The game is set in Cyberpunk Alternate History, and follows Noa, a young woman who works as a vigilante hacker. One day, she receives a call from her father, esteemed scientist Abner Solares, who hastily urges her to retrieve his research, lest it will be seized by the MegaCorp Monomind. While initially hesitant, Noa is eventually confronted by the corporation, and decides to satisfy her father's plea.
Jack Move provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Commands: When you execute Jack Moves, a short sequence of directional buttons is shown on the screen. Hitting them in time powers up the move.
- Alternate History: In the game's backstory, in 1997 all electronics on Earth were fried in a Solar Flare Disaster, in an event known as The Dark. Corporations were able to recover from it much faster than anyone else, and quickly superseded national governments. Governments tried to fight back, but corporations won the war, leaving the world a polluted and desolate place.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Dr. Qadir appears to be a silly villain at first, using not only Added Alliterative Appeal as well as repeating his words, which Noa is quick to mock him on. His ride is also equally silly, being a weaponized blob. However, he's mentally unstable to the point where he decides to murder Abner later on.
- Bizarro Elements: The Cyberspace "elemental" system consists of Cyberware (hacking, bugs, and glitches), Electroware (Shock and Awe, direct electrical connections), and Wetware (biological in nature, associated with purple liquid). Additionally, "Physical" affinity is associated with brute-force attacks
, but in Cyberspace it literally has combatants throwing hands. - Brain Uploading:
- Abner's research focuses on brain mapping, that can be used to create fully sapient AIs. Noa encounters Abner's copy, who is fully aware that he's not the original, but cares about her all the same.
- Monomind also researches a method to actually upload a person into a machine, and not just create a copy. Krall eventually uploads herself, and Noa has to confront her in Cyberspace.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Deconstructed. Dr. Qadir is a brilliant scientist, being Monomind's lead researcher. However, he goes beyond being merely eccentric, and dives right into instability. Eventually, he becomes convinced that Abner stole his research, and murders him, ignoring Krall's direct orders. He then gets shot himself for his troubles.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": All over the place.
- Normal attack is "Hack", special skills is "Execute", using items is "Patch", and Defend Command is "Cache". Justified by battles taking place in Cyberspace.
- Physical attack is "Toughness", physical defence is "Guts", special attack is "Grok", special defence is "Sass", and speed is "Synapse".
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Heavily downplayed. Noa initially waves off her father's call about how Monomind tries to seize his research as the ramblings of a madman. However, when corpos show up at her place and search it for clues, she understands that her father was telling the truth, and goes to find this data, becoming involved in the plot.
- Color-Coded Elements: Cyberware is green, Electroware is blue, and Wetware is purple.
- Cyber Green: Just about every computer screen is green-and-black, with little to no other colors. This extends to the game's interface, which also has a lot of green colors.
- Cyberspace:
- All battles in the game take place in cyberspace. For some reason, it appears to be weirdly tangible, as various security drones and Attack Animals are still fought in cyberspace, and not in real world. Additionally, defeated enemies appear to be actually physically beaten up or even knocked out. Despite that, all battle actions are labeled with programming terms, such as "Hack" for a basic attack, leaving it unclear if Noa actually smacks enemies with her fists, or is it just an Extreme Graphical Representation of actual hacking.
- To retrieve data from the device her father left her, Noa has to enter cyberspace for a prolonged period of time. It looks like a collection of Cyber Green flying islands, with a reproduction of her father's room at the end, that serves as a home to the man's AI copy.
- Degraded Boss: Monomind Security Brute, the first boss in the game, eventually shows up as a regular enemy in the Monomind HQ.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Cyberware is strong against Electroware, which beats Wetware, which in turn trumps Cyberware.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When Qadir murders Abner, Krall has no real reason to dispose of him, as he still can serve her cause, but she does it anyway. Additionally, at this point she has every right to detain Noa as a trespasser on a private property, but sends her home instead.
- Fun with Acronyms: Dr. Quadir fights you using L.E.A.P. Mk. 1 - Lethal Elastic Assault Platform. It's a bouncing blob with guns.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Some NPC mention that they eat cheap artificial food. Apparently, it tastes quite good, as long as one doesn't question what was it made of. Real food is still available, just more expensive and scarce.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: Almost every common saying is altered to fit the Cyberpunk aesthetics. Noa provides almost a literal example with "hold your trojans".
- Hopeless Boss Fight: In the first encounter with Krall, she always takes the first turn and blasts Noa for ~5000 damage, in a game where you're unlikely to have even a thousand and a half.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up completely restores Noa's health and data.
- Limit Break: Titular Jack Moves are really powerful skills, that can be used only after filling a special gauge, and fully consume it. It can be filled by dealing and receiving damage.
- Limited Move Arsenal: To use special skills, you need to install them into Noa's deck. Each skill consumes at least one "RAM block", and you start with only three. So, while Noa knows three attacks from the get-go, she can use only one of them at the time, as each of them takes two RAM blocks. You can switch skills while in battle with the "Install" command, but it consumes a turn. You're also limited to 16 RAM blocks at most, even with upgrades. Jack Moves are excluded from this, and are always available, explained as being activated with motion controls.
- Mission Control: Ryder, a wheelchair-bound man, provides Noa with intel and directions.
- Not Disabled in VR: Krall's daughter, Galatea, is completely paralyzed, but fully conscious, and Krall's actual motive is to upload her mind to give her freedom. She succeeds in the ending, giving Galatea a robotic body.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": When confronted by Monomind mooks in her father's basement, Noa is asked the password for the door. She mockingly advises them to try "Admin", "Password", and "6969". It turns out to be something marginally more secure: the date of her parents' wedding.
- Player Party: Notably averted. Unusually for a game marketed as an Eastern RPG, Noa braves slums and corporate buildings alone, save for the Mission Control.
- Point of No Return: You can't turn back after going to sewers leading to the final dungeon. In-universe, Noa literally can't go back the same way because the ladder she used turns out to be broken.
- Puzzle Boss:
- The Virtual Construct has two consoles that use powerful skills. Hitting consoles in a specific order will destroy them, limiting the boss to weaker physical attacks.
- The final boss, to an extent. In the second phase, the boss starts to turn into some of the previous bosses. To defeat the boss, you need to defeat each shape with a Jack Move. Defeating it normally just causes the boss to turn into another form.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Krall manages to accomplish her goal of uploading her daughter Galatea to a robotic body. However, Krall herself doesn't live to get to see it, and Galatea was fully aware of the horrible actions her mother did and thus hates her upon awakening, leaking the atrocities that Monomind committed.
- Random Encounters: In the top-right corner of the screen, there's "threat level". It fills up as you walk in dangerous areas, and once it's full, a battle has a chance to start with each step. You can double or halve the encounter rate, or even turn them off completely, but the game warns you that it will leave you underleveled for the next boss.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: One of your skills, as well as an attack used by Security Brutes, is a flurry of punches, that hits several times.
- La Résistance: Nightowls are a group that opposes Monomind, and conducts such actions as assassinating a Corrupt Corporate Executive that closed down the last independent clinic in the town. However, their only real role in the plot is providing a secret route into the final dungeon.
- Sequel Hook: In the ending, Galatea leaks the data about Monomind's shady deeds, which, as character note, is likely to provoke another war.
- Sequential Boss: The Enforcinator mecha in the final dungeon has four phases, each with the same amount of health, but with different weaknesses. Unusually, it becomes weaker as you go through phases, as its attacks gain a chance to be replaced with the weak "Minor/Major Malfunction" moves.
- Time Skip: After Abner dies, the game skips a month.
- Verbal Tic: Dr. Quadir speaks with Added Alliterative Appeal, and often repeats parts of sentences several times. Ryder lampshades it, saying that Quadir must have some kind of speech disorder.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Exploited. In the final battle, Final Krall starts turning into past bosses, so Ryder tricks her into turning into her self from the Hopeless Boss Fight. However, Noa is way stronger at this point, so Krall becomes a Zero-Effort Boss.
