Video Game / Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

When the digital and real worlds cross, our story evolves.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is a Digimon game for the Play Station Vita, developed by Media.Vision and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It falls within the Digimon World DS/Digimon Story series, being its fifth installment (though characters from Digimon World Re:Digitize make minor appearances), and is the first game of its home series to be on a Sony console rather than the DS. It is also the first Digimon work to be aimed exclusively at an older audience, a departure from the franchise's previous attempts to remain a children's franchise with a hopeful Periphery Demographic.

The premise takes place in a world with an online network called "Cyberspace EDEN", effectively a "physical" version of the Internet. An underground network of hackers exists under its layers, rumored to be using living computer programs called "Digital Monsters".

One day, while hanging out in a chatroom, the protagonist (Takumi or Ami Aiba, whose name and gender can be set by the player) receives a message telling them to log into EDEN to receive a "wonderful present". They and two others in the room decide to take up the offer and enter Cyberspace to test it out, but in the process they're given the "Digimon Capture" that lets them scan and capture Digimon and cornered by a monster called "Eater" that manages to latch onto the protagonist's leg, causing them to log out as a half-digital, half-physical entity. They're rescued by a detective Kyouko Kuremi, who offers to help them find out how to recover their body — in exchange for helping her with some cases revolving around the network, Digimon, and Cyberspace EDEN. And that's only the tip of something looming over the surface...

The first official trailer can be seen here, though it's in unsubtitled Japanese. The game was released in Japan on March 12, 2015. Like Re:Digitize, the game's art is by Suzuhito Yasuda, while the music is done by Masafumi Takada, and the CGI is done by Kamikaze Douga (of Fire Emblem: Awakening fame). In addition to its main story mode, the game has a thriving multiplayer component (both ad hoc and online play) which has inspired a budding tournament scene.

Against all odds, it was finally confirmed for a Western release for 2016, with an additional PS4 version for retail and the Vita version for download, making this the first Digimon game to be localized since Digimon World Championship in 2008. ^note  2014's Digimon All-Star Rumble was only released in North America and Europe with no word on a Japanese release.

The midquel, called Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory, came out in December 2017 in Japan, followed by a Janurary 2018 release internationally.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition, a Compilation Re-release containing both games came out for the Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam on October 18, 2019.

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Tropes for this game:

• Alas, Poor Villain: Alphamon and Yuuko to Crusadermon. It's subverted right afterwards.
  Crusadermon: What makes you and I so different?
  Alphamon: ...
  Yuuko: Farewell, Crusadermon... No... Miss Rie.
  Crusadermon: ... *Beat, then speaks in Rie's voice* This is it! Our final, final farewell, it seems. You mustn't cry, even if it's sad! Tee-hee!
  Yuuko: I always hated the stupid way you talked. The fakeness of it? The attempts to sound younger? You were ugly and pathetic, in all honesty.
  Crusadermon: Oh, my, my, my! So unexpected! Tee-hee! And I, how I felt about your adorableness? Or should I say, your brazenness? Impertinence? Gloominess? Your lame personality? You make me want to puke! I abhorred you...!
  • This could possibly be a Double Subversion, since Crusadermon was originally going to end the conversation on a positive note. It could be that the aforementioned character said what she said at the end in order to give Yuuko the satisfaction of getting her gripes off her chest without any regrets or guilt.
• All There in the Script: Detective Matayoshi's first name, Gorou, isn't mentioned in the game proper and only appears in the end credits.
• All Your Powers Combined: Lucemon's DLC boss fight sees him use Belphemon's, Daemon's, Beelzemon's, and Barbamon's Secret A.I. Moves in his final form. He also uses similar tactics to Leviamon and Lilithmon (potential instant death moves and AOE status inflicting moves respectively).
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: It'd be easier to list the battlefields that don't show some degree of this. From the ever-circling lights of the Digital Networks to the starfield and translucent floor of the Valhalla Server to the surreal windows onto the void of the Digital Shifts to the Design Student's Orgasm that is Makoto Yamashina's Memory, most of the game's battles take place in cyberspace.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Are you lost? Don't know what to do or where to go? Just speak to Mirei in the DigiLab and she'll point you in the right direction. Lampshaded in the fact the entrance to the DigiLab in Nakano is her consultation room. You can also ask Kyoko for pointers on where to find sidequests needed to progress the plot, and your profile contains a hint on where to go next for each quest.
  • Since there's no way to leave the Digital Shift dungeon at the start of Chapter 4, the game gives you access points to the DigiLab at the very entrance of the dungeon and just before the first Eater fight. (In fact, DigiLabs are nearly everywhere, preventing you from having to go too long with a Digimon at level cap in your party or in the farm.) Also, Suedou will sell you healing items if you speak with him.
  • Digimon battles have an "auto mode" you can activate, which basically hands control over your Digimon to an A.I. to fight for you. It is especially handy when facing off against Digimon with an absurdly high HP pool, allowing you to give your hands a rest if the only viable strategy is to chip away at them with minimal need to strategist. Digimon will even heal each other when in auto mode if they have the correct skill, though the player may still need to turn off auto mode to intervene and restore SP reserves.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Aside from the absolute cap of 11 Digimon in your party, Digimon also take up "party memory", limiting the number of monsters you can have with you at a time. Your party memory needs to be increased with Memory Up and Memory Up DX, usually only earned from boss battles and solving important cases, so that you can collect and Digivolve more Digimon.
• Arc Symbol: A late-game one, but still one nonetheless - around Chapter 14, when you start going back into the digital shift areas, the areas with boss fights have a massive hand looming over them with the appearence changing depending on the dungeon (the subway has it being made entirely out of subway cars, for example). Even Crusadermon's second boss fight area has one of these. It's kinda creepy and extremely ominous. Despite being prominently displayed repeatedly, the symbol itself is never even acknowledged.
• Armor-Piercing Question: At the end of Chapter 18, towards Aiba who fell across the Despair Event Horizon after remembering what happenned to Yuugo and their part in unleashing the Eaters on the Digital World.
  Kyoko: Would it have been better not to have remembered?
• Artificial Stupidity: The enemy digimons will rarely, if ever take advantage of the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors of the game.
• Assimilation Plot: Suedou's goal is to do this, believing that he can make the world "evolve" into a perfect one by merging the physical and digital worlds.
• Attack Failure Chance: Knightmon's Secret Art, Berserk Sword, is a 30% accurate Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack, whose status is Instant Death.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Examon is absolutely massive, with the human characters roughly being the size of his eye.
  • Units Not to Scale: However, in battle or following as your partner, he is around the same size as most other Mega Digimon.
• Audience Shift: It's been explicitly stated that, unlike the previous Story games, this game is aimed specifically at adults - thus, the Fanservice-based designs and more complex language (for instance, the Japanese release uses kanji without furigana, which are an absolute must for a game aimed at kids). It's notable that this is the first Digimon franchise game to get a CERO rating of B (age 12 and older). The plot also involves more mature and complex dramas like trapping a child inside a digital network while his body remains comatose for years, the accompanying trauma for the other kids involved, and one kid willingly throwing away his humanity in exchange for power while visibly going off the deep end in sanity, falling somewhere between Persona and Shin Megami Tensei levels of things that most definitely would not belong in a kids' game.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The biggest threat are the Eaters, but their sheer incomprehensibility makes them more akin to a force of nature. Their mere existence is responsible for bringing in the other primary threat, the Royal Knights led by Duftmon and Crusadermon, particularly the latter, as her schemes drive the game's first half in her guise as Kishibe/CEO of Kamishiro. Suedou is the third contender for Big Bad, as he too is driven by the existence of the Eaters for his distinct antagonistic agenda and ultimately wins The Big Bad Shuffle between the three forces by merging with Mother Eater to manipulate reality to his own ends.
• Bittersweet Ending: On one hand, both the Digital World and the Real World are saved from being consumed by the Eaters, Yuugo gets to return to his body, and the Cosmic Retcon restores Yuuko's family and removes the Digimon invasion of Tokyo from history, but on the other hand, the protagonist's digital body collapses, dispersing completely into data in front of the others just as they were finally headed back home, and the Digimon that they all befriended are restored to the way they were eight years ago by the same Cosmic Retcon as above, meaning they will remember none of their adventures with the main cast. Thankfully, the bit about the protagonist being gone doesn't stick thanks to the Power of Friendship.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The translation for the English version tends to vary from line to line quite sharply from a polished, competent one to one where phrases are overly literal, translated correctly but horribly wrong out of context. It's also chock full of mistranslation and incredibly sloppy in other areas:
  • Certain lines, some of them plot-important, are translated to say the opposite of what they mean, most notably Yuugo Kamishiro telling you to "search for [him]" when he has his first conversation with you. He's actually telling you not to look for him, because he's acting as Eater's Power Limiter.
  • The DigiLine chats are full of lines translated with the wrong context and a ton of typos, some of which negatively affect the ability to answer quiz questions (one question has the responses of "Haddock" and "Mackerel" swapped, so if you mean one you need to choose the other).
  • General Digimon franchise dub name inconsistency aside, the game goes back and forth between whether it uses Japanese or dub attack names (the latter of which is sometimes just plain mistranslated). Notably, it (intentionally) mistranslates the name of a dungeon as "Kowloon" for consistency with Digimon World Dawn/Dusk, but fails to take its romanization of "Darkmoon CITY" (spelling it as "Dark Moon City") into account. In addition, quite a number of changed names don't match up with what's on-screen (for instance, the tutorial introduces Cross Combos despite the in-game text for it quite clearly still showing it as Xros Combos).
  • The original Japanese version was careful not to drop any gendered pronouns for the main protagonist (since gender is selectable), so even when the writing is centered particularly around the male protagonist you can still believe that perhaps the female protagonist just happens to be Ambiguously Bi and somewhat of a roughhouser. The localization, however, uses male pronouns most of the time, even if you selected the female protagonist... only to fall into the gender-neutral "they" every so often (from characters who should clearly be aware of the protagonist's gender), and in one notable instance a DLC quest refers to the protagonist as "this girl" and "she"...in the same dialogue tree as a "they". Thankfully, later update patches cleaned up most of the pronoun issues, though some still remain. In a similar vein, a translation mistake (as Kyoko should not be aware of the person in question's gender) in their introduction reveals a certain gourmet critic to actually be female, and, in a fashion far more damaging to the plot, outs the mysterious Digimon who rescues you at the end of Chapter 12 as someone female who's very close to you, heavily narrowing down the list of suspects as to whom it could be.
  • As far as names are concerned, GrandLocomon and Cyclomon ^* As in "Cyclops" got hit with it the hardest, being renamed "GroundLocomon" and "Cyclonemon". By far the worst is one related to the Eaters. In the original Japanese, they were occasionally referred to as "Bakemono" which means "Monster". A translation error renders this instead as "Bakemon" having mistook it for the ghostly Champion-level digimon. Players of the english version occasionally found themselves confused, wondering when and where they'd encountered a Bakemon that was generating a Digital Shift.
    • Some Digimon names are even transliterated in different ways within the game. For example, the badge you can get after defeating a Goblimon is a Goburimon Badge.
• Book Ends: In the beginning of the game, Kyoko makes the protagonist her assistant at the beginning of the game in return for helping them find a way to return to their normal body. In the stinger, Kyoko once again offers them a job as her assistant in the "new Tokyo".
• Bowdlerise: The game refers to the Seven Great Demon Lords as the "Seven Deadly Digimon", despite the fact that this is a T-rated game...and the fact that Digimon World DS and Digimon World Data Squad were perfectly willing to call them the Demon Lords despite being kids' games. While this could be a play on the phrase "Seven Deadly Sins" (which each of the Demon Lords represent), the botched localization makes that intention suspect.
• Brain Uploading: This is how EDEN works, by actually uploading your "mental data" into the system rather than working from your brain. This leads to a particularly nasty reveal in one sidequest where a man tries to log out, only to find out that he has no body to return to...
• Brick Joke:
  • The Medal Man keeps asking you to not tell his wife about his hobby. The brick arrives once you've helped him collect all 500, at which point he ecstatically declares that he's finally going to tell her.
  • When you first try to log out after Connect Jumping, Kyoko jokingly assures you that if anything bad happens, she'll gather up as much of your data as she can. Come the ending, and Alphamon makes good on that promise with the help of your Digimon partners.
• Broken Pedestal: Nokia was a fan of Jimiken, a rock star... until she meets him in Kowloon and he reveals he's a malicious hacker willing to harm her Digimon friends. She takes a while to get over the shock and never puts him on the pedestal ever again.
  Nokia: My MP is down. It's been at zero for a while.
• But Thou Must!: None of the story dialogue choices change anything, to the point where the localization turns certain choices into a single full block of text (with the selection cursor moving between lines) - there might as well not be choices at all.
• Cerebus Retcon: Several times during the mid-to-late game, Aiba will begin to "space out" while in dialogue with someone, either doing a gesture over and over again, or simply staring blankly at the person speaking to them even after they finish talking. It's mostly Played for Laughs, but then Pete and Kyoko reveal that the "spacing out" are symptoms that the player's body is beginning to glitch and break down as it collapses into data dispersal.
• Character Select Forcing: Enforced as a gameplay mechanic. Your available Hacks at any given point are determined by the number of Digimon in your active party and their evolution ranks. For example, the Hack to clear Level 3 Firewalls can only be used if you have four or more Rookie Digimon in your party.
• Child Prodigy: The kid who made the Baku Reborn service not only runs it but designed it.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
  • Kyoko has a habit of going into tangents only slightly related to the matter at hand, although one was a cover so she could write a message on a client's DigiLine to threaten a hacker.
  • The protagonist has some shades of this as well, at least if their dialogue options are anything to go by.
• Clueless Detective: Averted with the "Mysterious Digital Face" case with Matayoshi - he is actually very competent, but Kyoko asks the PC to investigate it just in case since he's not particularly tech-savvy. In fact, he truly didn't need your help aside from how hackers in Kowloon aren't particularly happy to talk to a cop - he caught the culprit himself, with the PC's chief suspect being relatively harmless (aside from having a malicious Digimon).
• Collection Sidequest: The Digimon Medals give you very little in terms of rewards, and they're not guaranteed to drop from the Digimon they're tied to. Of more than 200 Digimon. Then it adds another 300 on top of that obtainable only via gachapon. Good luck!
• Color-Coded Elements: Each of the elemental attributes are assigned to a color: Grey for Neutral, Red for Fire, Blue for Water, Green for Plant, Yellow for Electric, Sky Blue for Wind, Brown for Earth, White for Light and Purple for Dark.
• Color Motif: The game's primary color theme is yellow, as it's the most prominent color on Aiba and Kyoko, the leading characters of the game, and used in notable UI/menu elements and promotional material. Combined with the secondary color motif of black in logos, Aiba and Kyoko's clothing, etc: it's the palette for Alphamon, who's been with the player all along.
• Combatant Cooldown System: The battle system is suspiciously similar to Final Fantasy X, complete with the extensive Visual Initiative Queue to boot.
• Company Cross References: Posters in the arcade on Broadway's top floor heavily advertise Tekken. The original Tekken, mind you, not the then-fresh release of Tekken 7.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Several examples:
  • When his health dips below 50%, Imperialdramon Paladin Mode starts to spam Omni Sword, which will most likely lead to a Total Party Kill for the ill prepared. The cheating part comes in if you try to be clever and kill him before he gets a chance to turn red, as he cannot die before he's used Omni Sword - his health will simply refuse to fall below 1 HP.
  • The Great Challenge cases in general. The difficulty is cranked up to the point that your opponents will always be faster than you no matter how much you train your Digimon in the DigiFarm. To add insult to injury, the Great Challenge versions of the Royal Knights just ignores the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors and will end up killing your Digimon even if you have a type advantage anyway simply because their attack power is also boosted through the roof.
• Contrived Coincidence: After the real Kishibe and Kyoko were indiscriminately attacked by Eaters summoned by Suedou and inflicted with EDEN Syndrome, Crusadermon was sent in by Leopardmon to initiate stage one of King Drasil's war against humanity, and Alphamon went in on their own to investigate the happenings. They just find the nearest body to use as a medium to walk around in the human world...and Crusadermon conveniently found Kishibe's while Alphamon found Kuremi's. Naturally this allows Crusadermon to basically unleash hell upon the Kamishiro Enterprise and Alphamon to investigate the Eaters without arousing any suspicion, and had they possessed different bodies, things might play out differently.
• Cooldown Manipulation: The Stun status effect knocks the affected Digimon further down the turn order, and usually not by much.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Kyoko clearly enjoys her "unique" coffee blends, despite seeming to know that everyone else finds them revolting to the point of gagging. This is actually foreshadowing the fact that she is not exactly human at the moment.
• Cosmic Retcon: Thanks to the reformatting of the Digital World to the state it was eight years prior, and the digitizing effect it had on the real world, the real world changes to a state in which the Digital World's influence never happened. Suedou ends up having not been born or existing (due to having disappeared with Eater), Yuuko's father is alive, Rie is a normal human, and Kyouko is a normal detective with no memory of the events of the game. Only the five kids from the incident retain their memories of the original universe.
• Darker and Edgier: Because of the audience shift, the game's story tends to deal with heavier topics such as people going catatonic and dying, with the protagonist themselves being one of the worst victims. It gets worse in certain sidequests.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: After the protagonist goes missing and you temporarily take control of Nokia instead, you're told to head to EDEN to investigate. Your first instinct will probably be to head for Kyoko's television, only to be reminded that Nokia cannot Connect Jump. Not that Nokia doesn't try anyways, with amusing results.
• Date My Avatar: A Shut-In named Nyota is chatting up a girl online, unaware that her true identity is a Minervamon.
• Developer's Foresight: Unlike most of the game, nearly all of the fights in Odaiba have sounds play in the background, even in the victory screen, such as fire, police sirens, ominous wind blowing and so on, presumably to keep the ambience and tension of Chapter 17.
• Demonic Possession: Nishino appears to be possessed by a giant Wisemon, driving her insane and leading to the Serial Disappearances in Akihabara.... then it turns out she was possessing it, having drawn it to her before somehow taking control of it.
• Design Student's Orgasm: Makoto Yamashina's Memory has a looping and very colorful animation of numerous EDEN-related objects and keywords alongside various other vaguely-technical things for a background.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Taking the time to train your Digimon to digivolve into one of the Demon Lords (or anything else that requires high ABI), which usually have stricter evolution requirements, can yield a very powerful ally for your team. Digivolving into any of the Royal Knights also counts, but they require clearing certain cases before you can add them to your team, and most of those cases only become available in the post-game.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Lucemon. While getting a Tokomon to Ability 80 is tedious, you can Digivolve him at level 30, the lowest of the Demon Lords, and child's play to achieve quickly with the help of a couple of PlatinumSukamons. While it's offset slightly by his huge memory cost (14, which is in the realm of an Ultimate whereas Lucemon is a Rookie), Lucemon can pretty much solo his way through anything early-game with nothing but his Grand Cross attack anyway. If you are playing on New Game Plus or the Complete Edition and have encountered Lucemon before, then he can be gotten even easier by simply getting Angemon and then De-Digivolving him into Lucemon.
  • Complete Edition has a Creator Cameo NPC who gives you several powerful Digimon that are basically non-Digivolving versions of late-game creatures: Omnimon NX, Leopardmon NX, Crusadermon NX, and Gallantmon NX.
• Disguised in Drag: While infiltrating Kamishiro with Arata, he disguises himself as a woman. If the player is a woman then they become a male businessman as well.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: At the conclusion of Chapter 10, when Rie extracts Yuuko's memories, it's given a very rape=y undertone. She opens up by telling Yuuko that she needs to relax for her first time, and closes with a scream as it fades to black.
• Dream Spying: The protagonist starts doing this in Chapter 13. Pete guesses that they are either connecting to a network while asleep, or that it is a side effect of their deteriorating body being affected by the Digi Lines. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the latter case.
• Duality Motif:
  • Mastemon, created for this game, is a DNA Digivolution between Angewomon and LadyDevimon. Her appearance is a black-and white female Digimon in a power suit with the differences split down the middle,◊ even having angel wings on the white half and devil wings on the black half.
  • This motif is similar to Lucemon Chaos/Falldown Mode's design,◊ who has his wings split between angel and devil wings.^note Though one of his angel wings is black, which indicates that he has fallen towards darkness.,
  • Omnimon◊, of course, has the aesthetic of being the fusion of the Greymon and Garurumon lines, looking like an armored knight with one arm shaped like MetalGarurumon's head and another shaped like WarGreymon's head. The emblem on his chest also combines the Crests of Courage and Friendship into one.
  • Chaosmon◊, a Digimon later added to the game in a patch,^note But debuted much earlier than this game. has a similar motif to Omnimon. As it's the fusion of BanchouLeomon and Darkdramon, it also has its arms take the appearance of its component parts. Unlike Omnimon, who has a knight motif, Chaosmon's main body appears more aristocratic, resembling a somewhat sinister, long, black-and-white tailcoat, adding more to the duality. It even sports heterochromia, with one eye being bright blue (like BanchouLeomon's) and one light-gray.
• Dueling Hackers: The effective premise regarding the hacker wars in EDEN, although said duels tend to involve Digimon fighting more often than not.
• The End: The final ending cutscene shows someone In-Universe has written "owari" (Over) via the mayonnaise on Kyoko's coffee in her office, a final show of her odd drinking habits and the character the player has come to know over the course of the game, before Fade to Black.
• Eldritch Location: The Digital Shifts are places where the Eaters have punched through to the real world from cyberspace, transforming places in the real world in surreal, maze-like areas that more resemble Witches' labyrinths, with data forming windows into a void full of objects that resemble twisted versions of objects in the real location and creating more objects in the areas themselves.
• Elemental Powers: A total of nine attributes associated to elemental forces: Neutral, Fire, Water, Plant, Electric, Earth, Wind, Light and Dark.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Not to be confused with the usual Virus > Data > Vaccine > Virus setup present, there are three sets of elemental attributes that are related to one another within effective-wise:
  • This first set follows a rock-paper-scissors cycle, where it has Fire effective against Plant, Plant against Water and Water against fire.
  • The second set is also a trio, where it has Electric effective against Wind, Wind against Earth and Earth against Electric.
  • The last set consists of Light and Dark, where they both form a Mutual Disadvantage against each other.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Yuugo's primary policy in running Zaxon is, basically, "Everyone's welcome as long as you show pride in being a hacker", but he still kicks Jimiken out for his blatant criminal activities. (More accurately, he shows enough scorn to get Jimiken to decide he's sick of it and bail out.)
  • Several NPCs met in Kowloon are former Zaxon who quit because too many criminal hackers were joining.
• Face of a Thug: A case with a Piedmon as your client sees him run into this problem, for obvious reasons. He's too scary to perform for kids and adults don't take him seriously. So he asks for your help finding a job in an attempt to be more like humans. He's actually a nice guy and needs given a pep talk so he can get the nerve to go to the interview.
• Failed a Spot Check: Cases where you need to find a Digimon's lost property sometimes have said lost property lying about close by in plain sight. This ends up being especially common when the search area is in Tokyo.
• Faux Affably Evil: Rie Kishibe.
• Fire Is Red: The Fire Attribute is associated to the color red.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In Chapter 7, you get a case to hunt down someone in Kowloon who stole a rare Digimon medal. Speaking to one of the random hackers near the perpetrator has them reveal that their mother has recently started acting weird because of a Jimiken music video, barely moving or taking care of herself. Shortly after, you find out Sakura has gone missing after the same exact thing happened to her.
• Food Porn: Two cases are dedicated to the player character and their friends touring the local restaurants, and both are accompanied by the PC describing each meal in mouth-watering detail.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There's a short blink-and-you'll-miss-it hint early in the game about "Yuugo" actually being female: when running into Jimiken and Yuugo in Avalon Server, Jimiken questions Yuugo on why he's there. One scene earlier, you'd seen Yuuko express a large amount of concern about how to get the message to you about withdrawing from the server...
  • Another one regarding Yuugo's true identity. Yuugo mentions early on that the player would be an anomaly among hackers because their first Digimon partner willingly became their partner instead of being read by the Digimon Capture. "His" partner, Machinedramon, abandons Yuuko because he has no loyalty to Yuuko as a person, but to the Yuugo avatar.
  • During Chapter 1, Yuuko asks the detective agency to investigate a group of Account Raiders (people who steal access to EDEN accounts) who, when encountered, are wearing the logo for Demons, Jimiken's hacker group.
  • While being debriefed by Kyoko at the end of Chapter 4, Aiba offhandedly mentions the Digital World, which seems to take the normally unflappable Kyoko completely off-guard, and she all but demands to know where Aiba heard that word. Her reaction makes much more sense when she is revealed to be Alphamon, one of the Digimon Royal Knights tasked with investigating the source of the Eaters destroying the Digital World, which humans are not supposed to be aware of at all.
  • Another blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment occurs whenever the mysterious flashback of five children appears. Look closely and you might notice several of the children have a very similar hairstyles to Aiba's friends, and Aiba themselves.
• Funetik Aksent: The various Tentomon NPCs' dialogue is rendered as a heavy Scottish accent in the English version, with nigh-impenetrable phonetic spellings everywhere as a Translation Convention for them using the Kansai Regional Accent.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • There are reports of players using PS4 Slim having the game crash for no apparent reason during chapter 12 or immediately before the final cutscene, with some reporting that the bug caused the entire system to crash. Bandai-Namco's recommended way of getting around the bug is moving the save to a cloud and then borrowing a friend's PS4 or Vita to proceed past the buggy segment; otherwise, the game becomes unwinnable.
  • Using Gale Storm III in Yamashina's Memory will crash the game due to an odd interaction between the attack animation and the busy background, at least on some copies of the game. If the player is unaware of the glitch, it can leave them in an infinite loop of crashing without knowing the cause, leaving the game unplayable or at least extremely frustrating. What's worse, the only point to go to the Digilab is at the very end, before the boss, so if one enters the dungeon with that as their only Area of Effect attack, they won't have any chance to trade Digimon out to remedy it.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Several in the Complete Edition, and mostly because the requirements to get certain Digimon were removed. Of note:
  • It is entirely possible for you to have your own Mastemon before the plot requires you to jogress one. Which would save you at least an hour of plot-related quests just so Mirei's lets you advance the plot.
  • In fact, most of the latter half of the game could be skipped if the game would just recognize that you can just breed Royal Knights left and right, and probably already have some in your lineup. Particularly egregious in UlForceVeedramon's case, since a good chunk of chapter 15 is spent trying to get to a parallel universe to get Rina's V.V's help, since the Cyber Sleuth's universe's own UlForceVeedramon is stuck in the Digital World.
  • The case "Boy A" is optional, and becomes available near the end of the game. During this quest, Arata's Infermon evolves into a Diaboromon. However, a mandatory story segment sees him already with Diaboromon in his party. So, it is entirely possible to see Arata using Diaboromon, then trace back and accept the sidequest, see Arata having an Infermon again, and finally see Infermon evolve into the Diaboromon it supposedly was beforehand. The game just assumes you will return to the agency before opening the gate to the Digital World and take on all remaining cases.
• Gathering Steam: Beezlemon's special ability Gluttony works like this: every turn in exchange for a small amount of hit points, the team's attack is increased, essentially meaning the longer the battle goes, the stronger they get. Combine this with a good healer, and this can be very effective.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Arata, in his despair, yells at you to leave him alone in the Eater void he's brought himself into. Your response is to punch him in the face, which quickly leads to an all-out fistfight — but his angry retaliation indicates that He's Back!.
• Glass Cannon: Chaosmon is one of the best examples of this trope in the game. At max level, it has one of the highest ATK in the game, but it also has pretty low INT and DEF^note not unlike the first generation of Pokémon, INT counts for both offense and defense. Additionally, its support skill increases all damage, given and received, by 30%, meaning that even resisted hits will still hit pretty hard, especially against Chaosmon itself. Players have to be careful when using Chaosmon against certain bosses, even if it has a type advantage over them.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Or rather remembering what really happened eight years ago. Arata is so distraught that he leaves with Suedou to acquire power to fight the Eaters with. It doesn't end well for Arata. Poor guy. When Aiba finds out, they break completely and almost end up assimilated into EDEN, descending into a Madness Mantra and needing Nokia's and Yuuko's help in snapping out of it again. Thankfully they do, and Aiba then goes on to snap Arata out of it as well.
• Good is Not Nice: In the "Two Faces" case, Angemon hires you to bring a Devimon before it. However, Devimon doesn't want to go. Angemon does not take this kindly, and starts attacking you instead. Even after your Digimon beat some sense into it, the Angemon just flies away while cursing Devimon for some nebulous misbehaviour that may or may not have actually happened.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Despite the English version being rated T (where foul language would be fair game), the rather inconsistent nature of the localization means it often can't decide whether to avert this or play it straight.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: The Baku Reborn service. Both the Genius Architect Boy and Kyoko realize the implications of it, that he may one day lose control over it (and considering it can read a person's mental data that spells trouble), so he hands it over to Kyoko to deal with it. She sends the player to catch it, and it turns out to have merged with a wild Clockmon and erased its sapience.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Plot characters will occasionally tag along with you for certain battles; although they're not controllable and will only work by AI, it won't harm you much since they don't take up an extra slot in your party, can have some powerful attacks (depending on the member in question), cannot take on status effects (and thus can't be sent into Panic and put your party at risk), and - perhaps the most useful - have no internal HP or SP bar, meaning they can tank hits for you endlessly and churn out powerful attacks one after another with no repercussion. It's jarring to sometimes see them tank hits of upwards of 1000 like it's nothing, but it ensures that they don't become a hindrance to you.
• Hard Mode Perks: Playing on Hard Mode awards more money and items in battle.
• Heroic BSoD: Occurs when Yuuko finds out Rie's been manipulating her and the player character is thrown back into the recollection of the incident eight years ago.
• Heroic Sacrifice: With no other way to confront the Big Bad inside the Mother Eater, Aiba performs a Connect Jump into its body despite it being obvious that their quickly-deteriorating cyber body can't take the strain. They back out again seemingly none the worse for wear, but their body collapses and disperses completely during the transit back to the real world.
• Heroic RRoD: As mentioned above, the player character over-taxing their already severely deteriorated cyber body by Connect Jumping into Eaters ends up causing them to collapse, just as they were almost back to the physical world. Thankfully, the epilogue shows that it doesn't stick.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Depending on how you see it, the end result could be depicted as this; the early game presents many different options for who'll end up being the main antagonistic force in this game. In the end, it ends up being Yggdrasil and the Royal Knights, a plotline used at least twice in other incarnations of the Digimon franchise, though Suedou does end up being the ultimate Big Bad in the game, and it's implied Yggdrasil never actually ordered the Royal Knights to do more than just investigate the origin of the Eaters, and thus the malevolent ones are acting of their own accord.
• Hikikomori: One case involves finding out why a boy has decided to become one. Turns out it's because he and a Minervamon have a mutual crush and spend all day chatting online.
• Hollywood Hacking: Sapient monsters being raised to be used as hacking tools is only the tip of the iceberg here.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: If you're doing absolutely 0 damage on the dot to the enemy and the "incidental" boss theme is playing (instead of the normal one), you can reasonably assume it's due to this. There are also a few less discernible ones, such as the first Examon fight (it ends when Gallantmon takes a massive hit), or a few boss fights where you can actually deal damage but the enemy is completely incapable of knocking out your Digimon despite their much more powerful attacks.
• Hotter and Sexier: Due to the above-mentioned Audience Shift, characters like Kyouko and Nokia are rather scantily clad (this is partially due to the artist being Suzuhito Yasuda, who generally draws female characters this way). Some female Digimon like Angewomon are also quite busty and flaunted in certain cinematics, although this isn't all that new to the franchise.
• Human Resources: One sidequest involves a scam service involved in this business. The particularly disturbing part about it is that the victims are having their minds uploaded to EDEN, completely unaware they're not in the real world anymore, and if they try to log out...
• Ice Magic Is Water: Many ice-powered Digimon's Attributes are Water.
• Incompatible Orientation: A wild Lillymon ends up having a crush on a Hot Guy for one case and tries taking photos of herself for him. He explains that he's only into guys.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: Aiba says this at one point when they overhear a rather depressing conversation about EDEN Syndrome, which they are currently afflicted with.
• Inconsistent Dub: The English release rather aggravatingly bounces between being a decent localization and a poor one.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: A hacker that stole a very rare medal from a businessman says in a panic that he never saw any businessman. But as Aiba points out, s/he had yet to bring up the businessman when the hacker gave gimself away.
• Intercontinuity Crossover:
  • Mirei Mikagura and Rina Shinomiya from Re:Digitize Decode take on some minor roles in the story; Mirei manages your DigiFarms and Digimon storage, while Rina lends you Veevee (as UlforceVeedramon) in your mission to gather the Royal Knights, and tags along for the ride as well.
  • Sayo and her Dianamon from World Dusk are available as free DLC, with a questline that involves challenging the Seven Great Demon Lord Digimon (although World Dusk is also in the Story series, it involves a very different universe).
• Interspecies Romance: Several Digimon end up developing feelings for humans. Likewise, several humans become attracted to the more humanoid Digimon. Some of them, like Naoya and Minervamon, are mutual.
• Intertwined Fingers: Angewomon and LadyDevimon when they merge into Mastemon, complete with a borderline Almost Kiss.
• I Work Alone: Arata attempts to invoke this in order to save everyone else from getting implicated from the technical crime of assisting in the Tokyo blackout. He tries to put on a cool front about it, but when you actually meet up with him later he reveals that being on the lam really sucks.
• Karma Houdini: Although she isn't technically responsible for murder as Crusadermon's the one who actually did it, the real human Rie gets off scot-free and in fact is implied to be seducing the president in the epilogue, despite the fact she's known by the main cast to be guilty of attempting to bring him down in the past for her own ambitions and having murderous intent towards him. The whole Kamishiro Enterprise counts for this as well, as the company is mentioned to have engaged in corrupt dealings even before Rie took power, including illegally buying out Nile Corp and covering up the EDEN beta test as a success.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Safety Guard grants this in the form of a Status Buff. When the affected Digimon is hit by lethal damage or a One-Hit Kill effect, its HP goes to 1 and the buff is removed. Status Barrier needs to be applied again to survive any more lethal hits. The buff still works even if the Digimon was already at one HP.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The official website outright states the fact that Mirei no longer has a physical body, which was originally the very last reveal at the end of Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode. The game itself does not discuss this in detail, though one might raise an eyebrow at Mirei warning Rina that anyone who travels outside their world will be separated from their physical body, as it never mentions what she thinks of this as it applies to herself.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The Tower Records in Shibuya is turned into "Shibuya Records" in the US version, due to a legal issue with a similarly named company, while in Europe, it retains the correct name.
• Lethal Chef: There's a reason people tend to react with horror to Kyoko offering them some coffee. Both the protagonist and Arata black out upon tasting her coffee for the first time, with the latter apparently fully convinced that he is going to die right then and there.
• Lie to the Beholder: Arata modified the "Stealth Hide" program to do this while they are diguised during Chapter 9.
• Like Brother and Sister: Rina Shinomiya and Veevee have this kind of relationship, with a hint of Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling, with Rina as foolish one and Veevee as the responsible one
• Lighter and Softer: This game manages to be both Darker and Edgier and this — it's no cakewalk but it's also no Digimon Tamers, being around as dark as you would expect with a standard JRPG of its setting. It tells when the villains are nowhere near as heinous as what is usually presented for Digimon standards and the Greater-Scope Villain is a Welll Intentioned Extremist.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: A sidequest involves an illegal service that promises buyers lifelike dolls of girls they can live out their fantasies with, under the stipulation that they never leave their room. It turns out that they actually become trapped in EDEN, convinced that they're still in the real world, while their now-comatose bodies are sent to foreign countries for less-than-pleasant business, possibly to be harvested for organs. Once the investigation is over, Kyoko suggests that they technically have no way of proving that the entire world they're in isn't a simulation, either, but doesn't pursue the subject further.
• Love at First Sight: Weird Nerd Boy claims this about the Florist, but she states he's a Stalker with a Crush. Considering he wants you to get all her contact info... she has a point.
• Madness Mantra: This crops up in the Digimon a few times. In chapter 6, the sleuth fights a Wisemon who frantically repeats "Don't look!" over and over after the fight. That same one is possessing Nishino, who also ends up uttering "Don't look" over and over because of it.
• Magikarp Power: After helping Hackmon digivolve into Jesmon, Gankuumon gives you the Steel Will, allowing you to get your own Hackmon. And not only does he only evolve into Jesmon at Level 60, you have to complete the Gankuumon/Jesmon Great Challenge to unlock Jesmon. Once you meet both requirements, however, you can finally have your own Jesmon, and it is glorious. He even can outright counter Imperialdramon Paladin Mode by just spamming Weltgeist over and over again during the Omni Slash attack.
• Male Gaze:
  • Rarely occurs, though the camera does give Angewomon a pan up her body during her victory animation. Interestingly, among the player's Digimon, she's the only female Digimon that gets this treatment: her Evil Counterpart, LadyDevimon, and Lilithmon, the Digimon embodiment of lust, both of whom seem like more obvious candidates for the trope, just get rather unassuming victory animations of them doing Evil Laughs instead.
  • The DLC boss version of Lilithmon, on the other hand, does get this, with her intro animation involving camera focus right on her breasts. (She is the demon of Lust, after all.)
• The Masquerade: While Digimon are common knowledge, information about the Digital World itself is kept strictly under wraps by those in the know. As such, the vast majority of people think Digimon are just hacking tools with a particularly quirky interface. Whenever the protagonist openly tells a client that a Digimon was the source of their problems, they assume it means they've been targeted by a hacker for kicks, not that there was an actual sentient critter messing around in their data.
• Marathon Level: The level that leads to the final boss, Mother Eater, as it involves no less than seven boss stages: four Eater-infected forms of King Drasil, followed by the Yuugo-core Mother Eater (a comparatively easy fight that, despite being initially billed as the final fight, is so ridiculously easy it's obvious there's more coming), followed by two "sections" - the first being the bottom core and arms of Mother Eater, the second being its head and shoulders.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: For a given value of mundane. Most strange events in the game are due to Digimon or the Digital World influencing the real world, but the case of a ghostly girl who lures people in front of speeding traffic never gets explained.
  • At least, not in this game. The midquel does in the wizard and reveals that it's a Dragomon..
• Meaningful Echo: What's originally just comedic banter between Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon upon their first meeting about finding each other's names weird turns out to be exactly what they said to each other eight years prior when they first met.
• Mêlée à Trois: The battle to get into Under Zero has the Rebels, Zaxon, and the remnants of Judes fighting each other to access it.
• Mental World: The protagonist Connect Jumps into an EDEN developer's memories while the latter hooked up to a machine at one point, making for a pretty weird if rather straightforward dungeon.
• Metal Slime: In Chapter 10, in the Valhalla Server you can find and fight a rare Digimon that when defeated gives your Digimon in the party over 4000 EXP.
• Mirror Boss: The penultimate opponent of the Masters Cup is a copy of the protagonist, with his/her party consisting of the Mega forms of the three starter Digimon.
• Misery Builds Character: The more advanced training courses on the Farm Islands will make your Digimon stronger in less time, but they're not going to enjoy it and your Camaraderie with all those that were forced into it will drop heavily as a result.
• Motherly Side Plait: One case has you look into why a boy has decided to become a Hikikomori. His mother who requests the investigation has her hair tied over her left shoulded.
• The Multiverse: Mirei and Rina are explicitly stated to come from another world (presumably the one of Re:Digitize: Decode). At one point, you get to travel to their world in order to recruit Rina's UlforceV-dramon; when she accompanies you and V.V. to your world, Mirei notes that because she's not native, she can only exist there as a digital entity not unlike the Digimon.
• Mythology Gag: Other than things that generally fall in line with franchise lore, there are some references to other Digimon media:
  • The Digimon Medals were a real toy.
  • Nokia's Agumon and Gabumon are voiced by their voice actresses from Digimon Adventure.
  • All of the Tentomon NPCs speak in the Kansai dialect, referencing Koushirou's Tentomon.
  • Pumpkinmon and Gotsumon are fought in Shibuya, a reference to when those two Digimon ended up in that part of Tokyo in Adventure.
  • The Gold Cup includes a trio of a Taomon, WarGrowlmon, and Rapidmon (the Ultimate forms of the three main Digimon in Digimon Tamers) and ends with a Shakkoumon, Paildramon, and Silphymon (the three DNA Digivolved Digimon from Digimon Adventure 02). The Legendary Cup also ends with a Seraphimon, Kerpymon, and Ophanimon (the Three Archangels from Digimon Frontier).
  • Pete's real name, "Miko", is a reference to the name of Taichi and Hikari's cat in Digimon Adventure.
  • A DLC mission involves Yuuko playacting as a Beelzemon and "killing" a Leomon, who utters "this is my fate" as his last words - referencing Beelzemon's murder of Leomon in Digimon Tamers. The same mission has you meet a Lalamon who would rather sing and a Patamon who has trouble Digivolving, and later Kyoko says that she's heard a saying along the lines of "every hero needs goggles".
  • In the "new Tokyo" created after the Cosmic Retcon, the Digimon Capture is replaced with a training app; it's called "Digital Monster", and is described with an exact description of the original V-Pets.
  • The end of the Demon Lords campaign has Mirei summon a Monzaemon as the "ultimate Digimon", a reference to the original V-Pets in which he was indeed the strongest.
  • Some of the support skills (Nightmare Soldiers, Dragon's Roar, etc.) are references to the Pendulum V-Pets and the TCG.
  • The playable Slepimon/Kentaurosmon has a noticeably female voice actress, possibly referencing Satsuma's Kudamon-Sleipmon/Kentaurosmon in the Japanese version ofDigimon Data Squad.
  • EDEN's white background, floating objects, and pastel colors and lines take large cues from Our War Game! and its successor. The latter is the strongest with the DigiLine avatars, but the former is referenced by the partners of Nokia and Arata, as they have the two major Digimon introduced in it.
  • The game's final area has Yggdrasil's form as the World Tree as momentarily seen in Digimon Data Squad as per its namesake, but almost completely destroyed, with only chunks of the base of the tree surrounding the massive hole created by the Mother Eater.
  • On a meta level, producer Habu stated in an Famitsu interview that the premise of gathering friends and discussing cases in a detective's office is inspired by Digimon Adventure 02's Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World nature in which the kids would discuss their strategy in the computer room and solve problems in both worlds from there.
• Navel-Deep Neckline:
  • Kyoko has her shirt mostly unbuttoned, exposing her ample cleavage and midriff as well as the fact that she isn't wearing a bra.
  • Nokia's dress has a plunging neckline that goes below the bottom of her breasts, but her bra and more modest chest size make this less apparent.
  • Rina Shinomiya from Re:Digitize: Decode also has her hoodie mostly unzipped, completely exposing her chest, but is wearing a bra underneath.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Release trailer material prominently shows a GrandLocomon rampaging on the tracks, but the actual game only has it show up in one minor DLC mission with no relevance to the main plot.
  • Averted with the "Kyoko Kuremi, Cyber Detective" English trailer, which had Kyoko speaking in full English. As soon as the trailer begins, a small disclaimer pops up in the corner telling viewers that the game will not be dubbed.
• New Game Plus : The international release has one, which unfortunately lacks any features like skipping scenes you've seen before. While most stuff gets carried across you will lose your progress in the Offline Cups. You'll also lose the Steel Will, preventing you from digivolving into Hackmon, though you can still devolve into him.
• New Skill as Reward:
  • The final two chapters have an urgent and eight challenges (making nine missions in total) that give the player the ability to evolve their Digimon into the 13 Royal Knights and Imperialdramon Paladin Mode upon completion.
  • Similarly, completing the eight missions involving the Seven Great Demon Kings will unlocked the ability to evolve your Digimon into Dianamon.
• Nightmare Fetishist: The local occult club occasionally posts cases to the detective agency, usually because they need help verifying various spooky urban legends. The fact that their very first case almost ends up killing the group and the protagonist fails to curb their enthusiasm.
• Non-Elemental: Free and Neutral, where the Digimon will be neither weak nor strong against Digimon of any Type or Attribute, respectively.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Kyoko and Mirei can provide hints on progressing the main story, while the "Case" tab in the Player section of the menu will provide hints on the current case.
• Obviously Evil:
  • It's quite evident from the very start, purely from their behavior, that Rie and Suedou are not exactly going to do very nice things. One scene even has them having fun trying to talk like a Card-Carrying Villain. For Suedou, it's Downplayed since it turns out he's more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist and he just happens to act like that.
  • For fans of the anime, Piedmon comes across this way. Subverted as this Piedmon is actually a nice guy and is a surprisingly shy and timid fellow who just wants to entertain people.
• Occult Detective: The player character is recruited by the Kuremi Detective Agency to investigate strange goings on in the Digital World, taking on the specific title of "Cyber Sleuth".
• One Degree of Separation: In a mission in Chapter 6, you're sent to get information on some disappearances in Akihabara, and you get information from a creepy guy hitting on a florist clerk; he says that he has a friend (of a friend of a friend of a friend...) who was one of the victims and redirects you to a comic maniac forum. Once there, you meet a girl who gives you some hints...nearby someone who happens to conveniently be none other than Arata. Then, when you track down the culprit, not only does it happen to be the florist clerk, Arata just happens to know both the culprit and the hint-giving girl personally...
• Optional Boss: Rina Shinomiya (or, more specifically, her UlforceV-dramon, V.V.); beating them allows you to evolve an eligible Digimon into your own UlforceV-dramon and unlock a series of quests to fight and obtain eligibility to create your own versions of the other Royal Knights as well.
• Out-Gambitted: Yuugo tries to lead the Zaxon corps to Valhalla Server in order to find out what Rie was up to. Rie already had a pre-installed false personality in the Yuugo avatar that was subconsciously leading him to do this, allowing her to have hackers from all around EDEN walk right into her trap.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: One quest involving finding the hand of a Hagurumon unlocks a unique area just for that quest and quickly locks it away when the quest is completed. Since it's not required to advance the plot, people aware that this gives an unusual amount of experience tend to leave the quest open just for the sake of having access to it (since it locks up for a while when the quest is completed, and by the time it returns there are far more useful places to use).
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Although the game averts this for one-time only dungeons (via the "Mirror Dungeon" that appears in the DigiLab that allows you to revisit dungeons that are no longer present due to the plot and claim any items or Digimon data you failed to do beforehand), if you move on to the next chapter without finding Victory Uchida, you'll miss out on the rare item he was offering for that chapter. Heck, sometimes if you don't seek him out immediately on chapter start, you can still miss out on the items if you try to find him later on in the chapter.
  • If you Digivolve or Devolve any of the DLC-exclusive costumed Agumon you get they'll lose the costume even if you turn them back into Agumon. The game forewarns you of this, thankfully. Both this and the Victory Uchida issue above can be resolved by starting a New Game Plus.
• Piñata Enemy: PlatinumSukamon, GoldNumemon and PlatinumNumemon all give out considerably more experience and money than normal. Additionally, PlatinumSukamon and PlatinumNumemon's support abilities increases experience gained in battle, while GoldNumemon's ability increases money earned. They are extremely rare encounters, but you can get your hands on their considerable EXP rewards by simply Digivolving them from more common Digimon and then loading them onto another one.
• Point of No Return: The Digital World. The game makes it abundantly clear that you won't be be able to come back after you enter and repeatedly recommends that you complete any remaining side-quests, stock up on items, etc. before you go. (Despite that, it isn't actually the case; you're allowed to go back for items and access the DigiLab after a certain point, although you won't be able to take on any more requests.)
• Poor Communication Kills: Starmon, SuperStarmon and Justimon on "A Villainous Cinematic Case" became so caught up on making an action movie, they adopted a "superhero" persona, complete with a Super Sentai pose, that they used everywhere. This actually got them into trouble after they sent a very unfortunately worded letter to some Digimon they wanted to recruit to play the villains, all written in-character, and without providing them any context whatsoever. This made the letter seem like prime Fantastic Racism.
• Pop Quiz: Throughout the game, Digimon will send quiz questions asking about the real world, in-game mechanics, and about the Digimon franchise.
• Post-Final Boss: A version played for laughs near the end of the DLC Seven Deadly Digimon campaign: you've just defeated all seven of them in a number of grueling battles involving bosses with tons of status effect infliction and self-healing, but Mirei's gone completely nuts and summons the "ultimate Digimon" made with the signs of the seven sins you collected, and you're starting to wonder if you've indirectly led to the creation of a behemoth larger than what you've faced before. She ends up summoning a Monzaemon that "plays" with you by constantly taking and restoring your health and SP (effectively giving you an infinite supply as long as you take care not to stay too long at 1 health), has only one huge damage-dealing attack that it doesn't use very often, and doesn't self-heal, meaning that you can finish the battle absurdly quickly as long as you hit it enough. Sayo even lampshades how silly the situation is.
• The Power of Friendship: It's mentioned several times in the narrative that the main characters can draw strength from the fact they have their friends by their side. In the end, the protagonist is able to return to their body because of the remains of their data their Digimon were able to gather through their bonds with them.
• Precocious Crush: The Child Prodigy behind the Nightmare Eater case did what he did because he had a crush on the girl and wanted to tease her to get her attention. He was too immature to understand the scope of what he was doing at his age after falling in Love at First Sight.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Sayo from World Dusk is available as Downloadable Content, where she and her partner Dianamon appear in some missions.
• Product Placement: The player character's shirt has the logo for AWA Studio on it. The Tower Records store and its mascot, Reiko Tawa, also factor into certain parts of the story (although this turns into a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo in the English version). Certain brands such as Mandarake and even Sega (complete with ads for Border Break) are real-life brands presented on signs and posters around Tokyo, although it's hard to say which ones are product placement and which ones are there purely for the realism factor (as the game strives for a fairly realistic and uncannily detailed depiction of the actual Tokyo locations).
• Pronoun Trouble: Regardless of what gender you choose, the game will use male pronouns when talking about the player character... and even that isn't consistent. Given that the original Japanese-language version had no issues using gender-neutral pronouns (which is admittedly less of an issue as it is in English language conventions), this can likely be chalked up to localization issues.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The player character can be either male or female. This does not change anything in the dialogue other than gendered pronouns and grammar, even when certain lines are quite blatantly written for the male protagonist instead (the localization is even worse about this, even forgetting the pronouns on occasion).
• Real-Place Background: A large amount of the game involves running around areas of Tokyo, which are modeled in excruciating detail. See here.
• Red Herring: Fei's unusual behavior and suspiciously overly enthusiastic loyalty to Yuugo draws some red flags, culminating in when (while looking over Yuugo's speech) Rie and Suedou decide they're going to have "her" follow through with their plan. "Her" refers to Yuuko, being unknowingly manipulated by Rie. Fei's loyalty is genuine.
• Retraux: The "Dot" status turns the afflicted Digimon into a two-dimensional 8-bit sprite reminiscent of the original V-Pets (albeit colored).
• Running Gag:
  • Yuuko's obsession with food; her early appearances tend to be running into her and discovering that she's there to try out some restaurant or a food promotion. When asked about her ideal romantic gift, her answer is...onigiri.
  • Kyouko's tendency to put bizarre ingredients such as yogurt or sea urchin in her coffee, which is eventually used as her way of revealing herself when she appears as Alphamon to the others — only she. as in someone who would have no concept of how human coffee is supposed to be, would know of putting mayonnaise into coffee.
  • The Player Character running late. If there is a scheduled meeting, they simply cannot arrive on time, no matter how serious the situation is.
• Samus Is a Girl:
  • "Yuugo" is actually Yuuko, using her older brother's appearance and name as her EDEN avatar.
  • Partially in regards to Alphamon and Crusadermon, who in most iterations of the (Japanese) Digimon franchise have been male characters, but inhabit female human mediums Kyoko and Rie, with the localization identifying Crusadermon as female. This is more vague in the Japanese version; they inhabit female human mediums Kyouko and Rie, but are never confirmed to be male or female, and the ability to apply this question to Digimon to begin with is dubious.^note The franchise has a general rule of No Biological Sex, and some Digimon, like Renamon in Tamers, don't consciously consider themselves as having gender; however, multiple continuities have established Digimon within the same species as being potentially male or female, other franchise entries (such as even this very game) have certain Digimon self-identify as male or female, and notably at least one continuity (Digimon Fusion) takes a sledgehammer to even the No Biological Sex rule, with one supporting Digimon character explicitly being a biological son of a male and female of their species (along with other implications of sexual relations). There's no indication that Digimon should necessarily choose human mediums of the same gender, but this at least threw off many who weren't expecting that plot twist for this reason. Further muddying this is that "Alphamon" Kyoko speaks with masculine inflection in her voice as does Alphamon themselves, but "New Tokyo" Kyoko in the end, who was never possessed by Alphamon, speaks with feminine inflections.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: The Bug status reverses type advantage on Digimon affected by it, whenever it be by attacking the opponent or receiving damage from them, whenever a Vaccine becomes weak to Virus, but resistant to Data, and vice versa.
• Secret A.I. Moves:
  • Many story relevant bosses have moves that the player can't get with that Digimon period. These range from simple status buff moves to potentially crippling ones.
  • Each of the seven Demon Lords has at least one. Especially Lucemon, who after going Falldown Mode has every move other than than his signature moves be Secret A.I. Moves, including several of the other Demon Lord's.
• Secret Test of Character: Kyoko susses out the fact that Yuuko had them investigate Makoto Yamashina was one of these.
• Shop Fodder: Sometimes jewel items (e.g. Pearls, Saphires, Diamonds, etc.) will drop in battles. These have no use other than selling them to shops for loads of money.
• Shout-Out:
  • Arata's "Blue Box" chat avatar bears a passing resemblance to Snufkin. Nokia even mentions that Arata tends to act like a "protective big brother" in the chat, much like Snufkin's role in the Moomins.
  • At one point, Arata wonders if Kamishiro tech includes a camera that can detect hidden objects or a ball that can be stuffed with captured creatures. This is immediately lampshaded.
    Suedou: Those are some oddly specific examples there.
  • This image◊:
    Anime Nerd Boy: Uwahhh! Someone save me-desu! I have no keikaku for this situation! Bankai! Dattebayo! KAMEHAMEHAAAAA!
  • Kyoko names an amnesiac Wanyamon (a blue, cat-like Digimon) with old memories "Pete", citing that he's like a "time capsule", making him a likely reference to a certain other cat named Pete that's been around for a long time.
  • Gankoomon lays this one on one of the Royal Knights after the latter says he'll try his best:
    Gankoomon: Do or do not. There is no try.
  • When Nokia finally tells off Jimiken for his jerkass behavior, she tells him his style is a ripoff of a specific Western rock band also known for wild antics and painted faces but can't quite remember the name, or whether they're from America or the UK. ^Answer They're actually from America.
  • After the battle against Craniamon, when the player talks to Kyoko about seeing Yuuko's "Yuuko the Blackhearted" version of herself, the detective speculates a lot of things like doppelgangers, bilocations, or an expression of her "persona", expounding on the last by stating that she grew up wearing several different "masks" (the CEO's daughter, the hacker group leader, the unhappy girl growing up alone).
    • Her aftermath of her (and your) battle against an AI possessing her Yuugo avatar also has similar veins to a Shadow Self acceptance.
  • Several of the otaku NPCs recreate notable poses from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. There's also BanchoLeomon, who is a walking pastiche of Jotaro Kujo.
  • Upon finding out that a guy is stalking a woman, one of the possible responses is "Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky".
  • When searching for the Avatar Pieces, Kyoko comments that at least you don't have to fight 48 demons for them.
  • Examon, a huge, red dragon Digimon, first appears coming out of a vortex in the clouds.
• Spell My Name With An S: Prior to the localized release, the main candidates for romanizing クーロン were "Coulomb" (like the electrical charge unit) or "Cron" (like the Unix job scheduler), both of which are written クーロン in Japanese. The game itself displays the name in romaji inside Makoto Yamashina's memory dungeon as "Cool-wrong", which is decidedly off the mark. The official localization goes with "Kowloon", which, while decidedly incorrect (it refers to a city in China), is meant to keep consistency with the romanization employed by a previous game.
  • The "Kowloon" name is possibly a Woolseyism, as it could refer to the Kowloon Walled city that existed until the mid-90s. Just like how Kowloon in the game is considered the dangerous "underground" of EDEN filled with lawlessness and criminals, and had hackers formed into mafia-like gangs, Kowloon Walled City was run by the Triads and was rampant with crime, compared to the rest of the city actually being decent.
• Split Personality: Manaka of the occult club briefly suspects that she might have one, as an explanation for some text messages that have been sent over her DigiLine but she doesn't remember writing. (As it turns out, it's not.)
  Kyoko: The politically correct term for that would be "dissociative identity disorder," actually.
• Spot the Thread: It's possible to ID the Mysterious Digital Face yourself, but the PC doesn't pick up on it. Unlike the cops walking around the street, the culprit doesn't have a baton.
• Superboss: The DLC offers missions involving fighting the Seven Great Demon Lords; both this campaign and the Royal Knights missions make up the most difficult bosses in the game (far above the actual final boss of the main story).
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors:
  • The main Digimon franchise type effectiveness is present in this game, following the usual Virus > Data > Vaccine > Virus setup (applying a 2x multiplier to strong damage and a 0.5x multiplier for weak damage), along with the one native to Story games involving the different races (applying a 1.5x multiplier to strong damage). In this game in particular, the virus/data/vaccine setup is absolutely important for players to keep in mind; bringing too many Digimon of the wrong type leads very easily to a quick and painful loss to the point where it's best to look up the type of the Digimon you'll be fighting if you can before you fight them.
  • Not only there are attribute effectiveness by type, there are also two sets of elemental attribute effectiveness that each forms a cycle this way.
• A Taste of Power: The end of Chapter 10 has you briefly commanding Nokia and the newly formed Omnimon, a Level 50 Royal Knight that is far more powerful than anything you have at the moment. Needless to say, Fei's team does not last long.
• Temporary Online Content: The entire game in the west, along with all its DLC, was delisted for both PlayStation 4 and Vita in December 2018, making it impossible to play the game digitally if you did not already purchase the game or the DLC. While it is possible to still play the game if you get a physical copy, you still are unable to get the DLC. The new Complete Edition that was released on October 28, 2019 lets people get the game and DLC again digitally on Switch and PC, but western PlayStation 4/Vita players are still out of luck.
• Title Drop: In the Japanese version, the protagonist is usually referred to with the title of "Cyber Detective" (dennou tantei), but only twice in the game does the game parse this with the titles English "Cyber Sleuth" (once when you are first presented the title, and once at the very end when Alphamon calls you this).
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If you switch on the auto-battle mode your team will act this way, using their most powerful and costly attacks against enemies that are weak or low on health, and healing profusely if they take so much as Scratch Damage.
• Those Two Guys: The player character's school friends Ryouta and Sakura, who never willingly involve themselves with any of the hackers, but send you DigiLine chats every so often and occasionally get pulled into some incidents. They're mostly there just for comic relief and to provide some normal daily-life situations in contrast to what you're dealing with. The most significant thing to happen about them overall is a minor subplot about Ryouta's very obvious crush on Sakura; near the end of the game, Sakura tells you via DigiLine that they've started dating.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Not the trailers, but the promotional materials: the official website shows Rie casting LordKnightmon's shadow.
• True Final Boss: The final opponent of the Masters Cup, Mr. Navit, claims to be this.
• Urban Legend: The Occult club full of Nightmare Fetishist students have you investigate these. Despite the fact that the very first case turned out to be real and nearly killed all of them when a ghost tried to manipulate them into getting hit by a truck.
• Vague Age: Rina; in her home game, she was part of a cast that seemed to be mainly composed of kids or pre-teens, and was drawn as such. In this game, although nothing necessarily indicates that this game takes place any amount of years after Re:Digitize Decode, but she's drawn to look like they're around the same age as the high school-attending cast. Mirei notably goes under the same phenomenon, despite Re:Digitize Decode establishing that she's actually an adult woman displaced from her body.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Tokyo government building in Roppongi spans forty-nine floors (that thankfully the player doesn't have to traverse all of thanks to elevators) and is a giant labyrinthine maze of unprecedented size.
• Victory by Endurance:
  • This is the only way to beat Lucemon's final form: he's completely invincible until he burns up all his energy, at which point he's left completely helpless and goes down in one hit.
  • Defeating Imperialdramon Paladin Mode requires surviving five consecutive hits from its strongest attack. If successful, Imperialdramon will commend the player and reduce its own HP to 1, allowing the player to finish it off easily.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Leopardmon breaks down in insane laughter upon his defeat and death.
  • Lucemon, despite not appearing at all outside his DLC boss fight, manages to have one. He starts the fight in his Rookie form and calmly says "Arrogant..." when using his knockback move. He has no dialog at all during his Falldown Mode phase...but when he goes into his final form, he more or less goes completely berserk and starts actually yelling, and he uses the other Demon Lord's Secret A.I. Moves, he notably skips Lilithmon's and Leviamon's (the only two who don't yell theirs) and starts with the two themed around anger. In fact it's implied he's went so berserk he burns himself out completely and is left completely helpless at the end.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Jimiken's fight in Chapter 3 is supposed to teach the players that they should be careful about what Digimon they bring into a fight (specifically, the fight teaches you the importance of Digimon types and status effects).
  • The first Eater fight is a good means of showing how important blocking is in this game and how important buffs truly are.
• Water Is Blue: The Water Attribute is associated to the color blue.
• Wham Episode: Just about anything between chapters 10-12, as the tone shifts from the earlier Digimon series to Shin Megami Tensei levels of bad. A Digital Wave causes Digimon to appear in the real world. The Detective Agency tries to stop it and fails, causing Arata to take the blame and go on the run. The overworld map goes from modern-day Tokyo to World of Ruin levels of bad, with Digimon fighting the police in the street and the town being thrown into chaos, and Kyoko has gone missing, forcing Pete to take over. Just to top it all off, the player character's half-cyber body is beginning to break down and disperse due to the increase in Digital Wave activity and contact with the Eaters.
• Wham Line: Crusadermon makes the mother of all confessions in Chapter 17: she did not kill Satoru Kamishiro. At least not directly. She still did, but it was Kishibe's idea- Crusadermon was just along for the ride. She even shows one last semblance of sanity before she reverts back, and clearly regrets it. Even Yuuko's at a loss.
  Crusadermon: It was never my intention to kill your father. Rather, it was that woman's thoughts... Like a black flame. Like a serpent in the grass... Kishibe's ambition, desire, envy... Her passion affected my thoughts as well.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Fei, despite being established as the closest person to Yuuko in her "Yuugo" persona; we never even get to find out what happens to her in the new Tokyo; it's possible that with this version of events, she'd never met Yuuko, though Nokia doesn't even mention if they'd looked for her. This applies to pretty much everyone else with a subplot - what happened to Miko and Yoshito? Or Ryota and Sakura's relationship?
• White-and-Grey Morality: Besides possibly Rie/Crusadermon, good luck finding a genuinely evil villain:
  • Some of the Royal Knights might be a little too enthusiastic when it comes to destroying all life in the real world, but they have good reason to be xenophobic, and when it comes down to it they are dutiful knights, following the orders of..
  • King Drasil, who only wants to attack the real world as he believes it will protect his subjects in the digital world. Also, he's being corrupted by...
  • The Eaters, who suffer from Blue-and-Orange Morality and Horror Hunger, seemingly as a result of being corrupted by human contact early on, who in turn get manipulated by...
  • Suedou, who genuinely wants to improve the quality of human existence and is legitimately baffled that the heroes oppose him, and who mentors...
  • Arata, who wants to make up for past mistakes, even if it involves some reckless choices.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The game manages to pull it off with every season of the show at once:
  • The main characters are implied to have been destined to connect with their partners, of whom an Agumon and a Gabumon are the most prominently featured.
  • Of these children, the main character is unusual in that they carry a small army of Digimon with them rather than just one main partner as all the other children do.
  • A creepy-looking older man manipulates the children, and in particular one who turns to the dark side, in an effort to reach the Digital World himself.
  • The major threat is a non-Digimon digital lifeform that corrodes and devours anything it comes in contact with, which if not stopped will engulf both worlds.
  • The Royal Knights arrive roughly halfway through the story and take over the majority of the remaining plot.
  • Said plot focuses heavily on an ideological rift between the members of the Royal Knights, with Alphamon as a prominent figure in the heroic faction.
  • Of the ones that side against humanity, Crusadermon and her scheme to gather energy play the front-and-center role.
  • To deal with a threat that can't be handled otherwise, the characters reach out to other Digimon media for a crossover.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • A non-plot-related example: during the final battle of the Masters Cup, you face Omegamon Zwart and ChaosGallantmon. When you reduce either one's HP to 1, the other will finish it off, returning to full health and gaining a boost in power.
  • For one side-quest, a Numemon has you kill eight Syakomon and take their shells because they were picking on him and uses them to digivolve. Then it tries to kill you since you've done everything it wanted and had always planned to do so.