Character Reversal in Digimon Story Time Stranger: Everything You Need to Know

Character Reversal stands as one of the most powerful and versatile status effect skills in Digimon Story: Time Stranger. Rather than dealing damage or providing stat bonuses, this attachment skill fundamentally restructures the type matchup system by inverting the combat triangle, making it an essential tool for strategic team building and difficult boss encounters.

Understanding the Character Reversal mechanic

The foundation of Character Reversal lies in how it manipulates the game's attribute system. Digimon Story: Time Stranger uses a rock-paper-scissors structure with three main attributes: Vaccine types beat Virus types, Virus types beat Data types, and Data types beat Vaccine types. When you apply Character Reversal to any Digimon—whether on your team or an opponent—this entire relationship flips.

Under normal circumstances, if a Vaccine Digimon attacks a Virus Digimon, that attack deals 1.5 times normal damage (indicated by ◎ in the matchup chart). But with Reverse applied, a Vaccine Digimon becomes weak to Virus instead and resistant to Data, completely reversing the advantage. This creates situations where your normally disadvantaged team composition suddenly becomes viable against previously impossible matchups.

The reversal goes beyond simple type switching. Elemental resistances and weaknesses also flip with the status. If a Digimon normally resists Fire damage, that resistance becomes a weakness under Reverse, and vice versa. This dual-layer system means applying Reverse can sometimes create unexpected interactions—for instance, equipping abilities that lower elemental resistance while using Reverse might accidentally increase that resistance instead.

Which Digimon can learn Character Reversal

Multiple Digimon across the game's roster naturally learn Character Reversal at varying experience levels. Here's a comprehensive table showing all known Digimon that can learn this skill:

The skill becomes available for purchase in shops during the main mission "A Promise on a Scarf," making it accessible relatively early in the game. If you want access to Character Reversal from the very beginning of your adventure, prioritizing Digimon like Vademon, Andromon, or Pumpkinmon makes strategic sense, as they can learn the skill by level 20.

How to equip and use Character Reversal effectively

Step 1: Obtain the attachment skill

First, acquire Character Reversal through one of several methods: have a Digimon with the skill level up naturally, purchase a Skill Disc from vendors in towns, or remove it from a Digimon that already knows it for transfer to another. The removal and transfer system means you can build up a personal collection of the skill across multiple team members.

Step 2: Access your Digimon's skill menu

Open your party menu during exploration or from the main menu. Select the specific Digimon you want to equip with Character Reversal, then navigate to their skill page or attachment skills section.

Step 3: Add character reversal to your moveset

Choose "Attachment Skills" from the options and select "Add Skill." Find Character Reversal in your inventory of skills and confirm the attachment. Each Digimon has a limited number of skill slots, so consider what other skills you're currently using.

Step 4: Deploy in battle strategically

Use Character Reversal when facing type-disadvantaged matchups. For example, if your entire team consists of Virus-type Digimon and you're facing Data-type bosses, applying Reverse to the boss flips its weakness—turning it into a Vaccine weakness instead, which your Virus team still doesn't exploit. However, applying Reverse to your own Virus Digimon transforms them into Vaccine types, allowing your team to suddenly hit the Data-type boss with advantage.

Step 5: Manage ongoing effects

Remember that Reverse lasts for the entire battle once applied and cannot be toggled off or reapplied to reset the status. Plan your skill usage accordingly, as you cannot undo the effect mid-battle. However, after the battle ends, all status effects clear automatically.

Why Character Reversal is essential

First, Character Reversal has near-universal applicability. Unlike many status ailments that specific bosses become immune to, Reverse works on nearly every opponent, including major story bosses. Bosses frequently resist other debuffs like poison, sleep, and confusion, but they cannot ignore attribute reversals. This makes it particularly valuable when your strategy relies on consistency.

Second, the skill provides solutions for monotype team strategies. Many players prefer building teams around a single attribute type—whether all Virus Digimon, all Data types, or exclusively Vaccine types—because they find those designs visually appealing or mechanically interesting. Without Character Reversal, monotype teams face severe disadvantages against type-aligned bosses. Reverse transforms this weakness into strength, making single-type team viability possible throughout the game's 30-40 hour campaign.

Third, the skill can be obtained within the first 10 minutes of gameplay, yet remains competitively viable even against endgame content. This accessibility combined with effectiveness creates an extremely unusual scenario where a powerful tool becomes immediately available to players who know where to look.

Strategies featuring Character Reversal

One strategy involves starting with a weak Digimon that learns Character Reversal early—such as Tentamon (Tentachimon)—and having it apply Reverse to the opponent immediately. Once the opponent's type has reversed, switching to your primary team allows them to suddenly attack with advantage against the now-reversed opponent.

Another approach uses Reverse on your own team members. If you have a specialized Digimon with exceptional stats but wrong type advantages, applying Reverse can flip its weaknesses into resistances, creating unexpected durability against normally problematic attacks. For instance, equipping both elemental resistance-lowering abilities and Reverse creates cascading effects where the boss's signature attacks become significantly weaker.

Against the Vademon boss fight specifically, bring Vaccine and Data-type Digimon because Vademon itself will use Character Reversal during the encounter, forcing you to adapt on the fly. Having type diversity ensures you can continue dealing effective damage even after Vademon reverses its own matchups.

Character Reversal as the ideal problem solver

Character Reversal represents the closest Digimon Story: Time Stranger comes to a universal problem-solver, functioning as both an offensive tool for flipping opponent matchups and a defensive measure for enabling monotype or unconventional team strategies.

Its availability early in the game combined with effectiveness against virtually all opponents makes it arguably the most important attachment skill to acquire during your initial playthrough.