Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers is a game released in 2000 for the Bandai WonderSwan, based on the Digimon franchise. It is the second in the WonderSwan series, the sequel to Digimon Adventure: Anode/Cathode Tamer and continues the story of Ryo Akiyama.
Shortly after watching the defeat of Diablomon, Ryo and Ken Ichijouji are visited by a V-mon, who takes them into the Digital World to confront another Diablomon which was loose in the Digital World... which was only a ruse by Millenniumon to draw Ryo back into the Digital World, and he splits the Digital World in half, separating Ken and Ryo. Ken meets his own partner, Wormmon, and he and Ryo are forced to work separately to reconnect, meet again, and confront Millenniumon together.
The game goes in a different direction from its predecessor gameplay-wise, instead playing as a more traditional Role-Playing Game, a trend that would continue for the rest of Ryo's series. It also implemented evolution of Digimon and encouraged the use of Jogress evolution to build up strong partners. The game was followed up by Digimon Adventure 02: D-1 Tamers, which gets to the important part: exactly how the hell Ryo, ostensibly a Digimon Adventure character, ended up in the Digimon Tamers Alternate Universe anyway.
Tropes present in Digimon Adventure 02: Tag Tamers:
- All There in the Manual: Part two of Ryo's really long,
unexported manual. Even worse, it also acts as a partial manual for Ken's backstory and the events which turned him into the Digimon Kaiser, and the final scene where Ken gets a Dark Seed after defeating Milleniumon is even shown several times in Adventure 02. - Broad Strokes: It forms the backstory for Digimon Adventure 02 but you have to ignore Taichi meeting Ken and Ryo and Milleniummon reviving Vamdemon in the Digital World.
- Continuity Snarl: This game offers a couple of inconsistencies to events depicted in Our War Game and Adventure 02. In the game, Ken and Ryo are watching the battle between Omegamon and Diablomon from within Ken's room and get pulled into the digital world almost immediately after. In 02, Ken is shown to first enter Digiworld from his own room and returns there afterwards, with no reference to Our War Game (this may or may not be a separate experience from the events of Tag Tamers, and if so, it's unknown if he met Wormmon then or later). According to Our War Game, Ryo was on a mountain in Turkey, accompanied by someone who definitely isn't Ken.
- The epilogue of the game indicates that Ken at least remembers Millenniumon at the beginning of his reign as the Kaiser. In 02, the Kaiser is a complete amnesiac regarding the events of the Wonderswan series, and Wormmon mentions nothing of the affair (though he is not established to be an amnesiac like Ken).
- If Ken did experience Our War Game and go into the Digital World after that, he should be more aware that it's not just a game, and that it has significant real world consequences. While he was proud and smart, he would also notice the nukes being sent off or the computer viruses, both of which were attributed to Diablomon.
- Degraded Boss: In the game's opening, Diablomon is, well, exactly as threatening as it was in Our War Game. Then the game actually starts, and V-mon can defeat the first boss Diablomon without needing to evolve at all.
- Involuntary Group Split: Rocks Fall, Entire Digital World Splits
- Shattered World: Towards the beginning of the game, Millenniummon splits the digital world in twain.
- Start of Darkness: The epilogue, set a year later, shows Ken first realizing his Digimon Kaiser persona.
- Tag Team: As its name suggests, the game is a variation on this: Ryo and Ken are separated, and the player switches between playing them at various intervals and can use Reload Machines to swap items between each other as the game necessitates.
- Terms of Endangerment: Millenniummon starts using them with Ryo. It's the first foreshadowing of Brave Tamer's big reveal.
