The World Ends with You

Square-Enix is hailed for its superb RPG’s, and for good reason. They created and maintain several highly praised franchises spanning many sequels. But now we have The World Ends With You (TWEWY). It’s an all-new original property and it’s a great beginning in hopefully another top-notch franchise. Being a Japanese RPG TWEWY naturally has a somewhat targeted audience. Those of you who enjoy Western RPG’s may be missing out if they decide to skip TWEWY. While it is still very much an RPG rooted in the customary conventions, they way it goes to execute certain mechanics, its unique aesthetic and very streamlined interface and controls make TWEWY an enjoyable experience for anyone.

TWEWY is on the DS and it utilizes both buttons and stylus controls. Holding the DS one handed shouldn’t be a problem by now, seeing as many past games have used this configuration and your wrists should be as strong as an ox. If your wrists are still useless sacs of flesh then you’ll have to just deal with the weird sensation you get, by the way that sensation is called pain. Anyways, as an RPG, TWEWY has an emphasis on plot. It’s a shame though that it follows a growing trend of making the protagonist have amnesia and being woken up in a new and odd place. As Neku you wake up in an alternate reality Shibuya district of Tokyo without any memories, only your name. Despite a somewhat mundane intro and a slow start, TWEWY’s plot is serviceable and relatively good. While it doesn’t straddle anything mind-boggling, you do want Neku to win and you want to find out what happens.

The plot is quite complex and it would take a while to explain everything, I mean a long while. Essentially you are forced to participate in the Reapers Game and you are sent missions via cell phone text messages, you have to carry out these tasks and usually are given a time limit. Fail to do the missions and you are “erased”. Thankfully the internal clock in the game appears to not work as you can dilly-dally as much as you want without repercussions. So then Neku has a player pin; this allows him to scan an area and read the minds of passerby’s and locate Noise (enemies). Being a psychic mind reader is fun as some residents in Shibuya obviously haven’t been on the logic train for a while and others are so shallow and materialistic it’s hilarious to read their brainwaves. Noise, on the other hand, appear as icons, these are different shapes and colors depicting the type and amount of Noise in those icons. By touching a Noise icon you engage it in battle, so there are no random battles in TWEWY, which is good.

Now combat in TWEWY is in real-time and very innovative. It’s initially confusing and maybe frustrating as you control two characters simultaneously, one on the bottom screen with the stylus and one on the top with the D-pad or A/B/X/Y buttons for lefties (like me). Thankfully the game has a good tutorial that shows you the ropes and it introduces new mechanics slowly. As Neku on the bottom screen you control his movement by dragging him around, fast drags will make him dash, and you do various attacks with multiple stylus techniques. Now you must equip pins on Neku, these badges are the only offensive maneuvers for Neku and will enable him new abilities. They range from shooting energy blasts, creating walls of flame, doing melee slashes, dropping boulders, creating black holes, forming ice walls, the list goes on.

Each pin has a different move to carry it out; it could be as simple as just tapping enemies to hit them with lighting, to slashing across Neku to shoot a projectile in that direction, no ones going to complain about a lack of move variety. A pin can be assigned to a “sub” option; this makes the pin not respond to stylus inputs unless the L or R button is held down. Seeing as the touch screen can sometimes mix up your random scribbling on it, “sub”-ing pins will help you keep pin execution clear and concise while in battle. You can assign more than one pin as a “sub” as well.

Pins usually have limited uses, followed by a “reboot” period (basically a re-charge time). Pins also level up; as you use them they gain PP. Pins can even evolve as well into more beefy versions. You can only have six pins equipped at a time, but not all the slots are available at the onset. After you level up a pin fully it will go into your “Mastered” cache; pins that aren’t fully developed are in the “Stockpile” cache. This helps you organize your collection of pins. Also pins evolve differently depending on the type of PP they get the most. Battle PP (obviously PP earned in battle), Mingle PP (basically PP received by having your DS interact with another persons DS) and Shutdown PP (when you’re not playing equipped pins will gain PP each day up to a week) all will affect the evolution of pins differently.

Your other player remains stationary on the top screen and the D-pad or A/B/X/Y buttons controls their attacks. A combo tree/map opens up when you press a button, you can then navigate through said combo tree/map and unleash a combo. Every combo finisher will result in a # or symbol or some icon. These icons are paired up with icons on the top of the top screen; you will have several different partners throughout TWEWY and each partner has his/her unique icon set. If you do a combo and the finisher is let us say “Icon Z” and there is a panel on the top of the screen that is highlighted and labeled “Icon Z” or it matches with conditions in which “Icon Z” falls in, then you will earn a fusion star. Earn enough stars and you can unleash a fusion attack, these involve both Neku and his partner in an all enemy damaging attack. Thankfully, seeing as the whole fusion system is quite confusing, fusion attacks aren’t required. TWEWY offers this system but doesn’t enforce it and you could avoid it throughout your whole play through if you so desire.

The combat system sounds like a right old mess eh? That’s what I thought initially because I was confused as hell. But I kept at it and now I can tear up Noise on both screens, if I can learn the daunting combat system in TWEWY so can you. You can assign the player on the top screen to be controlled by the computer, but you get much better results if you do it manually. The trick in combat is the light puck. There is a green aura that will surround one character at the start of battle. When said character does a combo finisher the puck will move to the other character, resulting in a puck rally. Keep your attention on the character with the light puck and you’ll be cruising through battles like a pro. If you rally the puck back and forth your attacks will become stronger as well, you start each battle with a rally count of zero, so it pays to keep the puck in motion.

In addition to dual character control, the fusion system and the light puck you are also graded at the end of each battle. Time, damage taken, rounds (you can touch multiple Noise icons consecutively to engage them in clusters one group at a time), and specials gained (getting ten puck passes is one special, a 30 hit combo is a special, etc) are all added to your letter grade. The grade effects the amount of PP you earn. Also after every battle you are fully healed, wait really?

Ya really; TWEWY is a streamlined like a barracuda. There is no micromanagement, no fiddling around in menus for hours on end, nope. Healing in battle is possible with certain pins, and outside of battle it’s unnecessary as you’re healed after every encounter. So no items right? No potions or anything? Well yes and no. Items aren’t traditional healing factoids; instead items (consumable items) serve as stat boosters. Each character can eat one item at a time and they will get stat boosts from those items. But the stat boost only comes after the item is digested; say a crepe takes 8 bytes to digest, that basically means after 8 battles your character will digest that item and get the stat boost. Each character can only digest 24 bytes in one-day real time, so eat the big stuff first. This is a swell system; you can effortlessly boost your characters without having to manage point allocations or intricate grid systems, instead you just stuff your face with food and go on your way.

But what about armor? Surely Neku can wear dragon scales and shiny Mythril vests? Ahhhh… no. In Shibuya it’s all about hip and cool trendy clothes. Each character can wear four pieces of clothing, from glossy pumps, chic hats, shiny necklaces, sharp business suits, backpacks, bell bottom pants, Shibuya is a clothing freaks dream. When you buy a piece of clothing you may not know the ability of the item; you have to become good acquaintances with the store clerks for them to give out the ability of items. It’s easy to get on the good side of clerks though, just browse around and they will usually give out three or so items’ abilities. Abilities can vary from adding another panel to Neku’s partners’ combo maps to simply increasing HP by 20, so watch what you wear.

Each area in Shibuya is governed by trends as well. Wearing popular clothes and pins, most Pins are branded, will result in attack boosts, while sporting unpopular brands will net you an attack strength reduction. The pause menu easily shows the trends in your current area as well the trends in other sections of Shibuya so you can switch out that icky scarf for a fashionable bracelet.

Eating stuff and wearing stuff are the only ways to increase your characters stats, which consist only of Attack and Defense. There is no stupid “Agility” stat or any of that bilge, just the basics. When you level up in TWEWY your max HP increases and your drop rate increases. You can also select your level on a slider; putting yourself at a level lower than your max level will increase drop rate but your HP will be less. It’s a good gamble and you’ll want to adjust it to your finesse in battle. Drop rate relates to enemy spoils, and the chance they will drop pins. Pins from enemies will be normal offensive pins or they will be money pins.

This is just another of many examples of how TWEWY is so efficient, the way it handles money. Naturally as you are in Shibuya, which is in Japan, the money is in Yen. Yen Pins come is set amounts, so you can get one Yen pins, 500 Yen pins and so on (largest I’ve seen is 10,000 Yen pins). Yen pins go into the aforementioned “Mastered” pins cache. Now before I continue, just know that any pin can be dragged to a garbage can icon on the pin menu for a cash back value and this is the only way to convert Yen Pins into actual Yen. So let’s say your wallet is full, you can’t carry any more money, so if you get Yen Pins they go to waste right? Nope, they just sit in your “Mastered” pin cache waiting for you to convert them to real money. This is a great feature and every RPG should have a system like this, which enables enemy spoils to not get lost.

TWEWY has a distinct Japanese/anime look to it obviously, but it has many graffiti and street elements in the art. Tribal tattoos, skull beanies, chains… TWEWY looks like a JRPG à la mode. Character and enemy sprites are very well designed and there are some very impressive anime style cutscenes, which span both screens. NPC’s look dandy as well, you will recognize repeated sprites and pallet swaps, but there is still a lot of variety in NPC’s. Everything holds up well in TWEWY, the framerate rarely dips, even better it holds up in combat as well.

The soundtrack in TWEWY is a good conglomerate of pop, rock, rap and electronic genres. While the songs tend to be small loop-able tracks, the quality outshines the small length. Also there are a plethora of voice clips in TWEWY. For a handheld game this is very admirable, as the clips are numerous, clear and sound great. Sound effects are nice and what you would expect, they get the job done but don’t stick out. Some pins will sound much better when they evolve into better versions, they just sound more robust.

A comprehensive beastiary (or Noistiary in this case) is available at the pause menu in addition to the mini-game Tin-Pin Slammer. This has a refreshing retro feel (I love the Tin-Pin theme song, good old 8-bit sounds) and it involves you and someone else trying to knock one another’s pins off a playing area. You also have special attacks like hammers to aid you in slamming pins. This mini-game, while I enjoy the nonchalant happy-go-go-awesomeness vibe, is frustrating to control with the stylus. Nevertheless this mode allows you to hook up with another person with a DS and a TWEWY game card so you both can slam away.

You know when you learn about some new feature in an RPG and a helpful window pops up with all the info on the new thing and then disappears forever? So if you forget the details about said feature you’re screwed as you can never recall that helpful window? Well don’t fret, in TWEWY there are “?” mark icons on each section of the pause menu you can click to open up the magical know-it-all window. I found this to be very handy as I once forget how to make Pins “sub”, I just clicked the “?” icon and found out. Also other times when you learn new info or the method to do something, all of it is kept in your item menu for easy reference.

All in all, TWEWY is greater than the sum of its parts. While not revolutionary by any means, it does things differently than other JRPGs and does it better. With undeniable charm and style, a smoking soundtrack, an innovative battle system, very modernized mechanics and all those great little helpful details, TWEWY is a highly polished package. I mean when you collect enemy spoils in battle “BLING!” pops up… awesome? I think so; The World Ends With You is so zetta splendid.