YMMV / Digimon Survive

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Haru daring Garurumon to kill the professor in Chapter 7. Is it a legitimate death threat against the professor or a Secret Test of Character to make him remember his bonds with the professor (the real Haru) and stop his irrational hatred against the children's partners? Renamon ("Haru") does hate the professor for abandoning Miyuki 50 years ago, but in the other hand, given she and Gabumon, the real Haru and Miyuki had a history of working together she likely knows who Garurumon is (and wouldn't want to see him dead), and he's an obstacle to her way of freeing Miyuki from Piedmon's clutches.
• Ass Pull: To some, the conflict between the group and their partners, most notably Minoru and Falcomon in Chapter 6 of the Truthful Route. Citing the Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure feeling far weaker here due to Shuuji averting the dark evolution to Wendigomon on this route. While the reason for the falling out is stated to be the group being fearful of the dark fog Lopmon gave as it nearly Dark Evolved, many find that explanation to be rather weak and the group's reaction too disproportionate.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After playing through the game once and seeing Ryo and Shuuji die tragically, going through the Truthful Route becomes immensely satisfying. From seeing Kunemon save Ryo, to him warming up to the group and playing an instrumental role in saving Shuuji's life. Similarly, Shuuji overcoming his issues and realizing how poorly he's treated Lopmon and forming a better relationship with him.
  • Adding to the above, seeing Arukenimon get her smug smirk wiped off her face when Ryo completely torpedos her plans and be left in complete disbelief is incredibly satisfying, given how smug and sadistic she's been both up until then and in the other routes.
• Cheese Strategy: Any Piedmon encounters and most Kenzoku encounters can be easily trivialized by deploying at least two attackers, a Combat Medic with a healing skill and a Stone Wall with a Vexing Crystal equipped on it. Just place the decoy in front of the boss(es), the medic next to the decoy, and have your attackers go behind them to attack them without taking damage as they fruitlessly try to go through the decoy. This is because Piedmon and all non-Super Ultimate Kenzoku only have single target attacks and cannot deal any sort of splash damage against nearby units. Just remember to apply debuffs on foes if necessary and heal the decoy every turn.
• Complete Monster: Piedmon is the right-hand of the Master, carrying out human sacrifices in his name to preserve the Kemonogami World. When the protagonists arrive, Piedmon sends his minions to capture the children before personally appearing in front of them to kill Arukenimon as punishment for her failures, and kidnaps Miyuki to sacrifice her. When Miyuki manages to send him to the Human World, Piedmon attacks humans and discovers the truth behind the Master. In the Wrath Route, Piedmon is healed for Aoi and Labramon, paying back their compassion with a brutal beatdown that leads to the agonizing duo becoming the insane Plutomon. In the Harmony Route, Piedmon convinces the grief-stricken Kaito to fuse with his Myotismon and become Boltboutamon to take revenge on the Master. When Kaito shows regret for his actions, Piedmon takes the opportunity to fully take over Boltboutamon's body and kill Kaito, the Professor, Haru, and Miyuki to become strong enough to challenge the Master. In the final battle, Piedmon takes over the Master's body and states his intention to destroy both the Human and Kemonogami worlds, while showing glee at the suffering of his victims' souls.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • At the end of each route, the free battles will contain Megas, but they only really achieve this status in the Truthful Route where you can be pitted up against up to 4 in a rather confined space and most of them go on par with the monsters that you're using. The worst however, are:
    • BanchoStingmon, who can easily paralyze and poison your units. If you don't have a Restore equipped at hand, that monster is effectively put out of commission. However, what makes this so awful is BanchoStingmon's passive, which means that it actually gets buffed every time you hit it and deals more damage at a critically low HP, meaning that a half-baked one will spell doom and you must kill it in one go.
    • Cherubimon is also very annoying because of its confusion-causing Area of Effect attack. Confusion is horrible in this game because it turns your units against you, meaning if another enemy doesn't hit the same unit right there or you can't cure it, it will cause a Disaster Dominoes situation where that unit goes completely out of control and ends up wiping out multiple others. Oh and it's likely going to move first compared to your other units when you encounter it in Part 13 of Truthful, so if you don't spend time enchancing your speed you'll actually have issues hitting it.
    • Piedmon's regular enemy version is just as bad as the boss version. His attack is always treated as a back flank and thus can easily annihilate your monsters that don't resist his attacks regardless if you guard or not, and there's a high chance where he exceeds your monsters in terms of speed. Worse is his passive debuffs a random stat once it hits you, leaving your units more vulnerable to further attacks.
    • There's a map in Chapter 13 of Truthful that pits you against two MetalGarurumon and two WarGreymon (all around level 82 - 99). MetalGarurumon has a deceptively wide area of effect that can easily freeze multiple units and wipe them out, and WarGreymon has an incredibly heavy hitting attack that can hit you from miles away when you're too busy fighting another monster. Expect one unit killed in a successful run and do not be surprised when all the enemy units gang up on your entire party and wipe out most of them within the first 3 turns on the other side of the map before you can even beat two down.
  • Deramon can easily become this when they hit your stuff with confusion so they turn against your units and wipe them out. It's especially egregious in the Puppetmon encounter in Chapter 11 where one is placed next to WereGarurumon and your Agumon with a GranKuwagamon and it just happened to turn your WarGreymon against you, causing it to kill the nearby WereGarurumon and netting you an instant game over.
• Difficulty Spike: The Truthful route plays out with the standard difficulty curve at first, until Part 9 begins and enemy levels quickly rocket up to the 40s (Equal to foes in the usual Part 11) and keep going higher from there. It is telling when you run into Mega level Kenzoku in the first mid-boss encounter of Part 9, and the Free Battles from Part 10 onwards have Megas that can two-shot your own easily if you're not careful. It's especially jarring if the player immediately goes for it once it is available and does not bother Level Grinding before and even if they did, they still have to treat even basic fights a bit more seriously than usual.
• Disappointing Last Level: To many players, the path to the Golden Ending feels like an afterthought despite being the longest of all story paths. The first eight Parts, even post-Part 3 play out exactly the same except for the end of Part 5. Even the inclusion of Ryo and/or Shuuji in story events feel forced as much of the dialogue outside of them are still the same (and thus noticeable via the Skip function). Not to mention that a few Exploration/Free Action segments treat them as if they were not there even when they are clearly present in a location. Then there's also Chapter 6 where Ryo and Shuuji could had been played major roles, but were stowed in the sidelines as if they weren't there, not to mention that while the focus on the Sovereign Beasts was a welcome addition, the way the story explained everything from that point on is considered awkward, seemingly rushed, and does not provide as much payoff as the Moral route, which most fans agree to be the most sensible path.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While the story campaign is generally well-received, many fans think that the gameplay leaves much to be desired. The battle UI can sometimes end up unresponsive at times especially if using a mouse on the Steam port, the battlefields are too huge to transverse manually within a reasonable amount of time, grinding for specific monsters is difficult and tedious because you can't quit battles in the unit selection menu, training items drop very rarely, and the presence of multiple Game Breakers makes combat trivial. Many players tend to just enjoy the scenario and barely even bother training anything but the Day 1 DLC Guilmon and their partners.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Kunemon was previously a rather unappreciated rookie next to his fellows like Tentomon and Wormmon, but his interactions with Ryo, endearing Intelligible Unintelligible antics and tragically fading away after Ryo's death in the base routes. That his actions are essentially responsible for the Truthful Route - by saving Ryo - also increases the fandom's fondness for him.
• Fandom Rivalry: Due to having the same release date thanks to it having been pushed to release earlier than originally scheduled, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has attracted some ire of fans of Digimon Survive, particularly with Digimon fans expressing worry their game, the first Digimon game to be released worldwide in years, will be overshadowed by this bigger Nintendo-published game's release.
• Fanfic Fuel: The Wrathful Ending sees the human world turned into a dystopian After the End world where kids who found their partners are persecuted and thrown in internment camps, some people use their partners for evil purposes, and things are their darkest...but the main kids have taken to being a rebel faction, saving kids and their partners, and trying to set everything right. Dark as it is, the idea of a post-apocalyptic Digimon story with the protagonists acting as the Hope Bringer and La Résistance is incredibly interesting.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Xenoblade Chronicles 3. There are plenty of fans who get along swimmingly, quite eager to see both games releasing at the same time considering both of their categories as roleplaying games. It helps that both games are different enough genre-wise to not clash with each other: with Digimon Survive being a Visual Novel + Strategy RPG, and XC3 being a MMO-like action RPG.
• Game-Breaker:
  • New Game Plus carries over levels, evolutions, recruited Free monsters, and items, allowing the player to plow through battles quicker and, outside the Golden Ending, potentially turn even endgame boss fights into Anti-Climax Bosses.
  • Save Scumming allows the player to raise Affinity easier as they can save during dialogue options and quickly reload at any time if they did not get the boost. Save Scumming also plays a role in the Good Bad Bugs found in Parts 3 and 5.
  • The Bananas you find in Free Battle drops or scanning camera distortions increase your monster's speed when you feed one to them. With a speed stat at around 1800 or more, opponents can fail to hit you at all while you can pretty much solo almost anything (including Mugen Recollection in Hard) provided you have enough attack power.
  • Partners-wise, WarGreymon, Agumon's Moral Route evolution, can easily become this if used correctly. While his stats and movement range are above average for a Mega, what really defines him is his special attack, Terra Force, a hard-hitting attack with an absurdly broad-ranged Area of Effect that allows him to bombard foes from half a mile away in smaller maps. He's also one of the game's rare good fire users, and unlike Dinorexmon or Phoenixmon, he has higher Special Attack than Attack to make full use of Terra Force. You can pretty much carry yourself through subsequent Wrathful and Harmonious routes just by having Agumon evolve into him rather than the evolutions unlocked on those routes.
  • The Vexing Crystal items forces the AI of any enemy within attack range into attacking the monster equipping it, so they will be forced to fruitlessly hamper a Stone Wall like Sakuyamon Maid Mode or Dinorexmon while your attackers get ignored and finish the enemy units one at a time. If used correctly, unless you find yourself fighting something that has an attack with incredibly broad area of effect like a WarGreymon, you can win most fights in the game very easily.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Any Free battle enemy that tends to move away from the player's party without attacking (unless cornered) just to drag out the fight. Especially bad if it is a Mobility type like Crowmon.
  • Plesiomon might not be as outright dangerous as other Megas, being a defensive unit with low mobility and pitiful attack range. The problem is with its unique attack, "Sorrow Blue", which has a high chance to cause confusion on your units. If you're not attacking it with Baihumon or Ceresmon Medium or you don't have anything that blocks confusion in some form or way, there's a very high odd that whoever's deployed to kill it will turn against your party and induce a wipeout depending on the target hit. Worse is unlike in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Plesiomon is actually a downgrade to MetalSeadramon in this game, talking to it only yields a fine Anti-Water Crystal and it's one of the two monsters where negotiations can fail because of RNG so it's not likely to benefit you.
• Good Bad Bugs: Parts 3 and 5 have Affinity-raising mechanics that depend on more unique occasions: asking all four questions to a friend (if applicable) in the former and finding a friend's lost item in the latter. The player may save on a line exactly right after the Affinity boost notification. Reloading this file results in an Affinity increase once (albeit without any notification, so the player has to check the Profile to notice), but nothing stops the player from saving this accidental added value at the exact same dialogue position and then reload it, earning another boost. By saving and reloading this way repeatedly, the player can easily max out that friend's Affinity.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The professor's voice actor, Kazuhiro Yamaji, would later go to voice Piedmon in Digimon Ghost Game. In the Harmonious Route, Piedmon-as-Boltboutamon killed him alongside Miyuki and Kaito and the Piedmon in this game is a Complete Monster and an Omnicidal Maniac, but the one in Ghost Game is an Adaptational Nice Guy and a Noble Demon unlike him.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Any interactions about Kaito's overprotectiveness over Miu, including those Played for Laughs, suddenly become a lot more heavier when we find out what actually happened in the Harmonious Route. He's not just obsessive, he's desperate and Properly Paranoid.
• Ho Yay: Unsurprisingly for being The Protagonist in a game with Relationship Values, Takuma has shades of this with his male teammates, in particular with Kaito and Minoru:
  • While a rather standoff-ish person to most, Kaito develops more of a soft spot for Takuma compared to the rest of the kids (bar Miu, of course). In particular, Takuma is one of the few people able to calm Kaito down or get him to think straight, and is in turn one of the few people Kaito is willing to open up to. Dialogue options that increase his affinity tend to be accompanied by a Luminescent Blush, either before sheepishly thanking Takuma for his input or trying to deflect it in a rather Tsundere way.
  • Minoru's a lot less prone to these moments due to being more open and casual with Takuma than Kaito, but he has his moments. A particularly notable moment is during Part 4, where he brings up the idea of renting out an amusement park for a date with a girl; the option that increases his affinity is to claim Takuma would rather rent it out for just the two of them (granted, Minoru's follow-up dialogue has him frame it more as a fun hangout, but it's still telling that answer is preferred rather than agreeing with him about taking someone else on a date).
  • Aoi and Saki's friendship gets very close, especially after Chapter 8 and especially if you're playing the Wrathful route. Other characters, including Minoru and Kaito even notice, pointing out that Saki is probably the only person who can make Aoi feel better, or confide in. Both also express deep admiration for the other, wishing they could be more like each other. In the Wrathful route, Saki's death is the key event that starts Aoi's Sanity Slippage, with her huge guilt spurring her into a series of increasingly poor choices. When reflecting on Saki's last moments, she even thinks, 'Saki let go of my hand. She rejected my feelings'.
  • Saki's Ultimate/Perfect evolution event involves her talking non-stop about how she wants to be more open with Aoi, and how much Aoi means to her.
    Saki: I'm so focused on Aoi, it makes me nervous. I'm normally not like this at all. I want to face her more... I don't know, properly?
    Saki: We... we can't run. I mean, if we run away just think about what'll happen to the other kids— And Aoi, of course!
• Jerkass Woobie: While Ryo initially starts off a standoffish lone wolf kind of guy at first, and has a shaky relationship with his partner Kunemon, the arrival to the other world ends up revealing a side that people feel quite bad for. The guy is constantly panicking as things go bad for the group, fearing that they might have died and ended up in the afterlife. He's frequently seen trying to call his parents on his phone, to no avail. It only gets worse further in at Chapter 3 as a result of the Professor's Heroic Sacrifice, Ryo starts to lose it, believing and fearing that only death awaits the kids at this point. And in his Sanity Slippage, an encounter with a disguised Arukenimon leads to him believing she's his mother, desperately wanting to see her again... Only to nearly be killed by her and Cyclonemon as he ends up falling off a bridge as he starts to cave into his despair, realizing that his mother had died a long time ago when he was young despite him constantly trying to call her in the present day... Thus leading to his death to the fog as he gives up on himself, regardless of the player's efforts to try to help him.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Beelzemon is notorious as some of the weakest Megas in this game. His highest stat is his physical attack, but his unique attack, Double Impact is a special attack that does nothing special other than hitting foes for underwhelming Dark damage, and there's no shortage of Dark attackers with unique niches like Plutomon or Piedmon. His other stats are also nothing to write home about. The only good thing about him is he's a good user of the Hell Crusher skill, which is a physical Dark attack while other Dark attackers are special-based, but you're better off using other Dark monsters instead.
  • Plesiomon is largely outclassed by MetalSeadramon in terms of being a tank. Its stats are lower than MetalSeadramon and its passive doesn't even offer much protection from heavy-hitting attacks. Its special attack, "Sorrow Blue" also has a pitiful attack range and it only inflicts confusion on foes.
  • As far as partners go, Kaito and his Dracumon in general is pretty underwhelming. His standard Mega is Beelzemon, which is already one of the worst Megas in the game. His talk command doesn't really help matters; it boosts physical attack, but since there aren't a lot of physical attacks in the game and his other Mega, Boltboutamon, doesn't even have physical attacks, it doesn't fit well with his monster partners at all. He also only has Virus-type dark attackers in a game where enemies who resist dark are many and there are numerous monsters who can fill the same niche as his, making him rather underwhelming in many situations.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Screenshots of Dracmon's Ultimate evolution scene are reposted by players a lot due to Takuma saying, "Takuma's portrait and name are not shown for this line." That's right, a localization note was left in and is easy to access. This scene is prime material for mocking the sloppy localization work on this game.
  • A screenshot of Agumon saying "Thank you for caring about us, even though countless children died for our sakes", taken from the ending of the Moral route, tends to pop up in conversation about the game on message boards, given how hilariously dark such a line coming out of a mascot character is.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many fans tend to hate Shuuji over his abuse of Lopmon and completely gloss over that it's because he's gone entirely nuts there rather than a wholly conscious act. Much of the time he's viewing Lopmon as a punching bag to vent his despair and fears on, something he ultimately realizes the folly of in the Truthful Route.
• Misaimed Marketing: When the game was initially announced in 2018, it was described as "a survival SRPG that combines 2D & 3D with lots of genres". During the first week of the game's actual 2022 release, articles on NintendoLife and GameRant detailed how it was being review bombed by fans who assumed from that original marketing it would be a gameplay-focused Strategy RPG, were upset with the game's lengthy Visual Novel segments, and were unaware of Habu Kazumasa's later statement that it would be more like an "interactive Digimon anime".
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm:
  • In subsequent playthroughs, the cutscenes in which the Partner monsters digivolve into a new stage. When they happen the first time, they feel just as epic as they are intended to be done in the story but, since every New Game Plus keeps all the stages your monsters have reached, these scenes lose a lot of impact. It might look great when Agumon evolves into Greymon for the first time, but when you are replaying the game and Agumon has already reached its Mega stage (especially since it's guaranteed to happen in the first playthrough), that same evolution will feel more like a Power-Up Letdown and way less like a Moment of Awesome.
  • Before your second fight against Plutomon in the Wrathful Route, she complains about people putting burdens on her as the class president as if she was still Aoi. It's supposedly an insane rambling that represents Aoi's broken mental state, but since she's now a hulking god of hell complaining about class president work, it can come across as cheesy.
• Never Live It Down: Shuuji, Shuuji, Shuuji. While he basically lost his mind at that point and he does get better in the Truthful Route, most will never forgive him for his treatment of Lopmon, made even more egregious since the player will likely never see him get better unless they do a second playthrough.
• Player Punch:
  • Ryo's death in Chapter 3 has become this for many players early on, being a wake-up call that characters can indeed die, with poor Kunemon dying as well as a result of his death. Takuma's regret over not having done more to help Ryo only adds to the emotional impact, along with the fact Ryo died just as it was revealed his problems stemmed from his mother passing away when he was really young. And for added insult to injury, a first-time player would VERY likely be unaware that there's no way to save him on your first playthrough, even if they try to perform Save Scumming, as it's only on a New Game Plus that you have the opportunity to rescue him.
  • Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this game is that if anyone goes insane (usually because someone they cared about died), there's pretty much nothing you or other characters can do to save them because the deaths are route-dependent. The game likes to put in moments to make you think that Takuma or anyone else can appeal and console them back to normal, but their fate is already sealed. It's especially gut-wrenching when you see Kaito turning into a ticking time bomb or Aoi straying off to tell herself some absolutely insane things and people did their best to get them to move on but they just don't.
• Spiritual Sequel: This game can be seen as one to the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor series on the Nintendo DS. Devil Survivor is also a strategy RPG game with visual novel elements (though in inverse to Survive, the Devil Survivor gameplay is more of a sRPG than a Visual Novel) with many similarities to Survive: Teens befriending monsters, branching story routes based on the player's alignment (with Moral, Wrath, and Harmony being renamed from Neutral, Chaos, and Law paths respectively), party members defecting or outright being Killed Off for Real depending on the choices made, and lastly, the overarching theme is based on survival.
• Spoiled by the Format:
  • The presence of Gabumon and Garurumon in the story and the fact that they're both voiced by Mayumi Yamaguchi gives away that they're the same monster and that they can fuse with Agumon to form Omegamon.
  • Also a fairly similar case for Arukenimon, given the reprisal of Wakana Yamazaki, who previously voiced the same Digimon in both Digimon Adventure 02 and the more recent Digimon Ghost Game.
  • As soon as you unlock the evolutions for your partner monsters you'll find out there's a total of three more columns of Evolutions (representing monsters from Champion to Mega), with Agumon having two being on the 5th row instead of four. When you first fight Piedmon in Chapter 7 you haven't even unlocked the 4th column for anyone yet, despite everyone claims that it's the final battle before they go back home. There's still a long way to go before the game ends.
  • Wanna know if a character is going to die? Look no further from two things; 1. a flashback at the start of the chapter specifically concerning their past and 2. their sanity obviously deteriorating even before shit starts hitting the fan. If any one of these happen, most of the time you can expect to kiss that character goodbye.
• Squick:
  • During Shuuji's death, not only does it contain the signature Black Blood seen in Ryo's death scene, the game treats you to a CG of his limbs being crushed through Wendigomon's teeth. Furthermore, if you listen closely you can hear Wendigomon audibly chewing on him for a brief moment.
  • On a more grounded level Miu being stalked by grown man who the game clearly establishes as a Stalker with a Crush. There's no wonder why Kaito is so overprotective to Miu, he's horrified.
• That One Achievement: The fanbase and achievement percentage agree that Master Researcher (~1%) is the only achievement with actual difficulty (Survival Master does not count because it is a 100% Completion achievement that depends on all other achievements having been unlocked). The description says "Encountered all monsters," but what it does not say is that the player has to obtain them for themselves, meaning that just having them visible on the Monster Library does not count. Many monsters can only be encountered in shadow encounters and it is completely Guide Dang It! combined with Luck-Based Mission and Save Scumming for when they are finally found. Some may think that Free monsters based on the main partners can be dismissed, but the Free Agumon is the only non-Talk way to obtain Cyclonemon and Skullgreymon, which are shadow encounters only. When it comes to encounters, it can even differ between paths and in-game time of day, so even with a guide, the player can still miss out certain encounters easily in the current file if they are not careful.
• That One Attack: Naturally, anything that can cause confusion, sleep or paralysis becomes this, especially in late-game where enemies frequently pack moves that inflict them and the chance of being inflicted by these conditions crapshoots. The former can easily turn your powerful monsters against you by sending them into a rampage that can wipe out multiple units (and they are programmed to be impossible to redirect by vexing crystals), while the latter two makes them a sitting duck to be wiped by enemy monsters. Boost Seeds or Brushels are also rare enough to discourage regular use especially when opponents start inflicting them left and right, making status immune monsters like Magnadramon or Crystals that block them important in endgame.
• That One Boss:
  • For bosses in all routes, both Piedmon encounters are likely going to pose some trouble to players on their first run unless they are Crazy-Prepared beforehand. He has abnormally high speed in addition to being an Mega while you only have Ultimates, meaning that he will often move first before your other monsters while your attacks will miss a lot. He'll also often buff it, basically mandating a preemptive Speed Break. Worse is this guy's default attack, Trump Sword will always hit your monsters as if it were a backwards flank, so he will hit way harder than he actually does and guarding is pointless. Not even a Triceramon with a Vexing Aegis Crystal at level 60 or higher will survive more than two hits even if he eats an attack debuff and it will assuredly delete supposed checks like MagnaAngemon in a single hit. His passive will also debuff random stats of anyone he lands a hit on, making the fight harder as it drags on. If you don't have good equips and a strategy in mind, be prepared with multiple wiped units. The second battle against him is even worse depending on your setup as you will have none of your usual partners available meaning that if your non partner monsters aren't up to snuff you'll be in for a rough time, doubly so if you have been going for a Harmonious route as then Agumon will be at a type disadvantage causing Piedmon's already hard hitting attacks to hit even harder.
  • Azulongmon's trial has the preset party member consisting of Gabumon, a party member who is very likely to be underleveled unless the player did serious Level Grinding in a previous run (and it can only be in a Moral Route, which also happens to allow it to fully unlock its evolution line). For plot reasons, the player cannot deploy any of the partners the player has gotten used to (not even Takuma's Agumon), but is allowed to deploy up to three Free monsters. The thing is, without said grinding, Gabumon's level starts out at the 40s, while Azulongmon is at the 80s, the battle is lost if Gabumon is defeated and Azulongmon heavily resists MetalGarurumon's water attacks. Oh, and there is no chance for a Free Battle if the player wants to prepare the poor guy, because the story just throws them into that Boss Battle straight away. Hope the player has well-trained Free mons and good Equips, especially on higher difficulty settings.
  • The penultimate encounter of the Truthful Route is a Protection Mission where you have to prevent Miyuki (placed on the other side from your starting point) from being killed by a swarm of Kenzoku. It doesn't sound that bad until the 3rd and 4th turn where a total of four Mega Level Kenzoku directly spawn near her, which are seemingly programmed to ignore any non-taunt unit to directly attack Miyuki. (And if you're thinking about throwing a decoy at them, they usually don't have enough mobility to reach the other side of the map) The Kenzoku kill Miyuki in approximately two to three hits and if you drag on too much time they will cast Attack Charge + and make things worse. Don't forget there's still an initial group of four so you have to deploy some units to specifically deal with them while you have to deploy another group to ignore everything and go to the other side within three turns — if you don't have an Acceleration Charge+ equipped anywhere or you don't have high-mobility, broad area-of-effect units, be prepared for a very hard time.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: As per usual in Digimon fandom tradition, some players are miffed by the use of dub names (and an Inconsistent Dub at that) for monsters and skills. As the game only has Japanese voiceover, this results in a similar Calling Your Attacks dissonance a la Digimon World 2 and monster name confusion like in the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth games.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • On the Truthful Route, after averting the deaths of Ryo and Shuuji, many scenes still play out almost the same as they do in the Non-Truthful Routes, the result being that Ryo and Shuuji end up getting shunted to the side in many scenes bar a few notable ones. The most egregious example of this being the fight against Garurumon at the climax of Chapter 6 where Ryo and Shuuji are the only pairs to never show up to support the group during the fight. Luckily, after Chapter 8 this is largely alleviated and Ryo and Shuuji have more prominent roles in the story.
  • Also from the Truthful Route, there's the lack of connection between the four Sovereign Beasts and the chosen child who gains them as their partner's evolution. The lack of a build-up or payoff here can easily contribute to the rushed feeling and could have been an excellent means to cap off the arcs of those four characters, five if Miu's was still tied to Kaito's as the two have often been instead of only focusing on Takuma to establish him as the successor of Fanglongmon. Another complaint is they're the only evolutions not to get a full screen artwork on their first transformation, despite their store importance.
  • Also from the Truthful Route, out of all the main kids, Kaito gets very little to do and is notably the only one to not have their partner get a new Mega. Kunemon and Lopmon both get full evolution lines, Falcomon, Labramon, Syakomon, and Floramon get the Sovereigns as their new Megas, and Agumon gets Fanglongmon as a bonus. Dracmon gets nothing, and is noted for having the worst Mega out of the kids' partners at base. Given Beelzemon Blast Mode is nowhere to be seen, many have noted it easily could've been included as an upgrade for him on Truthful Route to even out the kids.
• Unexpected Character: Many of the evolutions and monsters in the game have taken many players by surprise, as they either debuted very recently or have not had much representation throughout the Digimon media.
  • While Kunemon's Champion form, (Flymon), was expected because it, alongside the Kuwagamon line are considered his typical paths, almost no one expected his Ultimate and Mega forms to be JewelBeemon and BanchoStingmon mostly due to them being associated with Wormmon's evolution line rather than Kunemon's. BanchoStingmon especially wasn’t expected, due to being a relatively recent species (debuted in 2014).
  • Dracmon is another case being that after his Champion form was revealed to be Sangloupmon everyone expected him to have the canon path of Matadormon and Grandracumon. Instead, his Ultimate and Mega Evolutions are Myotismon and Beelzemon respectively, with Boltboutamon being his Dark Mega Evolution. That last one is especially noteworthy since Boltboutamon debuted in 2017.
  • Similar to Dracmon, Labramon's Dark Evolution took everyone by surprise given that it was Plutomon, one of the more recent Digimon to be included in the game, having debuted in 2013.
  • Floramon's evolution line in took many by surprise as they expected her Champion and Ultimate Evolutions to be Kiwimon and Deramon (which are also lesser known Digimon). Instead, Survive has her evolve into Vegiemon and Blossomon, the former being a typical mook in the animated series like Adventure. But the crowning moment is her final evolution being Ceresmon Medium, another member of the Olympos XII introduced in the same time as Plutomon.
  • While Agumon's evolution line in the Moral route is pretty much what everyone expected it to be (i.e. the Greymon line), the same cannot be said about Wrathful or Harmonious. The former has Agumon's Champion and Ultimate forms as Tuskmon and Megadramon, both of whom have very little to do with Agumon. Harmonious has Agumon evolve into Tyrannomon as a Champion, which is to be expected. Triceramon and Dinorexmon? Not so much. Similarly, Agumon evolving into Omegamon came as no surprise for some. Fanglongmon, on the other hand, is pretty unexpected.
  • Very few fans ever expected to see the Digimon Sovereigns in this game, since their last major appearance was Digimon Tamers. Even fewer expected to see Fanglongmon gain an important role for the first time in Digimon history and Dark evolve into brand new variants in the Master and Fanglongmon Ruin Mode. To add in more surprise, the latter also gets its own Digimon Reference Book entry a year after the game's release, as opposed to being treated as a game-only variant without an entry like ChaosPiedmon and the mutated Seven Great Demon Lords in previous games.
• Values Dissonance: English-speaking players tend to be frustrated by the children's inability to proactively do anything highly crucial unless the game wants them to. Specifically, the complaint refers to handling Ryo's breakdown and pretty much everything about Shuuji. Japan tends to have a troubled person be given space and handle the personal problems himself/herself and hold high value in respecting the elders/authority.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: In regards to Miyuki's Renamon, given how often they present themselves as Haru and characters can continue to address them with his masculine pronouns even after the reveal, but the monster themselves speak in an unambiguously feminine voice. Considering this confusion can linger even after they evolve into Sakuyamon is mildly impressive. Given that this is a Kemonogami, whose concepts of gender can get fuzzy depending on continuity and evolution trees, this is fairly mild.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The game in Australia has been slapped with a PG rating for mild language and violence and in Japan it has a CERO-B rating (meaning that it's supposedly for children above 12), though considering the horrifying death scenes, outright depressing storylines and a lot of swear words just short of avoiding a Precision F-Strike, it’s not necessarily appropriate for children to play. How Digimon has always been considered a family-friendly franchise despite the game’s Audience Shift leaning towards adults doesn’t help it much.
• The Woobie:
  • Kunemon has it rather rough for him for the game's first stretch. Due to being unable to talk by normal means, he's usually unable to properly communicate and speak with both monsters and the humans, with others struggling to understand what he's saying, much to his disappointment. And then there's his relationship wtih Ryo, with the poor guy too scared of monsters to even trust his own partner, frequently telling the worm monster to leave him alone. It then reaches its peak with Chapter 3 as with Ryo mentally broken, Kunemon's only able to watch as Ryo struggles through his issues, though the two at least start to communicate and bond a little bit... And then Arukenimon's debut only worsens the gap between the two as Ryo falls into delusions of seeing his mother, with Kunemon unable to help, ultimately leading to Ryo's death by the chapter's end... As Kunemon vanishes from existence as a result of his partner's demise.
  • Poor, poor Lopmon. The shy, sweet-natured rabbit is constantly victimized by Shuuji, who was too far gone to see him as anything but a burden and just treats him like something to lash out against. Therefore, Lopmon is basically the only partner monster who usually receives nothing but contempt from their partner in any way. It gets to the point where Shuuji resorts to physical violence, which results in a Dark Evolution into Wendigomon... and then eating Shuuji alive as payback.

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