Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory (デジモンストーリー　サイバースルゥース　ハッカーズメモリー) is a role-playing video game developed by Media.Vision and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment released at December 14, 2017 in Japan for the ', Playstation TV Vita and '. . Like its predecessor, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, the localized release does not feature an English dub.

Plot
Accused for a crime he didn't commit, Keisuke Amasawa decided to drop out of high school. Yu Nogi, his only childhood friend, remains the only person believing him. With his Eden account stolen, he attempts to track down the culprit with informations provided by the mysterious hacker K.

Keisuke used a "proxy" account in order to dive unto EDEN and ended up to the Digi-Market without Yu even after promising the latter to go together. The place is literally a hacker's market area for wild Digimons and Hackers stuff, it is also Keisuke's starting point for searching the hacker stealing account. After asking some people, he eventually encountered a certain Digimon Dealer and not seem out of place, he attempted to buy a Digimon with barely carried currency for a, a or a. Despite that he chose one and demanded him to free the other two instead to be erased. The dealer retaliated, called out his Digimons Ogremon and Devimon to attack. However, Ryuji Mishima alongside appeared out of nowhere to help Keisuke. Keisuke's Digimon also ran in to help. A bit of surprised to the Digimon's decision, Ryuji gave the Digimon capture program to Keisuke's Digivice. It allowed Keisuke to capture/tame the Digimon and together with Ryuji, teamed up to force the dealer to release the two Digimon back into the wild. Keisuke also narrated his reason for being there in the first place.

Ryuji saw Keisuke's potential and offered him a job as a member of Hudie, a small hacker group making jobs in the Eden like investigations, etc. His initial goal, albeit Ryuji wanted him to stop chasing the culprit, could also be achieved by teaming up with him. He accepted his offer in the end, making him the last member recruited with Ryuji as the Leader, Chitose Imai the second in command and lastly Erika Mishima, Ryuji's younger sister, the team's best hacker and Manager of Hudie Cafe.

Their group works directly under Yuugo Kamashiro's Zaxon, doing various missions for the group, usually being assigned them by second in command, Fei Wong Tomoe Ignacio. Hudie got involved directly, sometimes helping and unintentionally making things worse for them, with the various missions of Aiba and their friends, Nokia Shiramine, Arata Sanada, Kyoko Kuremi, Yuuko Kamishiro, Makiko Date, Gorou Matayoshi and Mirei Mikagura as well as Aiba's enemies, Jimmy KEN, Akemi Suedou and Rie Kishibe - Keisuke however, is on friendly terms with Jimmy Ken and Suedou and considers them friends. Keisuke also finds himself involved with the Royal Knights and Seven Deadly Demons, though unlike Aiba who becomes acquainted with every single member of both group, Keisuke only befriends Omnimon, Alphamon, Veevee, Craniamon and Beelzemon, whilst Crusadermon is a direct enemy to both Keisuke and Aiba. Despite befriending all of Aiba friends, Keisuke himself never meets Aiba however they crossed paths at the start of the story.

Following the leads of K, Keisuke dealt and defeated various hackers in the process, but eventually found the true suspect who stole his true account is the former himself. Keisuke learned K's true identity as Yu, who was madly in love with him but was at the back side manipulated by a Matadormon posing as a mask giving him higher hacking abilities and ended up controlling him completely. Keisuke later the Matadormon and freed Yu from its clutches, though the latter, frustrated and regretted everything he's done ignores Keisuke.

Similar to Aiba and their friends, Hudie also had to deal with the Eaters. When Zaxon and other hackers group decided to capture Under Zero, Crusadermon, personifying Rie Kishibe, plans to lure most hackers by lowering the area’s Security Level. The plan was not without Suedou who wants to test the capabilities of Digital Waves in Eden while Ryuji was hired to watch the development. The fighting became more intense at the last area when the Jude and Rebels came to interfere. Fei was defeated by Nokia and Omnimon but then Crusadermon suddenly summons Eaters using powerful Digital Waves.

Eventually their mission turned into a tragedy and the Eaters attacking numberless hackers caused them to acquire EDEN Syndrome. Hudie saw the gruesome reality as they battle countless creatures and experiencing the true intentions of Kishibe. Sooner or later that the Hackers find the Eater's source as Omnimon flies to destroy it once and for all. The incident was put to a stop but there were so many Hackers who've succumbed into the disease. One particular person, Ryuji, was struck to the reality that Kishibe gave for Erika's medical expenses is only a pretext to control him like a puppet just to reach her goal: to destroy the Real World. Suddenly, an Eater attempted to attack Ryuji but he was pushed out of the way at the last second by his best friend, Chitose. He sees his friend’s avatar and digital data being taken by the creature who and goes into a deep depression for his sacrifice later on. He went missing from the real world, he doesn't seem to care with Erika's condition at all. He stands by alone in front of a structure at the depths of Under Zero; the very same place of Eater tragedy. He feels how deep his depression, his regret for Chitose's sacrifice, his anger towards Arata's cowardice, and his fear to lead his former hacker team. This seemingly attracts the sleeping Arcadiamon inside the structure. Its dark miasma envelopes him but Cyberdramon tried to block him from Arcadiamon, yet his Digimon was still absorbed. The unknown Digimon came to a term with his negativite emotion and “teamed up” with him on his mission to destroy all hackers for petty revenge of Chitose's sacrifice. Ryuji would destroy the hackers, whilst Arcadiamon would absorb or devour their Digimon to Digivolve all the way up to its highest level. He was eventually first sighted on assisting Keisuke against his battle against K at Akihabara. After defeating K’s Satamon, Arcadiamon absorbed its data and fled somewhere else to gather more data. Ryuji meanwhile is mindless.

Ryuji and Arcadiamon causes massive trouble all over Eden and the real world. Whilst doing so, Erika tasks Keisuke and Wormmon to track down an Eater in order to find a way inside the Eater Network. After defeating it, they hack it and use its data to reach the Eaters home world, where they come across the real Yuugo Kamishiro. Explaining that they had come to locate Chitose's memory data, Yuugo allows them to do so, which they find due to the help of Chitose's Ankylomon. Chitose's data was successfully restored, causing him to be the first and only person to awaken from Eden Syndrome and then a moment of respite for Hudie.

They inform Chitose about Ryuji's recent actions adding that Hudie's base of operation was destroyed because of the latter. Still bedridden Erika tasked Keisuke to track Ryuji's whereabouts again to give him updates of Chitose's condition. He ended up at the Akihabara District with Arata who has similar reasons for looking for Ryuji. They later found Ryuji at the reactivated Digital Wave Distorted Area who was in delusion and miasma of Arcadiamon; twisting his understanding by blaming everything to Arata. He still won't believe that Chitose is saved and tries to destroy his friend only to end up with a brutal defeat. Chitose then arrives with the help of Detective Matayoshi and yells at Ryuji for his actions. Seeing Chitose in person shocks him and his depression and influence from Arcadiamon slowly wanes away. However, Arcaidamon wakes back up and attempts to murder Chitose. Like Chitose had done before, Ryuji pushes Chitose out of the way and takes the attack instead, before flying off somewhere.

As the wreak of wild Digimon and Eater alike grows, Hudie located Arcadiamon Ultra's location at Odaiba Bridge. The gang attempts to destroy the massive Digimon however all of their attack seem not to bulge it and remains unscathed. Erika decides to use her Eater Bits as a final option, which she secretly created using the previously hacked Eater data. Her Eater Bits creates an opening to defeat Arcadiamon and they successfully defeat it to free Ryuji. Cyberdramon is seen embracing his master after all this time which Ryuji thanks his undying devotion for him. Despite all the happy ending, Erika's condition came to worst again. She exhausts her energy, her Eater Bits goes rampant, and the modified Eater attacks her to merge with her physical body into the Eater Legion. Erika's memory influenced the creature as it heads into Kowloon, EDEN into a small chasm that goest into Digital World. But its massive size caused Eden to get corrupt and all users were forcefully logged out.

Needing to get into Eden to free Erika, Fei allows Hudie to use Yuuko's personal EDEN computer, which with the help of Yu and the various hacker groups Keisuke had fought against, manage to gain access, though only enough power existed to allow Keisuke, Chitose and Ryuji to enter. Finding Eden to be infested with countless amount of Eaters, they fight their way through, eventually finding Eater Legion. They attempt to defeat it without killing the body, but this proves to be impossible and Erika instructs them to kill Eater Legion as her body was too assimilated with it. Erika's non corrupted memory data from her server merges with her Wormmon to become Hudiemon and she aids in killing her real world vessel. A large group of Eaters then merged with the rest of her corrupted memory banks, creating Eater EDEN, which Hudie managed to kill as well. Due to the actions of Aiba in the Digital World, the world is reset and changed so that EDEN never existed, the Digimon never arrived in the real world to interact with humans. Erika made the choice to remain as Hudiemon, rather than return as Erika because should she return to a human world without EDEN, she will die due to EDEN being the only reason she was still alive. In addition, she was directly responsible for the death of her parents in a car crash, which is what caused her illness in the first place, so erasing herself out of existence will not only remove all burdens from her brother but will also cause her parents to stay alive. Keisuke left his Digimon with Erika, as do Chitose and Ryuji. Hudie return to the real world, with their memories of Digimon and Erika erased. With no Erika in the new world, Ryuji is an only child. He still however, is the leader of Hudie - with Chitose and Keisuke working for him. Without the influence of Matadormon, Yu became a member of Hudie and remains on good terms with Keisuke. Unlike the rest of the group however, Keisuke retains his memories and cries in what used to be Erika's bedroom.

Development
Like Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, the western version Hacker's Memory has English and German subtitles.

On December 28, 2017, the Japanese Digimon games account tweeted that if their tweet got more than 2018 retweets before January 5, four new Digimon would be added to the game as free DLC. The amount was achieved in a few hours. Famitsu later revealed the four Digimon would be Ryudamon, Ginryumon, Hisyaryumon, and Ouryumon. They later added a stretch goal of 10,000 retweets to add one more Digimon, with the tweet reaching 10,000 one day before the deadline. The final Digimon was revealed to be Apocalymon. The first four Digimon were added on January 24, 2018 worldwide, whilst Apocalymon was added February 13.

The Sistermon Noir/Sistermon Blanc pre-order DLC was censored in North America, due to Noir being a nun and this not being suitable in North America, so Noir was changed from a black cat like nun Digimon, into a blue mouse like nun Digimon, Sistermon Ciel, as Namco USA had forced the change. Every other region however was unaffected by the censorship and had access to Noir, rather than the censored Ciel.

Gameplay
The gameplay is identical to its predecessor, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, only with a few balance changes, such as Sleep no longer taking a turn to wake up. A second battle type however was introduced, Domination Battles. ABI has been doubled, now maxing out at 200, meaning bonus stats can now be increased up to 150, being 50+half of 200 (150). SPD was also nerfed, now only giving Digimon multiple attacks in a row if the Digimon is on the field for a long time. Penetrating attacks were also changed, now being either "medium", "strong" or "extra strong". In addition, Hacker's Memory brought back what Cyber Sleuth removed, being able to fight 4/5 wild Digimon at once, rather than three maximum.

List of obtainable Digimon
The Field Guide shows the Digimon's model, can show attack and walking animations, like previous Story games, shows stats for any level between 1 and 99, with the default being level 1, shows the attacks each Digimon can learn, shows their Digivolution trees and has a profile for each Digimon in the game.

Hacker's Memory includes all 249 Digimon from the original Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, adding 92 new raiseable Digimon, taking the total to 341. This includes the pre-order exclusive Digimon of the first game, which outside of Europe, could only be obtained by pre-ordering the game, or buying a new copy. Hacker's Memory also includes pre-order exclusive Digimon, which like the predecessor, outside of Europe, can only be acquired by pre-ordering or buying a new copy of the game. Unlike the original game however, the Sistermon, four of the pre order Digimon, were added to the PlayStation store as free DLC one month after the release of the game. The NX Digimon however, remain exclusive to pre-orders/new copies. Examon, a Mega level Digimon in Cyber Sleuth, was retconned to an Ultra level in Hacker's Memory, DNA Digivolving from Breakdramon and Slayerdramon, rather than digivolving from RizeGreymon and DoruGreymon. Due to the addition of BaoHuckmon and SaviorHuckmon, Hackmon no longer digivolves directly into Jesmon, with SaviorHuckmon and Duramon instead Digivolving into the Royal Knight. Otherwise, all digivolution options remain the same as the original game, with the new Digimon placed into the existing evolution trees. Some Digimon, MetalGarurumon and Alphamon, had their special attacks replaced (though Alphamon's attack in English versions of the game retains the name "Blade of the Dragon King", even though the attack was changed), whilst some Digimon, such as Monzaemon retained the same attack, with the attack having a completely different effect. (Monzaemon's Hearts Attack is a Penetrating Attack in Cyber Sleuth but heals one ally's HP and increases ATK, DEF and INT by 10% in Hacker's Memory). Some Digimon, such as AeroVeedramon had their attack animations changed, though the effect remains the same, whist AeroVeedramon and UlforceVeedramon's Swiftness Support Skill was changed to only work on the Digimon themselves, rather than the whole party. PlatinumSukamon's Support Skill was changed from Platinum Service to Platinum Bonus, which increases experience by a lower amount, whilst PlatinumSukamon and PlatinumNumemon had their DEF stats changed to 999, by far the highest stats in the game.

Unused Digimon
Bearmon, SkullBaluchimon, and Kimeramon have unused models in the game's code.

Credits

 * Producer: Kazumasa Habu
 * Composer: Masafumi Takada
 * Creature design: Oh!Great
 * CG scenes:
 * Digimon design: Kenji Watanabe

Preview
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