Title: The World Ends With You
Genre: Role Playing Game
Developer: Jupiter & Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Rating: ESRB - T (Moderate Violence)
Formats: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 18/3/2008 (EU), 22/03/2008 (US)

Synopsis:
Neku Sakuraba is dead. Not figuratively as an anti-social teenager, but literally, struck down as he walked through his home town of Shibuya. Death apparently has its upsides, as a few moments after dying, he's enlisted in The Game (accent intended, y'all just lost), where the mysterious Reapers set missions for groups of players, permanently removing the failures from existence. Neku awakes in Shibuya's famous Scramble Crossing, immediately being set upon by the ferocious Noise. A strange, and sometimes distant girl, Shiki Misaki runs to his rescue, forming a pact that allows them to battle the Noise without worry. Neku and Shiki then realise that 7 days of missions await them, with their very existences at stake.


The World Ends With You is a bit of a strange beast. JRPGs have always been a strong point of Square Enix, so for them to team up with the relatively unknown Jupiter would seem as a little bit of a stretch from a AAA studio. To go with an action-orientated JRPG across 2 screens with action happening on both sides is also a bit of a strange choice...

The World is set in modern day Shibuya, with all the city locations being present and correct, albeit with names changed (With the exception of the Scramble Crossing, and the Statue of Hachikō). All the standard fares of the JRPG are there. Storyline with reflection and character maturation? Check. Varied enemies and a database to check them out on? Oh yes. Levelling and grinding system? Habeeb it.

A big feature of The World is the combat, which is both non-standard and hideously difficult in places. Basically, you control both Neku and your pact partner (initially Shiki) at the same time. Neku is controlled on the touch screen, using different movements and strokes, like holding on a space to set fire to it, vertical slashes to create a massive ice spike, or even focussing the stylus on one enemy to have it burned by the power of love (I wish I were kidding about that...). Skills are stored in "pins" (basically button badges), which activate in a massive manner of ways. Some skills are actually really good, some of utter trash. Your pact partner is controlled either by the D-pad, or the button pad for lefties, with an option of 3 combo paths to follow.
Both characters also share the same health bar, which vanishes from the end that the damage comes from, so in a number of places, the HP bar was left somewhere in the DS hinge, and I died without even seeing the lack of health. However, the enemies also share this same weakness, and you can use either Neku or your partner to kill the Noise enemies, although, as you'd imagine, it's much faster to use both at the same time.


Another tweak that you can use, is as you level up, you also get access to the Level Bar. This rather interesting addition to the standard JRPG framework allows you to artificially reduce your health bar, to dramatically increase the drop rate from the enemies. Unfortunately, when you finish the first week, and you're around level 28, you can then lower the bar by 25 levels, and fight 4 groups of enemies at the same time, and you'll have a 100% drop rate from every enemy in the game. Even then, most enemies drop rate hits 100% at about 70 star difficulty (every level you drop adds 1 star times the number of stacked fights to the difficulty). Selling 20 or so pins after every battle becomes very boring, very quickly.
Another tweak you get access to is the ability to change finite difficulties, ranging from Easy to Ultimate, changing drop tables, and enemy stats accordingly. This is the leveraged on, with some challenges forcing you to change difficulties to get the right item to pass.

Graphics are largely what you'd expect from a handheld console, with a gritty, underground feeling to the artwork style. Most of the enemies have tattoo styles built in to the artwork, with some optional bosses being completely composed of tribal tattoo artwork. FMVs are noticeably missing, being replaced by fixed animation cutscenes. This is more than made up for with the immense soundtrack, comprising a few hours of music, from various styles.

Overall, the game sucked in more time than I thought it would, even with the ability to shut the DS and carry on later, nearly causing me to miss the stop for Ely on the train a couple of times. Pain in the ass when the next stop is about 30 minutes down the track.
Another really good point of note is the "Powered Off PP Up" system. The game rewards you for taking breaks, with your currently equipped deck of pins receiving experience when your DS is switched off. Equip your shittiest pins, save, and enjoy life for a while, safe in the knowledge that you're not being forced to use shitty skills to 100% the database.

Scores!

Graphics: A unique style brings alive the gritty nature of dead people fighting tooth and nail for a second chance at life, big enemies and a noticeable level of detail gives a great experience on the move - A
Gameplay: Combat system is either boring with the your partner on AutoPlay, or completely unforgiving in places with a hugely steep learning curve if you're trying to control both at the same time on a higher difficulty. A real let down in places. - C
Re-play factor: Huge database of enemies, items, and the feature of being able to influence trends in the city allow for some seriously massive replay times. Extra missions after the story just add more to this, providing an amazing amount of replay for such space constraints - A+

Overall:
A very nice game to kill some serious time when on the go. Leave your mp3 player at home and really enjoy the sounds of The World Ends With You. Replay factor on par with RPGs on console games is a real treat from a rather risky venture between a AAA studio and a reasonably unknown company.
Let down in a few places by repetitive combat, almost superfluous difficulty system, and a completely unforgiving combat system, this should still be a good addition to any JRPG fans collection - B

I kinda agree with this, but I never beat this game. I was playing it before my DS broke It's one I look forward to finishing, someday.

I also agree with it, but you do get used to the control scheme around halfway through [spoiler]week 2.[/spoiler]

Or I did, anyway.

Yeah, then you get access to Ultimate difficulty... ~1700hp couldn't save me from that, the only way I managed to survive it was by having the partner on autoplay instantly, and even then, it was close. Hard is a learning curve, Ultimate is a brick wall if you're doing both at the same time.

Loving these reviews, mate.

But erm, you're not planning on completing ALL your games are you? Sigma might prove a bit of a challenge...

Not saying you can't do it, I'm saying you might not be arsed doing it, cause some points are devilishly hard, and require many retries....

(cmon Nub, throw down that gauntlet and prove me wrong)


Nah really, looking forward to your next one. Soon as I'm done with FFIII, might give this one a go! Loving my DS atm.

Hey, I'm just that quick on most games, just look at my progress on Sacred 2, already 90% into Platinum, and that's with doing the Epic Office Quest in each playthrough... Bring on Niobium

Although, I'll actually admit to this, but I very nearly lost my rag with Sigma 2, after about the 4th level or so. Boss fights are utter bollocks, with them throwing extra attacks completely outside their patterns. Some of the area interactions are completely shit, wall-runs are missing when I've done worse ones that have stuck. Pipe swings that are pointed to by the hint system, and you pass straight through them...

So Sigma 2, I just can't keep my cool enough to get far enough into it to do a review properly

Don't get me wrong, some of the bits were pretty cool, but going from POP:TFS to this, the combat feels more like button bashing and luck, than actually being able to fight coherently.

Underwater sections were painful as well, flight controls ftl... Weapons other than the sword didn't really have any impact to them, accidently lopping an arm off of someone, and having the fight system locking on to someone else, while the limp guy crawls up and explodes on your face... Oh, and taking half of your health bar off in the process...

While I'd love to have finished it, I'd prefer to not throw a pad through a £450 TV...
But yeah, pick another one, without proper shitty broken things

Yeah, Ultimate is really one of those things you have to ease into.

But I've beaten the Ultimate Enemy on Ultimate with my level reduced down to 1. Fun stuff.

Or, if you didn't fight The Ultimate Enemy, and thus, have no idea how FUCKING SDHITYNJIDS HAX he is, I've also beaten every boss(aside from him) in the game in a chain battle(so no healing between battles) on Ultimate with my level reduced to 1.

...I think I played this game a little too much...