The World Ends With You has been a game that has kinda haunted me for the last 10 or so years. Ever since I first saw it on a Nintendo DS, being played by my brother, the style immediately jumped out to me as something reminiscent of the insane clothes that the anime characters in Kingdom Hearts would wear. So I always wanted to play the game, but the loss of our copy and the lack of a truly perfect port, had me looking for tons of years. Not to mention that even though I am a fan of Tetsuya Nomura's style, most recently I felt tired of his work, especially when it came to story, which left me afraid that this title would severely disappoint me. Especially considering these characters cameo in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, which gave me a less than nice impression of Neku and his friends.
Instead this game kinda blew me away, I picked up a copy for my Nintendo DS and from that point on I I could not put it down. It's style is far from a gimmick, it's the central core of what the game wants to explore, that being living and growing within the massive district of Shibuya. It makes me kinda sad that this is the only franchise in Square Enix's lineup that wants to explore city life, because I genuinely believe that the writers and designers have such a great grasp of youth culture and how being an outcast in a sea of outcasts feels.
The only real problem I found was with the gameplay, while it was very exciting and fun to mix and match new pins to tackle constantly refreshing enemy encounters and some genuinely great bosses, the systems can at times be confusing and messy, eating increases health bonuses, but how much you eat is limited to each REAL LIFE DAY. Making growth feel random and as a mechanic it started feeling like busy work. A ton of the pins also felt kinda bad to use, I had a ton of issues getting swipe motions to register correctly, and when you have to do multiple in a row it is even worse. It's also extremely difficult to keep up with at times, since you have two characters to control at once, however it made those rare moments of prediction, understanding what is going to happen on one screen so you can concentrate on the other, so much more rewarding. It's a mishmash of ideas that aim to imitate the chaos of Urban life, the clashing of ideals and cultures, that in the end come together to form an extremely exciting experience.
Instead this game kinda blew me away, I picked up a copy for my Nintendo DS and from that point on I I could not put it down. It's style is far from a gimmick, it's the central core of what the game wants to explore, that being living and growing within the massive district of Shibuya. It makes me kinda sad that this is the only franchise in Square Enix's lineup that wants to explore city life, because I genuinely believe that the writers and designers have such a great grasp of youth culture and how being an outcast in a sea of outcasts feels.
The only real problem I found was with the gameplay, while it was very exciting and fun to mix and match new pins to tackle constantly refreshing enemy encounters and some genuinely great bosses, the systems can at times be confusing and messy, eating increases health bonuses, but how much you eat is limited to each REAL LIFE DAY. Making growth feel random and as a mechanic it started feeling like busy work. A ton of the pins also felt kinda bad to use, I had a ton of issues getting swipe motions to register correctly, and when you have to do multiple in a row it is even worse. It's also extremely difficult to keep up with at times, since you have two characters to control at once, however it made those rare moments of prediction, understanding what is going to happen on one screen so you can concentrate on the other, so much more rewarding. It's a mishmash of ideas that aim to imitate the chaos of Urban life, the clashing of ideals and cultures, that in the end come together to form an extremely exciting experience.