The World Ends With You

The World Ends With You is an innovative title from the makers of Kingdom Hearts. Previously known in Japan as Subarashiki Kono Sekai, The World Ends With You takes major influences from Japan’s modern day culture including its people, music, clothes, food and design.

Once upon a time, Square Enix used to release games that didn’t include the words ‘Final’ or ‘Fantasy’ in the title.  I know, it’s hard to believe when they’re releasing a new game bearing the title every other month, but it’s true, and many of them were actually pretty darn good: Front Mission, Vagrant Story, Einhander, Secret of Mana.  Pretty much all but forgotten now, unfortunately.  In recent years, Square has taking to milking their favourite cash cow to the exclusion of just about everything else.  But every now and then, something comes along that gives you hope that maybe, just maybe, something of the Square of old still exists.  That something would be The World Ends With You.

You play Neku, an anti-social brat who believes that, in this world, all he needs is himself.  As he points out in the intro to the game, other people are little more than a nuisance, getting in his way.  One day, he wakes up in the middle of the famous Scramble Crossing in Shibuya, an area that is to Tokyo what Times Square is to New York.  In his hand he clutches a mysterious black badge that lets him read the minds of others.  Helpful, in a way, since he appears invisible to the eyes of just about everyone else there.  As he tests his new toy, he’s attacked by monstrous frogs that seemingly kill a few others around him.  He does what any normal person would do, and runs for his life, eventually meeting a strange girl who forces a ‘Pact’ on him, telling him that it’s the only way to survive and beat the Noise, the creatures chasing him.  After the battle, he finds out that he’s been drafted into the Reaper’s Game.  If he and his partner manage to survive for the week, completing mandatory tasks along the way, they’ll eventually have their greatest wish granted.  Of course, no one ever said the game would be easy.

Looking at the box, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is another game in the much-maligned Kingdom Hearts series, sharing as they do a main designer, Tetsuya Nomura.  However, if you’re one of the ones who hates his art, don’t let that put you off as there’s a hell of a lot of good stuff in here.  The in-game graphics are nice and solid, Neku and co. being nice, chunky sprites that animate smoothly.  The combat effects are good and flashy, but never to the point of distraction, nor to the point where you can’t tell what’s going on.

The enemy designs are nicely done too, the Noise resembling animated tribal tattoos.  There’s a lot of palatte-swapping going on (taking the same enemy, but colouring this one red to show it’s stronger) but by and large it’s nothing too obnoxious.  Besides, redecorated enemies are a long-standing RPG tradition!  The art style borrows heavily from the graffiti subculture, so if you liked the art of the Jet Set Radio games, you’ll probably find something to like here.

The gameplay itself is where things get interesting.  For running around on the map screen, you can either use the touchscreen, the d-pad or the face buttons, depending on what hand you use, something I’m sure a lot of lefties out there will appreciate.  In combat, however, things get a lot more interesting.  To defeat the Noise, you need Pins.  Pins are badges that give you special powers, from the simple, such as firing bullets of energy, to the more interesting, like spearing your foes with rising icicles, to the just plain fun – the pins that let you toss around chunks of scenery to damage your enemies almost never left my deck.  Each one requires a different method of attack as well, from tapping the screen, scribbling back and forth, swiping across the Noise, or even shouting into the often-forgotten mic.  Remembering what does what and how it’s activated can be a little tricky, but with nigh on 300 of them available – most of them capable of levelling up or evolving into other pins – you’re given a lot of freedom to set things up exactly to your liking.

If you know one thing about TWEWY, it’ll probably be the other main feature of the gameplay.  In every fight, while you’re dashing around like a lunatic, setting things on fire, your partner will be on the top screen fighting too.  While Neku is controlled solely with the stylus, your partner uses the d-pad or buttons to launch attacks on the upper screen.  Here’s where it gets slightly tricky.  As Shiki, the girl who joins you at the start attacks, a path of arrows appears on her screen leading to a load of different icons.  These correspond to icons at the top of the screen.  If they match up, you earn a star.  Get enough stars and you can do a fusion attack that damages the enemy, but also refills your life.  If it sounds complicated, in practice, it’s anything but.  Your partner can be set to automatic, doing their own thing, allowing you to take over at any time.  And when you do, you can just mash ‘right’ and still get decent damage.  There are one or two fights where you’ll need to take direct control of your partner, but leaving them to their own devices isn’t as bad a plan as you might at first think.

Finally, we come to the two main stars of the show: the music and storyline.  The soundtrack to this game is, without a doubt, one of the best I’ve heard in a long time.  A good mix of rock, rap and J-pop, there is something here for literally everyone.  Heck, the soundtrack could be 30 remixes of Twister, the game’s main theme, and I’d still be happy.  Each individual song is also, interestingly enough, available for purchase in the game’s many stores.  The tracks can be selected to play when you open up the main menu, doubling up as a sound test, and letting you customise the menu to a degree.

The story, on the other hand, is something else, starting off small-scale, quickly gaining momentum.  What starts as a simple quest for memory becomes something else, and Neku rapidly finds himself running out of friends and allies as it becomes apparent that no one is telling him what’s going on.  Some of the twists here actually managed to surprise me, and I’ve been playing RPGs for years: fairly impressive if you ask me.  While Neku initially comes across as your typical moody anti-social RPG protagonist, there’s a few nice turns that mark him as something different from the Cloud Strifes and Squall Leonhearts of the gaming world.

If there’s a major flaw with the game, it’s this: the game’s too short.  I was able to beat it in about 4 or 5 days, though admittedly, I was playing it constantly.  An average playthrough would probably take somewhere in the region of 30-ish hours, which is still pretty good going, but this is one of those games you don’t want to end, it’s that good.  The usual RPG trait of grinding for levels or items, is rendered moot by the fact that you can change the difficulty at any time, either by handicapping yourself with a slider that lowers or raises your level (lower = fewer hitpoints but a higher chance of an item drop) or by changing the difficulty setting at will, enemies also carrying different items at different settings.  A blessing for some, no doubt, but for others, that’s a large chunk of the game missing in one.

Another downer is the computer AI, especially on the harder settings.  You can be cheerfully dancing around the enemies without a care in the world, while your partner is getting pounded from every angle.  And since the pair of you share a single lifebar, you’ll sometimes find your friends are more of a liability than an asset.  It’ll teach you to keep an eye on both screens, but more than once you’ll find yourself incapable of keeping either character safe from harm.  The Pin system too, is needlessly obtuse, giving you absolutely no indication of what you need to do to make Pins evolve, relying on a lot of unnecessary trial and error.

But even with those problems, this is still a fantastic game, easily one of the best on the DS by far.  It tries to do things differently compared to other RPGs and action games out there, and actually succeeds in just about all of them.  The dual-screen combat system takes a while to get used to, as does using the Pins to attack, but before long it becomes second nature.  And when you finish the game, you’re presented with one of the most comprehensive New Game+ modes I’ve ever seen, not only giving you a host of new challenges, but also allowing you to replay any section of the game’s main story, something I know I’d kill to see in more games.  From the game’s fantastic intro (which suddenly becomes a whole lot more meaningful after completing the game – rewatch and see how much sense the random images now make!) to the pulse-pounding final battle, set to one of the best songs in the game, this is a game that never fails to impress.  If it were longer, and if the Pin evolution system was easier to use I’d give this a 10 in a heartbeat.  As it is, it’s still one of the finest action-RPGs I’ve ever played, and I for one can’t wait for the inevitable sequel.

+ Superb combat system
+ Excellent music
+ The single best New Game+ setup I’ve ever seen
+ Rhyme – she’s just adorable

- Game could’ve been longer
- Partner AI occasionally leaves somethin to be desired
- Grating use of Americanisms (‘Bling’ whenever something is picked up)

Score – 9/10