Opening your heart

The World Ends With You is an action role-playing game released on the Nintendo DS in 2007 and developed by Square Enix and Jupiter with remixed versions releasing on mobile and the Nintendo Switch during the years. An innovative game that manages to tell an intriguing story with great and relatable characters with some bizarre game yet unique and out of left field felt pretty clunky throughout the experience.

This game's story surprisingly puts you on your toes through the game to an extent I really didn't expect here and the dialogue here really holds up well despite the game being almost 15 years old. I'm also surprised by how varied and catchy the soundtrack seems to be that it enhances almost every facet of this game and the way the game presents itself. Neku and the supporting cast are well written and fleshed out and there's always something new to find out about them that ends up making sense later. The facet of the gameplay that takes full advantage of the touch screen is also well implemented with each pin or "psych" you get attributing to the various functions of the DS such as scratching the screen with the stylus, touching an enemy, swiping motions on the touch screen down to having to scream using the microphone to activate a pin that I did enjoy.

The gameplay here is extremely innovative and unique even now but expect a learning curve as you have to juggle between two characters at the same time during gameplay and the game felt clunky throughout. I also wouldn't have mind as much but some pins refused to work despite the instructions being clear and the touch screen wouldn't be able to do exactly what I wanted at times that would get me to take more damage than intended and felt frustrating at times. The special way partners work is pretty cool except for one that took a bit more out of me that I expected but I appreciated that it plays different in certain scenarios.

This is definitely a game that holds up really well and has a meaningful message to leave with you in the end. The soundtrack is memorable, the characters get you attached surprisingly quick, the story always keeps you guessing and I have never seen Shibuya more into its element here. Always expand your world so that it never ends with you.

You would be hard-pressed to find another game that is more singularly-focused in its vision than The World Ends with You. There’s a very good series of video essays on YouTube that goes into detail on how every little aspect of the game’s design ties back into its overall themes, and so I won’t get into the minutiae of it here, but suffice it to say, the entire game centers around Neku’s character arc. Of course, that’s not to say the other characters aren’t developed—Shiki and Beat in particular are very well-fleshed out and entertaining characters in their own right—but their development is all ultimately in service of Neku’s development. This results in what is quite possibly my favorite character arc in all of gaming as well as a narrative that is both confident and concise, coming together to make for one incredibly strong piece of writing.

These are all things I’ve come to appreciate with time, but when I first played this game at the age of 13, when my sense of media literacy was only beginning to develop, these weren’t all things that I initially picked up on. It helps, then, that on top of having the kind of laser-sharp theming that you would expect to come out of the indie scene today, The World Ends with You is just generally a blast to play. Like Katamari Damacy, The World Ends with You is one of those rare games with a genuinely unique gameplay format that manages to knock it out of the park on its first try. Finding pins you like and customizing your deck around ones that work well together is such a gratifying experience, one made even more so when you develop enough muscle memory to begin focusing on your partner on the top screen. Beyond the larger thematic elements, the line-to-line dialogue is witty and full of heart, the cast is filled with charming characters, and the story has plot twists aplenty. The artstyle is about as sharp as the dialogue and unique as the gameplay is, and none of that is to mention the soundtrack, which, though not quite eeking its way out over EarthBound for my favorite soundtrack in gaming, sits very firmly in second place as the soundtrack with the greatest number of songs that work as well out-of-context as they do in-context—that is, as an album isolated from the game itself, it is second to none.

The World Ends with You is a masterpiece in how it marries its artful writing with its fun, more traditional game-y elements. It is one of the most unique JRPGs to come out of a major studio, and I absolutely implore anyone and everyone interested in the genre or just good storytelling in general to play it. It is simply that good.

the best game of all time doesnt begin to describe how fucking incredible this game is.

i originally played the switch version about 10 months ago, gave it a 9/10 and moved on. but in the coming months, i just couldnt stop thinking about it. it became my favorite game of all time, after i dwelled on it in those months.

fast forward to, november and i buy a ds copy and borrow my friend's 3ds, so that i can try the original gameplay. i started playing it in early january.

admittedly, i wasn't too fond of the combat system in the beginning. i thought it was needlessly complex, messy, and just way too much to handle. but as i played through the game i started to realize that was intentional. i thought it was a stupid statement to say that a game's combat system "reinforces its themes." but now, here i am. saying the exact same thing. about mid game i started having a blast wih the combat. and it all clicked with that joshua quote. everything i described about the combat system above is the exact same with people. it really does reinforce the games themes. by late game, i was having the time of my life, feeling the exact same things i felt a year ago. the only complaints i have with the partner system is that most of the time it boils down to mashing the left or right, with an occasional up or down. but i havent grasped the complexity of it in that sense, then. (just like people!!!)

trust your partner. i found myself repeating that phrase, time and time again throughout the game's combat. you really do have to trust your partner. when you look at the bottom screen, you need to have faith that everything wont go to shit on the top. when you look at the top screen, you need to have enough trust in yourself that youre in a good enough position to look at the top screen for a while. its an endless juggle of trust, just like people

yknow i was quite cautious when i decided to play this game again. it was my favorite game of all time, and i was terrified that it wouldnt live up to this pristine, fond image i had of it. i found myself doubting that it was that good at multiple times in the early game. as i played tho, with my more analytical approach this time, boy am i glad to say it lives up to that pristine image, even more so than i had thought originally, with the added complexity and reinforcement of the gameplay. there were way more profound quotes in this game than i originally remembered. it does an even better job with its themes than i remembered, too. especially with the segment after the final boss. it puts everything neku has learned to the test, and i didnt realize that the first time around. maybe, just maybe because i hadn't expanded my world yet.

this can't be a fookin twewy review without mention to the banging ost. i still prefer final remix's ost, but who wouldnt? i also like a lot of the final mix versions of the ost more as well(save for long dream and a few others i dont care to mention). but we live in 2022, so i just put things like transformation on during [that boss fight] or long dream 1980s in [that boss fight]. hell, even then most of this was played without sound on as i played it on the bus 75 % of the time. at the end of the day tho its still the twewy ost, the core is still there and we wouldnt have any of the banging remixes or rearranges without this.

conclusion: every one from the ages of 13-17 needs to play this epic formative game.(just like p5!) very epic, thank you twewy. i like this one more than switch version now.

Before the remaster next month, I want to log my thoughts now about this game. Thing is it's one of my favorite games ever made. Not just because it's an interesting world to explore, not just because the characters you meet are fun and interesting, and not just because the action button system basically makes critical hits into a skill rather than chance, but because this is one of the only games I can actually see and articulate its difficulty curve

Just in the first area alone we start out with Goombas that all have 2 HP. If you do an action command properly, you do 2 damage. Easy! Except the battle you encounter has 3 enemies. So you also need to learn how to defend. The next new enemy you encounter is by itself, but has 3 HP, forcing you to learn the action commands properly. The next fight you're fighting two of them (insert kittens here) and eventually you get to the tutorial boss which has a body part on the ground and in the air, both with 3 HP, which you need to attack before hitting the main body

The game continues like this in a way that lets me physically see the difficulty curve. Like I remember Boggly Woods not just for its amazing color pallet, but because that's when enemies with 4 HP become standard. I remember Keelhaul Key not just because of the shipwreck storyline, but because the Ember enemies introduced have the same 8 HP as the previous chapter but also have an elemental affinity that wasn't present up until this point.

This is also why I don't really like the newer Paper Mario games. Like, I love partners and I love the wild creativity and I hate that those were removed, but those aren't the only things that make a good game. Origami King looks like a fine game, but the battle system doesn't feel cohesive to me. Numbers feel random rather than predictable, so there's no reason for me to invest in the gameplay. Unlike TTYD where I know how much damage an enemy can do just by paying attention to what the game is telling me.

So, yeah. I like this game a lot. Both for its wild creativity but also its incredible implementation of game design that makes knowing how it works feel rewarding. I'll do a more professional (for me) log on the remaster when I've beaten it, but this is just my off-the-cuff feelings of TTYD: I like it because I am a HUGE gameplay nerd

this is probably the most confused i've been about a game so far, about so many of it's aspects, what's its story tried to tell me? how I should even view it's story, it's narrative, how everything about it works?

On one hand i'm given a fantastic visual presentation and unique style that no other game ever had, really good music that just fits brilliantly in every scene. Writing that's so specific yet fascinating with how much it mirrors a real life form of speech a regular person might have with the amount of swears and slurs. And to top off this segment there's genuine peaks of stories like in the entirety of the Parade chapter.

On other i got such an uninteresting first half where I questioned if it's worth going through more of it, often wanting to drop the game for a while. placebo segments that are an absolute drag in their pacing and mindless repetition and every time I had to do them i felt discouraged to boot up the game. There's a lot of characters but it's so hard to keep track of them and remember every single one since you won't know if they will become a major part of the chapter's plot or if they'll be gone forever in the very next scene. It has plathera of moments where I could not understand a single bit of what is even happening as so much of it is presented to the player yet might mean absolutely nothing as you cannot tell if what you're seeing is meant to be a metaphor, forshadowing or just an artistic flair

I genuinely have no idea how I should view this game, this work, this art piece. It's so fascinating and confusing to the point where i'm trying to comprehend so much of it that isn't supposed to even make sense.

And just for that.

I have nothing else but tremendous respect.