SPOILER WARNING: I will be spoiling the entire game from top to bottom in this review. Every route, every character, as much lore as I can muster, etc. If you want to stay unspoiled, scroll to the conclusion section at the bottom. Thank you.
One thing that has always been very respectable about Digimon’s game section is how they’re always willing to try new things. New genres, new styles of gameplay, new tones, etc. Even in their anime and manga departments, they try to change things up here and there in a variety of ways. It helps keep the franchise fresh and interesting while still staying true to their roots.
Digimon Survive is one of their biggest deviations from the norm. Survive is a horror/survival game and visual novel with some tactics-style gameplay peppered throughout. The tone is rather light and typical at the beginning as we meet all the characters when they’re in their own world, but as soon as they enter the Digital World, everything starts to become much darker extremely quickly. In fact, this is most likely the darkest entry in the Digimon franchise.
Before I continue, this game is an odd duck in that it never really uses the terms “Digimon” and “Digital World” unless you’re in specific routes and only at the very end. This game acts as a sort of origin story of those terms if you’re in the right route. (If you’re not…*shrug*) The Digimon are referred to as Kemonogami, and the Digital World is just the alternate world. However, I’ll be using the proper terms for simplicity.
You still have a group of kids being sent to the Digital World and partnering with Digimon who had been waiting their whole lives to meet them, but this time the stakes are frighteningly high from the very beginning.
The characters are all panicking from the outset as soon as they enter the Digital World, which is fully understandable, especially as unfamiliar Digimon start attacking them, even injuring the human characters. Despite quickly meeting their Digimon partners, even they don’t raise spirits very much. All of the Digimon are very nice and dedicated to their partners immediately upon meeting, but most of the children are wary of these creatures at best and openly hostile at worst.
To make matters more chilling is the impending fog, which literally consumes (read: kills) anyone who gets engulfed in it. The fog is controlled by The Master, the big bad of the game, and he seems to be able to control it and target specific people and Digimon when he wants. They don’t come out and say it, but I think the fog gets thicker and is more apt to take someone when there are deeply negative feelings present. It also tends to completely consume areas permanently when someone has died there. However, those aren’t really concrete rules. The fog is confusing.
The kids soon have to retreat to a run down version of a schoolhouse they’re familiar with and turn it into a home base.
In this school, they find the siblings, Haru and Miyuki. They’re younger than the other kids, don’t seem to have any partner Digimon themselves, and have been in this world a seemingly long period of time yet are still perfectly fine. Additionally, Miyuki barely utters a word, but her brother is able to understand her.
These two are creepy at first, and, understandably, several characters mistake them for ghosts at the start. To the player, this makes even more sense because the opening scene of the game shows these same kids, and the end of the scene is Miyuki being taken by the fog and Haru being forcibly pulled through a portal.
However, they are not ghosts, even if one shot REALLY made it seem like Haru was, and I don’t know what that was now with context. Maybe Renamon was just screwing with them or something. We’ll get to these two more later.
As they encounter increasingly powerful Digimon, the characters all start getting more depressed, paranoid, scared, and aggressive in a very realistic manner. The rest of the game is about the group trying to, well, survive, enemy Digimon, environmental hazards, the fog, their own doubts and personal struggles, and each other while also trying to make their way back home. In the meantime, most of the children make friends or at least strong allies with their partner Digimon while others only get gradually colder and more distant with theirs.
Being honest, I kinda went into this game not realizing it was such a dialogue-heavy visual novel game. It looked cool from the images and short videos I saw, and as a longtime Digimon fan I didn’t want to spoil myself on anything so I didn’t look up much else. It had good reviews, though, so that was enough for me. When I realized it was mostly a visual novel early on I got kinda disappointed. However, I’m not averse to visual novels. I just have to be in the mood for them. Once I adapted to how this game really was, I got into it a lot.
I want to make that clear because, while looking for opinions on this game, I found that a lot of people’s default defense for it when someone says they don’t like it is to act as if they’re illiterate dunderheads who no likey words. While visual novels aren’t my favorite genre of game, I still like them fine. Heck, one of the few video game reviews I have on my blog is a visual novel review.
My main issues with the game stem from the gameplay and certain aspects of the story.
The following is based on my first experience with the game playing the PC/Steam version with a mouse.
I tend to love turn-based gameplay. Tactics-styled is a bit iffy for me, it’s sometimes annoying and slower paced, but I also tend to enjoy it. I have no idea what the heck happened when designing this part of the game, but it was miserable. My clicks tended to not register a third of the time, and when it would register sometimes it would act as if I clicked something I very much did not, such as a different attack, and MANY TIMES a different movement square.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the camera is garbage. In open areas, it’s not terrible to work with. It’s still a bit annoying because the camera angles aren’t free – they are four fixed angles you can choose from – but it’s not terrible. However, if there are obstacles or high ledges, I’d have a bitch of a time trying to navigate properly because the camera just didn’t want to let me go where I wanted to or sometimes even attack who I meant to attack.
As if THAT weren’t bad enough, the animations to walk and attack take forever. Luckily, that note isn’t as bad because you can speed up those animations by holding down left click or going to the settings and upping the gameplay speed. Unluckily, I didn’t realize you could do that until about a third of the way into the game.
The gameplay is so miserable that even though battles are actually somewhat uncommon in this game (Unless you seek them out in free battles) they nearly made me quit as I got to around Part 9 (There are 12 parts in the normal routes, each of which taking like….two hours or more to complete usually.) At Part 10, I was fully considering just letting the game autoplay when I got to battles, but I didn’t want to do that….mostly because the AI for the autoplay is a dumbass (Which is weird. The AI for the enemies doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad.) but also because I didn’t want to, ya know, not play most of the game. I did, however, play on easy difficulty just so I could get through everything faster.
For the record, the normal difficulty isn’t bad at all. It’s challenging, but very fair. But I died once in Part 3 I think, and even that early in the game the gameplay was so frustrating that I didn’t want to have to keep replaying matches and getting annoyed just by the mechanics alone, so I lowered it.
After I completed one playthrough, I admit, I was so frustrated that I uninstalled it and didn’t really want to keep playing through to get the other endings. I did want to see the other routes, though, especially the true ending. I started watching a Let’s Play of the Truthful route and realized the player was having no issues whatsoever. He was playing the PS4 version.
I thought maybe the gameplay was more tolerable with a controller, and if I could experience the other routes for myself I should. So I reinstalled it, booted it back up, plugged in my controller, and….yeah, it’s more tolerable…..But there are still issues.
Maybe it’s just the PC version, I don’t know. It’s definitely not my equipment.
The skip button can be very frustrating.
I didn’t really use it on my first playthrough because I didn’t want to miss anything. I’d hit it on accident, which would be annoying, because it would fly through dialogue when I didn’t want it to.
I think the skip button works on the rule that, if it’s dialogue you’ve heard before, either in the current playthrough or previous ones (If you’re in a New Game +, that is, we’ll also get to that later.) it will skip automatically once you press it and only shut off when it hits dialogue you haven’t heard before. But if that’s the case, why was it skipping through dialogue in my first playthrough when I obviously had never heard that dialogue before?
If you have dialogue between routes that is only SLIGHTLY altered due to the different route, you can’t auto-skip it. You can keep tapping ‘skip’ to get through it, but it won’t fast-forward automatically. Sometimes, I swear the other route’s dialogue is exactly the same sometimes but you still can’t skip it usually.
Here’s an example of how wonky the skip button acts. In all three of the base routes, there’s a part where you enter a library and have to fight illusions of your friends while snapping them out of their own illusion. When I got to Minoru, I could skip all the dialogue no problem, seemingly because I had already read it before in another route. When I got to the Professor, even though all his dialogue also looked the same from the other routes I played, I couldn’t skip his dialogue.
There’s another point in the game where you notice Aoi has on a cute ring and ask her about it. I didn’t get this scene in the Moral route. In Truthful, Ryo is there to talk about it with you and Aoi. In other routes, he’s not. But the dialogue for the ring-related stuff is basically exactly the same just with the Ryo parts cut out. I learned this while trying to do the Harmonious route, which I did right after Truthful. So it was a little annoying to act as if this was a new scene when the exact same information was conveyed just without Ryo there.
I’d be fine with the skip button stopping at new lines for this scene, but it acts as if this is an entirely new interaction when it’s really not.
I am grateful that there’s a skip button. I never would have played through every route without it. But I just never understood the logic behind some things being skippable and others not.
The map button was also having trouble registering with a controller. I’d have to hit the map button several times in order for it to actually go.
The battle navigation is better with a controller, I will say. There’s not as much issue with registering button presses as when you use a mouse. However, it’s still clunky. Using the D pad to select where you want to go on a skewed map is a bit of a pain in the ass. Using the left stick is better, but it’s still not great. This is especially bad in maps where there’s a lot of elevated terrain and obstacles.
Sometimes, button presses still seemed to lag in registering when my computer wasn’t having any trouble running it at all.
So, yes, if you play the PC version, please use a controller to save yourself a headache. It’s still not perfect, but it’s significantly better. It made the game much more tolerable and allowed me to actually play through the other routes without pulling my hair out.
Outside of all that malarky, the actual combat is pretty straightforward. You select your team of Digimon and move them across the map to fight enemies. You can defend by surrendering your turn, and you have to choose what angle you leave your Digimon at. This is important because side and back attacks do more damage. Even if you’re defending, if you get attacked from the back or side, you can suffer a lot of damage. However, this also goes for enemies, so it’s a good deal. There are elemental and type advantages in play, but I didn’t pay too much mind to them, to be honest.
An interesting mechanic that they included in Survive was the “talk” feature. If your Digimon is a partner Digimon, they can talk to their partners, their partners can talk to each other, or you can talk to enemy Digimon as long as they’re not part of scripted battles. Half of this feature is for the sake of getting buffs and heals should you talk to an ally. The other half is in service of recruiting more Digimon.
Talking to your partners is a great way to give an extra temporary and one-use buff to a Digimon who may desperately need it.
The recruiting stuff…..is more bullshitty. In fact, I’d say it’s the most bullshitty part of the game.
When you’re allowed to explore the maps, you always have the option to free battle, even in places you honestly shouldn’t logically have that option. (I was sent to the human world at one point and still had free battle options…) These are random battles with various Digimon for the sake of leveling up your Digimon, farming items, and recruiting free Digimon.
The recruitment process is really frickin’ weird. Basically, you just have a conversation with the Digimon and try to get it to like you well enough to have the option to either ask it to join up with you or give you items. You have three questions to answer (or vague comments to respond to) to increase their positive response by at least half. If you fail, the Digimon will get pissed off, giving it a buff, and you won’t be able to try to recruit it again in that battle.
The issue with this system is that it’s such a pain in the ass to figure out what you’re meant to say. It’s largely either guesswork or trial and error. For some Digimon, it’s not that difficult to figure out at least a passably good response. For instance, with Angewomon, given her demeanor, it’s easy to figure out that she wants you to respond with kind or noble words. Some Digimon are just violent brutes, so responding with challenges or praising strength works a decent amount of the time. However, with most Digimon, it’s a total crapshoot.
For instance, remember how I just mentioned that some Digimon are brutes and respond to violent responses or challenges? They have an Andromon with similar speech patterns to these more brutish Digimon, but the responses aren’t meant to be the same. You’re supposed to respond with respect and kindness…kinda I guess. Looking at a guide, some responses are supposed to be hostile like preparing to fight. Andromon is one of the most intelligent and well-spoken Digimon. Why would they have this one only speaking in grunts and random noises?
Some questions are just stupid leaving you with no clue how you’re supposed to respond. Why would a Digimon be asking me what makes leaves green? How am I supposed to know what to say when they ask what the clouds look like to me?
So many times you feel like all you can do is guess randomly. I failed so many times answering these dumb questions. On later playthroughs, I just used a guide because I wanted to fill out my entire library and this was ridiculous.
Oh, by the way, even if you answer all the questions perfectly, you’re still not guaranteed the Digimon will join you because, the higher level (As in Champion, Ultimate, etc.) they are, the harder they are to recruit.
Your current karma score, increases or decreases your chances of recruiting the Digimon based on their typing. If you have high Moral, it’s easier to get Vaccine types. Wrath is for Virus types. And Harmony is for Data.
OH, by the way again, if you fail in getting them to join you after passing the questions, they just leave! You can no longer defeat them to gain experience or items – they just bolt.
Granted, you can do free battles infinitely (You can also save before going into one and just reload the save over and over if you fail.), and many of the same Digimon show up over and over, so you can just sit there and grind, learning what Digimon responds to what, until you get the Digimon you want, but the process is so tedious and repetitive coupled with the gameplay that’s already the same way, that it’s far too annoying to bother. Also, some Digimon only appear in certain areas at certain times, and if you don’t get them there you could very well be screwed if you’re trying to collect them all.
I only collected about six or seven free Digimon on my first playthrough because I realized that there are some battles where your teammates won’t be able to join you. Ally Digimon are your only options for back up in those situations, so you need at least a few good ones.
You can also recruit Digimon through Shadow Battles. Using your camera in certain areas at certain points will reveal a shadow. You can choose to either fight or run. If you fight, you get an encounter with an assortment of Digimon. Again, what Digimon you get depends on the area and the moment you’re triggering the Shadow Battle. Some Digimon are only accessible through Shadow Battles if you no longer have their pre-evolved form, but you have no idea what Digimon are in this battle before going in, unlike in free battles where you’re shown what Digimon are in the battle on the screen before you enter.
As is the main staple of visual novels, there are many instances in the game when you’ll be prompted to answer a question or make a comment to a character. Sometimes, your choice affects dialogue responses. Other choices affect the target character’s affinity toward you. And others determine your karma score.
There are three karma or alignment scores in the game; Wrath, Harmony, and Moral. Your alignment determines two things – the evolution tree of Agumon, and the route you take in the story. Unless you’re in New Game + in which your alignment more or less doesn’t really matter too much to the story if you get the Truthful route.
Agumon-wise, going all in on Moral will get you the traditional evolution tree of everyone’s favorite yellow dinosaur – Greymon, MetalGreymon, then WarGreymon. Going the Harmony route will you get you Tyrannomon, Triceramon, then Dinorexmon. Wrath will get you Tuskmon, Megadramon, and then Machinedramon.
I tend to go my own way on first playthroughs of visual novels, making responses based on what I think is best or something I would want to say instead of just gunning for one trait because I think the route would be better.
I wound up getting Tyrannomon as the Champion, Triceramon for Ultimate, and then WarGreymon as Mega. After I was done with all the routes, the only Digimon I hadn’t unlocked was Greymon.
The answers are color-coded, and the color coding threw me off a bit. Moral is red, Wrath is yellow, and Harmony is green. I was fine with Harmony being green, that makes sense, but Moral and Wrath threw me off. I kept thinking I’d be choosing a bad route when choosing the Moral option and being confused as to why the ‘bad’ option was usually nice or noble.
I later found out through a Steam forum thread that the color coding does make sense. It corresponds to the attribute coloring in the original Digimon TCG (Red is Moral for Vaccine, green is Harmonious for Data, and yellow is Wrath for Virus). But….why would they go by that old coloring?
In the current day TCG, the attributes themselves don’t have color-coding. As far as I can tell because I don’t play Digimon, I collect the cards, the color mostly corresponds to the elemental aspect of the Digimon. Dragons and fire-based Digimon are red, water/ice-based creatures and beasts get blue, and angels and holy beasts are primarily yellow, so that one’s the complete opposite. Purple is usually the color for ‘evil’ creatures like demons and fallen angels.
Another person responded saying it’s a cultural difference. Red is a good color in Japan. It wards off evil spirits. It’s a common color in shrines and temples. It denotes passion and strength.
Yellow’s not really an evil color in Japan, though. It has pretty positive meanings. In fact, from what I saw, the west sees yellow as a more treacherous color than Japan does. But it does still mean caution and warning in Japan as it does in the west, so that’s something I guess.
I can accept that it went by the original attribute coloring just fine, but it was still confusing to me at first. I did get used to it eventually, though.
You have limited karma responses, and whichever factors are highest when you reach a critical moment in Part 8 opens access to the route you’ll be taking. Basically, if any score is at 25 or higher when you reach this part, you’ll have the option of getting one of two (three) routes. I don’t think it’s possible to have a clean sweep of 25 across all alignments before you get here, so you’re limited to just two routes (three) at most when you get to this point.
The options at this point don’t light up to show you which route you’re taking, but in addition to always being color-coded, the options are also always in the same spot. Moral is to the left, Wrath is up, and Harmony is right. The option for down at this point is the bad ending option….kinda obviously, but we’ll discuss that later.
The other responses that affect the story are affinity-based. Affinity is Survive’s affection system – another staple for most visual novels. Let me be real, affection systems are one of the reasons why I don’t tend to love visuals novels. Because it seems like so many visual novels want to screw with your head on the response. Like you choose what you think is a perfectly reasonable answer, but it’s the wrong one.
‘Hey Main Character, what do you think of me?’
A) I think you’re cool!
B) I think you’re cute….
C) I think you’re smart!
D) You smell like butt…
….Hmmm….A?
‘What you mean by that?! Can’t you be serious, Main Character?! Typical of you to say something stupid like that. I worked really hard to smell like butt….’
I just get annoyed trying to say something innocent or even nice only to wind up getting a cold or aggressive response. Meanwhile, a response that I’d think would make the situation worse is the right call.
Maybe a part of that problem is me, though. I am at awful communicating in real life too.
And while it gets easier to understand what responses work with what characters based on their personalities as you play the game and learn more about them, even then there are some instances where I feel like the answers are annoying to figure out and their responses can be just as confusing.
I chose what I felt like choosing in my first playthrough, as I said, and I didn’t get anyone to an affinity level high enough to get a Mega evolution out of any of them. And that’s sad. On the Truthful playthrough, I used a guide, and after that I just tried to remember what worked. If I got a different question because I was on a new route, I’d do my best to give an educated guess.
It was frustrating sometimes, but not any more or less frustrating than any other affection system in other visual novels.
Another gameplay aspect is the camera. It’s supposed to reveal things that are hidden from your normal eyesight. However, many times when you’re exploring, the points where you’d need the camera are either pointed out to you anyway through an interactable point (IE, you click on a bush or something and it says “There’s something here. Maybe if I check with my camera) or you enter an area and it tells you to look around with your camera.
It honestly didn’t have much of a point besides to add an extra step and animation time as you explore around. You could just as easily click a point and discover the item or enemy without needing to use the camera.
You could say it’s needed for Shadow Battles, but it really isn’t. They never even explain why certain Digimon can’t be seen or interacted with if you don’t have the camera up.
The one time they did something with the camera that was kinda unique was also a little confusing. They keep finding dead Digimon, but you can’t see them without the camera, but even with the camera you can’t see anything. You can only see distortions. This is seemingly because their data is fading away. But then later you see actual Digimon corpses, so why even bother? I have no idea why these corpses even exist. I thought Digimon burst into light and data fragments when they die.
You could say using the camera helps reinforce a ‘digital’ aspect of this game given that there is hardly any in this Digimon game, but cameras are a common staple of horror games as well, especially Japanese horror. Cameras are used to see spirits and other supernatural creatures and items. They could have been using an old camera and it would have been the same mechanic.
You don’t even need to scan the area if you’re using a controller. You just hit the left and right bumpers and it will cycle through interactable points through your viewfinder.
Takuma Momozuka and Agumon
Our resident gogglehead for the game, Takuma is the main protagonist and the character you play as throughout the story. His personality and/or fundamental values will shift slightly depending on what you focus on as your responses. I chose Harmonious most often but shifted to more Moral responses the later I went into my first playthrough, so my Takuma was largely responsible, brave, level-headed, and always tried to save everyone. He would also be realistic while trying to keep everyone’s spirits up.
I’ll note the differences in his character when I talk about the various routes. They’re quite minor, though. His character stays largely the same through most routes.
I liked Takuma for the most part. Nothing to complain about. And his relationship with the always adorable Agumon was sweet and heartwarming.
Agumon is his biggest cheerleader and staunch defender. He’s inquisitive and sweet while also never shying away from a battle, especially if it’s to protect Takuma. You can sometimes use interaction points to talk to Agumon, and I honestly don’t know if that’s a waste or not. It’s not as if Agumon has affinity points, and I didn’t tend to get amazing items from talking to him, if I got any at all, but I never regretted talking to him because it’s Agumon….Doy.
Takuma has his own internal struggles, but, outside of wishing he hadn’t been so dismissive of his mother when he left the morning of him becoming trapped in the Digital World, he doesn’t really have a consistent emotional or mental struggle that’s anything more than trying to do the right thing while also not trying to do anything stupid or rash.
At least the Moral route Takuma is a likable kid and a worthy gogglehead. He tries to take care of everyone, and most of the characters find themselves leaning on him when they’re at their lowest. At one point in the game, Takuma winds up back in the human world. Since time works differently between the human and Digital Worlds, even though he only spent a few hours back in the human world, ten days had passed since Takuma vanished for the others.
To their credit, they didn’t fall apart without Takuma. In fact, even though losing him was a blow, and another serious factor that affected morale, they were actually doing pretty well for themselves, in the Moral route anyway. That’s not to say that they do better without Takuma, but it’s somewhat nice to know that they didn’t reduce the other kids to being incompetent and completely lost without their leader. I think that says more about Takuma’s influence on them throughout the game, even if they don’t directly say it.
The Takuma that I played wasn’t out to be a hero, but he was determined to save his friends no matter what. He tried to give most foes a chance to come to their senses and either help them or at least not hurt them, even if it was foolish in some instances. I think he’s a very brave and caring kid.
Minoru Hinata and Falcomon
My favorite character of the new group was Minoru – Takuma’s best friend and the group’s jokester. He’s usually very positive and laid back, constantly cracking jokes and fooling around. Outside of that, he desperately wants to be a hero. However, his insecurities lie in him believing he’s cowardly and offers nothing to the group, which aren’t traits befitting of a hero. He commonly uses jokes and goofing around as a defense mechanism.
Minoru, sadly, doesn’t get full focus in any route. He has a minor arc to himself in the middle of the game, and this arc happens in every route, but he doesn’t get any exploration into his backstory or huge moments like the others, which is disappointing.
Minoru has one of the most diametrically opposed Digimon in the group with Falcomon. While Minoru is usually lackadaisical and goofy, Falcomon is absolutely stone-faced and serious. Like the other partner Digimon, he is 100% dedicated to protecting his partner, and he’s also interestingly the most ‘heroic’ of the group, jumping at the chance to save innocents and help others. Falcomon loves Minoru in his own way, but he more often than not chides Minoru for not taking things seriously or at least tries to keep him on topic.
Their relationship seems decent enough at the start, but it’s clear that these two have difficulty meshing fully. Not just because their personalities clash, but also because Falcomon is basically already what Minoru wants to be. He’s brave, confident, and strong while Minoru doesn’t believe he is as such.
They get along just fine for most of the game, but mid-game is where things start to get rocky between them. The kids are all tricked by fake clones of their Digimon, and all of the kids are able to tell which Digimon is theirs because they know them so well. However, Minoru was the only outlier. He did choose correctly, but he openly admits that he couldn’t tell the difference and merely guessed. This really hurts Falcomon and creates the first cracks in their relationship.
Tensions come to a head between the two when one of their group goes off the deep end and forces his Digimon into a Dark Evolution. The monster that emerged ate his partner in one of the most shocking moments in the game.
This event shook the entire group to their core and left many of them side-eyeing their own partners, concerned that they either have been tricking them the whole time or might one day transform into a horrible creature that will turn on them. Most of the kids wise up pretty quickly with all the Digimon arguing that it doesn’t make sense for them to be secretly on the enemy’s side or evil considering they’ve risked their lives and fought for the kids on many occasions.
Minoru, however, is a tougher sell.
He basically temporarily becomes the new version of the character who died – being incredibly distrusting and openly hostile toward his partner, believing he too will one day betray and kill him. Falcomon is understandably upset at the way Minoru is treating him, especially since he seems to have no issues using his power when danger is around but decides to treat him poorly when it’s safe. Eventually, he decides to leave the group as a result.
It’s revealed that the reason the Dark Evolution occurred wasn’t because of anything the Digimon did. The kids and their partners are linked in numerous ways – their souls, their personalities, but most importantly their emotional states. The Digimon’s partner had just gone completely off the deep end with paranoia and hatred that the Digimon Dark Evolved as a result.
As we’ve seen throughout the franchise, Dark Evolutions are nothing to shake a stick at. You’re basically asking for destruction and devastation. However, this is certainly the first one I’ve ever seen result in a horrific murder.
They learn at this juncture that if a Dark Evolution happens and the Digimon kills their partner or anyone else, they only have themselves to blame.
Minoru then realizes his error and starts to realize what a dick he’s been.
Look, the aspect of a human emotions affecting their Digimon has been well-established since the beginning. It’s a core reason why most partner evolutions happen. And dark feelings leading to Dark Evolutions is also not new.
However….I kinda didn’t care for this revelation. Mostly because of how this information is used. There are several points in the game where the characters remind each other that their moods and emotions affect their Digimon so they shouldn’t get overly upset or depressed or whatnot. That just doesn’t seem like healthy emotional processing.
Knowing that Minoru continuing to be an asshole might Dark Evolve Falcomon should not be the main reason why Minoru starts changing his mind about Falcomon. It’s like saying you shouldn’t hit a dog because it might attack you instead of, ya know, don’t hit that dog because it has feelings and that’s mean.
I think a better approach would have been comparing him to the actions of the person who died right before they caused the Dark Evolution. Could Minoru ever see himself being so abusive to Falcomon? Hating him so much? If not, why is that? Because he actively cares about Falcomon and appreciates how he’s risked so much to protect him? And also that Falcomon’s heart reflects Minoru’s so he should be a perfectly trustworthy being?
I dunno. It just felt weird to me.
He and Falcomon eventually patch things up and become a much stronger team. Falcomon still tries to ground Minoru and keep him on track, but Minoru has much more confidence in both himself and Falcomon as they proceed further along in the story. He matures and becomes a bit of the hero he hopes he could be.
Falcomon himself was a cool Digimon. He reminded me a lot of Hawkmon from 02, and he had a similar dynamic to Minoru as Hawkmon had to Yolei. In fact, I heard Hawkmon’s voice in my head whenever I read his dialogue. If the Digimon had a leader among themselves, I’d say it was Falcomon. Agumon’s great too, but he’s not really much in the way of a leader.
Speaking of Falcomon, he’s one of the best Digimon to have on your team because of his high movement capabilities. Once he evolves to Ultimate, and you use the talk feature with Minoru for an extra speed buff, he can practically traverse the whole battleground in one turn. It was so nice.
Aoi Shibuya and Labramon
Aoi is the big sister or “mother hen”, as she’s described by other characters, of the group. She’s very serious and responsible, typically trying to keep more immature characters like Minoru in line, and always tries to keep morale up by keeping everyone fed and watered. Despite Aoi being a model student and a very kind individual, she sees herself as unreliable and envies people like Saki who are more openly honest and seemingly confident.
Aoi continuously proves herself to be reliable and strong. Her biggest fault is in not accepting that being reliable doesn’t mean never having support. She chides herself for relying on Takuma and Labramon to constantly pick her up, but eventually she comes to realize that it’s not a weakness to need that support. No matter how reliable you are, you can’t be an unbreakable support beam for everyone at all times.
Labramon is a huge source of support for her. She’s constantly cheering Aoi on and fighting off her negative self-talk. When the kids start questioning the intentions of their partners, there’s something particularly sad about Aoi expressing these doubts. She’s not mean about it, but just the fact that she’s questioning Labramon is sad. Understandable, but sad.
Honestly, Aoi is the most boring of the group. I liked her just fine, but there’s also just not much to her. She constantly says she feels unreliable. She cooks for the team. And she’s nice and responsible. That’s about it.
The other characters also weren’t fully explored in my first run of the game, but at least they had more going on in their personalities and/or they implied more interesting aspects of their backstories.
With Aoi, there’s really nothing.
Well…kinda.
The route in which she gets the most focus is Wrathful. However, it’s not like it really explores her character much more than the other routes did. Even though it gives Aoi more interesting and cool moments, it’s mostly just watching her spiral into darkness following a death in the group.
We do learn that, in school, many of her classmates took advantage of her kindness and reliability by dumping their work on her and going off to do their own thing. They knew she’d do it because it needs to get done. She can’t just leaves things undone. Her teacher told her to tell him when they did that, but even when she did nothing came of it. She was too much of a doormat to confront her classmates about it.
This seems to be the main reason why she admires Saki so much. She’s honest, speaks her mind, and never has difficulty saying what she wants. She’s proactive and brave. She’s everything Aoi wants to be.
So, yeah, even in a route where she get some very emotionally impacting and badass moments, there’s still not a lot to her as a character.
….Oh, yeah, I guess I should mention one thing. It’s very slight, but there is ship tease between her and Takuma. Honestly, there’s also some with Saki too, but it’s clear it’s teasing with Saki and legitimate with Aoi. This never goes anywhere in any route and never matters at all.
Labramon is adorable as hell and sweet as a cupcake. In battle, she has a few healing buffs because of course one of the girls has the healer. However, Labramon’s not much to write home about in regard to her evolutions. Even her good Mega evolution is only decently cool in comparison with everyone else’s. It was one of the better ones, power-wise, but not much to write home about otherwise.
Still, I would gladly buy a Labramon plushie, please and thank you.
Saki Kimishima and Floramon
Saki is definitely our Mimi of the group only less bubbleheaded. She’s very into outward appearances, she’s constantly taking pictures of herself (in the opening anyway), and she comes off like a popular diva. However, Saki is also very optimistic, caring, honest to a fault, and encouraging.
Her main issue is that she’s deeply insecure and fears people hating her. She desperately wants people to like her and be her friend, but her personality also causes her to butt heads with people fairly often. Eventually, with the help of Floramon, Aoi, and the others, she becomes more genuinely honest and tries to not put up a front, knowing she has true friends who love her for her and aren’t going to abandon her.
Saki also keeps a secret – she’s been in and out of hospitals with a mystery illness for a long time. This is something she’s self-conscious about. She was supposed to get a surgery for the illness after camp, but she wound up getting trapped in the Digital World.
In my first playthrough in the Moral route, and also if you have lower affinity with her, Saki’s illness doesn’t really present itself very much. However, it becomes a significant factor if your affinity is higher.
In that case, she starts suffering from her illness quite a bit more, and Takuma and Saki wind up getting attacked. Takuma doesn’t have Agumon with him, for some reason, so it’s all up to Floramon. All Saki wants is to be healthy so she can stand up and fight with Floramon, and all Floramon wants is the power to help make Saki healthier and end her pain, and her desire for this triggers a Mega evolution into Ceresmon Medium.
She not only has the power to defeat the enemy in this form, but she has the ability to heal Saki slightly. It doesn’t cure her of her illness, but it does make her feel significantly better. I felt like this was one of the strongest Mega evolution scenes in the game.
Her illness is given a bit more focus in the Wrathful route, but really all that matters with that there is that she’s secretly scared to have an important operation. She’s already pushed a previously recommended surgery back before, and this time she was only able to buy another week with the excuse that she didn’t want to miss this camp.
However, she wound up getting into a fight with her friends (the details of which we never learn) and she started hating herself and her fear. She wished she’d disappear because she thought no one would care. And she kinda got her wish because she was sent to the Digital World.
Her relationship with Floramon is….good, but iffy in certain respects. Floramon seems to immediately know Saki extremely well from the get-go, allowing her to connect with Saki more easily and understand what she truly wants and needs. She and Floramon always seem like they’re good friends. However, I really don’t care for how Saki treats Floramon based on her appearance.
It only comes up a few times, but whenever Floramon evolves, Saki makes some comment about how Floramon looks now. She wants Floramon to be cute or beautiful.
Floramon herself isn’t really all that cute, but then she evolves into Vegiemon, and Saki calls her creepy.
Her next evolution is Blossomon, which Saki has a better reaction to, but she clearly still doesn’t like this form at all nor does she think she’s cute.
Saki is finally happy with Floramon’s appearance when she reaches Mega level and gains a more traditionally beautiful form.
I get that Saki likes pretty things, but it feels really weird for her character arc to be centered on acceptance and being your true self with your friends without worrying that they’re judging you or secretly hating you then turn around and have her only be 100% satisfied with her Digimon partner when she’s finally pretty.
I did stumble upon a Reddit thread that explained that Floramon’s evolutions reflect Saki’s hatred of her body, and only in the very end when her character arc is mostly complete does she finally gain a beautiful form, which does make sense, but I felt like it was a bit rude of Saki to express disappointment in the physical appearance of Floramon’s forms.
Saki has an interesting dynamic with Ryo that’s mostly ignored after they enter the Digital World. She seems to be the main person to keep him in line and manages to drag him into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do. I thought they’d be way more important to each other than they wound up being. Saki’s bond with Aoi gets far more attention, and Ryo doesn’t have a particular bond with anyone specifically barring…maybe Shuuji in the Truthful route?
Kaito Shinonome and Dracmon
Kaito comes off like the resident cold and distant bad boy, but, while he is abrasive and blunt, Kaito is completely dedicated to protecting his sister. Pretty much all he cares about from start to finish is Miu. If you get in his way, he’ll push you aside. If you help him, he likes you. He’s pretty simple to get close to as a result, but I couldn’t get him to 70 affinity on my first run, either. Maybe I just didn’t focus on him enough specifically.
Kaito can be pretty likable when you stay on his good side. Sure, he still butts heads with pretty much everyone and can be a jerk sometimes, but he’s a dedicated brother, even if he’s overprotective and Miu gets annoyed by his hovering, and a pretty level-headed person when Miu’s safe and things are going well. When I was allowed to freely explore, he’d be one of the first characters I’d check in with.
He gets cooler the further along you get in the game, barring the Harmony route. He starts mending things with Miu, he focuses more on the others, and he becomes a true loyal friend. He especially matured in the Wrathful route as he preoccupies himself with helping Aoi after a character death rocks her to her core. He sympathizes most with how she feels because of his backstory with Miu and his own protectiveness of her.
Miu had a stalker not long before the start of the game, and Kaito beat the guy nearly to death to protect her. It’s why he feels so protective of her.
He gets so locked on to helping Aoi that it’s almost like he’s traded in Miu for Aoi as his point of obsession. However, he asserts that he’s not into her or anything. He just recognizes everything she’s done for them over the time they’ve been in the Digital World and wants to repay her in kind.
While Kaito can be a pretty damn good guy….his attachment to his sister can get be a bit…..creepy.
This doesn’t happen often, but there are certain scenes where his expression of his love for his sister comes off as incestuous. It never goes anywhere in any route, and he vehemently denies having any affection for his sister beyond that of a sibling….but….still…..they very clearly put in that implication on purpose given that more than one character points out that what he’s saying and thinking about Miu is creepy.
When asked what he likes about Miu, he says she’s got cute slender arms that make you want to protect her, big cute eyes that make you want to hug her, and a small mouth so she nibbles food like a hamster. She acts like a cat, being all “Leave me alone” but then she gives him a look and it’s all—Takuma interrupts him before he can go further, but Kaito says that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Even Takuma thinks to himself that this goes beyond brotherly affection.
Given Miu’s backstory, it makes sense that he’s overprotective and preoccupied with her safety and whereabouts. However, also given Miu’s backstory, it’s really, REALLY odd for them to include these implications. It makes it especially difficult to want to encourage Miu and Kaito to patch things up, because, if he really is into her in that way, then it’s like telling this victim of an obsessive adult pedophile stalker to be nice to her obsessive incestuous brother. It’s really uncomfortable to think about.
Miu says a few times that Kaito uses protecting her as an excuse to be violent, and it’s never made clear if this is right. I think Kaito is too obsessed with Miu for that to be true, and even the others don’t agree with that.
Kaito doesn’t really get that violent too often. There was one instance where he slapped Miu during a particularly heated argument, but I feel like if he didn’t care about Miu and just wanted an excuse to fight he’d have gotten into scraps more often. I mean, hell, despite butting heads a lot with Shuuji and Shuuji basically saying they shouldn’t go save Miu, he never once smacked him.
His relationship with Dracmon is interesting. They frequently argue and butt heads, but most of it isn’t malicious. Dracmon is a very easy-going Digimon, but he’s not afraid to challenge Kaito on what he’s saying and doing. He wants everyone to get along, and he wants Kaito to chill out. Dracmon seems to be a unique being in that he knows just what to say to Kaito and how to say it to pull in his reins and cool his head.
That being said, sometimes Kaito is too much even for him, notably when Miu’s in danger or lost, so he just goes along with him because he’s also his loyal partner. I liked Dracmon overall. He’s a fun little Digimon. Although it was trippy for him to evolve into Myotismon.
In Harmonious, however, it becomes clear that Dracmon might not be as close to Kaito as I first thought. There are several factors in play here, but it kinda took me aback how he seemed to be disposable in that route.
Miu Shinonome and Syakomon
I thought I would hate Miu with a passion. At first, she’s kinda just a mischievous kid with a love of the macabre, but upon her, I guess I’ll say “proper”, introduction in the Digital World, she acts like an entitled little brat as she reigns over an amusement park with the resident Digimon hailing her as their queen. She even goes so far as to drop all of the kids and their partners down through a trap door into a jail cell seemingly to leave them trapped forever with no food or water. (And, honestly, with how far the drop was implied to have been, some of them should have been gravely injured.)
However, she gets a horrifying, traumatizing reality check soon enough that backs me away from that point.
Miu is still sometimes a brat, but it’s clear that part of her behavior is a defense mechanism due to her traumatic past with her stalker. He would constantly pester her, follow her, and he told people they were dating. She always felt like everyone, including her parents and Kaito, to a degree, acted as if she did something wrong. Even after the stalker was sent to prison, it was like people didn’t believe that she wasn’t dating this older guy. Bear in mind, Miu is 11 and this guy looks to be like in his early 20s-ish.
Kaito beat the hell out of this guy for what he did, nearly killing him, and everyone, including his parents and Miu, gave him weird looks after the fact. Kaito didn’t think he did anything wrong. He was just being a good big brother protecting his sister.
Miu and Kaito’s parents moved them out to the country to avoid any creepy guys who might stalk her. Because that never happens in the country. Miu took it as a punishment. Kaito saw it as a form of protection. She’d be safe from creeps and away from the people in their town who were judging them. It’s hard to know who’s right because we never see or hear Miu and Kaito’s parents. It’s possible they also moved out there to avoid people talking about what Kaito did to the stalker.
Miu was treated poorly when she came to the country. Other kids shut her out because she was a city girl. One girl touched Miu either innocently or mockingly because she was interested in her clothes (Other kids were mocking her clothes.), but Miu suddenly pulled away and yelled to not touch her. This made the kid cry.
A boy mocked Miu relentlessly and called her weird because she was muttering to herself and was interested in occult stuff. Kaito also beat that kid up.
Most of Miu’s character arc centers on her trying to deal with Kaito’s overprotective and obsessive nature. She wants to assert that she can take care of herself and doesn’t need protection….even if some routes show she appreciates Kaito being protective of her sometimes and does need help on occasion in such a dangerous environment. Kaito and Miu also share a characteristic in that they’re both awful at expressing their genuine emotions. Once they finally start conversing more openly, their relationship steadies a bit better.
I actually liked Miu a lot. I didn’t even really need her to mend bridges with her brother to get there on my opinion of her. Yeah, sure, she can be bratty, but she’s also very entertaining and she tends to be the one most empathetic when it comes to the Digimon. That time where all the kids start doubting the intentions of their Digimon? She’s pretty much the only one who doesn’t question her partner at all.
She can be sweet and funny at many points. Her complaining about her brother just gets a little tiresome is all. I get why she does it, but it’s repetitive.
Honestly, I didn’t get a whole lot from Syakkomon. She’s very dedicated to Miu, like all the Digimon are, and she tends to keep Miu from spiraling. She also believes in Miu’s ability to protect herself more than her brother ever does, giving Miu more genuine self-confidence.
Even her battle abilities and all her evolutions are just okay…..barring her Sovereign form, which is the always awesome Azulongmon!
Syakkomon IS pretty cute, though, and I love seeing her close her shell.
Ryo Tominaga and Kunemon
Well, there’s no putting it off anymore – we have to talk about the last two fated children.
Ryo comes off as a bully from the get-go. His character introduction is intimidating a bunch of students around the doorway into moving, which they do promptly because they’re scared of him.
Ryo is a character who embodies the “his bark is worse than his bite” adage, though. Ryo talks big game, but most of the time he’s just extremely whiny. Half of his dialogue before he enters the Digital World is complaining or making snide comments.
However, after he enters the Digital World, he changes entirely. He is, by far, the most immediately and severely impacted by being trapped in the Digital World. The instant he realizes what’s happening and the gravity of the situation, he begins panicking. He loses all hope, he’s never not scared, and he quickly devolves into a muttering incoherent mess who can’t really be reasoned with.
Ryo, despite his earlier attitude, is not that difficult to sympathize with. Sure, he’s a rude bag of hot air, but in these circumstances he’s just a terrified kid in a horrifying situation who is, quite realistically and terrifyingly, losing his mind to terror and despair.
At first, I didn’t put much effort into helping Ryo because of how abrasive he was, but I soon became very concerned for him due to how severely his mental state was slipping. I wanted him to grab onto something, someone, anything, and climb out of this darkness he’s fallen into. I got him to talk with me a couple of times, but it wasn’t good enough.
Ryo is the first character to die in the game, and he’s the first to be taken by the fog. He loses all hope and falls for a hallucination of his mother calling to him in the fog. All he wanted was his mother, and he went to her, but the fog swallowed him up.
We learn during this scene that Ryo’s mother is actually dead. She was always sick, and Ryo tried to spend more time with her, but the doctor wouldn’t allow it. She always told him to be strong, and those were her last words.
By the way, if I’m making the fog sound like not such a bad way to go, make no mistake – the fog is scary as hell.
The fog is concealing a mass of black hands that slowly drag you away into the abyss and seemingly rip you apart. One of the motifs of this game is black splatter patterns – those are basically lightly censored ala School Days blood splatters. In addition, it seems like the fog can come out of nowhere at any time and quickly envelops the area you’re in.
Despite not really being close with any of the characters, besides maybe Saki a little, Ryo’s death has a devastating impact on the other kids. At best, it allows the dangers of this world to finally sink in so they can make smarter moves. At worst, it makes them feel hopeless and like they might be set to die next.
I felt really bad that I wasn’t able to save Ryo. I figured that I just didn’t put in enough effort to save him, especially since I mostly ignored him for half the time he was available as a character to interact with…..but no.
Ryo is one of two characters whose deaths are scripted in all three non-NG+ routes. There is no way to save him. Which, if you ask me, is kinda bunk. But whatever.
Ryo’s death was shocking, even if it was somewhat expected. I honestly just didn’t think I’d lose a character so early in the game. It was only Part 3. And to have such a horrifying death in a Digimon game was definitely an eye-opener.
As if to put salt on the wound, right after Ryo dies, we learn a tragic and heartbreaking truth – when a fated child dies….their Digimon partner dies along with them.
Shortly after Ryo dies, we have to watch poor little Kunemon fade away into the ether.
(Side-tracking a bit, but this is another thing that should have been brought up as proof that the Digimon can’t have ulterior motives or are working with the enemy. If they were aiming to kill them, that’d be foolish because they’d be killing themselves.)
Speaking of Ryo’s relationship with Kunemon, he didn’t really have one in the base routes.
Ryo was so preoccupied with his fears that he couldn’t develop a bond with Kunemon. In fact, he disliked Kunemon, finding him disgusting and feeling like he got shafted for getting a Digimon who couldn’t talk. He mostly ignored Kunemon, though Kunemon loyally stuck by Ryo’s side. There is one moment where he kinda praised Kunemon for finding an item, but that was about it.
Each Digimon is reflective of certain aspects of their partner’s personality, for better or worse. Kunemon’s symbolism is more blatant than the others. Kunemon can’t talk, creating a significant communication barrier between Kunemon and everyone else, even Ryo. Kunemon can really only communicate through chirping-like noises and some slight facial expressions.
Ryo’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t communicate with others or express himself genuinely. He won’t let anyone help, and he won’t be vulnerable with anyone. Even when he’s spiraling, making no secret as to how terrified he is and how hopeless he’s feeling, he won’t actually talk much with anyone.
It’s rather fitting, looking back, that Saki was the closest of the group to him when she’s in a similar boat. While she’s definitely more open and honest than Ryo is, she also puts up a front for her own protection.
Fittingly, in the Truthful route, saving Ryo allows Kunemon to evolve and eventually gain the ability to speak when he reaches Ultimate, which is further symbolic of Ryo’s own character development. Ryo also gains the ability to ‘understand’ Kunemon even when he’s in a form that still can’t talk, reflecting their stronger bond.
As it stands, though, in every other route Kunemon never even evolves into Champion level because Ryo’s so out of it and disconnected with his partner.
Despite being unable to speak, the other Digimon seem to be able to somewhat understand Kunemon. From the few bits you can gleam of their interactions with him, Kunemon does seem to also have a decent degree of Ryo’s anxiety, but he does have fighting spirit, bravery, and a desire to protect Ryo. These traits are subtle hints that there is more to Ryo than meets the eye.
Ryo undergoes a lot of character development in the Truthful route.
Kunemon helps save Ryo from the illusion by slamming into him. Ryo is initially annoyed, but he praises the little bug a little for his caring. I also think all of the kids, barring Shuuji because he sucks, tackling Ryo helped him realize that everyone else really does care about him.
Ryo becomes more understanding and flexible after that. Sure, he’s still grumpy, but he tries to see everyone’s point of view and he continues to give everyone a realistic perspective. He’s more relaxed. He gains a much stronger bond with Kunemon that allows him to evolve, and he even apologizes to Kunemon when he realizes that him giving up and dying would have gotten Kunemon killed as well.
He’s still openly scared of certain things, particularly Arukenimon and ghosts, but he’s braver because he acknowledges that fear but does what needs to be done anyway.
Ryo in the Truthful route became one of my favorite characters. I saw people criticize this turnaround for being too quick and unearned, but I don’t feel that way at all. I think the speed at which he changed coupled with the circumstances of his change worked out quite well.
He’s also the catalyst for saving the life of the other doomed character….
Shuuji Kayama and Lopmon
I’d like to introduce everyone to Survive’s hate sink!
Shuuji is, at best, tolerated by the characters in game, and most of the fandom simply hates him.
I don’t blame them.
At the start of the game, Shuuji just comes off as an uptight authority figure. He’s the oldest of the group, so he volunteered to be a group leader of the school camping trip. Imagine Joe from Adventure 01 if he had a much bigger stick up his ass. In fact, Shuuji is pretty obviously modeled off of Joe. He has dark hair, he’s the oldest, he feels responsible for the entire group because he’s the oldest, he tries to be the voice of reason, he wears glasses, he’s uptight and rigid, he’s very studious – he even has the same general backstory with the overachieving big brother and pressure of trying to be like him.
His father ‘abandoned’ him because he couldn’t live up to his standards. I don’t know if he means literally like he left or he just stopped believing in him.
However, despite Joe’s complaining and insistence on staying on the safe side of things, Joe wouldn’t hesitate to help out in times of emergency or risk his life to save others if he had to. (*Sigh* Okay, early on in Tri, he does, but that’s a review for another day.) True bravery is doing the right thing even if you’re terrified. It doesn’t mean not being scared. It means to overcome that fear to help others or protect something important.
Shuuji is a coward through and through and a useless leader to boot. He’s….passable-ish in the human world, but as soon as they enter the Digital World, that all goes away. He never does anything useful in dangerous situations, and whenever the characters are back at their base trying to regroup and figure out what to do, Shuuji just butts heads with anyone who has a plan that’s not “Wait here and do nothing.”
Have a lead that could allow them to find their way home? Don’t care. Stay inside. Want to find people who are missing and could be in danger? Don’t care. Stay inside. Want to just look around outside? Don’t care. Stay inside.
There’s no harm in being realistic. In fact, it’s very helpful to ensure that everyone understands the risks involved in anything they do in that world. However, Shuuji never develops alternative plans. It’s always “Stay at the school where it’s safe.” Even when it’s obvious that no rescue team is coming for them and they’re in an alternate world, he digs in his heels and asserts that staying at the school is the right play.
If you somehow manage to drag Shuuji on a mission, he drives the group way too hard in order to get the mission done as quickly as possible so they can go back to the school. He spends most of his time whining and complaining when he’s not fighting with another character – usually Kaito. In moments where the tension becomes too much, he’ll run off on his own, which should be fully against his character because it means he’s wandering this dangerous world alone while also abandoning the kids he’s seemingly so dedicated to protecting.
At this point, you might be wondering why Shuuji doesn’t earn as much sympathy as Ryo. They’re similar in that they both whine and complain a lot, they spend a lot of their time being scared and useless not being willing to take action or make plans, they butt heads with other characters a lot, and they’re just scared kids trapped in a dangerous world.
Sure, it may be annoying how he’s acting, moreso than Ryo because at least Ryo mutters in a corner to himself most of the time as opposed to yelling and bossing everyone around, but doesn’t he get some sympathy due to his circumstances? He may have signed up to be a camp counselor, but he didn’t sign up to be the leader of a survivalist group in an alternate world with a creepy murderous fog and giant monsters who want to kill them.
The reason why he gets so much more disdain from fans and other characters is mainly how he treats his partner, Lopmon.
Shuuji has made no secret of the fact that he hates the ‘monsters’ of this world, no matter if they’re allies or their own partners, but no Digimon receives his ire more than poor Lopmon. From the very moment they meet, you’d think Lopmon murdered Shuuji’s parents and wore their skin as a coat. He LOATHES Lopmon and never once thinks as him as a partner.
Lopmon tries his best to connect with Shuuji and protect him, but Shuuji just wants Lopmon to go away and stay away.
At one point early in the game, Shuuji’s out collecting nuts for food….when Takuma points out that they have plenty of food at the moment, but at least he’s taking his mind off things. Lopmon comes in, scaring Shuuji by accident, revealing that he’s collected a bunch of nuts. Shuuji just goes off on him yelling that he never asked him to collect nuts and to keep away from him. He goes on and on about how useless Lopmon is, and when he makes an effort to help Shuuji complete his task he yells at him and tells him to go away.
His abuse of Lopmon only gets worse and worse as the game goes on, and it becomes very unsettling.
Here’s how many of Lopmon and Shuuji’s interactions go.
Lopmon: “Oh, uh…Shuuji, are you—”
Shuuji: “SHUT UP! I TOLD YOU GO AWAY YOU USELESS SACK OF SHIT! GOD, YOU’RE ANNOYING!”
Shuuji’s catchphrase basically becomes “SHUT UP!” after a while because that’s his default response whenever Lopmon has the gall to open his mouth around Shuuji.
Even if Shuuji lets Lopmon get more than one sentence out, Shuuji usually just dismisses whatever Lopmon is saying and proceeds to call him useless or harasses him for not being stronger.
Yeah, for a guy who despises these monsters and is scared of all of them, he also has quite the big chip on his shoulder for being assigned a “weak” one. He’s particularly jealous that he didn’t get a Digimon like Agumon.
Granted, out of all the Digimon partners of this story, Lopmon IS the cutest and most unassuming. He’s literally a little brown and pink bunny wabbit.
At a point in the story where every other partner Digimon has at least gotten to Champion level, Lopmon is the only one who still hasn’t been able to evolve (Due to his lack of connection with Shuuji and Shuuji’s own lack of effort), making Shuuji even more annoyed by Lopmon’s ‘weakness’.
In addition, since Digimon share traits with their partners, Lopmon is very scared and weak-willed. While he’ll gladly go to battle for Shuuji and risk his life to protect him, no matter what he says about him, and, early on, he’s good at encouraging others, he has trouble joining in on battles sometimes, and Lopmon doesn’t have the will to stand up to Shuuji or call him out on anything he’s doing. Not that it would matter anyway, but still. He also isn’t able to criticize Shuuji in private with others, either. He shies away from implications that Shuuji’s treating him badly.
Lopmon tries to contribute without going against Shuuji, but he mostly just stands there with a sad and nervous look on his face saying barely a few sentences in a tone that indicates he’s always on the verge of tears.
The bigger issue is, the more a human partner expresses a certain emotion or trait, the more their Digimon partner will be affected by it. Shuuji’s deepening fear and negative thoughts only make Lopmon more scared, depressed, and weak-willed, which just make Shuuji angrier, and it goes in a worsening loop.
Shuuji even accuses Lopmon of being lazy, which is why he thinks Lopmon is weak in the first place. There’s a part where the group has to go on a long hike to get to a certain location, and Lopmon in particular looks exhausted and sore after getting over halfway there.
Bear in mind, Lopmon’s about a foot and a half tall and has legs about as long as a pencil. Of course he’s struggling to keep up with everyone else. The hike, by the way, was so long and tough that everyone else is wiped out when they reach this point as well, but Shuuji only really calls out Lopmon for being tired. When Takuma brings up Lopmon’s tiredness, Shuuji legitimately says “Who cares about his sore legs? He’s nothing but a burden!”
Why is Lopmon even walking? Can’t anyone offer the poor thing a piggy back ride? Lopmon are able to float using their ears as gliders. I’m pretty sure they weigh like nothing. Then again, Shuuji would probably just lay into him even harder for hitching a ride given that it’s a ‘lazier’ option.
There’s a moment at the start of Part 5 where Shuuji has a nightmare about his father getting upset with him for not living up to the Kayama name, and his brother is taking pity on him and saying he’ll work twice as hard for the both of them. This is a flashback nightmare about his father ‘abandoning’ him.
When he wakes up, he sees Lopmon sleeping next to him and asks why won’t he ‘change’ (He either means getting stronger or evolving.) He then realizes that Lopmon is just like him.
You really think he’ll maybe get a little better after this revelation. He’d feel sympathetic toward Lopmon and maybe be nicer to him…..but no. He just gets worse.
Later in the game, you’re offered a chance to encourage Shuuji to train Lopmon. It seems like a somewhat good idea, right? Shuuji wants Lopmon to be stronger and less ‘lazy’ and Lopmon wants to bond with Shuuji or at least get some modicum of attention from him. I thought maybe this would be good for them so I foolishly encouraged it on my first playthrough.
It was inevitable either way, but god I wish I hadn’t.
This ‘training’ is basically just an excuse for Shuuji to also become physically abusive to Lopmon. He works the poor thing to the point of collapse and endlessly harasses and belittles him, not giving an ounce of encouragement or praise. He tells him to do push-ups even though…look at his damn proportions and tell me he can do a push-up. Then he tells this creature that looks like it probably doesn’t have knees to do squats.
Lopmon is sadly so dedicated to Shuuji and, depressingly, somewhat happy about getting his attention that he decides to keep it up and give it his best. It doesn’t really do anything, though.
Arukenimon catches onto Shuuji’s paranoia and toxic treatment of Lopmon and decides to zero in on him. When they’re all out on a mission to attack the enemy’s base, she manages to lure Shuuji away from the group, tormenting him with hallucinations of his father. When he reaches Arukenimon, she gives him an offer. She claims she only needs one child sacrifice, so if Shuuji agrees to give her just one child, she’ll show him the way home.
To Shuuji’s credit, the one time he’s admirable in the main routes is when he offers his own life as long as it will get the others home. Arukenimon sends in MegaSeadramon to kill him, and he panics, yelling that he doesn’t want to die. Lopmon rushes in to protect him, but he doesn’t stand a chance against MegaSeadramon without evolving.
Things go straight to hell after this.
Shuuji flips his shit at Lopmon’s weakness and starts viciously beating him for being useless. He demands that Lopmon evolve and finally show some strength.
I really, truly thought Shuuji was going to straight up murder Lopmon here.
It really says something about Shuuji’s character at this point where I honestly was expecting that outcome over the one we actually got, which was half more predictable and half incredibly shocking.
The predictable part was Lopmon undergoing a Dark Evolution. As most fans of the franchise are aware, dark feelings and trying to force evolution in a partner causes Dark Evolutions where the Digimon goes out of their minds as a crazy powerhouse bent on destruction.
Lopmon Dark Evolves into Wendigomon. Unlike a lot of other Dark Evolutions, Wendigomon does seem to have a small amount of consciousness left. He speaks in broken sentences and few words, but he is somewhat coherent.
Shuuji is happy to see Lopmon evolve, and he cheers when Wendigomon one-shots MegaSeadramon, but he quickly realizes his grave error when Wendigomon opts not to attack Arukenimon and instead targets Shuuji.
Here’s where the shocking part comes into play. In the frame of a few moments, Wendigomon picks up Shuuji, shoves him in his mouth, and with a few chomps he eats his partner. So I guess I was half right at first….
My jaw literally dropped when this happened. I mean, I didn’t really care if Shuuji died. Well, okay, I did care, but only because Lopmon would have died if Shuuji did. But this is the worst possible scenario for him dying because Lopmon, despite it all, loved Shuuji, and his main prerogative was always to protect Shuuji at all costs. To have Lopmon, who is almost entirely out of control of himself, be the one to kill Shuuji, but also have him be conscious enough to see and process what he’s done…..Fuck, man. Lopmon didn’t deserve that.
Oh, and we didn’t even touch upon the worst part….This didn’t actually kill Shuuji. HE’S STILL ALIVE IN WENDIGOMON’S BODY, AND YOU CAN HEAR HIM SPEAKING IN WENDIGOMON’S STOMACH!
And, bear in mind, it’s not as if Shuuji was swallowed whole or anything. The chewing sounds, what sounds like bones snapping, and blood splatter on the screen coupled with the fact that the first bite only made it to his knees and forearm definitely indicate that he was at least maimed when he was eaten, so it’s especially horrifying.
The fact that Lopmon is aware of what he’s doing and that this form hurts him on top of everything is almost too much to bear.
What really kills them both is the fog. It emerges shortly after they defeat Wendigomon. It’s the only time I’ve ever been thankful for the fog as it ended their suffering.
In the Truthful route, Shuuji will survive this event if you save Ryo. He smacks some sense into Shuuji and saves him from this horrible fate. Now, you may be wondering if Shuuji in the Truthful route earns any better response from fans. Truthful!Ryo has many fans, and surviving the rest of the game gives plenty of room for character development. So, maybe, Shuuji can also develop and earn a better reputation among fans.
….Yeah…..Not really.
There are some key differences between Ryo’s situation and Shuuji’s.
First, Ryo died in the end of Part 3. Meaning he was only annoying for less than a quarter of the runtime of the game. Not to mention that his backstory makes him much more relatable and sympathetic. He lost his beloved mother some time before the story started, and he’s so broken by his fear and depression that he thinks his mother is alive and even believes Arukenimon is his mother before she reveals her true form.
All he wants is his mom, and even if he gets back to the real world, he won’t have that. But he’s too broken to understand. He even starts believing he’s already dead and is reuniting with his mother in the afterlife.
Once he’s rescued, Ryo’s character development carries on throughout the rest of the game in Truthful, slowly but steadily becoming braver, more reliable, helpful, and a great partner to Kunemon.
Shuuji dies in the end of Part 5. Meaning he spends nearly 40% of the game being completely obnoxious and a terrible human being. And even though he does get better over the rest of the Truthful route, even becoming a true partner to Lopmon and getting him to evolve normally, this is definitely a too little too late situation.
Shuuji’s backstory isn’t nearly as sad or compelling to get you to start sympathizing with him, either, especially if we don’t know if his dad was really abusive or just a strict asshole.
While I don’t agree that Ryo’s development in Truthful was poorly paced, I totally get where people are coming from with Shuuji’s turnaround. Yeah, Ryo punched him and gave him a hard dose of reality, but he was trying to beat his Digimon to death a second ago, and after that he’s crying for Lopmon and praising him. It’s even enough for Lopmon to evolve right there, and their relationship is aces after that. They’re the best of buds, and Shuuji’s on great terms with the other Digimon too. He’s the polar opposite of how he was before. It’s too much too quickly.
With Ryo, it was more gradual, and he keeps up his grumpy attitude and still expresses that he’s scared of various things, so it’s not as jarring. He’s brave because he acknowledges how scared he is but doesn’t dwell on it. He has faith in himself, Kunemon, and his friends, and that allows him to tackle threats even when he’s terrified.
Shuuji, however….they almost act like he didn’t say and do….what he said and did. Sure, Shuuji feels bad about his treatment of Lopmon, but like….he still nearly beat Lopmon to death and all is forgiven on all sides, even by Lopmon, just because Ryo gave him a pep talk? Minoru and Falcomon had a much longer falling out, and that was just because Minoru was suspicious of the Digimon’s intentions and if they could even unintentionally kill them. It’s just a lot to swallow.
Ryo’s relationship with Kunemon improving is also so much better paced than Shuuji and Lopmon. Kunemon being the first one to try to knock some sense into him made Ryo acknowledge him more and showed him how much he truly cared. He gradually starts to kinda understand him when he ‘talks’ and even when Kunemon evolves by Ryo’s bravery and resolve, we see the reflection of the slower character development in Flymon…because Flymon still can’t talk.
It’s only when Ryo has developed even more that Kunemon reaches a stage where he can talk – JewelBeemon. Funnily enough, though, no one’s around to hear JewelBeemon talk the first time he evolves, and he devolves before he can talk when people show up, making Ryo frustrated, but in a funny way. Takuma’s just like “Don’t worry, Ryo. We’ll hear him talk some other time.”
With Shuuji and Lopmon, like I said, they’re just best buds immediately. No animosity from Lopmon, no bitterness. Shuuji doesn’t even pull a Falcomon and run off in fear and shame of what he might do. Everything’s perfectly fine after that.
Second, Ryo wasn’t nearly as bad as Shuuji was, both in his obnoxious behavior and his treatment of his partner. Ryo mostly just complained and whimpered when he was sane and sat in the corner muttering to himself and sometimes yelling when he wasn’t. His treatment of Kunemon was bad in that he was scared of him and thought he was creepy, but he mostly ignored Kunemon otherwise. He did complain that Kunemon couldn’t talk, but that was about it.
Let me make one thing clear – everything that happens between Shuuji and Lopmon still happens in the Truthful route. It’s just that Ryo stops him from going further when he starts beating on Lopmon and prevents the Dark Evolution. Many people view this behavior as being too severe to make up for, especially at basically the midpoint of the game, and I agree.
Shuuji was so bad throughout his entire time in the non-Truthful routes/nearly half his time in the Truthful route that even the other characters didn’t really have a nice word to say about him. Early in the game, he even leaves Saki (And Floramon and Lopmon) behind while he ran to cower behind the others after she fell down when Fangmon and his henchmen were cornering them.
The only one who really seemed to see him in a more positive light was the Professor, whom Shuuji respects and likes, but we barely see any meaningful interactions between them in the non-Truthful routes.
Once the Professor appears to ‘die’ in the first third of the game, Shuuji gets even worse.
He abuses his role as leader while also clearly not wanting to be leader. He demands respect as leader without doing anything to earn it besides being older than everyone else. He’s always happiest when he’s leading and the others are following. It doesn’t matter that he’s the ‘leader’ anyway because it’s usually just up to the majority vote.
He says straight out several times that his main goal is to have the others acknowledge him, and sometimes when he says they have to do the right thing he follows it up by saying that’s what the Professor would want – not that doing the right thing is, ya know, the right thing. It’s just what the Professor would want.
He’s useless otherwise as he doesn’t agree with scouting the area, he has no plans for getting out of there or beating the enemy, he can’t do anything in battle because he won’t work with Lopmon and he’s a coward, and he can’t keep morale up because he’s such a nihilist.
You can be happy that Shuuji finally got his head out of his ass and that Lopmon finally got the recognition and care that he deserved, but that doesn’t erase the incredibly uncomfortable toxicity and abuse on display for so long beforehand.
Shuuji does have a certain degree of self-hatred that he projects onto Lopmon, and hurt people hurt people of course, but it is so difficult to feel for Shuuji when you feel so much worse for Lopmon. It’s never implied that Shuuji’s father beat him or tried to kill him. Abandoning or disowning him is also awful, but Shuuji’s treatment of Lopmon is objectively worse. He never gave him a real chance. Any time he’d humor the idea of Lopmon helping, Lopmon would be unable to voice his opinion well under the harsh eye of Shuuji and immediately get written off as pathetic.
The fact that he realizes that he’s treating Lopmon the same way his father treated him and decides to be even harsher and more malicious instead of using his perspective to have some sympathy for poor Lopmon makes it even more infuriating.
If he had just been a generally annoying prick and then got better, it would have been easier to forgive him and enjoy his redemption and character development. But couple his annoying-prickery with how much of an absolute monster he was to Lopmon (irony) and it’s just too difficult to really appreciate his turnaround, especially that far into things. Lopmon deserved a better partner.
This part of the story is emotional and very compelling. Even if it’s extremely uncomfortable to watch, it’s a realistic outcome in a story like this. I may have hated Shuuji, but I didn’t think he was badly written. The only aspect of his character that I’d say is badly written is how repetitive his dialogue is, but that’s also fairly understandable given his character.
Perhaps I can also say that they went too far with Shuuji if they really wanted him to be sympathetic in the Truthful route. Even in the other routes, they want you to mourn him with the others, and I just never felt like I was given a good reason to.
I saw some people going to bat for Shuuji asking people who hate him if they hate Ken from Adventure 02 because Ken also abused his partner, treated him like shit, and did all sorts of terrible things in general.
This was an interesting argument, especially for me as Ken is one of my favorite characters.
Here’s the thing, yes, Ken was a piece of shit for a long time. But A) he had a more traumatic backstory than Shuuji, making him more sympathetic. And, hell, they both involve overachieving older brothers who look down on them. Ken’s brother, Sam, died after getting hit by a car (After Ken wished he’d disappear no less…), and all of the high expectations for his brother suddenly fell on him. He wound up in the Dark Ocean after that and got infected with a Dark Seed. While the Dark Seed is not a mind-control device, it does highly amplify negative feelings and directly lead to the creation of the Digimon Kaiser.
B) He got shit for eons for what he did as the Digimon Kaiser. He fell into a coma because of Wormmon’s death, he spent quite a while wandering the Digital World cleaning it up and trying to make amends to the Digimon he hurt, and after going on a lone apology tour and refusing to join up with them at first because he didn’t find himself worthy, he joined the good guys in an effort to make up for his mistakes.
It takes a long time before the entire Digidestined 02 group fully trusts him, and even near the very end of the series, even realizing that a Dark Seed was making him evil, he still felt responsible for what he did, sacrificed himself in a clearly vain attempt to help some other kids who were infected by the seeds, and even in Tri it seems like they don’t fully trust him and are quick to believe Ken could have gone down the Kaiser route again.
C)……He’s just a better character all around. He’s more entertaining as a villain, even if you do hate him sometimes for some of the more terrible things he does, he’s more sympathetic as a hero, and his personality when he’s back to good is likable, mature, helpful, smart, and charming. Bear in mind, he’s kicked a puppy. It takes some real legwork, writing-wise, to get me to still like a character who has kicked a puppy.
Shuuji does get better, personality wise, but he’s not anywhere near as compelling as Ken, mostly because we don’t get to see as much as a drop of the shit Ken went through conveyed through Shuuji’s story. None of the others ever bring up how awful he was or that he nearly murdered his partner in cold blood by beating him to near death. In fact, that incident just made the other kids distrust the DIGIMON because of the scary black mist that emanated from Lopmon when he was getting beat. It was almost like they were more upset with Lopmon, and that’s just gross.
Shuuji vaguely brings up his past mistakes a handful of times, but no one’s mad at him after that, Lopmon forgives and forgets with a smile, and Shuuji’s one of the most trusted members of the team.
The other thing people brought up as a defense for Shuuji is the cultural differences. Like, to an American, maybe we don’t get his backstory about familial pressure and expectations as much as someone in an Asian family would, but, even then, I can’t give him much more flak.
Honestly, if there was a route in which you save Ryo and could still let Shuuji bite it (Or the other way around *Badumtss*), I probably would have gone for that before the Truthful route. The only reason I would think twice would be because I wouldn’t want Lopmon to suffer more and die.
The Professor
A man simply known as “The Professor” (*bites tongue to stop myself from making Gilligan’s Island references*) also winds up in the Digital World alongside the kids. He is a professor of folklore, though he’s shunned by his academic peers for his beliefs.
The Professor is a mysterious being, if you couldn’t get that from the fact that he technically has no name. He’s a sweet person who provides a lot of useful information to the kids that slowly helps them unravel the mysteries of this world and their situation. He vanishes for a somewhat long period of time after a death fakeout, but when he returns he starts acting strangely.
The Professor is a source of levelheadedness to most of the characters, particularly Shuuji. Since he is by far the oldest and wisest, he usually has the best course of action in mind. If nothing else, he provides the kids with some context of this world to help guide them to their next goal in returning home.
However, there are numerous moments throughout the game where The Professor is too wrapped up in his own thoughts and concerns and needs Takuma to help ground him again.
The kids being particularly rattled after he ‘dies’ is very understandable. After all, not only does that mean losing their lone adult as a leader, but it also means they’ve lost their source of levelheadedness, maturity, and knowledgeable decision-making. It’s also a cold slap to the face because, if a person like him died, what chance do these kids have?
I did say I was spoiling everything, so here goes – he’s actually Haru or Akiharu, the boy from the beginning of the game who was pushed through a portal. It actually lead back to the human world. He tried to tell the adults at the time what happened and that his sister was still trapped in another world, but they didn’t believe him. They just went off and searched for her normally to no avail.
Haru then started losing his memories of his time there due to the trauma of losing his sister and the guilt of feeling like he abandoned her. However, his main priority in his research was still centered on that shrine and Kemonogami.
His Digimon back then was a Gabumon, who, at this point in time, is usually in Garurumon form. Garurumon initially hates humans, Haru in particular, because he believes Haru abandoned him years ago when he went through the portal. Haru was actually sucked into the portal, but Gabumon didn’t know that.
Feeling betrayed, Gabumon begun to hate all humans and started working with The Master to sacrifice children.
As Akiharu regains his memories of his past experiences in the Digital World, he also remembers Gabumon/Garurumon and wants to mend bridges with him, but Garurumon is hesitant to say the least. He does canonically team up with him one more time to help Miyuki near the end, but only in the Moral and Truthful routes does he return to Akiharu’s side for good and the two properly make up.
Interestingly, Akiharu’s interest in learning and academia came from Gabumon. Akiharu asked a lot of questions, so Gabumon told him to go read a book and learn things on his own. Akiharu decided he’d research for himself whenever he wanted to learn something, leading to him becoming a professor.
I liked The Professor. He was a sweet man who did his best for his sister and those he cared about. There wasn’t really more he could have done back then for either Miyuki or Gabumon. He never put his life above anyone else’s, nearly sacrificing himself several times for the kids.
…….Although, it IS a bit odd that no one insisted on knowing his name before the reveal.
‘Haru’ and Miyuki
I mentioned earlier that Haru and Miyuki come off as creepy. Miyuki is mostly silent and expressionless at all times, though Haru can understand her, and Haru doesn’t behave in the way you’d think a young boy would behave. While he’s dedicated to his sister, he also doesn’t tend to react to things in a normal way. Many times, he doesn’t have much of a reaction at all to anything you say to him.
Miyuki in particular is a mystery because, even though we now know Haru was fine because he went through the portal, Miyuki definitely got consumed by the fog. So how is she alive? For that matter, if The Professor is Haru, who is this Haru?
Miyuki is of the Minase clan – a shrine maiden no less. She possesses the ability to open portals between the two worlds by singing a song. The Master needed to absorb her to gain her powers, but he was only able to get half of her soul when he grabbed her back then. Miyuki’s body and half her soul escaped somehow. While she was still alive, her loss of half her soul left her unable to age, mostly unable to speak, and most of her personality was removed.
Her faithful partner, Renamon, does everything in his power to protect her, and he’s, shockingly, able to keep her safe throughout all that time.
I should point something out. Miyuki and Haru went to the Digital World 50 years ago in real time. Digital World time flows faster. Based on rough estimates from when Takuma went to the human world for a few hours, Miyuki was likely trapped in the Digital World for 4000 years! And, somehow, Renamon was able to keep her safe from The Master and the fog that entire time. That is some impressive work.
Renamon, using his powers of….being a fox because I really don’t think regular Renamon have this power, transforms into Haru throughout all this time to soothe Miyuki because she had been waiting for Haru to come back. The presence of her brother’s image comforted her, but it came at the expense of gradually forgetting about Renamon. It hurt Renamon, but eventually he settled into his new role. Even when his secret is revealed, he spends more time in his Haru form because he had grown used to it.
I enjoyed Haru and Miyuki’s story a lot. It only comes to a satisfying conclusion in the Moral and Truthful routes, but it was still very interesting and well-written. I also kinda just liked having them around before The Master possessed her. It was kinda nice to just check in on them, even if conversations with them rarely amounted to much. Usually, characters that are more or less there to babysit would annoy me in games, but I liked them just fine.
There’s a point in the game where Miyuki does regain the other half of her soul, restoring her personality and ability to talk, allowing you to better connect with her as a character. She’s a sweetheart, really. She tries her best to help everyone, and she even gains a particularly strong bond with Takuma. She’s also very strong to have withstood everything she’s endured over thousands of years without breaking. I liked her quite a bit and did everything I could to fight for her in the end.
Miyuki’s story is so sad, though, no matter what route you take. Obviously, it’s best in Moral and Truthful, but even then she still suffered through thousands of years of being trapped in an alternate world with danger around every corner and half her soul being taken by the Master. Even when she reunites with her real brother, he’s in his 60s and she’s obviously going to outlive him by a significant margin. When she returns to the human world, she also has a bit of heavy culture shock as she doesn’t understand the changes that have occurred in the world in the past 50 years. They don’t say it, but she also pretty clearly has to deal with the death of her parents. It’s a lot to take in and process, but at least she has her brother now. And Renamon, depending on the route.
Speaking of Renamon, while I did love Renamon in this game, I feel like the relationship between Renamon and Miyuki was only really done justice in the Moral route. Things go to hell for most of them in Harmonious and Wrathful, but even in Truthful I feel like their relationship didn’t get enough closure and focus. Moral was the only one where their bond was given proper attention. Not that I’m complaining, at least it was in one route, but I find it weird that it wasn’t given good focus in Truthful too.
Story
Survive’s story is more or less the exact same across all routes barring some mild changes in dialogue depending on your choices for the first eight parts. The lone exception is Truthful since obviously numerous things change with Ryo and Shuuji surviving.
You can skip through most dialogue in Parts 1-8 after you’ve done one playthrough to make it easier to sit through, but it does still take a while.
While this is a bit of a chore, each route offers a mostly unique experience, character arc, and story. There are also scenes and conversations in Parts 1-8 you can try to get that you might have missed before, even if they don’t really impact the plot very much. It creates a good amount of replayability.
I could have loaded a save to get the Harmonious route without going through all eight parts again, but I fully replayed the game for each route because I wanted to get as much as possible out of each route and karma alignment answers.
The story itself is very well-done. I enjoyed it quite a lot. In fact, it’s one of my favorite stories in the franchise. I do think that, but the format that it’s currently in makes me never want to revisit it again. It has very interesting lore, engaging characters, for the most part, great chemistry between all the characters, shocking, emotional, and adorable moments, and a pretty decent villain.
The aspect of the Digital World previously being one with the human world and everyone had a Digimon partner back then but then the worlds separated when the humans’ bonds with their Digimon partners weakened is intriguing. The Digimon or Kemonogami basically suffer the same fate as some figures in real legends where it’s like we used to see these beings all the time but then we lost contact because our connection to the spiritual world weakened for one reason or another.
Years ago, the stability between the worlds was maintained by religion and spiritualism. Unlike recently where many children become sacrifices by just happening upon a portal around the shrine, they’d actually ritualistically sacrifice human children to the Digimon to gain their power back in ancient times. Since fewer people know about these legends let alone believe enough to make sacrifices, the connection has weakened.
The ties between the two worlds still exist, though, and tragic or terrible events in the Digital World cause major disasters in those spots in the human world.
In all of the main routes, you never find out what The Master’s true motives or identity are. Moral gets the closest, but I’ll address that later. As a result, The Master can come off as just a big bad evil dude in most of the routes/endings. The main conflict with him is that, yeah, his existence keeps the Digital World stable, so killing him….well, you get it. However, without defeating The Master or getting Miyuki back from him, they can’t go home, and more kids will just wind up dying to him, so they’re in a bit of a pickle.
There’s a little bit of additional lore in memories you can find while scanning with your camera, but these mostly just amount to cautionary tales about the fog. The first three parts of all the memories can be found in any route, but you can only access the final two of each through their designated route. I managed to get all of them but the final two for Moral because, since Moral was my first playthrough, I didn’t know to look for those….And I’m not sure I would have had the patience to look anyway at that point.
The evolution points of the story are usually quite satisfying and well done. Being a big Digimon fan since I was a kid, some of the evolutions made me cheer out loud. However, several others were a wee bit disappointing.
Some evolutions had huge buildups while others were just kinda out of nowhere. I know this is out of necessity. The game is long enough without trying to dedicate huge moments and plotlines to each and every evolution, but I wish it was a bit more balanced.
It’s a very strong story in pretty much all the routes, to varying degrees. However, I have to address some of the more frustrating aspects of the storytelling.
As much as I loved it from start to finish, I was getting increasingly impatient with the pacing to the point where I was really trying to just plow through the rest of the game in the end. The story wasn’t losing me. I was just getting frustrated at how the game kept meandering, especially when it came to dialogue that didn’t matter (as in you get nothing from it and you don’t even get a chance at increasing anyone’s affinity. It’s also just not that interesting sometimes if you want to give it story value.) and repeating stuff over and over.
The conversations all feel like they could be edited with some entirely omitted. The group conversations are the worst offenders. I get that everyone should have a turn speaking, but they drag on for so long many times, and there are too many instances where we have a long conversation only to have it wind up with little progress, if any.
The repetition in scenes was less frequent but very annoying. For instance, three different Digimon tell us that a character’s in the castle, and when we regroup with the others it’s all –
“Do you think she’s in the castle?”
“Eh, maybe?”
*goes to the castle*
*explores outside*
“Huh, not here. Maybe she’s IN the castle.”
Then “Oh she’s hiding in this treasure chest.”
“No, she’s not”
*pushes me back to the map screen* “
We know she’s in the treasure chest.”
“Is not!”
*pushes me to the map screen*
“Open the damn treasure chest!”
This comes off like it’s meant to be a joke, but it just winds up being annoying. They could have all this be a cutscene in itself instead of making me go through the motions of reentering from the map.
Interestingly, on my third and fourth playthrough….it didn’t boot me out to the map each time. I just selected the treasure chest three times and that was it. So, did the designers realize how annoying that was and decided to spare you from having to do it a third time?
There are parts in the sewers and a castle where you’re just sent down halls several times for no real reason.
In the final part, the big battle against The Master, before we get to the final battle (In the Moral Route) all the characters have to confront shadows of themselves who echo their biggest insecurities. And each scene is the same. “I used to think that, but not anymore! Not since my character development!”
Partner Digimon: “That’s right! Let’s show this shadow who’s boss!”
And then we have to not only fight an enemy we’ve fought a million times by now, but the fight has to be interrupted by a mini-cutscene of the focal characters reiterating the same sentiment as before the fight started. Why? Did they think we forgot they said that?
I thought this might be where the other Digimon reach their Mega stages if your affinity is high enough, which would make these scenes worth it, but if your affinity isn’t high enough on any of them, they just become chores to sit through, and that’s your own fault. I now realize that I was wrong. The Mega evolutions happen long before this point if your affinity is high enough, so it’s just repetitive and annoying.
The most egregious example in this part is with The Professor and Miyuki who not only go through this as well, but this comes immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY, after they just processed the exact things the shadows are bringing up in the previous scene. And, like typical, they have to drag out the dialogue to make it even more annoying to sit through. Given that patience was already running thin at this point in the game, it’s almost like they were taunting me.
THIS is what people are really talking about when it comes to the pacing issues with this game. For most people, it’s not a case of “Ooh, scary words in my game! I no want book! Me going back to Fortnite!” It’s a case of, well, poor pacing. That’s why I really think this would have thrived as a CYOA novel or a manga or something. Those mediums would usually tighten up the pace, and without having to interrupt the story with battles and exploration, it could come off much better by default anyway.
It’s not like they’re stretching for playtime either. I invested 31 hours into one playthrough. Granted, some of that time is AFK, but each part usually lasted about two hours for me. Two hour parts with 12 parts is 24 hours.
It’s a shame because, like I said, I do love the story. But the pacing really hindered it. It’s a very love-hate relationship at points, but we make it work.
There are four routes and five endings in Survive. I will be going through each route in the order I completed them.
Moral (Second Best Ending – Two Deaths)
The first route I got was Moral, and, to my pleasant surprise, it is the second best route in the game. It’s the best ending in the game on your first time through because you’re unable to get the ‘true’ or best ending on your first playthrough. Is that a little bit unfair? Yeah, kinda. But that’s also another staple of many visual novels, so I guess just deal with it.
Moral focuses more primarily on Haru, Miyuki, Renamon, Garurumon, and Takuma.
Like in all the routes, The Master has gotten hold of Miyuki after you came back from the human world. How? I have no clue. The others act as if they’ve been dealing with Miyuki for the past ten days (Three hours for Takuma) that Takuma has been gone. But Miyuki was with Takuma the entire time in the human world, so….I dunno. She’s possessed and has been attacking the group numerous times through a variety of sneak attacks and illusions.
Most of them have given up hope that Miyuki can be reasoned with, but Takuma refuses to give up – as do Akiharu and Renamon.
In all of the base routes at the amusement park segment, one character is set to die. In Moral, it’s Jijimon. He sacrifices himself to save the kids from an attack. While we don’t get nearly as much time with Jijimon as we do the other characters who are set to die in the main routes at this point, it was still a very sad death. He was a noble creature who just wanted to protect the little ones at the park and guide the kids as best he could.
Moral involves a lot of trying to get Miyuki to break free of The Master’s control through everyone’s voices, but primarily Akiharu, Renamon, and Takuma. Eventually, the Master tries to secure control over her by fusing her with a bunch of Kenzoku – his dark minions which are some of the toughest enemies in the game. She gets a pretty cool character design when this happens and becomes an enemy herself.
Meanwhile. Garurumon comes back being chased by some of Piedmon’s leftover Puppetmon goons. He refused to work with The Master anymore because he wants to protect Akiharu and the other kids, and they blamed him for Piedmon’s death, though he wasn’t responsible. He’s wounded, and Akiharu refuses to abandon him again, as does the rest of the group.
It takes more conversation in the middle of battle before he realizes The Professor is Akiharu, but….that doesn’t really make a lot of sense given the previous events. Whatever.
The point is that Garurumon and Akiharu finally clear the air and restore their bond, allowing him to become MetalGarurumon, one of the evolutions that made me cheer because I adore MetalGarurumon.
After the battle is over, Gabumon becomes a part of the team, which is essential for an awesome twist later in the game. He’s still uncomfortable around people, but he’s dedicated to Akiharu once again.
As you get further into the route, the aspect of leaving the partner Digimon once the final battle is over starts bothering everyone. They don’t want to leave their partners, but they also want to go back home. Time’s a wastin’, though, so while we get some somber discussion about it, they have to press on.
They reach the shrine, which is where The Master’s main body lies. The way down to the final floor is sealed by a barrier and a thick stone door that can only be unlocked with a magatama, which is basically a set of beads used in ritualistic and religious practices. They get one by fighting one of The Master’s Puppetmon and enter the last room of the shrine.
There are murals on every floor of this shrine, but there is a much larger and more impressive mural in this final floor main room. They discuss more lore about the Kemonogami that I’ve already gone over but will come into play in the final end of this route.
They enter one final room that is much creepier as it looks like something out of Silent Hill. The walls looks like they’re made of flesh and have what look like human faces carved into them. As they move further into it, they start getting text messages.
Something I haven’t addressed in the story yet is that the group has been getting garbled texts fairly regularly in the Digital World. They can’t understand anything in these messages, and they started ignoring them after a while. These new messages are more legible for some reason. The further along into the shrine they go, the more legible the texts become.
The Professor theorizes that they’re closest to their world in the deepest part of the shrine, allowing the text messages to come through more clearly.
Does this matter?
…..Not really in any other route but this one. But we’ll get to that later.
As they confront the Miyuzoku, they try over and over to reach Miyuki, battling her several times inbetween. Renamon is eventually able to fully get through to her. Miyuki remembers her partner and even recognizes The Professor as Akiharu. Despite it seeming like they’re winning, the Master won’t let go of Miyuki.
He tries to attack Akiharu, but Renamon pushes him out of the way, taking the fatal blow for him. Miyuki comes to her senses again as Renamon starts dying from his wounds. She’s completely distraught over what she’s done to Renamon, but Renamon tries to comfort her in his final moments.
As Renamon fades away, Miyuki is so heartbroken that she loses herself to the Master’s control again.
Anyway, blah blah blah…….OMNIMON!
Yeah, I’m not even gonna bother explaining why this happens, but Takuma’s Agumon and Akiharu’s Gabumon fuse to become one of the coolest Digimon ever – OMNIMON!
And, no, I’m not going to call him Omegamon. I don’t know why people have their panties in a twist over insisting on calling him that now. And I doubly don’t care that that’s what he’s referred to as in the game. He’ll always be Omnimon to me.
Moral is the only route in which you get Omnimon. Not even in Truthful do you get this, so the fact that I got this on my first playthrough made the struggles getting here worth the fuss.
Omnimon finally defeats Miyuzoku, freeing her from The Master’s grasp. Renamon is….still dying, for some reason. I saw him burst into light fragments, but okay.
Unlike how Digimon death is handled in most parts of the franchise, Digimon death is permanent in Survive……usually.
Renamon bursts into light fragments (again) after saying goodbye to Miyuki, but this time it’s different. Miyuki’s tears merge with the bits of light and form a Digiegg.
….Okay.
I would have no issue with this, honestly. In fact, the scene reminded me a lot of Takeru watching Angemon die and then seeing the Digiegg on the ground. Renamon being in an egg and Miyuki vowing to wait as long as it takes to see him again would be perfect, especially since Renamon spent so long waiting for Miyuki to come back to him…..Except they basically ruin this beautifully sad moment almost immediately.
It takes all of a scene or two, literally like five minutes of play time, before the egg hatches….into a Renamon. Not his baby form. Not his in-training form, even. Rookie level Renamon. Oh yeah, Miyuki. Wait however long it takes for him to come back to you. That could take upwards of the length of time required to microwave a Hot Pocket! The dedication!
As if that weren’t bad enough, Renamon’s not even tired after dying and coming back to life. He immediately Warp Evolves to Sakuyamon right after hatching. What was even the point of that death if they were just going to do that? Give us a bit of time to miss him before you bring him back.
Anyway, they still have to deal with The Master, and once they get done talking The Master whisks them all into his little pocket dimension to have one final fight.
After a battle, we get that annoying part I mentioned before where everyone confronts dark clones of themselves and they all have to say basically the same thing until we cycle through all the characters except Takuma for some reason.
I will say that these scenes have one saving grace – Minoru’s part. It is absolutely hilarious. Catches you completely off guard in a moment like this. It’s great. I won’t even spoil it.
Once that’s all done, we once again direct our attention to The Master. Miyuki explains that she can feel the souls within the Master. He covets these souls because he needs them to sustain the world.
Okay…pause.
In Moral, they kinda frame it like The Master was still trying to do good by maintaining stability in the Digital World, which…he kinda was. Just his existence is keeping the Digital World afloat, which keeps the human world stable as well.
He outright says, once he’s reverted back to a single soul, that all he wanted was to protect this world and keep it from collapsing….which isn’t right if you know the lore behind who The Master really is and why he became that way.
You really only learn of that stuff through the Truthful route, which I hadn’t done yet.
The Moral route tries really hard to nudge you into talking with your enemies, trying to hear them out, giving them a chance to change their ways, etc. so you do have the option to give The Master a chance to talk it out, but it doesn’t work.
Renamon and Gabumon argue that the Master will never listen to reason. He doesn’t even register that they’re there. He’s just a mindless power obsessed with destruction. But when you defeat him he turns into a single soul, stripped of all the souls he had collected over the years. And he still asserts that all he wanted to do was protect this world. The only way to protect the world from collapse is by using the power of the sacrifices.
Then as the Master fades away, everyone feels bad because they think the Master only did what he did for the sake of protecting the Digital World, and, by extension he was protecting all of the Digimon.
…………No.
He still murdered thousands of kids horrifically over the years. And, remember, when a fated child dies, their Digimon partner dies too. So them being all teary eyed and going “Aw, he was trying to protect us” really falls flat to me. Doubly so now that I’ve played Truthful because, if that ending is canon, then he was really just lying to the kids here. And, even worse, maybe trying to convince them to continue his legacy and gather sacrifices for him.
At least Agumon sets them straight and tells The Master that any world sustained by killing children doesn’t deserve to go on, even if it’s theirs, so it didn’t bother me too much.
They wonder how the world can be sustained if they’re not collecting sacrifices anymore. The Professor has a theory.
During the battle, Takuma started getting messages about a viral video showing Agumon and Takuma fighting Piedmon. They heard a bunch of voices and saw lights as they read the comments and saw the views on the video. This caused The Master pain and weakened him enough for them to take him down.
These comments and the views on this video drew the attention of millions of people. Their thoughts and beliefs into this world had an impact on the Digital World and The Master. They quelled the rage inside of him, like an offering would do for a god, as Aoi put it.
Rewinding back to the lore of the game, this does make sense. The only reason the worlds separated in the first place was because humans were losing their bonds with their partners. The religious ones who still believed and offered sacrifices regularly helped maintain the world. But over time even that waned and caused instability. Only by forcibly obtaining sacrifices and generating power from the souls and the rumors of kids going missing was the link still maintained.
Also, for those thinking the social media aspect is lame, let me remind you that an extremely similar thing happened in Digimon the Movie where they used the power of people sending in emails to stop Diaboromon and power up Omnimon.
If human thought, focus, and attention maintains this world, then they need to generate more of it. So, basically, it’s fairy or Santa logic. If they get more people to believe in Kemonogami and ensure that they stay in the public consciousness, they can maintain the Digital World.
With a new plan established, they invite their Digimon friends to join them in the real world….and here’s the one aspect of this route that does tick me off.
The Digimon decline going back with them….for no real reason. They just say they feel like it’s not the right time….
I guess they still wanted the Moral route to have a slightly bittersweet taste to it so the Truthful route would come out looking the best (Even though we still lost two people and three Digimon…) so they were like “Nah, let’s not let them live FULLY happily ever after. Bye bye, Digimon partners!”
So the kids all bid their Digimon farewell, hoping to see them again in the future.
Now, you may think this isn’t a huge deal. After all, Miyuki is back in the human world, and, if she wanted to, she could open a portal at any time to visit them.
Well, not only have they clearly not done that after the one year time skip at the end, but let me remind you that time works differently between the two worlds.
When Takuma came back to the Digital World after spending like three hours in the real world, they said he had been gone for ten days.
So, I did math, I hope you’re proud of me, one year in the real world would be 80 YEARS FOR THE DIGIMON. They don’t age, apparently, but dear god that’s a long time to wait, if they even decide a year’s wait is long enough. Who knows?
Anyway, a year later we see Miyuki and Akiharu. He’s discussing how he’s keeping an eye on social media to ensure that people are still taking an interest in the Kemonogami and the alternate world. Takuma and the others are using videos and photos they took in that world to further generate interest. The shrine is rebuilt and more popular than ever, and it seems like a new religion may come of this.
Since so much of this attention is centered in the digital realm and essentially data is being used to sustain the alternate world, Akiharu states that the ripple effect may eventually cause people to call the alternate world the Digital World and the Kemonogami may be called Digimon.
Even though, ya know, they already were acting like digital beings in a digital world, but I guess you can brush some of that stuff off like it was just mystical stuff looking like digital stuff.
They also theorize that the more changes that occur in the human world in response to the Digimon and Digital World stuff, the more the Digital World will take on the appearance of the human world. And soon enough the door will open again….even though…can’t Miyuki open it herself anymore?
Anyway, since it’s been a year, the kids have decided to meet up with Miyuki and Akiharu for a visit. As they greet them, the game ends.
I get where they were going with this ending. They talked about how gods don’t have physical forms and part of their power in religion is people’s faith in them despite not sharing the physical realm. I think the idea was to not bring the Digimon back because they wanted there to be faith in this world and these creatures instead of just bringing them in and saying “Hey! Magical creatures with superpowers exist!” Even though that would most certainly generate beliefs and thoughts into the Digital World to maintain it, it may also cause chaos.
I just wish they hadn’t worded it like “Oh no, it’s not time yet. We can’t explain why, but it’s not time for us to go with you yet.”
Having played every other route, I am very happy that I got Moral first. Not just because it’s the best base route, but also because I think going through this route first makes you appreciate the other routes even more. I was happy to get a more optimistic ending in Truthful, and the more tragic events of Wrathful and Harmonious impacted me harder.
Also, this is the only route that effectively acts as a prequel for Digimon and the Digital World. Truthful touches upon it, but Harmonious and Wrathful don’t make any mentions of them.
One final thing, after the end credits, the game….kinda taunts you for not saving Ryo. A pop up comes up saying Ryo could have been saved if his affinity was higher. But, no, he couldn’t have. Unless you’re in New Game+, Ryo can’t be saved no matter how high you get his affinity. It’s a scripted event in all routes except Truthful. I know it’s basically trying to hint that you can save Ryo if you play again, but if you start a normal game over again to try to save Ryo, it won’t work.
Truthful Route (Best Ending – Just This Once….Everybody Lives!) and New Game + Notes
One of the other reasons I decided to reinstall the game was because I had learned some benefits of New Game+.
– You’re able to keep your evolution trees, Digimon levels, and allied Digimon, making battles a breeze on subsequent replays.
– You keep a bunch of your items too.
– While affinity levels reset, you get more affinity points per successful interaction.
– You can skip dialogue you’ve already gone through in other routes much more quickly.
– It’s literally the only way you can save Ryo and Shuuji and get the true ending.
– It’s also the only route in which you get specific Mega evolutions for certain Digimon.
However, while these are attractive benefits to New Game +, there are also some caveats to keep in mind.
– Your affinity levels on everyone reset, so you need to rebuild everyone’s affinity to get their battle benefits.
– New Game + only works by starting the game from the last save of your previous game. The save file needs to have the word “Complete” on it, otherwise you’ll waste your time starting a new playthrough from scratch. I caught myself early on this, but I still wasted time and was frustrated for it.
– The skip issues I mentioned earlier.
Truthful doesn’t really follow any subset of characters anymore closely like the other routes. Instead, it focuses more on the lore of the game.
But before we get to that, we have to cause a ripple effect by saving Ryo. In New Game+, if Ryo’s affinity gets above 30 before you get to the end of Part 3, you will save Ryo from his foggy fate, and subsequently you will also save Shuuji no matter his affinity because Ryo saves Shuuji in the end of Part 5.
Ryo’s death caused a domino effect and dampened everyone’s spirits early on. Then Shuuji died and made things worse. With both of them living and undergoing character development, the tone stays much more optimistic than it is in the other routes. We even avoid having any deaths in the final amusement park segment when every other route has one.
You, of course, get the evolved forms of Kunemon and Lopmon if you continue improving their affinity, which is very beneficial in battle and for completion purposes. You even get to use Wendigomon, which is…….wow. It’s never commented on, but….wow.
Because they both live, The Professor has more time to analyze the murals in the shrine. Shuuji is helping him, and he actually helps reveal a key component of defeating The Master – the four Sovereign Monsters.
In the other routes, we learn only a tiny bit about these monsters. We don’t even learn their names let alone meet them. But in Truthful, we not only learn what and who these monsters are, but we’re also sent on a journey to meet and ally with all of them.
The Sovereign Monsters were originally the partners of four sacrificed children from hundreds of years ago. There were five sacrifices, with the fifth being Haruchika Minase – the ancestor of Miyuki and Akiharu.
Haruchika despised the fact that he was sacrificed. In particular, he was upset at his sister, Yukiha, for sacrificing him. He wanted revenge on his sister, the Minase clan, and the entire human world. His rage and thirst for revenge turned his partner, Fanglongmon, into The Master through a Dark Evolution. To give him more power, he told him to feed off of darkness and hate and he fused himself with The Master.
In order to stop their friend’s rampage, the four unnamed fated children’s partners evolved into the four Sovereign Monsters – Azulongmon, Ebonwumon, Zhuqiaomon, and Baihumon. They managed to defeat The Master, but they realized they didn’t have the heart to kill him. Instead, they sealed his powers and separated into the four cardinal directions. Each sat in a hidden shrine in their respective direction keeping The Master’s powers at bay, with the spirits of their partners also chained to each shrine. But over thousands of years in the Digital World, their powers waned and The Master was able to slowly break through their seal.
While the Sovereign Monsters are hostile to the fated children, particularly Zhuqiaomon who basically hates humans and his own partner most specifically, they do agree to help the new generation of fated children in their attempt to take down The Master once and for all after they pass a test to prove they’re worthy. That test is mostly just a battle with each of them. Once you pass, you’re given their powers.
Unlike when you recruit other allies, the Sovereign Monsters do not act as separate Digimon in your roster. Instead, Floramon, Labramon, Falcomon, and Syakkomon gain the ability to evolve into them as a separate Mega evolution. No one ever comments on this, which I think is a missed opportunity, but whatever.
One thing I should bring up is when they find the final Sovereign Monster. It’s under the school, and the Suzaku Boy (The ghost of the partner of Zhuqiaomon. Each partner’s only name is based on the real shijin or Four Symbols in Japanese mythology. The others are Byakko, Seiryu, and Genbu.) appears in the school.
This freaks out Ryo, who is still terrified of ghosts, and as they start encountering the ghost more and more, the others start freaking out too.
….Despite the fact that A) They’ve already encountered three ghosts up to now and haven’t reacted like this. And B) He obviously looks exactly the same, if not more approachable, than the other Sovereign partner ghosts.
He can’t speak when he’s up in the main school building because he’s restricted to the shrine underneath, which is why he didn’t talk to anyone, but why are they acting this way? Being fair, Takuma does bring up that they’ve encountered ghosts in this world before and just…I dunno, forgot about those times, but it was just a weird writing choice for it to cause a brief panic. Ryo, I totally get. Not the others.
Miyuki, still trapped in The Master’s realm, somehow meets up with Yukiha’s ghost. She’s waiting for her brother to return. Before Miyuki can ask her many questions, she loses her consciousness to The Master once more.
Back with the others, they make their way through the shrine to The Master’s main body, but the door is sealed shut. The Sovereign partners appear and say they will break the seal. They have that power because the seal was made by the Sovereign Monsters. Since they’re connected to them, they can break it.
Once you make it down to the final level, you’re forced to talk to literally everyone. And literally everyone tells you to talk to literally everyone. Thank. You.
Once you cycle through most of them, The Professor explains the lore of the world.
The one note of lore I will discuss here is that the memories you collect do explain the origins of these murals. Specifically, The Tale of the Mural. You can only get all of these memories by going through the Wrathful route.
The group asks if humans or Digimon painted these murals, and it’s kinda a combination of both. Inspired by the stories told to him by his partner Digimon and ancient Digimon he met, a fated child (I say that, but he was probably older) painted these murals as his grand master work. He spent an extremely long time painting these murals. He spent the most time in the bottom floor, the last room, and worked his way up.
However, a strange fog started seeping into the floor, so they rushed through completing each room’s mural until he got to the top. He was so weakened by the effects of the fog (or….maybe it was something else. I dunno. The fog isn’t a poisonous mist.) that he had to guide his partner Digimon into painting it for him. He managed to just barely complete it, but the painter died shortly after.
The story told in the murals gives them all hope that the worlds can once again become one and people can find peace together with the Digimon.
They finally move on to the last room where The Master, possessing Miyuki, and the Sovereign partners wait.
The spirits try one final time to appeal to Haruchika. They argue that anyone he has a grudge against isn’t even alive anymore. He needs to calm his rage. However, he refuses. He can’t forget what was done to him. How he was abandoned and cast aside by his clan and sister.
Here’s where things get….iffy.
Miyuki starts regaining control of her body a little and yells out that that’s not what happened. His rage has been misplaced.
After a battle, Miyuki is finally freed. Once she reunites with her brother properly, she begs the others to save him. He’s bearing a grudge against being made into a sacrifice, but, according to her, that’s not what happened.
As the spirits explain that they need to let Haruchika tell his side of the story, they all get whisked away to The Master’s realm. He’s pissed. Miyuki and Akiharu have reunited, her brother came for her, but his sister never came for him. He wonders why Miyuki isn’t mad at Akiharu for abandoning her.
They explain that their situation isn’t like that. She sent him away to protect him, sacrificing herself to save her brother. She’d never despise him for living a life after that. Garurumon also argues that, in all that time, Akiharu never stopped thinking of Miyuki either. All those years, even after his memories started fading, he still tried to save her. Renamon adds that Miyuki never gave up either. Even being robbed of half her soul and being trapped for thousands of years, she never lost hope that her brother would come for her.
Miyuki tells The Master that he was never abandoned either. He won’t hear of it, and another final battle starts.
At a point in the battle, Miyuki weakens The Master with her song. Once you win the fight, it seems like The Master is defeated, but it’s not that simple. Haruchika has been split from The Master, but his Digimon still lives. Fanglongmon is by his side, fueled by his rage. He has taken on a corrupted form called Fanglongmon Ruin Mode.
What’s worse is that Miyuki opened a portal with her song, giving Fanglongmon and Haruchika a chance to escape to the human world and cause massive destruction if they don’t stop them or stall them until the door closes.
They head into battle one more time to take down Fanglongmon.
In the middle of battle, they see a light shining through the portal. Like in Moral, we hear people reacting to the viral video of Takuma and Agumon fighting Piedmon. Unlike in Moral, however, the belief in the Kemonogami gives everyone a buff and weakens Fanglongmon. But, despite this, the battle still seems like it might wind up in Fanglongmon’s favor.
Suddenly, a light appears in front of Miyuki and engulfs her. She takes on the form of Yukiha. Fanglongmon is actually pissed at seeing her, yelling about why she chose now of all times to return. A black mist appears over Fanglongmon’s body, and Yukiha identifies it as an aura of dark malice. Yukiha takes in this malice, weakening Fanglongmon further. She tells the others to strike now and save her brother.
After one more battle, Fanglongmong Ruin Mode is defeated, and he returns to normal Fanglongmon. Yukiha says all is good. The malicious aura is gone, and now Fanglongmon can look after this world in his proper form.
Fanglongmon….recognizes her, somehow, saying it’s been a very long time since they last saw each other. He couldn’t have possibly have met her, but whatever.
Yukiha explains that she didn’t abandon her brother. She planned on following him, but she had familial duties to protect her clan and ensure peace for the people. I don’t know what she does to do all that. She is a shrine maiden, but her only power seems to be opening portals to sacrifice people in. She did exist in the Kamakura period, so she probably had a decent amount of stuff to deal with. Maybe in this situation, she’s like a village elder or something.
By the time she had ensured her clan was safe and in peace, she was far too old to traverse to the Digital World and passed away.
Fanglongmon figures out that she entrusted her reunion to her descendants, and she bent the laws of fate to return to him through Miyuki and embrace her brother once more. She asks if Fanglongmon will return her brother to her.
Haruchika appears, having heard everything. He’s deeply regretful for what he’s done, having lost himself to rage and malice, nearly destroying the world – he feels he can’t atone for what he’s done.
Yukiha says his tears are atonement enough.
Yeah, here’s where they started to lose me.
First of all, they act as if Haruchika had it ‘all wrong.’ That his sister didn’t abandon him. Didn’t throw him away.
Sure, she intended on coming through the portal later, but A) she had the opportunity to do that the first time she opened the portal but didn’t. And B) She still sacrificed her brother! And four other people who were seemingly friends or close vassals of their clan given that they call Haruchika “Master Haruchika” in flashbacks. She had no idea what was in this world, but she knew there was no coming back. She knew there were monsters within it. You don’t call people “Sacrifices” without knowing you’re basically damning them to death.
She still did that. As far as I know from everything I read about what happened back then, she did it willingly and did it for the power of the Kemonogami. That’s what he was really mad about in the flashbacks – Being made into a sacrifice. I imagine his rage at his clan specifically was because…why was he made into a sacrifice if he came from such an important family? Was he born to be a sacrifice? The stuff about being mad that his sister didn’t come back for him didn’t become a thing until much later.
Second of all, IS IT?! Is it REALLY enough atonement for him to cry about what he did? He killed god knows how many children and just as many if not many more Digimon all in a thirst for power to get revenge on the entire world. But he squirts out a few tears and says he’s sorry and that’s enough? I get that the game is ending, but yeesh.
Also, backing up a tad, this is why the ending of Moral, retroactively, becomes a bit confusing and seems like it was just the Master tricking the others. He never had the Digital World or the Digimon in mind. His one goal was always to achieve the power he needed for his revenge.
Kill his sister.
Kill his clan.
Destroy the world.
That’s all he cared about. He didn’t care about his friends or their Digimon or even his own Digimon. That Moral acts as if he was doing a noble thing the wrong way just doesn’t add up with this true ending.
Haruchika tells the kids that he thinks they can set the world right since they had the power to break the bonds of fate. From now on, he’ll watch over the Digital World with his sister and find a place to enjoy peace finally in a world that’s not ravaged by war. They “went into the light.” which I don’t know if that means they went to heaven or just moved to another non-nightmare realm to watch over things.
Anyhoo, now that The Master has reverted back to his true form while the door was open, it connected the two worlds. That doesn’t fully make sense because the two worlds were separated before The Master existed, but whatever. In every route, The Master is the lynchpin in maintaining the stability between the worlds, and, once he’s gone, the worlds forcibly merge again…..Except in Moral where, despite him dying, it doesn’t cause the door to stay open or force the two worlds together. The door closes, and they maintain the stability with viral internet marketing.
Anyhoo again, as the worlds re-merge, human souls will once again find connections with Digimon. All of the kids declare that they’ll bring their partners back home with them to live out their days happily together. Even Shuuji, who doesn’t care what his family will think of Lopmon.
They’re all ready to herald in a new era – a new generation of humans living side by side with their Digimon partners.
Honestly, the absolute end of Truthful after this is a bit lackluster. Takuma explains in voiceover that, while things were chaotic in the human world at first, humans have started to accept Digimon, both wild ones and partners.
We cut to a set of younger kids at the shrine. They heard rumors that a bunch of kids met some monsters and had a crazy adventure near this shrine so they want to see if they can meet some monsters. One of the kids says people online have taken to calling the monsters “Digital monsters” or “Digimon” for short.
Why?
Again, Moral is the only route that gives any sort of real explanation behind the name. Two endings don’t even use the proper names.
They’re worried they might get attacked, but suddenly a little DemiVeemon, who is not obtainable in the game, pops up and says he’s been waiting for the main kid to show up.
The end.
I called this the best ending because no one dies, and the kids can live happily with their partners, and the world’s response is the most positive.
….BUT….It’s also a bit overly optimistic for a horror game. Haruchika is forgiven rather easily for killing untold amounts of children over hundreds of years in a bid for revenge and nearly destroying the world.
They make off like Yukiha didn’t do anything wrong when that’s…wrong. You could argue that she didn’t have a choice but to sacrifice people because, back then, it was considered a religious ritual to gain prosperity, and they were in a time of war, but it doesn’t actually give you anything.
In fact, given what we know about the link between worlds, sacrificing kids may actually cause damage in the human world. In the base routes, the spots where Shuuji and Ryo died in the Digital World created natural disasters and accidents in the human world. In fact, in Truthful, they say it’s even worse because, in order to explain the accident with the cable car in the human world, they say it’s the spot where Ryo NEARLY got taken by the fog. And the accident at the factory was just where they fought Piedmon. So even having a near death experience or fighting a bad guy can cause damage in the human world.
She didn’t know all that, fair enough. Just like she had no way of knowing about the time dilation in the Digital World meaning even waiting a few days to follow her brother would have been around a year’s worth of time in the Digital World.
But, still, it’s hard to ignore that she did willingly sacrifice her brother and four other kids and act like she did nothing wrong. She doesn’t even say she’s sorry or that she regrets sacrificing him.
Not to mention that, while I’m all for a happy ending, basically just having Takuma say that the world was chaotic for a while and now it’s better and more accepting of the Digimon feels lazy. Even in the far more light-hearted original anime series, they still hid their Digimon and feared them being discovered because they worried they’d be taken away, studied, and possibly even killed. Only in the very end of Adventure 02 did Digimon become a widely known and accepted thing, and that was after they had their asses saved by good people with good Digimon numerous times.
Actually, this entire absolute end feels lazy. It’s the shortest of the absolute ends. Even the fully bad ending/game over sequence is longer. The other kids never show up – not even Takuma. He only gives some narration. No updates on how they’re doing or what they’re doing to help the world transition like in the other ends.
They also just chuck in the mention of Digimon becoming the name for these creatures without explaining why. This is the TRUE ending. You need to do better than that. It’s the name of the goddamn game and franchise! You can’t just be like “Oh, yeah, how do we connect this back to Digimon?….Eh just….call them Digimon. I don’t care.”
That only made sense in Moral because it was a hypothetical name The Professor came up with based on the fact that Digital data was being used to maintain the alternate world. The real monsters weren’t present in their world in that route, so the belief in them due to seeing and spreading images and videos of them all over the internet became the new religion, so to speak.
Granted, even in Moral, it’s questionable whether that would work because the aim was to one day open the door back up, let the Digimon through, and merge the worlds again, which would mean the digital aspect would be pointless, but at least it would still make sense as an original name that might stick.
In Truthful, what, are they calling them Digimon because they’re monsters they first saw in a digital format? If that was the case, literally every creepypasta and SCP monster would like a word with you.
Slenderman? More like Digislenderman! Siren Head? More like Digisirenhead! The Rake? More like the Digirake!
After waiting through 20+ minutes of credits (That you can skip, admittedly, but goddamn.) your last benefit of going through Truthful is just an admittedly cute picture of the selfie they all took together before they left for the final battle.
Truthful may be the ‘best’ ending in regards to everyone surviving and uncovering the full lore of the game. But, if you ask me, the absolute end is extremely lackluster and needed to be fleshed out a bit more to be fully satisfying.
Harmonious Ending (Second/Third Worst Ending – Four Survivors)
I wanted to save Wrathful for last because I figured that was the worst ending, for obvious reasons, and I tend to save worst endings for last if I can, but….both Harmony and Wrathful are pretty even in how ‘good’ they are. It just depends on if you value the lives of the characters more or the absolute ending more.
If you value the lives of the characters more, this is the second worst ending with only four survivors. If you value the absolute ending more, this is the third worst ending because it’s more optimistic than Wrathful.
You’d think Harmony!Takuma would be the nicest or the most well-liked of the versions of him, but he’s really not. Half of the responses feel like agreeing with Shuuji and being a coward or pessimist rather than trying to keep the peace. Some characters said I was almost creepily calm when giving a Harmonious response while others acted like I didn’t care about others.
Harmony focuses on Miu and Kaito. As Part 9 starts, we get a flashback of Miu when she first moved to the country with her family. As alluded to in the previous routes, Miu had a stalker. He would constantly pester her, follow her, and he told people they were dating. She always felt like everyone, including her parents and Kaito, to a degree, acted as if she did something wrong. Even after he was sent to prison, it was like people didn’t believe that she wasn’t dating this older guy and judged her for it. Bear in mind, Miu is 11 and this guy looks to be like in his early 20s-ish.
Kaito beat the hell out of this guy for what he did, nearly killing him, and everyone, including his parents and Miu, gave him weird looks after the fact. Kaito didn’t think he did anything wrong. He was just being a good big brother protecting his sister.
Miu and Kaito’s parents moved them out to the country to avoid any creepy guys from stalking her. Because that never happens in the country. Miu took it as a punishment. Kaito saw it as a form of protection. She’d be safe from creeps and away from the people in their town who were judging them. It’s hard to know who’s right because we never see or hear Miu and Kaito’s parents. It’s possible they also moved out there to avoid people talking about what Kaito did to the stalker.
Miu was treated poorly when she came to the country. Other kids teased her because she was a city girl. One girl touched Miu either innocently or mockingly because she was interested in her clothes (Other kids were mocking her clothes.), but Miu suddenly pulled away and yelled to not touch her. This made the kid cry.
A boy mocked Miu relentlessly and called her weird because she was muttering to herself, possibly trying to curse them, and was interested in occult stuff. Kaito also beat that kid up. Kaito is happy with himself for protecting his sister, but she’s annoyed.
Once the flashback is over, we eventually reach the final amusement park segment. Like I’ve mentioned, besides Truthful, this is a segment where one character is always slated to die. In this route, it’s Miu.
It’s such a weird sequence of events, too. Her character is all about proving she’s self-sufficient and can take care of herself while also acknowledging the dangers of this world and the fact that they all need to protect each other. Yet she runs off following a voice only she can hear when they’re surrounded by enemies in a worsening fog when they know the enemy can create visual and audio illusions (That can be unique to just one person) to trick them into the fog. She doesn’t wait for Kaito or Takuma who are with her. She just runs. And then she gets gobbled up by the fog with no real buildup.
I guess we’re supposed to think this isn’t quite as stupid of her because Saki does the exact same thing minutes before and it wasn’t a trick. There really were Digimon in trouble. But just because someone else did something stupid and it turned out okay doesn’t mean it’s less stupid for another character to do the same stupid thing. It’s Part 9. Everyone should more than know better. Minoru even points out that they’re splitting up stupidly like teenagers in a horror movie. Also, Miu didn’t even know Saki did that, so it’s even less understandable.
Miu’s death really is one of the more tragic deaths in the game because she had such a tough life and died trying to protect her Digimon friends. She felt responsible for the Digimon at the amusement park in particular because they’re young Digimon and she served as their ‘Queen’.
Poor Syakkomon follows Miu in death shortly after. She didn’t even have a chance to try to save Miu because it happened so fast.
As a result, obviously, Kaito goes off the deep end in grief. He blames everyone, himself above all else, for Miu’s death and decides to go on a rampage seeking revenge for Miu. He even starts beating up Digimon with his bare hands to get them to give up the location of The Master. In addition to killing The Master, he eventually aims to destroy both worlds because he doesn’t want a world without Miu to go on. He even seems to want to kill Miyuki for working with the Master.
Throughout all this, Dracmon continues to convince Kaito to stop, but he realizes it’s pointless. Kaito’s too lost in grief and guilt that he won’t listen to reason. His loyalty as Kaito’s partner overtakes his moral compass. He even willingly decides to go along with Kaito’s wishes when a dying Piedmon offers to fuse with Dracmon, as Myotismon, to become a superpowerful being that can kill The Master and destroy the two worlds like Kaito wants.
Dracmon/Myotismon and Piedmon merge to form Boltboutamon, and he’s more than a match for everyone and their Digimon. Kaito can’t be stopped in his rampage, so he decides to make a beeline with Boltboutamon straight for The Master.
After regrouping at the school, they follow Kaito to the shrine. Unlike in Moral and Truthful where the final room is sealed shut, the door has been forcibly smashed open by Boltboutamon – a testament to his power.
When they follow, they find the room littered with Kenzoku corpses and Miyuki unconscious on the floor. Kaito opted not to kill her because he doesn’t really have anything against her, though he did pay her back for attacking them.
He doesn’t have the same leniency towards his friends, however, and sics Boltboutamon on them again to kill them all.
Once he’s defeated, the others try again to get through to Kaito. They say it’s not too late for him and that he can still find a way forward in a manner that honors Miu, like protecting the Digimon they saved from the amusement park that meant so much to her.
Eventually, they are able to get through to him, and Kaito decides to accept their forgiveness and return to their side, but there’s a problem. Boltboutamon starts laughing, and it’s clear that his personality has changed to more Piedmon instead of Dracmon. He nabs up Miyuki from Renamon’s arms. Kaito admonishes him because he didn’t tell him to do that, but Boltboutamon doesn’t care.
Boltboutamon explains that he was created with three things – Piedmon, Dracmon, and Kaito’s rage. His rage ran through Dracmon, and that allowed him to control the fused state, but now that those emotions are gone from Kaito, his bond with Boltboutamon is lost, Dracmon’s consciousness is gone (Confirmed by Falcomon) and Piedmon is the only one left in control of this great power.
Kaito accuses this of being Piedmon’s plan from the start, but he admits he didn’t care either way. He’d have been just fine destroying the worlds by Kaito’s command, but he still feels the fires of revenge within him that Kaito used to fuse them, and he’s going to destroy the worlds anyway. He claims this is both for Kaito’s vengeance still flowing through him and his own hatred of The Master for using him and tossing him away – tricking him and the others by saying they were protecting their world when it was really just for his own selfish gain.
His first step in achieving that is absorbing Miyuki before the Master has a chance to do so in order to gain her power.
Kaito and The Professor rush him to stop him, but Boltboutamon doesn’t care. He actually draws them to him with intents on absorbing all three of them. The others can do nothing but stand there and watch. Kaito tells them to stay away and apologizes for what he did. As he smiles at them and says being friends with them wasn’t so bad, they all vanish into Boltboutamon.
As soon as they’re gone, Renamon yells out in pain. With Miyuki no more, Renamon is doomed to follow. All he can do is say he’s sorry to Miyuki for failing to protect her before he bursts into bits of light.
Also, while we don’t see it because Garurumon/Gabumon isn’t with us in this route, it’s most likely he died as well when The Professor died. If not, he probably was killed by Piedmon’s remaining goons.
I kinda figured this route was leading up to Kaito also dying, but I didn’t figure The Professor and Miyuki would die here too. It was kinda unceremonious for them, to be honest. Miyuki was only barely conscious.
There are only four fated children left, and the odds are grossly against them, but they decide to move forward and beat both Boltboutamon and The Master. Or at least whomever’s left standing after a battle between them. They must save the worlds and honor their fallen friends. However, they realize that, even achieving that, they may not be able to make it home because Miyuki’s gone. She’s the only one who can open a portal back to the human world.
Boltboutamon leaves to take on The Master, and the others follow. By the time they get to The Master’s realm, Boltboutamon has started losing. He goads The Master into absorbing him, ending his life and making The Master not only super powered but also giving him Miyuki’s powers.
After the group battles The Master, he groans in pain. Out from his ‘head’ emerges Boltboutamon who has used Miyuki to make his way into the Master’s mind and taken the opportunity of his weakened state to take control of the Master’s body and mind. This was his plan all along after he absorbed Miyuki.
Now, Boltboutamon can feel the souls of all the sacrifices within The Master. From what he says, it’s tens of thousands of souls – holy shit.
Boltboutamon opens a portal to the human world and invites the group to head back home like they wanted. It doesn’t matter anyway since he’s going to destroy both worlds. He says that’s what Kaito wants, and the others vehemently argue against that, saying Kaito had changed before he was killed, and before Miu died he was always kind, thoughtful and just. He did want to destroy the world, but he learned from his mistake before he could really do anything too terrible (save sacrificing Dracmon) and let go of his rage. All he’s doing now is using Kaito as an excuse for his own selfish desires.
After another battle, they brace for what seems to be an ultimate attack, but Boltboutamon suddenly stops. He writhes in pain claiming he hears a song. They realize that the souls of their friends are holding him back inside, and this is their one chance to beat him while he’s being restrained.
After beating him, they make a run for the portal only to realize it’s not closing, it’s actually growing and becoming more stable. The two worlds will merge once more with the door permanently staying open. Humans will be able to freely venture into the Digital World, and Digimon will travel into the human world.
Boltboutamon surmises that, while his quest for revenge has ended, plenty of other powerful Digimon will follow in his footsteps to destroy the worlds.
The remaining fated children panic about what to do, but Takuma comes up with an idea. They’ll take it upon themselves to educate the world about the Digimon and the Digital World. With the help of good Digimon like Agumon, Labramon, Falcomon, and Floramon, they’ll try to pacify the chaos that is sure to come into the world.
Cut to a year later, and things are a mixed bag. Some chaos has happened due to Digimon crossing into the human world, and while numerous children were paired with a Digimon, that’s not necessarily a good thing. People who are partnered with Digimon face prejudice. Many people are jealous of those with partner Digimon. Some people fear the Digimon enough to spread hate without jealousy being a factor. And others just hate them because they’re still different.
However, in just a year, Takuma and the others are already ironing things out.
An institute for kids with partner Digimon has been established, and Takuma and the others are important figures there. They help children with Digimon deal with the confusion of what this means for them and judgment they face out in society. And it’s a really nice place, too. Funding must be insane.
How did they even do this when a part of their work to get here must have been sharing their story?
Like “Oh yeah, guys, Digimon are great. I mean, yeah, being an angry dick did cause one of our friends to turn his little harmless bunny rabbit into a terrifying creature who ATE HIM. Sure, one of our friends was physically absorbed into one of them after he sacrificed his Digimon partner to an evil clown Digimon for the sake of gaining power to destroy the world. Sure we lost SEVEN friends in our like two weeks in the Digital World. Sure the Digital World has been responsible for thousands of deaths of children over the years in a variety of horrifying ways. And yeah some of them even wield guns. But look at Agumon, he’s so cute!”
It’s just a bit much to take in just a year. Minor issues cause problems that last decades or more in the human world, but we seem to be adapting to monsters entering our world, attacking people, and befriending small children pretty well.
While I will say this is very optimistic, it’s not overboard with how optimistic it is like Truthful. I respect the writers for at least bringing up that some children don’t get partners and would have hostility and fear towards those that have them.
That should have been a thing in Adventure 02, to be honest. I mean, yeah, it eventually reached a point where any kid and their brother had a Digimon partner, but clearly not all kids have one. The fact that they switched to calling them “The Chosen Children” in this ending doesn’t help matters. Yeah ‘fated child’ isn’t any better, but Chosen sounds a little worse.
I’d imagine it’d be like the rift between benders and non-benders in Legend of Korra. Having a superpowered monster as your loyal ally causes a power imbalance with those who don’t.
It’s not like these fears aren’t founded to a certain degree because bad Digimon are filtering in and causing problems of their own. And imagine the governments of the world abusing the powers of the Digimon.
The game even brought up something I made a comment about while watching the rest of the ending. Giving all this special attention to people with partners by making special institutes for them to learn about and work with their Digimon may be making relations with people who don’t have partners even worse because it comes off like additional special treatment for these “Chosen Children.” They worry that they’re discounting the thoughts and feelings of people without partners, but they don’t really have an answer for that now. They’ll just keep working to chase their dreams of helping people live better lives and prevent people from experiencing the pain Kaito felt.
It’s not a bad ending by any means because it did address several aspects of this situation surprisingly realistically and says there’s still plenty of work to be done, but it just felt a bit overly optimistic. I guess they were probably trying to be a bit more optimistic for the Harmonious route for obvious reasons. Try to make sure the ending is as ‘Harmonious’ as possible.
The overall route is a bit on the boring side, though. The Kaito stuff is somewhat compelling, but nothing really that interesting happens until Dracmon is sacrificed. Kaito just wanders around being pissed off and beats up some littler enemy Digimon. Granted, yeah, he has every right to be angry and distant, but it’s not that entertaining to watch.
The deaths of Miyuki and the Professor were also a bit too abrupt. They didn’t really have proper buildup or a strong tragic moment to process after they died. Kaito’s was also kinda empty, but he at least got to say a few kind words before he died.
Man, I just felt so bad for Dracmon, though. Kaito cared about him, but he clearly didn’t care about him as much as I thought. And Dracmon was loyal to the very end, accepting his fate and essentially killing himself to please Kaito. While Kaito does say a line or two about refusing to let Dracmon pay for his mistakes anymore, he never has a real moment where he expresses regret for what he did to Dracmon. At that point, they know Dracmon isn’t coming back, but he still doesn’t show any sadness, grieving, or guilt.
Wrathful Ending (Second/Third Worst Ending – Five Survivors)
It shouldn’t take me too long to summarize Wrathful.
Just replace Miu with Saki. Kaito with Aoi. Rage with Depression. And Boltboutamon with Plutomon.
I’m embellishing, of course, but not that much, to be honest.
But let’s take a minute to talk about Wrathful!Takuma. Many visual novels have one route where you’re just an asshole, and I figured Wrathful would be the one, right? That’s a pretty powerful word, wrathful. But he’s really not anywhere near an asshole. He’s all over the place.
He kinda like if you mixed Minoru with Ryo. Sometimes, he’s a screw off, taking pictures with Minoru, other times he’s an idiot making suggestions that are illogical and kinda cowardly, sometimes he’s a huge coward who wants to run away from dangerous situations, and a few times he’s a brute who just wants power and to fight.
Other times, Wrathful!Takuma’s kinda funny. Fangmon’s on the verge of death, and Takuma’s like “We can do anything to it from here! Are there any rocks I can throw at it?” But then other times he acts like normal Takuma and says we have to save someone or we have to do the noble thing. It’s very confusing.
So many times when you’re playing the Wrathful route you’ll suggest something and most everyone will shoot it down, sometimes giving you weird or dirty looks for even suggesting it. It’s definitely one of those visual novel routes where it feels like most of your choices don’t matter. Everyone else had the responsibility of either making me understand why my course of action wouldn’t work or convincing me to do the right thing.
In the start of Part 9, we get a flashback of Saki as she has a doctor’s appointment. The doctor is suggesting she get a surgery immediately to treat the mystery illness she has. Saki is still in good shape, making it a good time for the surgery, and waiting will just increase her chances of entering a bad stage and making surgery more of a risk.
Saki has already dodged a previous surgery, and she once again asks if she can put it off for at least a week, making an excuse of wanting to spend time and make lifelong memories with her friends during the camping trip. She was really just scared, but she couldn’t admit it.
Fast forward to the amusement park segment, and now it’s Saki’s time to die. I really thought Saki’s death would be related to her illness. Like it was much more grave than they thought, or something to do with the way time works in the Digital World was making her illness progress much faster and she’d die.
But nope.
It was basically Miu’s death, more or less.
Once again, everyone splits off. Kaito and Miu run off to fight enemies. Saki runs off to save some Digimon without even hearing them this time. Aoi runs off to help her while Takuma helps Miu and Kaito.
Unlike in Harmony where Miu winds up running off again at hearing a voice yell for help, this time Aoi does, but it’s okay. Takuma and the others even arrive to help beat the Kenzoku in front of them, but the Kenzoku panics. Set on getting at least one of the kids as a sacrifice, the Kenzoku grabs Saki, who is by herself helping the baby Digimon escape, and starts to drag her off into the fog. Aoi manages to grab her in time, but she’s slowly being consumed by the fog. They form a human chain to pull her back, but Saki realizes that it’s too powerful. If they don’t let go, they’ll just be dragged in with her.
Saki makes the choice to let go. She’s scared, but she’s also willing to sacrifice herself if it means her friends will live.
Everyone takes this death really hard, especially Aoi. She honestly can’t handle it. She had just gotten done telling Saki that she wanted to be like her some day, because she says what’s on her mind and she’s more proactive.
Aoi just breaks from this point, drowning in guilt and shame and feeling like she either could have done something to save her but couldn’t or, at worst, wouldn’t. She even believes she let go of Saki’s hand on purpose.
Everyone, particularly Kaito, Labramon, and Takuma, are concerned about her mental state. She won’t talk with anyone because she doesn’t want to be a burden and she has difficulty letting anyone know how she really feels.
Kaito being so dedicated to finding and helping Aoi was welcome but surprising. I get that he above all others understands what she’s going through because he has Miu and he kinda feels like he failed to protect her from that stalker, but he was becoming more preoccupied with concerns about Aoi than he was Miu, and that was really off-kilter given his character to this point.
Again, it was very nice and it’s not like he never shows concern for anyone but Miu, but it was still surprising.
The scene in the library is basically the same with Aoi being lured into it, like Kaito was. (We learn this library may have actually been conjured by her since it’s a library she recognizes, but it’s weird that she doesn’t mention this in any other route.) Renamon’s/Haru’s luring her like he did with Kaito by conjuring up an illusion of Saki (Miu with Kaito) who blames her for her death and tells her the best way to repent is to join her. However, she’s saved by Takuma and the others, though she runs off alone once the fighting’s all done.
As she mourns in the forest, she thinks of her own semi-sad backstory. Oddly, despite Aoi constantly lamenting her lack of reliability up to this point, the flashback shows the opposite. In fact, she’s so reliable everyone just dumps their work on her, the Class President, and she never complains. The teacher tells her to tell him the next time that happens, but he never does anything. And she’s too much of a doormat to speak up for herself.
Aoi wanders around the forest for a while until she bumps into the nearly dead Piedmon, as Kaito did. But instead of Piedmon offering to merge with her Digimon to help her get revenge, Aoi, now striving to merge the two worlds and live in harmony with the monsters, tells Labramon to heal Piedmon’s wounds, hoping he’ll appreciate the gesture, become good, and join them.
Labramon very hesitantly agrees, and it winds up going to hell.
Piedmon mocks Aoi for her consideration. He strangles her, beats her, and maybe stabs her. I dunno. She gets extremely bad wounds that the others immediately think are fatal upon seeing her. Labramon tries to save her but she’s also mortally wounded by Piedmon. The others beat Piedmon, but it’s too late for Aoi and Labramon.
As everyone watches on mournfully, knowing there’s nothing they can do for them, Aoi and Labramon reach out for each other. When they touch hands, Aoi internally screams over and over that she doesn’t want to die. Suddenly, she and Labramon merge into Plutomon, though it seems like Aoi’s the lone consciousness within the new Digimon.
Plutomon is Aoi at her most broken. Her one goal is to use her newfound power to merge everyone and both worlds into one, fusing them within her body, to bring peace and harmony to everyone forever. No more selfishness. No more conflict. No one dies. (Except everyone.)
Her friends plead with her to come to her senses, but she firmly believes this is the right answer. And it becomes very clear extremely quickly that she won’t take any arguments against her. She won’t accept selfishness. And any behavior that doesn’t align with her view of the paradise she’s trying to create will be corrected.
She explains that her main target is The Master because if she gains his power she’ll be able to absorb everyone. She leaves, and the others have to cope with the fact that Aoi is now their enemy.
They regroup back at the school before their final confrontation with both Aoi/Plutomon and The Master. This is actually the funniest scene in the whole game, which is a stark contrast to the heavy scenes that preceded it. The Professor decides to make everyone one last meal since it’s likely to be their last in the Digital World given the final battle is coming up. Either they’ll beat The Master and go home or they’ll…ya know, die.
And while they’re initially more than happy to partake in the meal, it turns out to be absolutely horrid. The Professor’s a terrible cook. Everyone tries their best to stomach it or pawn it off on another person as subtly as possible until Takuma tries some and can’t help but react and make it pretty obvious that they think the food is gross.
After some more levity and a good night’s sleep, the group heads to the shrine, as usual. Once again, the beats line up. Talk to people on every floor. The door in the third room has been destroyed, demonstrating the power of the dark Digimon of the route.
When you arrive in the room, many Kenzoku have been killed, but not in the same way Boltboutamon killed them. Plutomon absorbed them all into her to make them all one with her. Miyuki was left unresponsive on the floor. She’s supposedly being absorbed into The Master as they speak, but it’s not conveyed very well in the art.
Once her soul is completely taken by The Master, I guess kinda like she’s physically absorbed by Boltboutamon in Harmony, she dies. It’s quite sudden. She doesn’t even wake up. Renamon just suddenly cries out in pain in the middle of a scene and they realize Miyuki is dying physically because her whole soul has been taken by the Master I guess.
Once Miyuki and Renamon die, Plutomon leaves again to complete her mission. When they reach the end of the shrine, they’re all transported to The Master’s realm as they were in Harmony. They see Plutomon losing to The Master, like Boltboutamon did. And, like in Harmony, she gets absorbed by The Master.
After a battle with The Master, Plutomon, like Boltboutamon, wrangles control over The Master, having taken advantage of his weakness after fighting the others. With Miyuki also a part of her now, she opens a portal to the human world to absorb everyone. However, Takuma and what’s left of the group opposes her one final time. Once she’s beaten, she sees the error of her ways and resigns herself to death. She apologizes to both Labramon and Saki before tearfully fading away.
Like before, the portal starts growing and becoming more stable. They have to all go through the portal and deal with the repercussions of the two worlds merging.
Before I move on, I need to ask something. Were the Wrathful and Harmonious routes mistitled? Because it really seems like they should be swapped. Kaito wants nothing more than to destroy both worlds in vengeance for Miu’s death. That’s very wrathful. Aoi’s mission statement has “Harmony” all over it. She wants to merge everyone into one being to bring harmony and peace. She says “Harmony” numerous times in this route. I don’t get why this route is the wrathful one and Kaito’s is the harmonious one.
Unlike in Harmony where the absolute ending is a little too optimistic, Wrath’s ending is basically the same but with a more pessimistic slant.
A year later, the world outwardly rejects the Digimon coming through the portal. Most people don’t get a Digimon partner, making them fear and hate those who do. Having a Digimon partner becomes outlawed, and anyone caught with one is arrested and sent to camps. If what one kid said was any indication even the families of those who have Digimon partners get arrested and sent to camps.
The partnered kids and their Digimon are treated like garbage, being openly beaten by the cops. The one cop we see doing this even says he doesn’t understand why they can’t just kill these kids and their Digimon already.
However, there is a glimmer of hope. Out from the alley comes Kaito and Takuma and they save the kid from the cop. His father and mother have already been taken into the camps, but Kaito and Takuma tell them they’ll bring him and his Gomamon somewhere safe with others who have Digimon like they do. They’ll be accepted and hopefully be reunited with their families again in the future. Minoru and Miu are also helping, but they’re only shown through phone communications.
The Professor decided to stay in the Digital World when the portal opened as a way of mourning his sister, Renamon and Garurumon….even though there’s nothing to indicate that Garurumon died. He might be dead anyway because he was being attacked and chased by Piedmon’s remaining goons, and we never help him defeat them, but The Professor had no way of knowing that was happening. Miu still visits and talks with The Professor in the Digital World, though, implying the time dilation is no longer happening.
They also talk about how Aoi was wrong in her methods, but her view on a united world with peace and harmony is one they strive for. They hope some day they can make the world peaceful and harmonious living with the Digimon instead of fearing and hating them. However, at the present moment, things are just a gigantic mess. The shot of the city is smoky and dystopian. It will take a long time and a lot of work to get anywhere near peace.
Honestly, while this is certainly the more realistic view on such a turn of events, it is definitely depressing. What do you expect from a route called “Wrathful”, though?
I was ranking these routes by enjoyment as I went, and I struggled with figuring out how to rank Harmonious and Wrathful.
Wrathful has a more interesting and emotional story overall. While I do feel bad for Kaito, there wasn’t enough emotion in him sacrificing Dracmon. The scene where Aoi and Labramon die and reach for each other and become Plutomon basically on accident is much more compelling and emotional. That’s the most emotional I ever got in this game.
Boltboutamon is a creepy as hell Digimon, but his motivations get much weaker after Kaito turns back to the side of good. I can get how Piedmon would be pissed at The Master using him, but I don’t get why that would translate to destroying both worlds, especially when the reason he was helping The Master in the first place was to save his world.
Plutomon’s design is pretty damn cool. I love the lights and the shoulder guards. Aoi’s eerily calm and happy demeanor as she discusses absorbing every living creature into her was great. Those few times where she’s clearly making a threat or saying something malicious but isn’t changing her tone were extremely effective. I liked those few moments where the camera would zoom in on her when she said something particularly foreboding.
She didn’t sacrifice Labramon for this, either. It just happened. She claims she can hear Labramon within her agreeing with what she’s doing.
Plus, she did apologize to Labramon when she realized the error of her ways and faded away, which is more than Kaito did.
However, the absolute end is a tossup. I did complain about Harmonious being a bit too positive, but is Wrathful’s too bleak? More people survive in Wrathful, but the world is much worse off. Kids are being separated from their families, forced to live on the run or be sent to camps. And the best Takuma and the others can do is just bring them somewhere safe and hope the world changes for the better.
Overall, I’d say my final ranking is;
1: Moral
2: Truthful
3: Wrathful
4: Harmonious
Moral’s one main issue with me is that the kids don’t wind up getting to live with their partners in the end. And, even if this is a case of them being able to live with them some day, the Digimon still have to wait 80+ years in their time for it to happen. However, everything else had the best balance of the four routes. It had the best version of Takuma, it had the least impactful amusement park death, it had the best of Miyuki and Renamon, it had the least amount of deaths of the base routes, it was optimistic without going overboard, and it had friggin’ OMNIMON.
But we’re not done yet. Oh no. We don’t have anymore routes, but we do have one more ending.
The Fully Bad End/Game Over (No One Survives….)
At the end of Part 8, you always have one option no matter what your alignment is – “Never Go Back.”
Takuma refuses to go through the portal with Miyuki and Agumon to help the others defeat the Master and save the world. He can’t take it anymore. He’s fought and struggled the entire time he was in the other world all for the chance to get home. And now that he’s back home, he won’t go back.
Miyuki and Agumon are understandably floored by his decision. They need his help to save the world, but Takuma argues that he’s not strong enough.
Agumon gives the best argument that Takuma and him have always fought side by side. Takuma may think Agumon’s strong by himself, but Agumon’s only strong because Takuma gives him strength through their bond.
Suddenly, Takuma gets a text from his mother. Thinking of her makes him feel safe yet sad at the same time. He backs away and apologizes to both of them saying he just wants to go home to his mother and to be left alone.
Miyuki sadly accepts Takuma’s choice and even apologizes for not taking his feelings into consideration. Takuma apologizes profusely to Agumon. Surprisingly, or maybe not, Agumon accepts Takuma’s choice. In the end, he only wants what makes Takuma happy, though he’s sad they can’t be together anymore since Agumon refuses to abandon his friends and quit the fight. He consoles Takuma, who can’t even look either of them in the face anymore, and tells him they’ll win this fight and save their worlds anyway. He just wants Takuma to stay safe in the human world.
Agumon bids Takuma farewell, briefly showing that he’s crying before he heads through the portal. Miyuki also says goodbye to Takuma before her face falls and she goes through the portal.
Takuma calls out to Agumon, but he doesn’t go through the portal. He never saw Miyuki or Agumon ever again.
In narration, we learn that he went back home to his mother after that. He was happy to be home with his mother, but he noticed that the curry he had previously mentioned to Agumon as being delicious and wanted to share with him some day never tasted quite as good anymore.
Cut to a year later where Takuma and his mother are preparing to evacuate. She asks if he’s said goodbye to all of his friends, and he lies, saying yes. In truth, he doesn’t have friends anymore. Ever since the pictures of Agumon and Takuma fighting Piedmon went viral, nasty rumors were spread around that he was working with monsters. Despite that, he says he doesn’t care as long as he has his mother.
Takuma asks his mother if he’ll always be her kid, even if the world came to an end. She says of course she will. She’ll always take care of him.
Takuma explains that the world has slowly been falling apart with odd weather patterns and natural disasters. There are fewer and fewer places for people to live nowadays, and emergency relocations are normal. He feels like someone once warned him these things would happen, but he doesn’t remember it very well. He feels like this is the end of the world and that nowhere is really safe to live anymore.
He says that doesn’t matter as long as he has his mother to hold his hand.
And…
Game Over.
This ending isn’t definitive in everyone dying, but it’s pretty clear. If the others had been successful in their mission, they would have come back at some point. And, even if they did survive but didn’t come back for some reason, like Miyuki died or something, there’s still little chance they’d be alive. One year in the human world would equate to around 80 in the Digital World, making the other kids 92+. If they are alive somehow, they’d be way too old to effectively do anything against The Master. Although, interestingly, he didn’t make it through to the human world, so what The Master started doing in the Digital World to cause all this harm in the human world is a mystery.
This is certainly the bleakest ending with the only glimmer of light being Takuma’s love for his mother and hers for him, but part of that really feels like Takuma has lost everything else so he has no choice but to latch onto his mother – the person he gave up everything for.
I give the game major props for choosing to go down such a dark road. Even if no more deaths are shown on screen, every aspect of it is so depressing. The world is literally ending around their ears and there is nothing they can do about it. Agumon is also very likely dead, and Takuma would never know. (It’s odd that a human dying triggers death in their Digimon, but it’s not the other way around.)
They even have to kick him when he’s down and make him a social pariah.
Luckily, the game does prompt you to save before you make the decision that leads you down this route, so you probably won’t suffer that game over.
I saw someone say that when they get a bad ending in video games that they want to earn it by actively making bad decisions throughout the game instead of it being a single choice situation. I get that. I mean, if I was playing the Moral route and I chose this, then it’d make it seem like Takuma was way out of character.
On the other hand, he is just a kid who has spent days in an alternate world filled with monsters and very likely already watched two of his friends die horribly. It’d make a certain degree of sense for even Moral!Takuma to back out when he had the opportunity. Yeah, it’d still be out of character, but he’s still a kid. It wouldn’t be completely out of left field.
Graphics and Art
I really enjoyed the art of this game. Everyone had really cool character designs that fit their personalities quite well.
For instance, Minoru, the jokester goofoff, is sporting a big bright orange shirt and spiky hair like he’s Naruto.
Kaito has mostly bleached blond hair with a little rat tail and a tight black shirt that fits his abrasive personality.
Miu has one of the most adorable character designs with her cool hat, her green alien purse, and her oversized hoodie.
Saki perfectly fits her vibe, even with Floramon, with her pink and green jacket, her gradient from white to green dress, her simple but stylish ponytail with blonde hair, and her just large enough fashionable earrings.
Even Takuma has a cool design with a memorable pair of goggles worthy of the goggleheads of this franchise.
The overall art style is very consistent with what Digimon tends to look like. Agumon might as well have walked right out of Adventure 01.
The chibi art style for the animations in the battles was extremely cute and well-made. Each attack had its own unique animation which looked pretty cool. Some of the Mega level attacks were incredible. The evolution sequence was kinda boring, but we did get some cool cutaways for new evolutions that looked great.
The promo art is also beautiful. It’s done in a slightly different style with watercolor coloring, and I think it looks awesome.
However, I must note something as a bit of a warning if you choose to play this game. As I played, I encountered one of the weirdest problems I’ve ever had in a game.
After the initial scene, which is done in the normal visual novel animation style, and going through a tutorial battle, we get a fully animated, like watching an anime, cutscene. (This cutscene, animated by Toei, is done very well.) However, the video froze on the first frame of this animation. I could hear the audio, but the video was stuck.
I thought it glitched out, so I restarted. Because I hadn’t reached a point where I could save yet, I had to go through everything all over again. You can’t skip anything on your first playthrough, not even tutorials. I was annoyed, but it wouldn’t be the first time I had to go through everything at the start of a game again.
When I got to the anime scene again….same thing.
I tried one more time. Same thing.
Lost my patience. Looked to see if anyone else had this issue. It was a fairly common problem.
What was the issue? My computer didn’t have the codec to properly play the cutscene.
The solution? Do something I probably haven’t done in 10 years or more – download k-lite codec pack and install it.
I have never seen an animation in a video game I couldn’t play because I didn’t have the right codecs to play it and needed to download and install them to make it work. That was baffling to me. I’m no stranger to codecs, I’ve downloaded quite a few over the years to properly play video files, k-lite codec pack included, but to need to go out of my way to download one to play a video that’s playing in a video game kinda knocked me on my ass. I’ve never seen that before, and how they allowed that to be an issue is even more baffling.
This scene is the only one that’s affected by the codec, I THINK, don’t quote me on that, but, even so, that’s incredibly weird. I can play most any video file I put on my computer just fine without issue. But this four year old game needs me to install k-lite again? A codec pack that still comes packaged with Windows Media Player Classic? What the actual heck?
One final thing….The Master looks like an infected monster from Dot Hack…..Just had to get that off my chest.
Music
Being a visual novel, a long visual novel at that, you’re going to hear the same tracks over and over and over and over again. The soundtrack needs to be on point if your experience playing the game is going to be tolerable without muting the music in the settings. Well, I’m happy to report that the music in this game is incredible. I’ve downloaded numerous tracks to listen to outside of the game.
The main theme of the game, Kizuna, is absolutely beautiful. I still keep humming it to myself. The creepy tracks like Insecurity, Strange Presence, and Strangeness are very chilling and create a wonderfully unsettling vibe. The battle tracks were intense and were one of the main things getting me through battle sequences. Tracks like Determination and Triumph are wonderfully heroic and hopeful songs that raise spirits immediately. Peaceful tracks like Camp, Morning, and Relief were legitimately relaxing after rough segments of the game.
And you can’t forget Playful being the resident goofy song for more comedic moments.
The whole soundtrack works extremely well. It’s definitely the standout feature of the entire game.
Conclusion
Well, this certainly was a journey I went on.
I think many people are too harsh on this game, but I totally get where the frustration is coming from.
My opinion on the game really only lightened up after gaining the ability to skip numerous sections of the game and getting a controller handy. Your first playthrough, especially with a mouse, is likely to be frustrating at best and anger-inducing at worst.
There are numerous problems to contend with in the writing and gameplay that make the first outing a chore even if you’re enjoying the experience. The pacing issues and clunky controls are definitely the main issue there. It was certainly testing my patience, but I was sad that it was testing my patience because I was otherwise enjoying the characters, story, and all the Digimon very much.
I did say I didn’t opt to use autobattle on my initial playthrough because I wanted the gameplay experience. Well, admittedly, after two playthroughs, I did just wind up setting the battles to autoplay on full power for most encounters that weren’t bosses or attempts at allying with new Digimon. There was just no reason, especially since I had such powerful Digimon who would one to three shot nearly anything.
Let me tell you something. After I realized the gameplay benefits of NG+ and I got a controller out, I not only went back to play the game three more times to get all four routes, but I also went to the trouble of getting every item I could find, filled out my Digimon library by going out of my way to pursue free and Shadow Battles, some restricted to very specific times and areas, and getting some Digimon multiple times to get the various evolution paths, started one more playthrough on a fully Moral route to get Greymon to finish my library, and got every single achievement in the game.
Do you know how rare it is for me to do that for a game? It’s pretty damn rare. And, apparently, I’m one of 2% of players who did that much.
The only things I didn’t do was get every single memory (because I didn’t hunt for them properly on my first playthrough) and some misc. items that I don’t even know how to obtain. That’s all.
I really do think this is a great game. The story is very solid, the characters are all likable….barring Shuuji, but even he’s kinda likable in Truthful after a while, their chemistry with each other and their Digimon is great, the music is wonderful, the art is awesome, the voice acting is incredible, there was some really strong emotion at various points, the lore was interesting, and the main enemy was imposing and interesting as was the conflict.
The genre and tone shift to something so dark and anxious and having the balls to show certain graphic elements was very respectable and refreshing, even if Digimon has had its share of darker moments over the years. It was nothing compared to all this.
……Okay, yeah, the aspect of this being a Digimon-less, technically, Digimon game is a little irksome, I will say that much. I really don’t understand the thought process that went into that.
It’s almost like they made a Digimon knockoff game and then suddenly got the rights to Digimon and hastily put the character assets and names all over everything. Like it’s a Digimon game afraid to be a Digimon game.
It’s not a huge deal, but it is confusing.
If you’re a Digimon fan and you own a controller and/or a PS4, I’d say this is definitely worth at least one playthrough. If you’re not, then this probably isn’t the best entry in the franchise to get your feet wet, but you’d probably also find enjoyment in it.
If you have no tolerance for visual novels, then of course don’t play it. The gameplay is certainly not good enough to pick up the slack. If you’re a Digimon fan and not a fan of visual novels, watch a playthrough. You can fast-forward through the slower parts, you can skip the battle segments, and you can just watch the multiple endings.
If they made a sequel or another game in this style….I’d probably prepare myself better, but I’d most certainly play it. I’d hope they would iron out the wrinkles, but I’m all for another darker Digimon game that’s a visual novel, sure.
….Maybe next time I’ll get to use a GUILMON! I still can’t believe I missed a chance at getting Guilmon! Damn you, limited edition giveaways! We’ll be together some day, my precious red dino. Until then…I have an inordinate amount of Gomamon because the game kept giving them to me for free…..Not complaining, I adore Gomamon, but….I have a lot of them…So many Gomamon….No Guilmon…..I want my Guilmon.
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