YMMV / Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Yuuko's and Rie's/Crusadermon's parting words, basically amounting to the two admitting how much they loathed each other. One would think it's a bit sad that they wasted their farewell on such harsh words, but many fans feel like it was Crusadermon's/Rie's own way of keeping Yuuko from having any regrets about Rie's passing, since Rie had essentially been her sole guardian despite everything she put the poor girl through. This is compounded by the fact that Crusadermon used Rie's "cute" voice for their final words rather than the lower, more rough voice they use for serious dialogue.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Mirei informs Rina of the dangers of going into parallel worlds since it leaves one's body behind while you enter a digital state. Rather than be freaked out, Rina instead gets excited because she thinks it makes her more like a Digimon.
  • Aiba is remarkably upbeat for someone who has been forcibly extracted from their own body and turned into a mass of data that is slowly but surely deteriorating, though at one point it is implied they are deliberately ignoring the more serious aspects of their predicament, lest they completely give up altogether.
• Arc Fatigue: After the reveal of Yuuko being "Yuugo" and the revelation of her past, along with Rie's true identity about halfway into the game, the plot slows down massively in your search for the Royal Knights and, although some major things happen, it doesn't fully kick up again until Kyouko reveals herself as Alphamon in chapter 18.
• Awesome Music:
  • Thanks to Masafumi Takada's handiwork the whole soundtrack is amazing, but Final Phase, which plays as the player arrives in the Digital World is an energetic yet melancholy track that stands out among typical RPG final dungeon themes.
  • The same can be said for the themes of the Royal Knights which contain fantastic Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • Something Eroding, the battle theme against the Eaters. Creepy and oppressive, fitting for a battle against a digital Eldritch Abomination.
  • Hacking Pride the battle theme against Eater Adam aka Arata. A rocking fast paced track fitting for what is arguably the most difficult boss of the main story.
  • Hope Ster the melodic theme of Kyouko that captures her exuberant yet quirky nature.
  • The Ending Has Lots of Coffee, the theme that plays usually when a case is complete, has a very heroic and quirky feel to it.
  • A Fearful Encounter's industrial noises really help establish its oppressive nature.
  • Message, Yuuko's theme, has a very hopeful feel to it, highlighting her kind side beneath her cold exterior.
  • The first Digital Shift theme, Wandering in a Mayohiga, is a fast-paced and diabolical-sounding track that reminds you that whatever the place you're descending into might have been before, it's now the deadly and surreal lair of an eldritch horror.
• Base-Breaking Character: Nokia. People will either find her amusing or annoying.
• Breather Boss:
  • The main story's fight with Barbamon: a nice, straightforward battle after the brutal ones against the likes of Dynasmon and Bancholeomon. While Pandemonium Lost can deal stunning amounts of damage and heal off just as much, it's telegraphed a mile away by Magic Binge!, which has the added effect of slowing Barbamon to a crawl so you can smack him a bunch of times before guarding, dealing more than enough damage to offset the effects. Bring in a Digimon with Magic Charge Field and keep the Intel boosts up, and you can lower the damage even further. To make matters even worse for the poor Demon Lord, you have backup in the form of Veevee, who hits deceptively hard for his level and comes equipped with Speed Charge Field, allowing you to get in even more hits while Barbamon is slowed down! Overall, the battle is more long than it is difficult, and if you bring in enough SP-restoring items there's very little Barbamon can really threaten you with.
  • Duftmon/Leopardmon, for all his buildup, is nowhere remotely close to as difficult to the boss that comes before him: Eater Adam. Leopardmon's a fast and deadly opponent, but his stance switches are easily dealt with using a balanced team, his attacks don't hit nearly as hard as Adam's, he can't heal and is far less durable and keeping your speed and intelligence stats up will mitigate his speed and damage output, while setting up a powerful magic user to nail him.
  • Imperialdramon Paladin Mode: compared to his predecessors, he's not nearly as cheap or gimmicky. Bringing along a Sakuyamon to negate his boosts will keep his damage within manageable levels, and once he goes berserk and starts spamming Omni Sword, a Digimon like Jesmon or Craniummon and their damage-negating moves will completely shut it down: from there, it's a matter of sitting back and waiting until he wears himself out, or barring them Safety Guards on all your Digimon will help wait out the storm.
• Catharsis Factor: Given he can be a very difficult boss (as one of the game's extra bosses added in DLC), seeing Lucemon essentially have a Villainous Breakdown once he reaches his final form (going from calmly calling you arrogant for challenging to outright yelling and swearing to eradicate you) can be rather cathartic. Especially once he completely burns himself out and can be finished off in whatever way the player desires. Even more so if one takes what happens if you let him have another turn before finishing him (simply "Silence" with nothing else happening) as him knowing he's finished and there's nothing he can do about it. Even if the player has no trouble, given how monstrous Lucemon canonically tends to be in the anime, it can still be this trope.
• Critical Dissonance: Alongside its midquel, it is one of those games that were obviously made on a lower budget and as such ends up with lower scores from critics but ending up being a critical darling among fans.
• Demonic Spiders: Vikemon. Encountered near the end of the game, these Mega-level Digimon combine colossal health pools with the ability to use X-Heal, creating a cleric with insane staying power: they can make themselves and the other teammates they show up alongside nearly impossible to kill.. About the only way to properly deal with them is through the Dot status, making them unable to cast X-Heal.
• Difficulty Spike: A huge one about the time Eater Eve shows up, especially on Hard Mode. The Optional Boss Royal Knight missions and the DLC Seven Deadly Digimon missions require a massive amount of Level Grinding far above what's required to beat the main game (and arguably even lead to Character Select Forcing of sorts, since a large percentage of the Ultimate Digimon won't stand up to the challenge even at level 99).
• Game-Breaker:
  • If you have a Digimon that can inflict the "Dot" status (which removes a Digimon's ability to perform skills, leaving them able to only guard or use regular attacks), you've basically won yourself a ticket to cruising through almost all the regular Random Encounters in the game, because no field Digimon can cure themselves of Dot status unless they're accompanied by another Digimon that can cure status effects, which is extremely rare. Unlike other status effects, Dot doesn't wear off over time in the original version of Cyber Sleuth ^note The Dot status effect wears off after a couple turns in Hacker's Memory and in the Complete Edition of Cyber Sleuth., so you can exploit this all you like. Of course, this means the Dot status can be used against you (particularly with Eater's second form, which has an attack that inflicts Dot on your entire party), but the difference is that you have items to cure this, equipment to resist or completely block it, and wild Digimon don't have either.
  • Mastemon, although incredibly difficult to obtain (she's one of the Digimon who requires 80 ability), has a signature move that reduces the HP of all enemies on the field by 25%, ignoring all resistances and including bosses. This means that you can effectively cheese bosses and encounters by whittling down their health until their HP is so low that you can just use normal attacks anyway. That said, this is only effective for the main game; the Royal Knights and Seven Great Demon Lords still have multiple measures to be a challenge even with Mastemon in your party (although she's still an incredibly valuable asset).
  • Lilithmon. Although any Digimon that can do significant "penetrating" damage (damage dependent on either the INT or DEF stat) qualify as this by default, Lilithmon takes a special position for her Phantom Pain doing an obnoxious amount of damage. She's another 80-ability Digimon, but put in the work to get her and she utterly mows down the rest of the game. Same goes for Belphemon Rage Mode, but it requires even more space in the party for being treated as one level higher and doesn't get defensive benefits for focusing on the attacking stat like in the case of Lilithmon.
  • As this game runs on a Combatant Cooldown System, Speed functions as the One Stat to Rule Them All... as usual for games in that format. Therefore buffs, training, and Digimon with Speed-related passives such as MetalGarurumon and UlforceVeedramon are meta, especially in the online battles.
  • Digimon who are left in the farm gradually gain experience as you play the game. However on the Switch version you are able to sleep your console while the game is still technically running in the background, and once you wake up your console the game will actually have caught up with the amount of time spent in sleep mode and still give you EXP. Because of this, one strategy you can do is deposit all of your main Digimon into the Farm before you go to bed, put your Switch to sleep while the game is still open, then when you turn on your Switch the next morning, the game will have given you a 'massive amount of EXP as a result of catching up with the system clock.
  • Examon is a Mega Level Data-type Digimon with ridiculously high HP, moderately high defense, and excellent attack and speed. Due to the way types work in Digimon^note Data types do more damage to and take less damage from vaccine types, Virus types do more damage and take less damage from data types, and vaccine types do more damage and take less damage from virus types, this essentially blows the postgame wide open as a lot of the later missions are against Royal Knights who are nearly all Vaccine types of some stripe or another, meaning you can simply send Examon out with some healing-focused Digimon for support and call it a day.
  • A good reason why many of the aforementioned Digimon are designed as they are is because they first must be unlocked through story progress or completing DLC quests that also occur late in the game, notably the Royal Knights and the Seven Great Demon Lords, and as mentioned in Difficulty Spike above, those two groups present quite the challenge. That is, in the base version of the game. In Complete Edition, the quests remain but are no longer a necessity^note sans Magnamon and Rapidmon (Gold), who still need to get their Digimentals unlocked in the original quest, meaning that nothing is stopping you from grinding and have the aforementioned Lilithmon and UlforceVeedramon before you even reach mid-game, with the only reason to not have a party filled with Megas being the limited memory space the player has in their party at that point.
• Genius Bonus:
  • People particularly familiar with Digimon franchise lore will likely notice some early hints at some later reveals; in particular, many fans noticed even before the game's release Mirei's black and white cats being blatant parallels to her Angewomon and LadyDevimon, and Kyouko's car suspiciously having Alphamon's color scheme.
  • If you're proficient in the franchise's DigiLetters, you'll be able to decode a message from the Phantom of the Boy in White from early in the game that hints at his true situation: "Hurry and find me."
  • Arata's online handle "Blue Box" refers to a type of phone phreaker.
  • EDEN's underbelly is referred to as "Kowloon." Aside from being consistent with prior games, this may be referencing Kowloon Walled City, a segment of the real-life Chinese city that was filled with crime, run by the triad gangs, and treated as its own city-within-the-city much like how in-game Kowloon is filled with hackers who are in mafia-like groups and is treated like its own little world in EDEN.
  • The Final Boss theme, "The Anticipated New World" starts off by sampling Antonín Dvořák's fourth Movement of the "From the New World" symphony.
• Hype Backlash: Gets the receiving end of this from monster-collecting RPG fans (particularly Pokémon), especially when the Complete Edition was released (during the time said franchise's fanbase had been torn asunder after Pokémon Sword and Shield was Tainted by the Preview). This game (and mostly this game) tends to be highly praised and one of the common entry points for migrating fans. Some of those that have tried to play Cyber Sleuth claimed it had pacing problems, and the game eventually becoming more like a generic JRPG with Digimon tacked on.
• Narm Charm: One of the final cutscenes of the game include one were all of the plays partner Digimon are shown before one final farewell. There is however no limit to what Digimon can show up which can lead to some awkwardness for series fans when fellows such as Apocalypmon, Armageddomon, Lucemon SM or even Arcadiamon greeting the player one final time before returning to the digital world. And somehow the moment still manages to be quite heartwarming.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game is probably the easiest out of the Story series to date, as bar a small amount of strategy the game is rather easy with the exception of the some optional bosses. That said, what made the previous games particularly hard was that they were rather prone to some major game balancing issues and a heavy reliance on Level Grinding. The international release adds a Hard Mode for those who feel It's Easy, So It Sucks!.
• Sequel Displacement: While this game became one of the most iconic and popular pieces of Digimon media, the previous four Digimon Story games remain very obscure. Among factors causing this are the third and fourth games not having an international release, along with the first and second installments being erroneously localized as Digimon World titles instead, which may make people not even realize they are in fact Digimon Story games.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Because of the above-mentioned gameplay balancing (especially compared to other Digimon games), along with its focus on a more detailed and mature story along with some incredibly detailed art assets, this game has received the highest Famitsu score of any Digimon game to date (34/40, the previous record-holder being Super Xros Wars Red and Blue at 32). It is also the first Digimon game to receive generally favorable reviews from Western critics (most previous games in the franchise were reviewed mixed to negative), earning it a 75 on Metacritic (the highest rated games before this were Digimon World DS and Digimon Rumble Arena 2, both at 71).
• That One Attack: Any attack that can inflict party wide status conditions can be disastrous for those unprepared. For example: on Hard Mode, Eater EVE's second unique attack which it starts using at half health. Not only does it do an insane amount of damage to the entire party and heals itself, like with all the other Eaters, but it also inflict Sleep on any that manage to survive it, easily causing a Sleep-lock that can cause a Total Party Kill. It's also painful to look at it as well as it involves the Bound and Gagged Yuuko squirming around while the Eater feeds on her despair.
• That One Boss:
  • BanchouLeomon, who has not one but two attacks (one of which is an Area of Effect attack) that can easily OHKO you without warning, so you'd better have a ton of revive capsules handy. He compensates for this by not having terribly high HP and defense, but it doesn't mean much when he's constantly killing you in the first place.
  • Ebemon is evil. Just...evil. Far and away the most gimmicky boss in the game, he delights in shuffling everyone's types with his gibberish-named techniques. Going in with a team of Vaccine-type Digimon to counter his Virus-type is suicide, as the Bug condition turns them into Data-types leaving them at the mercy of Ebemon's utterly overpowered Brain Rupture attack. And just when you think you can bring in a Digimon that prevents Bug, you learn EBEMON CAN CAST BUG ON HIMSELF. There is no counter for that trick in the whole game. And just when things couldn't possibly get any more aggravating, Ebemon has a move that can heal himself for a hefty 500 health. Have fun!
  • Crusadermon's Fist of Athena will tear you to pieces. About the only saving grace is that she might decide to attack Gaioumon instead, but other than that it's a death sentence to anything that doesn't have a Safety Guard on it. Even if said Safety Guard does defend the recipient, Crusadermon's so fast that she can simply attack again and finish them off.
  • Eater Adam takes everything horrible about Eaters and turns it up to 11. Its Tyrant Cluster is its killshot, dealing insane amounts of damage and healing up just as much, and as its HP drops it starts using steadily-stronger boosts beforehand that will lead to even greater damage output and healing.
• Woolseyism: While it can be quite haphazard occasionally, the translation has times where it is clear they changed some puns or speech mannerisms to better fit with international culture. Not to mention the changes to the names of some Digimon from previous entries appear once again, like "Lordknightmon" to "Crusadermon" is back in play to put more emphasis on their aggressive personality, religious aspects, and cross motif.

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