Game Review: The World Ends With You (DS)

**pas** · June 1st, 2008, 13:47

The World Ends With You Review by pas (for the I-touch4DS Compo):

Platform: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix / Jupiter
Genre: Touchscreen Beat ‘em up
Players: 2

Overview :
The World Ends With You is a awesome, really stylish game that is a new approach to RPG’s by the RPG Masters themselves, Square Enix. It’s weird art style took the gaming world by storm, much like their last Masterpiece ages ago: Final Fantasy VII.

But let’s begin at the start:

Gameplay :
The Game has quite a complex Gameplaysystem and Story, so I will have to split this part up into several segments.

- Story:
First of, to mention the story. You wake up as Neku Sakuraba in the wonderful (the pun was intended) city, shibuya. Slowly, your are realizing what is going on around you:
You are part of a Game, a big game that takes off every year and decides players who need to participate. After realizing what’s going on you will find some kind of Pin that allows you to read peoples minds, but that isn’t all, this pin isn’t the only pin you will encounter, infact you will encounter A LOT of them, so stay tuned for a detailed explanation on that later in the review.

You will also met several People, the first of them being a trendy teenager girl called “Shiki”. Together with your partners you will then fight numerous battles, do quests for driving forth the main storyline by defeating enemies (more on that later) and solving puzzles.

Moving the Main Character from place to place (e.g. walking) is done by pointing the stylus into any direction of the touchscreen to have neku and companions follow it “Phantomhour-glass-style”.

If your Character reaches the end of the screen you will either enter a new restrict or the Screen will scroll, allowing you to see new unseen places.

- Battle-System:
Now on to mention the most interesting part this game has to offer besides the deep (!) story and extensive question: the Battle-System.

You can enter a battle at any time when standing around in Shibuya by pressing the Player Pin Button in the bottom right corner of the DS’s Touchscreen to reveal peoples thoughts and – in this case even more important – Noise swarming around them.

If you tap one of those Noises you will automatically enter Battlemode which works like that:
On the Top Screen you have your Partner and on the bottom, you – as neku. You will have the enemies on both screens and need to defeat them on both screens in order to be successful.
Your partner is controlled by the d-pad while you yourself (neku…) are controlled with stylus movements, swipes etc. Different kind of attacks can be applied by equipping pins, those again can be earned by fighting and defeating enemies in chain battles (up to 4 or more battles right after each other with no health refill) or just buying them in stores and stuff like that. To round this up, the Battlesystem has a lot more to offer than mentioned above, so has the Game itself, various Minigames like Tin-Pin-Slammer (Beyblade-ripoff ?) and others keep you busy for quite some weeks, therefore this deserves the full score:
5/5

Graphics :
Like mentioned before, the Graphics in this game (including the cutscenes) are really stylish, and totally fitting the Game’s setting of the modern Japano City.

This deserves extra points because it was done so well:
5/5

Sound :
One word: Earworm Danger
Once you started playing this game and heard for example the song Deja-vu you won’t be able to get those little pieces of art out of your head so soon again, which is a good thing, and combined with the smashing count of 35 tracks deserves yet again 5/5 since it includes songs for everyone.

Replay Value :
This is the first department which is a bit tricky to handle. The game offers a lot, a extensive storyline with secrets to be unlocked (I don’t mean your regular secrets… the secrets in this game are special, but to find that out you have to play it yourself since I won’t spoil the fun), a very customizable Battle system and Characters, each with their own story. Still, this game can have quite some replay value if you want to take a look at every pin, see every secret and beat every enemy, but that is not enough to keep some players playing it, so this section will get a 4/5.

Conclusion :
It is nice to see Firms taking a different approaches on subjects, which in case of The World Ends With You / It’s a wonderful world was a full success and makes hope for more like this. I for one totally think Square Enix has gone into the right direction with this game and therefore deserves the full score and nothing less:

Final Score:

----------------------------------------------------------

Battle Scene: