"The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world."
"The future is a clean slate, and you're the chalk!"
"Give up on yourself, and you give up on the world."
"I covered my ears and blocked them out. But you know what? If I don't clash, I don't change."
These are just a few of my favorite quotes from 2007's The World Ends With You (did you realize the people who make Picross for the eShop helped make this game? holy shit, yeah!), a game that, while not always subtle with its themes or messages, hits them out of the park all the same.
Neku Sakuraba is an angsty, occasionally melodramatic, antisocial youth who finds more joy in street art than the people around him in Shibuya. After dying, he's sent into the "UG", or Underground, and has to partake in a week long "game" to try and earn back his right to live. Cue the game you're playing.
It's a wild concept that really capitalizes on the stress of the situation. A timer on your hand, other players who are trying to get through these seven days, and you're there, with a partner to help you live and fight, someone who is there for you through all of it. And god, what an interesting, unique idea that I don't think we've seen really capitalized on in the time since besides the sequel, and even then, it was done differently enough.
I want to start off with my minor nitpickings and negatives with the game, because there's so much I'd prefer to talk about with the positives that I want to get through with the bad first. First, sometimes bosses feel overtuned. Am I bad at this game? You know, probably, yeah! But playing on hard, managing the two screens of combat, it's very overwhelming, frantic, and frenetic, and while it's fun, it can be pretty hard to manage. When you die, you have a few options: retry, retry on easy, escape (which you can't from bosses), or return to title screen. I wish there was an option to just go back to the pause screen, so I could change my threads, my pins, the difficulty, etc. Doing the final boss last night, I was caught with a very unoptimized pin setup, and god I wish I could've just gone back without having to go back to a few bosses before just to be able to change my pins in preparation.
Anyways, onto the good: everything else. The music is incredible, the aesthetic is so sharp and clean, the character designs, done by Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi, are FANTASTIC, and are so full of life and of the era energy, and the story is incredible. The characters go through so much development in their seven days, and for Neku's 21, you get such a full breadth of character for him. Slowly lightening up as he's with Shiki, helping her with her own problems, falling back slightly as Joshua's own personality gels so well with his own, and then his steadfast determination with Beat, the two bouncing off each other both very comedically but in such a refreshing way.
I think the best series are ones that are very sincere and earnest, ones that don't try and hide behind cynicism or nihilism or hopelessness. The World Ends With You delivers that in spades. The jaded Neku learns to appreciate the people and the world around him, wanting nothing more than to trust the partners he has and help the people he's with in order to survive the Reapers Game. Shiki learns what it means to be herself, to accept herself, who she is, what she looks like, what she can be. Joshua finds himself rebuked and his viewpoints pushed back against by the constantly changing Neku. And Beat? Beat's 120% over the top energy and personality is balanced out by Neku, helping calm him down as they try to make their way through one last game. Side characters like Uzuki and Kariya, and even the villains, are so full of life, character, and energy, even with how much less we get of them than our leads.
I could stay here all day talking about how fantastic the characters and the narrative is. The way the in-universe logic and the narrative combines to facilitate TWEWY's DS playstyle, making it, while the most difficult, the best way to experience this game in my opinion. The game's story is twisting and turning, and even the moments it lulls, the moments the action slows down and pause, it's all in service to making this the strongest story it can be.
In my opinion, this is one of those games that could've only come out in the DS era and been the fullest, best game it could've been. In my opinion, this is one of the best games of all time, solely because of all it encompasses and does, how strong everything is and it all combines into an incredible experience. When I played it back in 2007 or 2008 as a teenager, I didn't nearly appreciate it as much. I loved the music, I thought the characters were great, but now, as an adult, I see myself in the various characters, both in the past and in the present, Neku's "fuck everything that isn't me" attitude, Shiki's self-deprecation and self-loathing, and I wish I appreciate stories so much more back then like I do now.
Please, play this game. This replay has easily catapulted this to my top 5 games of all time, and if you like something that does things different, has a non-usual setting for an RPG (especially at the time of its release), or like incredible characters, music, etc., then you owe it to yourself to try out this game.
Just remember, The World Ends With You.
"The future is a clean slate, and you're the chalk!"
"Give up on yourself, and you give up on the world."
"I covered my ears and blocked them out. But you know what? If I don't clash, I don't change."
These are just a few of my favorite quotes from 2007's The World Ends With You (did you realize the people who make Picross for the eShop helped make this game? holy shit, yeah!), a game that, while not always subtle with its themes or messages, hits them out of the park all the same.
Neku Sakuraba is an angsty, occasionally melodramatic, antisocial youth who finds more joy in street art than the people around him in Shibuya. After dying, he's sent into the "UG", or Underground, and has to partake in a week long "game" to try and earn back his right to live. Cue the game you're playing.
It's a wild concept that really capitalizes on the stress of the situation. A timer on your hand, other players who are trying to get through these seven days, and you're there, with a partner to help you live and fight, someone who is there for you through all of it. And god, what an interesting, unique idea that I don't think we've seen really capitalized on in the time since besides the sequel, and even then, it was done differently enough.
I want to start off with my minor nitpickings and negatives with the game, because there's so much I'd prefer to talk about with the positives that I want to get through with the bad first. First, sometimes bosses feel overtuned. Am I bad at this game? You know, probably, yeah! But playing on hard, managing the two screens of combat, it's very overwhelming, frantic, and frenetic, and while it's fun, it can be pretty hard to manage. When you die, you have a few options: retry, retry on easy, escape (which you can't from bosses), or return to title screen. I wish there was an option to just go back to the pause screen, so I could change my threads, my pins, the difficulty, etc. Doing the final boss last night, I was caught with a very unoptimized pin setup, and god I wish I could've just gone back without having to go back to a few bosses before just to be able to change my pins in preparation.
Anyways, onto the good: everything else. The music is incredible, the aesthetic is so sharp and clean, the character designs, done by Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi, are FANTASTIC, and are so full of life and of the era energy, and the story is incredible. The characters go through so much development in their seven days, and for Neku's 21, you get such a full breadth of character for him. Slowly lightening up as he's with Shiki, helping her with her own problems, falling back slightly as Joshua's own personality gels so well with his own, and then his steadfast determination with Beat, the two bouncing off each other both very comedically but in such a refreshing way.
I think the best series are ones that are very sincere and earnest, ones that don't try and hide behind cynicism or nihilism or hopelessness. The World Ends With You delivers that in spades. The jaded Neku learns to appreciate the people and the world around him, wanting nothing more than to trust the partners he has and help the people he's with in order to survive the Reapers Game. Shiki learns what it means to be herself, to accept herself, who she is, what she looks like, what she can be. Joshua finds himself rebuked and his viewpoints pushed back against by the constantly changing Neku. And Beat? Beat's 120% over the top energy and personality is balanced out by Neku, helping calm him down as they try to make their way through one last game. Side characters like Uzuki and Kariya, and even the villains, are so full of life, character, and energy, even with how much less we get of them than our leads.
I could stay here all day talking about how fantastic the characters and the narrative is. The way the in-universe logic and the narrative combines to facilitate TWEWY's DS playstyle, making it, while the most difficult, the best way to experience this game in my opinion. The game's story is twisting and turning, and even the moments it lulls, the moments the action slows down and pause, it's all in service to making this the strongest story it can be.
In my opinion, this is one of those games that could've only come out in the DS era and been the fullest, best game it could've been. In my opinion, this is one of the best games of all time, solely because of all it encompasses and does, how strong everything is and it all combines into an incredible experience. When I played it back in 2007 or 2008 as a teenager, I didn't nearly appreciate it as much. I loved the music, I thought the characters were great, but now, as an adult, I see myself in the various characters, both in the past and in the present, Neku's "fuck everything that isn't me" attitude, Shiki's self-deprecation and self-loathing, and I wish I appreciate stories so much more back then like I do now.
Please, play this game. This replay has easily catapulted this to my top 5 games of all time, and if you like something that does things different, has a non-usual setting for an RPG (especially at the time of its release), or like incredible characters, music, etc., then you owe it to yourself to try out this game.
Just remember, The World Ends With You.