Digimon World Dawn/Dusk

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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

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


Tropes used in Digimon World Dawn/Dusk include:


  • A Taste of Power: All four of the starter packs you can choose from at the beginning have at least one Ultimate level Digimon. Naturally, this doesn't last...
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Sunken Tunnel.
  • Adaptation Distillation: The Digimon here don't always follow the same evolutionary lines as in the anime. For instance, Impmon's first Mega form in Dawn/Dusk is Lilithmon. Yeah...
  • All Your Powers Combined: DNA Digivolution.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The main story is easy enough to make most of the more powerful Megas such as ZeedMillenniummon unnecessary when compared to the amount of time required to get them. A few of them can be examples even for most of the post-story sections.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: After you defeat the Gaia origin, and talk to the tamers in your organization, you will be able to unlock Darkdramon, Anubismon and Imperialdramon Fighter Mode in Dawn and Saberleomon, Argomon and Armageddemon in Dusk. All of these unlocked Digimon are extremely powerful (SO much more then the members of the Gaia origin) and will require EXTREMELY HIGH STATS to beat them.
    • To make matters worse, the game can load more than one of them to fight you.
    • Justified as you NEED the experience they give if you ever plan on leveling past Lv. 70. At that point you'll be praying to meet those before every battle.
  • Camp Gay: Any Digimon can have the "Prissy" personality, which makes them talk and act like a stereotypical teenage girl...even if the Digimon is obviously male.
    • Of course, Digimon have no gender (more accurately, no sexual difference between genders), so this was bound to be happen.
  • Competitive Balance: Actually done cleverly. At the start of the game, a Dawn player has an automatic advantage over a Dusk player simply because Dawn's mascot and likely another of their Digimon has an element advantage over the Dusk version's mascot and likely other team member. This is compensated for because it's much easier (and quicker) to Digivolve the mascot of Dusk, giving her an advantage over Dawn players.
  • Continuity Nod: There are various oblique references to Digimon World DS, but it's only after the final boss battle that a character namedrops Chronomon.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: In the Dusk version at least.
    • It's more or less like the Digimon in the cities are normal citizens. However, all of the bosses who pose a threat to the Digital World are either Dark-type or at least look evil.
    • To clarify, Darkmoon City Digimon and Night Crow are not evil no matter the version you play, though like Light Fang below, they do get brainwashed into fighting you for most of the game in Dawn. All the other dark/virus type Digimon not associated with them are.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: The standard way of convincing other Digimon to cooperate with you is to beat them in a fight.
  • Distaff Counterpart / Spear Counterpart: Chief Julia to Chief Glare and ChaosGallantmon to Ophanimon.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The Hive Mind interactions between Alphamon and Omnimon are less of a Non Sequitur Scene when you realise the latter is named Omegamon in the original Japan version.
    • Minor, but Night Crow was supposed to be Night Claw, as a counterpart to Light Fang.
  • Embarrassing Rescue: In Dusk, Gutts is particularly bad about this.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: With some odd catagory assignments: grouping Insect and Plant Digimon together makes some sense, but as Lightning elementals?
  • Fetch Quest: You have to take some side assigments from Digimon to progress the plot; most of their requests fall into this.
  • Guide Dang It: Not just for DNA and Special Digivolving; you can't even get most of the Digimon quests without having certain Digimon with certain personalities...
    • Some of the NPCs on the other areas of the digital city mention some combinations for DNA digivolution and the correct Digimon+personality needed to unlock special missions. A large portion aren't mentioned.
    • The Digi-Eggs. Many of them are fairly simple; others require specific Digimon at specific levels.
  • Heroic Mime: Your counterpart/rival from the other team/game gets speaking lines, but not you.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Used in the battle against Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. The boss is supported by Minomon and Kuramon, two Digimon of the lowest Digivolution level in the game. They both have stats to rival many Mega Digimon and a variety of amazing techniques.
  • Light Is Not Good: In the Dusk version Light Fang is brainwashed by the Big Bad and the majority of the game is devoted to fighting them.
  • Level Grinding: You'll have to do loads and loads of this to max out your Digimon's stats in order to stand a chance in PvP.
    • From the beginning to end. Should the player not use the passwords in the Coliseum to start the game with the Legendary Sword, Legendary Armor and Legendary Ring, even the early enemies can take a while to beat. And more traditional players will be in for a surprise since the real way to enhace stats is by repeatedly degenerating the Mons so they go back to the previous evolution stage with higher stats. Should one simply level up and evolve them when it can be done, eventually the bosses will overwhelm the team.
    • Ironically, beating the weakest enemy in the game in enough to raise any Digimon from Level 1 to 3. Then the experience needed start to grow exponentially. And if you're actually building a team for PvP, you'll need to level one Digimon to 70, 80 or 90 several times. Have fun.
  • Magikarp Power: All of the In-Training stage Digimon learn the move Rainbow Spit, which hits twice for heavy damage... at level 60. Learning it before hitting Mega level for the first time is unlikely.
  • Now Where Was I Going Again?: Partly averted; you can look up your current Quest in the menu at any time. Of course, when you don't have a quest...
    • Exploring can be really tedious as you have no map and the later areas are pretty much big mazes with several dead-ends. Couple this with a extremely high random encounter ratio plus no means to repel those encounters and even the most basic missions can be a chore to do.
  • Number of the Beast: You need 6666+ experience from fighting Beast-element Digimon to Digivolve Myotismon.
  • One Game for the Price of Two: You can't collect all the Digimon without trading with others or fighting on Wi-Fi.
    • You also need to use multiplayer modes to access the top-level Tamer challenges.
  • Overly Long Name: You're only allowed eight letters to name a Digimon. This means that a vast majority of actual Digimon names won't fit at all, not even basics like "Garurumon". This is because the allotted number of characters was unchanged between Japanese and English. While Digimon names usually take far less than eight characters in Japan, well... you can see where we're going with this.
  • Plot Armor: The main character is immune to the data-erasing waves used by the Big Bad, meaning only he/she can stop him. The game's justification is that the attack requires a lot of power to use, and the player's character gets there after the first attack. Still doesn't explains the second and third waves, though.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 is used for some background music choices on the player character's islands.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: Might be why they let you rename your Digimon whenever it digivolves; seeing Vilemon become Lady Devimon is... interesting.
    • Similarly, Shamamon's final form is Kuzuhamon.
    • Also, your own gender selection functions like this due to some odd translation choices, which you're likely to find out by talking to your Digimon; among other things, they'll ask your female avatar if you have a girlfriend...
      • When your gender is brought up by other characters it will be male, even if you're the girl.
      • That might be because the game's dialogue assumes canon: the two canon main characters are Koh (the male lead in Dawn) and Sayo (the female lead in Dusk). Sayo will appear no matter which character you choose in Dawn, and Koh will do likewise no matter who you choose in Dusk.
  • Standard Status Effects: Mostly averts Useless Useful Spell by attaching these to normal, damaging moves as potential side-effects.
  • Super-Powered Evil Side: Ophanimon in Dusk, ChaosGallantmon in Dawn.
  • One Game for the Price of Two: In an extremely odd case, almost everything can be gotten as long as you have someone to play with, even if both players are using the same game. The version exclusive mons, for example, are obtained by matching Digimon. Matching a Greymon with a Dinohumon can result in a Guilmon egg, Guilmon being a Dawn exclusive and Greymon and Dinohumon being available in both verisons.