Back to Classics with this Adventure game set in a world of Digimon
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is a role-playing video game developed by Media.Vision and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, based on the Digimon franchise.
It is the fifth game in the Digimon Story series, following 2011's Super Xros Wars, and the first to be released on home consoles. An English version of the game was released in early February 2016, and features cross-save functionality between the two platforms. Unlike previous Digimon games, it does not have an English dub and retains Japanese voice acting.
A sequel, titled Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory, was released in Japan in 2017 and in Western territories in early 2018 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. In July 2019, a port to Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows, alongside its sequel, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory, was announced for release on October 18, 2019, as Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition. although the PC version released a day early.
In Cyber Sleuth, the player assumes the role of Takumi Aiba (相羽 タクミ Aiba Takumi) (male) or Ami Aiba (相羽 アミ Aiba Ami) (female), a young Japanese student living in Tokyo while their mother, a news reporter, is working abroad. While Aiba is hanging out in a chatroom, a hacker infiltrates it and leaves a message telling the members within to log into Cyberspace EDEN, a popular physical-interaction cyberspace network, to receive a "wonderful present." Although most of the room members declare it to be too suspicious to involve in, Aiba, along with users "Akkino" and "Blue Box" decide to look into it. Aiba meets Akkino and Blue Box the next day as arranged in Kowloon, a hacker-infested area of EDEN, where they introduce themselves as Nokia Shiramine and Arata Sanada, respectively; shortly after, the three of them are given the "Digimon Capture" by the unknown hacker and locked into Kowloon. While searching for an exit, Aiba runs into a hacker named Yuugo, the leader of the hacker team Zaxon who resembles a rumored "white boy ghost" said to have been sighted around EDEN, who teaches them how to use their Digimon Capture and tells Aiba that Arata is, in fact, a skilled hacker. Shortly afterward, Aiba, Nokia, and Arata run into a mysterious creature that attacks them, and although Arata manages to hack open a way out for them, the creature grabs Aiba and corrupts their logout process.
Aiba emerges in the real world as a half-digitized entity and is rescued by a detective named Kyoko Kuremi (暮海 杏子 Kuremi Kyōko), head of the Kuremi Detective Agency (暮海探偵事務所 Kuremi Tantei Jimusho), who specializes in cyber-crimes and offers to take them into her service as her assistant. Aiba manifests an ability called Connect Jump, which allows them to travel into and through networks. Recognizing the utility of Aiba's unique status, Kyoko assists Aiba in stabilizing their digital body and requests their assistance in investigating Kamishiro Enterprises, the company which owns and manages EDEN, specifically looking into a phenomenon called "EDEN Syndrome," where users logged onto EDEN will suddenly fall into a seemingly permanent coma. While investigating a secret hospital ward being overseen by Kamishiro, Aiba discovers their own physical body is in the ward, revealing that they are a victim of EDEN Syndrome themselves, before being confronted by a mysterious girl who admits to knowing one of the other EDEN Syndrome victims, and narrowly avoids getting caught by Rie Kishibe, the current president of Kamishiro Enterprises.
The game after that splits into four different simultaneous plotlines:
• Aiba helps Nokia reunite with an Agumon and Gabumon she'd met and bonded within Kowloon; she learns from them that Digimon are not hacker programs (as the public believes them to be) but living beings that come from a "Digital World", and that Agumon and Gabumon came to EDEN for a specific purpose that they can't remember. Nokia vows to help them recover their memories, but soon after begins to flee from confrontations with dangerous hackers; after being soundly defeated by Zaxon team hacker Fei Wong Tomoe Ignacio, she decides to become stronger and form her own hacker group, the Rebels, for the sake of improving relations between humans and Digimon. Her hard work allows Agumon and Gabumon to digivolve into WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon and sheer positivity ends up gaining her a large number of followers, causing Yuugo to worry that she might interfere with his goals of protecting EDEN and its hackers.
• Arata, who remains evasive about his own past as a hacker, assists Aiba in investigating "Digital Shift" phenomena around Tokyo, in which areas become mysteriously half-digitized. They meet a scientist named Akemi Suedou, who identifies the creature behind the Digital Shift as an Eater, a corrupted mass of data that is responsible for causing EDEN Syndrome itself, by eating users' mental data while they are logged onto EDEN, meaning that they are also responsible for Aiba's current half-digital state. Further encounters with Eaters signify that it has links to the "white boy ghost" that keeps appearing around it, and that by "eating" data it can evolve into different forms. After Arata learns the truth about Aiba's condition, and witnesses many acquaintances become victims of EDEN Syndrome, he resolves to do whatever he can to save them.
• Yuuko Kamishiro, the daughter of the former president of Kamishiro Enterprises, and the mysterious girl that Aiba encountered in the hospital, requests Kyoko's detective agency to investigate her father's purported suicide and assists them in infiltrating the company when needed. Despite Aiba and Kyoko gathering significant evidence regarding illegal activity within Kamishiro with the assistance of her father's old friend Goro Mayatoshi, a detective in the Tokyo Police Department, Kyoko's plans of exposing the company are thwarted when Kishibe holds a sudden press conference, admitting to the activity and announcing that all parties involved in the illegal actions have been terminated as scapegoats, which causes Mayatoshi's superiors to call off the accusations. Kishibe also announces a major upcoming update to the EDEN servers, and holds a preview session to attract new users to EDEN. Aiba, Arata, and Yuuko take advantage of the event to hack into the secure Kamishiro servers and secretly continue their investigations, and discover that the EDEN update ties into something called the "Paradise Lost Plan." Along the way, they learn that Yuuko's older brother is, in fact, a victim of EDEN Syndrome, a casualty of a failed EDEN Beta test eight years ago which was apparently covered up by Kamishiro.
• During the initial search for Agumon and Gabumon, Aiba and Nokia encounter Jimiken "Jimmy KEN", a Zaxon hacker and real-world Japanese rock idol, who attempts to capture Agumon and Gabumon, before being driven off by Yuugo. Aiba runs afoul of Jimiken again inside the Kamishiro server, discovering that he and several other Zaxon hackers were hired by Kamishiro without Yuugo's knowledge, apparently for security purposes. Eventually, Jimiken and a large faction of Zaxon members break away from Yuugo to form the "Demons," and hijack Tokyo's television signals using a modified version of one of Jimiken's music videos overlaid with subliminal messaging to hypnotize watchers into entering the Demons' stronghold in EDEN. Nokia and Aiba, with Agumon's and Gabumon's help, stop the music video and destroy the cameras broadcasting it, thwarting Jimiken's plans. After his defeat, Jimiken admits that the signal hijacking equipment was given to him by Rie Kishibe, but his EDEN account is destroyed by Fei before Aiba can interrogate him further.
Eventually, Yuugo mobilizes hackers around EDEN to attempt a large-scale hacking on Kamishiro Enterprise’s high-security Valhalla Server for an unclear purpose. Arata tries to intervene, revealing that he is the former leader of a top-class hacker group that had tried and failed to hack the Valhalla server in the past. Nokia, during a moment of determination, accidentally causes WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon to DNA Digivolve into Omnimon, but everything is quickly brought to a halt when Rie unleashes a large crowd of Eaters on the hackers in the server, revealing that the entire event was a trap to get Yuugo to accumulate Eater prey. While Omnimon puts a stop to the Eater rampage, Rie forcibly logs out Yuugo, who turns out to in actuality be Yuuko using a false EDEN avatar modeled and named after her older brother. Rie informs Yuuko that she'd imbued the avatar with an artificial personality that she had used to manipulate Yuuko's actions, and begins a process of extracting Yuuko's memories.
Omnimon's restoration to his form causes him to remember that his real purpose of coming to EDEN was to save the Digital World from an infestation of Eaters, which was created from negative human emotions taking form in EDEN. The Digital World's ruler, King Drasil, determined that humans were the cause, and ordered the Royal Knights to investigate and put a stop to the infestation, but the Royal Knights became split, with some knights advocating destroying humanity to wipe out the Eaters at their source, and others favoring a peaceful solution. Deducing that Rie is allied with the Royal Knights who advocate destroying humanity and intends to open a dimensional gate between the Digital World and Earth, Aiba and their friends chase after her in order to stop her and save Yuuko. They fail to stop Rie from opening the gate and revealing herself to be the Royal Knight Crusadermon, but Arata manages to close it by causing a citywide blackout, depriving the gate of the energy needed to sustain itself before all Royal Knights can come through, and he encounters Suedou, who reveals to him that he was the hacker developed and distributed the Digimon Capture program. The group then attempts to save Yuuko, who has been absorbed by Eaters into an entity called Eater "Eve", but even after defeating it Yuuko refuses to emerge from her despair at being manipulated. Aiba, realizing that Eaters are digital and they can Connect Jump into it, enters the Eater with Fei's TigerVespamon, who helps Aiba convince Yuuko that she is not alone, and successfully rescues her from the Eater Eve. However, Aiba is then pulled into a digital void, where they meet the real Yuugo. Yuugo wishes Aiba and their friends well, but asks them not to search for him, before a mysterious Digimon rescues Aiba from the digital void.
Aiba returns to the real world to discover a week has passed, and that Tokyo is now besieged by a massive Digital Shift as a result of Crusadermon's actions, allowing Digimon to enter and run amok in the real world. Aiba also discovers that their half-digital body is beginning to destabilize due to data deterioration, causing their body to "glitch" more frequently as their mental data disperses. The group begins to search for the other Royal Knights in the hopes of convincing them to join their side instead of trying to destroy humanity. In the process, Aiba and Yuuko encounter a former Kamishiro employee who gives them details regarding the EDEN Beta test eight years ago; Kamishiro sent five children, one of which was Yuugo, into the Beta to test the system's capabilities, but something went wrong and the test was aborted. While the other four children logged out successfully, Yuugo never regained consciousness and became the first EDEN Syndrome victim, and Kamishiro had the memories of the remaining four children erased in order to cover up the disaster. Shortly after, Suedou sparks a specific memory back in Arata, which causes him to gain an obsession with becoming stronger and leave with him.
Aiba and their friends eventually manage to recruit most of the Royal Knights through various means; in the meantime, Arata partially merges with Eater and begins to rampage around town by "eating" data. Aiba tracks down and confronts Crusadermon, seemingly defeating them, but, upon trying to return to Kyoko, falls into a Digital Shift containing what appears to be a recreation of the EDEN Beta test from eight years ago. Crusadermon, still alive, reveals the recreation to be a trap to capture Aiba and tells them the truth of the Beta test incident: The four other children who entered the beta with Yuugo were none other than Arata, Nokia, Yuuko, and Aiba themselves. When the children first entered the beta, they found a portal leading from EDEN to the Digital World. However, after opening it, an Eater followed them through and attacked Yuugo; the other children, frightened, fled the Digital World back to Eden, leaving him behind and leaving the portal open, allowing more Eaters to enter the Digital World. Overcome by despair at the revelation and already suffering from deterioration, Aiba allows their data to be absorbed into the simulation.
Meanwhile, Nokia and Yuuko, noticing Aiba's absence following the battle with Crusadermon, search for them, and eventually discover the entrance to the Beta Test recreation. After learning the events of the Beta test incident, they locate what is left of Aiba, but are ambushed by Crusadermon. To save them, Kyoko enters the Digital Shift and reveals her true form as "Alphamon", the 13th Royal Knight, and assists them in defeating Crusadermon and restoring Aiba. Alphamon then explains that the "real" Kyoko and Rie were humans who were attacked by Eaters and inflicted with EDEN Syndrome, and that Alphamon and Crusadermon possessed their comatose bodies to hide in the human world, but unaware of each other. Despite Crusadermon's defeat, however, Alphamon informs Aiba that Leopardmon, Crusadermon's leader, is collecting power in order to evolve into an even more dangerous form, intending to destroy humanity themselves, and that they must be stopped before the evolution is complete.
As Aiba and company head to the Tokyo Metropolitan Office to stop Leopardmon but are confronted by Arata, mired completely in despair over having abandoned his best friend Yuugo and forgotten about him. Arata transforms completely into an Eater "Adam" and attempts to assimilate Aiba, but Aiba manages to defeat the Eater and saves Arata as they did with Yuuko. After stopping Leopardmon, Suedou tells the group that they can stop the Eaters by traveling to the Digital World and extracting Yuugo from the core of the "Mother Eater," which will make it so that Eaters, and their effects on both worlds, never existed. The group arrives to find that the Mother Eater has completely taken over King Drasil; after defeating it, Aiba Connect Jumps in and extracts Yuugo, but Yuugo reveals that he had been acting as a limiter on Eater's actions, and without him as a central conscience it has no restraint to simply eat everything indiscriminately.
Suedou takes the opportunity to merge with Mother Eater himself and becomes its new conscience, hoping to merge the Digital and Physical Worlds as one and recreate a world without sadness or misery. After defeating the merged Mother Eater, Aiba, despite suffering from extensive data deterioration and risking a complete collapse of their half-cyber body, Connect Jumps into the Mother Eater in an attempt to rescue Suedou. Suedou, amazed that Aiba would risk their own existence to save him, determines that the universe is better off being allowed to unfold and evolve in its own way rather than be influenced by him, and restores King Drasil, simultaneously erasing himself from history.
As Aiba returns to their friends and watches the reforming Digital World, Alphamon informs them that King Drasil will perform a restoration on it, meaning that the humans will have to return to their own world, the Digital World will be returned to the state it was in eight years prior, and both worlds will be reverted to a state in which contact with the Digimon never occurred. Alphamon and the other Digimon bid farewell under the promise to meet again, and Aiba accompanies their friends back to the human world, but on the way back, Aiba, their half-cyber body finally giving out from deterioration, dissolves into data before their friends' eyes, leaving behind only their Digivice.
In the real world, with its status changed so that Digimon contact never happened, only Nokia, Arata, Yuugo, and Yuuko remember the events while Aiba is still comatose; Yuuko's father is alive again, Rie is an ordinary human woman, Suedou was never born, and Kyoko, despite there being evidence of her existence, cannot be found by the remaining four friends, who are still anxiously waiting for Aiba to wake up. Eventually, Aiba's scrap data is found by Alphamon, who has their Digimon team gather data from their memories of them to recreate their mind and restore them to their body. After being restored, Aiba meets Kyoko, who has no memory of them but, sensing a familiarity, invites them to work as her assistant.
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