digimon to build your dream team. And despite its nature, there is actually a fair amount of variation between the games, with several storyline quests differing depending on which version you're playing, although, regardless of the team you're on, the dialogues are pretty much the same.

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These games provide examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Sunken Tunnel.
• Adaptation Distillation: The Digimon here don't always follow the same evolutionary lines as in the anime. For instance, Impmon's first Mega form in Dawn/Dusk is Lilithmon.
• All Your Powers Combined:
  • DNA Digivolution, which allows your newly fused Digimon to inherit the techniques of the Digimon used to create it, and some new skills of their own.
  • Also used by the Big Bad, who combines its power with that of Chronomon, the final boss of the previous game.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The player is limited to having a maximum of three Digimon in their active party. Meanwhile, wild Digimon can appear in groups of one to five.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The main story is easy enough to make most of the more powerful Megas such as ZeedMillenniummon unnecessary when compared to the amount of time required to get them. A few of them can be examples even for most of the post-story sections.
• Barrier Change Boss: Any boss with AT Change, most notably Grimmon.
• Boss Rush: Once you beat the game, you can take on the Gaia Origin Quest. It ends with several difficult boss fights without rest.
  • The Legendary Tamer Quest; it also counts as a Continuity Nod.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: After you defeat the Gaia origin, and talk to the tamers in your organization, you will be able to unlock Darkdramon, Anubismon and Imperialdramon Fighter Mode in Dawn and SaberLeomon, Argomon (Ultimate) and Armageddemon in Dusk. All of these unlocked Digimon are extremely powerful and will require very high stats to beat even the weakest. However you ever plan on leveling your Digimon past Lv. 70, you'll be praying to meet those before every battle. On the other hand, if you're unprepared either due to underleveling or because the game loaded more than one of these Digimon in battle, expect a Total Party Kill to ensue.
• But Thou Must!: This is subverted before the battle with Grandracomon. You can tell him to pay for Kowloon Co's services himself and fight him or pay him 100000 bits and get the Kowloon Blade.
• Brought Down to Normal: The Champion and Ultimate level Digimon's in your chosen starter pack will later be forcefully degenerated to Rookie's, forcing you to train them from scratch to get to their original forms back again. The only exception to this is the already Rookie Coronamon and Lunamon in Dawn and Dusk respectively.
• The Cameo:
  • A post-game mission has you participate in an interdimensional tournament where you fight against the heroes of Digimon Next and the quartet of Digimon Data Squad as your opponents.
  • Sayo (female protagonist, Dusk side) appears in Cyber Sleuth.
• Camp Gay: Any Digimon can have the "Prissy" personality, which makes them talk and act like a stereotypical teenage girl... even if the Digimon is obviously male.
  • Of course, Digimon have no gender (more accurately, no sexual difference between genders), so this was bound to happen.
• Competitive Balance: Actually done cleverly. At the start of the game, a Dawn player has an automatic advantage over a Dusk player simply because Dawn's mascot and likely another of their Digimon has an element advantage over the Dusk version's mascot and likely other team member. This is compensated for because it's much easier (and quicker) to Digivolve the mascot of Dusk, giving her an advantage over Dawn players.
• Continuity Nod: There are various oblique references to Digimon World DS, but it's only after the final boss battle that a character namedrops Chronomon. A post-game mission also features a cameo of a young and de-aged Haruhiko Kogure from the previous game as your opponent.
• Crutch Character: Your starting Coronamon or Lunamon are like this. After your other two starters are degenerated to level 1 Rookies, those two are still at level 20 and will be stomping most opponents in the early game. However, their stat growth drops exponentially at higher evolution's, and by the endgame you will likely have switched in something else to use in battle.
• Da Chief: Light Fang has Chief Glare and his partner Ophanimon, while Night Crow have Chief Julia and her partner ChaosGallantmon.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Human and Digimon denizens of Darkmoon City and Night Crow due to their focus and mastery of Dark/Virus type Digimon. They are not evil no matter the version you play, though like Light Fang in the Dusk version, they do get brainwashed into fighting you for most of the game in Dawn. All the other dark/virus type Digimon not associated with them subvert this and play up Dark Is Evil.
  • Gaia Origin has several Dark Digimon in its ranks, including Apocalymon, but they aren't evil by any stretch. The aforementioned Apocalymon is one of the nice ones. So is ZeedMillenniummon, whose official designation is an Evil God type and yet is fairly reasonable to the player.
• Defeat Means Friendship: The standard way of convincing other Digimon to cooperate with you is to beat them in a fight.
• Demonic Possession: Ophanimon in Dusk and ChaosGallantmon in Dawn end up possessed by the ChronoCore and takes over Darkmoon CITY or Sunshine City respectively. Defeating OphanimonC or ChaosGallantmonC causes the ChronoCore to leave their bodies and flee to Chaos Brain.
• Disc-One Nuke: The passwords used to unlock the Legendary equipment and/or the Mega Dot Digimon serve as this.
  • Legendary equipment can be equipped by any digimon that exceeds level 10(your starting Coronamon and Lunamon is level 20), and is extremely powerful, in particular Legendary Sword increases attack by 66, twice as much as a level 30 All type equips. The only downside is that the game only gives you a single set of Legendary equipment, preventing you from arming your entire party with them.
  • The Mega Dot Digimon are limited by MP costs due to only having Mega Class techniques while having encyclopedia's base stats which are rather low, but they are still capable of wiping out earlier encounters with their Omega Rainbow Force or their Signature Move. While they become less useful after your other digimon started digivolving or degenerating, eventually the Mega Dot Digimon can degenerate into their Ultimate form and below, while retaining Omega Rainbow Force, giving them a strong advantage since they can degenerate into lower stages while retaining a Mega level technique.
• Distaff Counterpart:
  • Occurs with the cast due to Static Role, Exchangeable Character casting depending on the version.
  • Chief Julia to Chief Glare and their respective partners Ophanimon to ChaosGallantmon. Their lieutenants Litton and Raigo also follow this.
  • The Player Character's peer group tamers and friends (Pulsa, Komachi, Tonpei, Cheetah and Kenpa in Dawn. Newton, Dorothy, Punch, Gutts and Barone in Dusk) are also similarly counterparts of their group. And so do their respective Bronze ranked (Gaoh and Lyla (Dawn) with Sukekiyo and Kakumi (Dusk)) and Silver ranked (Gideon (Dawn) and Spike (Dusk)) named Tamers in their respective groups.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: It's a sort of game mechanic. If you lose a fight, you're transported back to your house, appear next to your bed, and told that you were having a bad dream. A great improvement on the last game, which simply had you teleported back to the overworld.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The Hive Mind interactions between Alphamon and Omnimon are less of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment when you realise the latter is named Omegamon in the original Japan version.
  • Minor, but Night Crow was supposed to be Night Claw, as a counterpart to Light Fang.
• Elemental Powers: Each Digimon is assigned being resistant to one attribute and weak to another. The following elements are: Wind, Dark, Earth, Metal, Holy, Water, Fire and Electricity
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: With some odd category assignments: grouping Insect and Plant Digimon together makes some degree sense, but as Electricity-elementals? The sequel did fix this by making them different species, however.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Gutts in Dusk and his Distaff Counterpart Cheetah are both bad at this.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Kowloon Co will only help you if you defeat them (Or if you decide to skip the boss fight and pay them 100000 bits up front). After you do so, two of the members suggest bailing, but their leader invokes both these tropes, stating that while they're criminals, they never go back on their promise.
• Fetch Quest: You have to take some side assignments from Digimon to unlock new plot missions; most of their requests fall into this.
• Four Is Death: both the regular evolution and DNA evolution requirements for Apocalymon require the base Digimon to have accrued 44,444 Dark experience.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: It gets weird quickly at the beginning of the game when your Player Character is treated like a total newbie by pretty much everyone despite the fact that the player already has at least one Ultimate-level Digimon in their starting party (the player can even start with two ultimates depending on their choices), which means that they are likely at least a Mid-Level Tamer. Not helping things is the fact that the player utterly smashes everybody they come across without hardly taking a scratch throughout the entire prologue — even your rival, who is actually the player avatar opposite to the one you picked, whom various NPCs claims is your peer and a very talented member of the rivaling team, and if that wasn't enough, they even use a starter team from the opposite version of the game you're playing. Almost the entire prologue section of the game is written as though you just got your first Digimon last week and that any of your opponents actually stood a chance against you.
• A God Am I: Grimmon becomes this after Chrono Core merges with him, fully intending to destroy the Digi-World to Omnicidal Maniac levels.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Not just information for DNA and Special Digivolving is absent, you can't even get most of the Digimon quests without having certain Digimon with certain personalities... Some of the NPCs on the other areas of the digital city mention some combinations for DNA digivolution and the correct Digimon+personality needed to unlock special missions. A large portion aren't mentioned.
  • The fact that some of the glitch walls disappear by simply going into an area without having any quest active in there. Yes, many vanish by simply advancing the plot, but since no explanation is given about them, everyone assumed you weren't supposed to get in there yet... And stay forever blocked off a few goodies.
  • The Digi-Eggs. Many of them are fairly simple; others require specific Digimon at specific levels. Fortunately, this mechanic is completely optional for completion.
    • To top it off, one of the most powerful of them, the Miracle Digi-egg, is unlocked as soon as you defeat Grimmon, the third boss, relatively early into your gameplay. You wouldn't know about it because you have to enter Login Mountain with no quests active (explained above), and then wade though two Beef Gate areas, in order to find it in a stray chest in the middle of nowhere. Many a player had finished the game and the missions after that, and never found it because of either unmentioned mechanics, or the fact that the majority of the other digi-eggs are given as quest rewards, so it's really easy to assume wrongly.
  • Basically, go check GameFAQs. The original Japanese game was made in the later half of the '00s, back when a lot of DS games were made with the intent to require supplementary guides sold separately. None which made the jump to the Americas, so there is about a book worth of missing info.
    • Including the four passwords for each version, which grant right off the bat ultimate equipment, four exclusive 8-bit digimon (two per version), and a Numemon / Sukamon.
• Heroic Mime: Your counterpart/rival from the other team/game gets speaking lines, but not you.
• Heroic Willpower: During the player's encounter with Grimmon in Access Glacier), they and Chief Julia/Glare actually resists Grimmon's ChronoDSR. This prompts Grimmon to use it a few more times in order to actually weaken the Chief.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • Invoked in the Platinum Tamer Rank battle against Imperialdramon Paladin Mode, who supported by Minomon and Kuramon, two Digimon of the lowest Digivolution level in the game. The support Digimon both have stats to rival many Mega Digimon and a variety of amazing techniques, ensuring that you'll lose quickly if you underestimate them.
  • You can invoke this yourself by raising an In-Training Digimon's Aptitude high enough and leveling them up until they learn ridiculously powerful Techniques (at around level 50-60)
• Level Grinding: You'll have to do loads and loads of this to max out your Digimon's stats in order to stand a chance in PvP.
  • From the beginning to end. Should the player not use the passwords in the Coliseum to start the game with the Legendary Sword, Legendary Armor and Legendary Ring, even the early enemies can take a while to beat. And more traditional players will be in for a surprise since the real way to enhace stats is by repeatedly degenerating the Mons so they go back to the previous evolution stage with higher stats. Should one simply level up and evolve them when it can be done, eventually the bosses will overwhelm the team.
  • Ironically, beating the weakest enemy in the game in enough to raise any Digimon from Level 1 to 3. Then the experience needed start to grow exponentially. And if you're actually building a team for PvP, you'll need to level one Digimon to 70, 80 or 90 several times. Have fun.
• Light Is Not Good: In the Dusk version Light Fang is brainwashed by the Big Bad and the majority of the game is devoted to fighting them.
• Magikarp Power: All of the In-Training stage Digimon learn the move Rainbow Spit, which hits twice for heavy damage... at level 60. Learning it before hitting Mega level for the first time is unlikely.
• Meaningful Name: The default names of the canonical Player Characters of both genders and versions (Discounting the Palette Swap of their models), Koh and Sayo. Koh (Kou in the original Japanese text) is an alternate reading to the Kanji of Light (光) while the "yo" in Sayo is derived from the Kanji of Night (夜) in Japanese.
• Mythology Gag: Quite a lot, and mostly to the anime series in the form you get some digimon, not limiting it to just the very appearance of digimon that appeared in the series at some point:
  • Apocalymon can only obtained by fusing members of the Dark Masters. The Dark Masters themselves can only be obtained in a specific order.
    • There's an slight one to Piedmon's status as the leader, The requirements to get the Dark Masters are made so Piedmon is the last one you can get. He is also the only one of the Dark Masters to not have one of his skills at level 4 and instead has all his skills at level 5.
    • In the series, Metalseadramon is the only Dark Master whose attribute is NOT virus, here, Metalseadramon is the only Dark Master whose type is not in the side of Night Claw.
  • Both of Myotismon's evolutions: It can only evolve to Venommyotismon while having an ally Demidevimon, and Malomyotismon can only be evolved to while having an ally Arukenimon.
  • Beelzemon Blast Mode can only be obtained by fusing it with a Bancholeomon.
  • Some Digimon that were main partners in the anime series can reach their supermode from that series, even if said form is something really specific and unique to the series in which it appeared.
• Night and Day Duo: The two mascot Digimon Coronamon and Lunamon whose respective Mega Forms, Apollomon and Dianamon, are the Digimon representatives of the Roman Gods of the sun and moon.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Partly averted; you can look up your current Quest in the menu at any time. Of course, when you don't have a quest...
  • Exploring can be really tedious as you have no map and the later areas are pretty much big mazes with several dead-ends. Couple this with a extremely high random encounter ratio plus no means to repel those encounters and even the most basic missions can be a chore to do.
• Number of the Beast: You need 6666+ experience from fighting Beast-attribute Digimon to Digivolve Myotismon to VenomMyotismon, and at Level 66, to boot.
• One Game for the Price of Two: You can't collect all the Digimon without trading with others or fighting on Wi-Fi.
  • You also need to use multiplayer modes to access the top-level Tamer challenges.
    • In an extremely odd case, almost everything can be gotten as long as you have someone to play with, even if both players are using the same game. The version exclusive mons, for example, are obtained by matching Digimon. Matching a Greymon with a Dinohumon can result in a Guilmon egg, Guilmon being a Dawn exclusive and Greymon and Dinohumon being available in both versions.
  • There's one point, however, where this trope is unintentionally forgotten. After defeating Gaioumon at Thriller Ruins in either game, the team you're on worries about their chief. ...or rather, only Chief Glare is worried about, even in Dusk^note Nightcrow's leader is Chief Julia.
• Overly Long Name: You're only allowed eight letters to name a Digimon. This means that a vast majority of actual Digimon names won't fit at all, not even basics like "Garurumon". This is because the allotted number of characters was unchanged between Japanese and English. While Digimon names usually take far less than eight characters in Japan, well... you can see where we're going with this.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • The Kowloon Blade... not that it matters, due to its pitiful stats when you get it.
  • Due to Nintendo Wi-fi going down years ago, anything that required you to use the online modes is now inaccessable unless you use alternative means such as cheats or alternative Nintendo Wi-fi servers.
• Palette Swap:
  • Several of the Digimon you can obtain such as BlackAgumon, Imperialdramon: Dragon Mode (Black) Hagurumon, MegaKabuterimon (Red) MetalEtemon and Meteormon to name a few are often alternate versions of Digimon found in earlier dungeons.
  • The female Player Character model in Dawn is a Palette Swap of Sayo and vice versa with the male Player Character model in Dusk for Koh.
• Plot Armor: The main character is immune to the data-erasing waves used by the Big Bad, meaning only he/she can stop him. The game's justification is that the attack requires a lot of power to use, and the player's character gets there after the first attack. During the second one, they're able to shrug it off with Heroic Willpower, and during the final battle, they're protected with the Power of Friendship.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 is used for some background music choices on the player character's islands.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender:
  • Might be why they let you rename your Digimon whenever it digivolves; seeing Vilemon become LadyDevimon is... interesting.
  • Similarly, Shamamon's final form is Kuzuhamon.
  • Also, your own gender selection functions like this due to some odd translation choices, which you're likely to find out by talking to your Digimon; among other things, they'll ask your female avatar if you have a girlfriend...
    • When your gender is brought up by other characters it will be male, even if you're the girl. This is because the Japanese version only had one script, with gender-neutral pronouns, and the translators did not bother to create a new one.
• The Rival: Koh in Dusk and Sayo in Dawn.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: Averted Trope. There's a male and female PC for each game, but neither has much backstory to speak of. The canon options are Koh, the male from Dawn, and Sayo, the female from Dusk (though there are Palette Swaps of each model for both games).
• Skippable Boss: If the Player Character has the required funds (100,000 Bits), they can pay GranDracmon instead of having to fight for his and Kowloon Co's cooperation.
• Starter Mon: Depending on your version, you get Coronamon or Lunamon to start with, which have powerful special moves. You also get a handful of supporters, though Coronamon/Lunamon are the obvious standouts.
• Status Effects: Mostly averts Useless Useful Spell by attaching these to normal, damaging moves as potential side-effects.
• Superboss:
  • Gaia Origin has you fight Duftmon + Sleipmon, Apocalymon, Susanoomon, ZeedMilleniumon, Alphamon + Omegamon, Beelzemon: Blast mode and Gallantmon: Crimson Mode.
  • The Platinum Tamer Test pits you up against Minomon, Kuramon and Imperialdramon: Paladin Mode.
  • The Legendary Tamer Quest has you fight several tamers from the various Digimon series.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Following suit the Running Gag of many Nintendo DS games, the cities the two rival teams are stationed in are called Darkmoon and Sunshine.
• A Taste of Power: All four of the starter packs you can choose from at the beginning have at least one Ultimate level Digimon. Naturally, this doesn't last...
• Useless Useful Spell: Techniques that do nothing but lower or increase the Spirit stat. The only thing Spirit does is determine how much your stats increase when leveling up and it has absolutely no effect in combat.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: ExoGrimmon teleports away after his final defeat, not showing up again afterwards.

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