The World Ends With You

May 2,2008 - Lately, more hardcore gamers have been looking down on Square Enix because since the big merger between SquareSoft and Enix, the only games worth mentioning to come out were a bunch of games in the Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts series. Each of the games have too much of a sense of familiarity and they’ve been leaving Japanese-based RPG’s dry for a while. Thankfully, Square Enix has come up with something different in The World Ends With You.

In the simplest sense possible, The World Ends With You is quite a unique game. Like Sega’s Shenmue series, The World Ends With You takes place in a modern time. In this case, it’s modern-day Tokyo—or more specifically, Shibuya. The main protagonist is a boy named Neku Sekuraba. He’s not unlike a lot of Square’s main characters. He has a distinct fashion sense with a crazy hairdo, and he has a bit of an attitude problem as well. One day while walking he finds a random black pin that allows him to read the minds of people around him, and then later he finds a time limit on his forehand. To make things even stranger, he comes across a talkative girl who forces him to make a pact with her, because it’s the only way to fight the evil “Noise.” Later players learn that it is imperative to defeat as many Noise as possible, because it is essential to clear every mission given in a span of seven days. If the seven days pass and the missions aren’t completed, Neku and his followers get erased forever, and the Reapers (the bad guys) led by Uziki Yoshiro win the “Game.”

It’s a complicated, yet unique, storyline, so it’s probably best that we stay out of details. The bottom line is that without a partner, Neku can’t fight. This is where more complicated, yet unique, things come to play. The battle system is an intuitive one that uses both screens. The touch screen uses Neku’s pin abilities, and the top screen is his partner’s. Depending on what kind of pins you have equipped, various motions with your stylus will cause Neku to attack in different ways.

For example, the flame pin you have at the beginning of the game will cause a line of fire to follow wherever you drag the stylus, while a wind pin will allow you to slash at other enemies using a blade simply by swiping at the screen. What makes the system complicated is that you use both characters at the same time. Since the top screen isn’t a touch screen, you’re limited to using the D-Pad as your main method of attack. You follow the button options on screen to unleash your moves, and it’s really as simple as that. As long as you follow the proper order and then pull off some freelance moves here and there, different chains of combos can be unleashed, further adding to the battle system’s depth.

Success in battles depends on your variety in pins. There are 300 pins in the game, and a lot of them do the same things. Think of them as the Materia from the Final Fantasy VII games. Each pin has its element and has its own way of causing damage to opponents. In addition to the pins, The World Ends With You adds to the style with clothing (the armor) in the game. Using Brand Recognition, certain clothes and pins are best to use at certain times. When a certain brand is “in”, the items you use become more powerful, and you get to deal more damage or have better defenses or HP when wearing the proper brand. It’s a cool take on how the world actually works, and you can keep up with brands and other cool things using the cell phone that Neku has.

The game looks great and is very reminiscent of Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future. Neku looks a lot like Sora and all the other characters look like cousins of those in Kingdom Hearts, but that’s probably to be expected since Tetsuya Nomura (of Kingdom Hearts fame) is responsible for designing the game. Along with characters and the environments, Square Enix did a wonderful job with its interpretations of Shibuya. It has certain landmark statues, and even cafes that you’d see walking around Tokyo. The World Ends With You really is a sight to behold.

Along with its terrific visual presentation comes one of the coolest soundtracks to ever grace a DS game. It has a fairly good mix of rock, pop, hip hop, and even J-Pop, so almost anybody can enjoy the music… except the J-Pop. All kidding aside, the game does as good a job sound modern as it does looking modern, and that’s a pretty cool thing for the developers to aim for.

The World Ends With You is a game that’s really hard to get into at first because of its bizarre presentation. However, the strangeness of the game is what really makes it stand out from any RPG—or rather, any game, that’s come out before it. The first playthrough should last anywhere between 10-15 hours, but players benefit from playing through it multiple times because of opportunities to learn more about the story’s background. The story contains touching themes of ignorance leading to maturity, themes of companionship, betrayal, and all sorts of things that you’d expect from a teen-novel flick. However way you look at it, The World Ends With You is an extremely engaging experience, but if you don’t have the patience for it at first, then the world ends with you.

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