The World Ends With You (DS) Review

The World Ends With You is a game that is not only perfectly suited to the DS, it is one that can ONLY be played on the DS. This alone makes it worthy of attention. However, it is also an extremely polished title, one brimming with ideas and with a style and identity of its own and, perhaps most importantly as an RPG coming from Square, it lacks the words ‘Final’ and ‘Fantasy’ in the title. Eschewing Tolkien-esque fantasy, Steampunk trappings or Stylised Future settings, in favour of modern day Shibuya in Tokyo, THEWY (as I’ve affectionately nicknamed it) offers up more than just a fresh setting, but also a unique (in a good way) battle system and a novel solution to the annoyance of random battles.

Strip back all of this games layers and behind it all are interesting characters with inter-connected backstories, seemingly unimportant connections, a well developed story and character arcs that would make most home console RPG’s blush. THEWY opens with the main character, Neku, doing his best to remain separate to the goings on around him. However, sooner than you can shout plot twist, he is thrust in a game where the prize is freedom and failure brings erasure from existence. To say too much about the story would be to spoil the many surprises it offers, though some may be put off by its relatively narrow focus. By that I mean that your immediate task is not to save the universe from destruction (though the stakes are most certainly raised), but simply to win the game and though an early plot-twist may seem to be a shameful act of laziness, it soon reveals itself to be one of the finest conceits in this coming of age tale of friendship and family. THEWY does retain some JRPG story conventions. Neku is very much among the Cloud family of main character archetypes. He is initially brooding and awkward around people though this is revealed to be a product of insecurity more than through intention etc etc.. The story is by no means perfect, though it never falls enough into cliché territory to make you want to put down the handheld.

She's quite a bossy lady

The battle-system too deserves special mention. Gone are random battles, replaced instead by the Scan system. Simply tap a button and Neku scans an area, revealing all of the enemies who prceed to rush and attack. Should you be feeling adventurous, you can drag a number of them onto Neku at once and thus chain battles. This not only nets you bonus experience points but also speeds up level grinding which has also been all but eliminated. At any point in the game, you can change the difficulty of the enemies, adjust your own level to add challenge. For example, you might be level 24, but choose instead to fight at level 13 resulting in greater risk, but equally greater reward. Battles also play out across both screens with Neku at the bottom, controlled by the stylus and his partner character at the top, controlled by the d-pad (lefty flip to the right face buttons is also possible). If this is too much to deal with at once, the top screen can be controlled by the game though this all but removes that part of the battle from you. Should you have it set on human control, but fail to give any commands for a (player-) set number of seconds, then the computer will take over to make sure the partner isn’t simply sitting idly by getting hit by enemies. Attacks on the bottom screen are mapped to pins, which form an almost Pokémon-esque collecting section of the game. These pins produce different attacks and are activated by everything from slashing an enemy to shouting into the DS microphone. Should two of your chosen pins require the same action, you can map one to the L and R buttons so that it will only activate if you’re holding one of the shoulder buttons. However there is still sometimes the issue of the game not recognising the required command and activating the wrong pin. It doesn’t happen often, though when it does it can be very frustrating. The battle-system may sound very confusing, and in truth it sometimes can be. The frenetic pace can understandably turn people off though those that persevere will find a battle system unlike anything that has been seen before.

Manic

There is so much that is different about THEWY it’s hard to believe that it’s published by a famously traditional Japanese studio. However, some of the differences seem superfluous, most notably the fashion mechanic. Instead of armour, the characters can equip clothes that provide stat boosts and special abilities: armour by another name essentially. However, the departure comes in the fact that certain fashion labels can be popular or unpopular with various benefits or drawbacks to using certain labels according to the trends. This also extends to the attack pins, which are also branded. It’s time consuming and bothersome to work around, though thankfully can be ignored with little consequence. Having beaten the game and clocked up around 40 hours, it is still the one mechanic that I deliberately avoided simply for being too cumbersome.

Final Thoughts

The World Ends With You is one of the most unique games available on any platform. However, its uniqueness is not what makes this game special. The blend of story, action and its distinctive style shouldn’t blend, but somehow Jupiter has gelled them together with considerable talent, to the point that nothing ever feels contrived. There are maybe five or six must play titles on the DS, and this is certainly one of them.

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