Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth



Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is what happens when you take Digimon and its "digital world" to its natural Cyberpunk conclusion.

In a world where Kamishiro Enterprise's virtual reality social network "EDEN" connects everything, an Ordinary High School Student is lurking in a private chatroom when a hacker impersonating Kamishiro's mascot Mr. Navit breaks in. He threatens to hack anyone who does not go to Kawloon, the deprecated past incarnation of EDEN, at the time he requests. Most of the chatters blow off the threat as a joke but three users decide to go through with it: Nokia, a very girly teenager, Arata, Nokia's friend who unknown to her has experience as a hacker, and the main character (default name: Takumi or Ami Aiba).

When the trio meet in Kawloon, a Digimon program installs itself to their rigs and they are trapped inside. Nokia and Arata manage to escape to escape but at the last second the protagonist is devoured by the tentacle beast (later called an "Eater") chasing them. Instead of dieing he/she awakens in the real world as an untextured digital construct. With the help of Private Detective Kyoko Kuremi the newly disembodied hero fixes their texturing problem, though discovers the main character's real body is in a coma. Using his/her new ability to travel through computers the main character, with the help of his/her new friends, delves into the seedy underbelly of Kamishiro.

The JRPG, the fifth installment in the Digimon Story series, was released in the US on February 2nd 2016 for the PlayStation 4 and the Play Station Vita, the first one released on a home console. A sequel Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory was announced in March 2017 for and released December 14 of the same year for both Vita and PS4. An English release was announced for early 2018 the day after the Japanese announcement and came out on January 19th 2018.


 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Your party can contain as many Digimon as will fit in your memory, which upgrades pretty frequently, but your active party can only have 3 Digimon.
 * Armor-Piercing Attack: Mandatory on latter parts of hard-mode due to vastly amped up defense. They kill the high defense, low HP Eaters pretty quickly too.
 * Cyberpunk
 * Cyberspace
 * Depraved Bisexual: Kishibe is pretty openly lewd regardless of target and pretty evil.
 * Disappeared Dad: While the main character's parents are said to be out of the country on work, only the main character's mom bothers keeping in touch by E-mail.
 * Heroic Mime: The main character never says anything but punctuation to anyone during conversation (which leads to several ellipsis duels with less talkative characters), yet has plenty of lines in battle, over email, and occasionally has fairly complex thoughts to themselves or the camera.
 * New Game Plus: A new addition to the western releases and added to the original release via free DLC.
 * Game Breaker: Platinum Numemon with tactician USBs multiplies EXP gain several times over and can easily cause all party members to ram the level cap just from mid game foes
 * Guide Dang It: (De)Evolution paths are largely unpredictable (and only that much if you are familiar with the franchise) while learn lists are entirely so.
 * Goggles Do Something Unusual: True to Digimon tradition, both main characters wear goggles. According to one of the first NPCs met, yet otherwise never referenced in game, the main character's goggles are actually a computing device. The female main character uses hers to tie her hair up.
 * Guest Star Party Member: Allies with their own Digimon will occasionally join you and are thankfully immortal. They're pretty weak despite the immortality and their biggest effect is a 1 in 4 chance (or better) of single target attacks missing you.
 * Gratuitous English: Jimiken introduces himself with "Yes! I! Am! Jimiken!". In the Japanese release the character's name is written with KEN in Latin characters while Jimi/Jimmy is written in kana.
 * Inconsistent Translation: The English script is clearly rushed and full of these, among several text errors. Kyoko's pet nickname of "Kyo-chan" is left untranslated several times, but once is translated as "Kyo-kyo" before reverting to "Kyo-chan" the very next line.
 * It's a Small Net After All: Nokia has a mutual friend with the main character and seems to have gone to the same school despite them not knowing each other before meeting online. Could possibly be justified by them meeting in a private chat room which could have had its visitors be given its details in real life. Not so justified is a random comic forum turning out to be one Arata is a prominent member of and the victims of the case that led to it being his friends.
 * Leet Lingo: Jimiken and a few one line NPC hackers include www in their speech (though skipped in voiced dialog). The English version translates this into many different forms of LOL (Lulz, ROFL ect.).
 * Lethal Chef: Kyoko can't make coffee.
 * Pop Quiz: You can randomly get one from owned Digimon not in your current party and you get a minor boost to friendship if you are correct. Several of these dealt with Japanese geography and history and the English version replaced them with different, easier, Japanese geography/history questions for obvious reasons.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero, Found Underwear: Happens as a mandatory part of an investigation.
 * Mage in Manhattan: Digital Shift dungeons where an Eater causes the digital world to merge with part of the "real" world.
 * Peninsula of Power Leveling: Digital Space 5 has very powerful opponents for its place in the game (accessible as soon as chapter 4 is cleared), easily allowing the player's party to reach massive levels. This is also a good source of money that can be used to fund development of an item that doubles XP gains. It becomes inaccessible for half the game if you actually clear the quest associated with it though.
 * Mega Corp: Kamishiro which is big enough to.
 * Mood Whiplash: Comedic quests often turn incredibly dark.
 * Mons
 * Rebellious Princess/Evil Chancellor: Yuuko Kamishiro and Rie Kishibe have a corporate variant of this relation. The orphan of the owner too young to manage the company that actively but covertly sabotages the evil schemes she's powerless to stop and the manager clearly scheming to keep control for herself.
 * Recurring Boss: Jimiken. Consistently one of the harder fights despite his comedic nature.
 * Refugee From TV Land: The player character is actually data that has managed to get into the real world..
 * Regional Bonus: The western release added a PS4 release (along with Cross-save), as well as a badly needed Hard Mode (the original version was extremely easy) and New Game Plus. Hard Mode and New Game Plus were added to the Japanese release as free DLC, and the PS4 version will be released in Japan as a bonus with the sequel. Unfortunately the translation itself is pretty rushed.
 * Shout-Out: One dialog option during a quest involving a stalker is ""Stalker," directed by Tarkovsky". This is a faithful translation of "ストーカー、　たるこふすきー!" and not a creation of the translators.
 * Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Averted. The Digiline conversations mention the main character has explicitly dropped out of high school to work as a cyber sleuth. Dropping out of high school to work as a paid apprentice is perfectly legal in Japan, and the whole officially being in a coma while lacking a physical body would probably cause issues with school records anyways.
 * Swiss Cheese Security: EDEN's security is extremely easy to break.
 * Trapped in Another World: During the tutorial events in Kawloon the main trio can't log out and is suggested to be what has actually happened to EDEN syndrome victims..
 * Villain with Good Publicity: Kamishiro is thought merely to be a industry leader. Most of the world doesn't know the musician and recent obsession of teenage girls Jimiken is also a hacker and shitposter extraordinaire.
 * Useless Useful Spell: Played straight. Averted in hard mode due to enemies taking and dealing more damage, yet having no increase in resistances, making disabling them a very attractive option.