The World Ends With You
Long review short: This is the best RPG on the DS, and the most refreshingly original game Square Enix has made in years.
Short review long: Remember the Squaresoft of old? The one that gave us unique experiences on a regular basis? Some of them good, some exceptional, and some downright horrible, but all of them unique? Even when they spin off into franchises of their own, the sequels were typically welcome. Actually, in some respects, the same could be said for the Enix of old...
Now, after a deluge of ports, remakes, and spinoffs, it seems Squeenix is finally starting to come back to its senses full-time. Additions in recent years to the tiny Musashi and Valkyrie Profile universes (as opposed to the bursting FF and DQ ones) as well as several upcoming new IP (The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery [with Tri-Ace], Sigma Harmonics, and Nanashi no Game amongst them) point squarely (no pun intended) in this direction. The first, gutsy step seems to lie with The World Ends With You, alternately known as Subarashiki Kono Sekai, or It's a Wonderful World.
I first heard about Square Enix/Jupiter's new game (which I'll refer to from here on in as TWEWY) back in March of last year, before its Japanese release. The visuals alone left quite the impression on me. When the limited-edition DS Lite was annouced, I agonized over whether or not I should get one. Then I saw the official website and became hooked on the music; thus, I picked up the soundtrack.
The entire time, I had very serious doubts about whether the game would see the light of day outside of Japan. When it was announced for European release under a new name, I was all ready to find a way to get it from the UK. Not long after, the North American date was announced. I bought it the day it came out, but had some other games to play first, so let it sit for awhile. In the meantime, I was exposed to a couple of spoilers (bleah), but not major ones, as it turns out (though one definitely tows the line between "major" and "minor").
So now I've been actually playing it for about a week. Holy shit, it was so worth the wait. Though I'm not a big fan of this sort of thing, TWEWY is so fucking huge that I just have to break this review up so as to cover all the specifics.
Story and Characters: The game centers around Neku Sakuraba, a teenager who wakes up with his memories gone in the middle of Shibuya. Here, he finds that he has been thrust into a "game" run by a group called the Reapers which lasts seven days. If he fails the game, he faces erasure. It's a simple premise, but one that serves a story that grows more and more complex with each passing day. The dialogue is peppered with slang and the script contains some genuinely funny moments. Overall, it's a refreshing breath of fresh air from your typical JRPG fare.
Neku himself is a loner in the mold of Cloud or Squall, one who finds himself alone in the streets of the big city-and likes it that way. Additional characters-including Reapers and other "Players"-lend further depth to the game and help us understand Neku and the world he inhabits.
World: TWEWY takes place in a partially fictionalized version of Shibuya, the Tokyo equivalent of SoHo (NYC), South Street (Philly), Coconut Grove (Miami)... basically, anywhere where young, hip, affluent, creative, etc. people congregate. You know, the types of places that you love and hate at the same time. Some aspects of this Shibuya exist in reality (most famously the Hachiko statue), others are fictionalized for obvious reasons (AMX and Towa Records seem to be replacements for HMV and Tower Records, respectively). The clothing and brand names are all fictional as well, though very much feel as they could be mentioned in a real-life issue of FRUiTS. So in short, it feels authentic, and even if you've never been to Tokyo (*raises hand*), Shibuya should feel familiar to anyone, especially my fellow urbanites.
Gameplay: Now, on to the meat of any game, and what a dish TWEWY serves up. The game's major hook is that it is played on both screens simultaneously, using both the buttons and the stylus. It's a messy system and takes some getting used to, but it's a stunningly beautiful mess. For the most part, a player will want to focus on Neku, but devoting time to the character on the top screen as well can lead to racking up points toward combo attacks, which can come in handy at times.
Clothes can be worn to help beef up characters' attributes, food can be eaten for (both temporary and permanent) stat boosts, and of course, pins grant attack moves and certain other effects. However, the catch is that each area of Shibuya is subject to trends, and how effective your clothes and pins are depends largely on their coolness (each clothing label has its own distinct style, from haute couture to Gothic Lolita to punk). This leads to a lot of item-swapping in the menu as you travel from one area to the next, and also a lot of shopping so that you have a diverse enough selection of brands to choose from.
And if that weren't enough, the game is time-sensitive: pins can earn PP to level up while the DS is turned off, and only so much food can be consumed within 24 hours. Also, the characters' levels and the difficulty of the enemies can also be adjusted at any time to make getting those hard-to-find pins (and racking up pins in general) a bit less of a hassle, but at the expense of easier battles.
And I haven't even mentioned chaining, or pin evolution, or Pig Noise, or memes, or Tin Pin Slammer...
The gameplay in TWEWY isn't just meaty, it's a banquet.
Graphics and Design: Sharp and stylish as hell. Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi's character design work does not disappoint, and it's all set against flat, clean backgrounds. The monsters (called "Noise") are all animals with one or more of their appendages replaced by colorful graphics inspired by graffiti and tattoo art, and though a little bizarre, these enemies fit in fine with the game's overall environment. Speaking of graffiti, there's a lot of graf-inspired text and such in the game, and thankfully, it comes across with a certain authenticity (as far as I can tell, there's no wack "graffiti" fonts used here, folks). Finally, the menus are well laid out and a breeze to navigate.
Music and Sound: I've already written about the music in my soundtrack review, and my opinion of it hasn't changed. It's good and fits in with the setting very well (it's also now on iTunes and features one of the tracks which wasn't in the Japanese version of the game! Sadly, said track isn't the supremely catchy "Three Minutes Clapping"). One particularly refreshing thing about how the music is handled is that, during regular field exploration and battles, the tracks cycle, so they're almost never the same back-to-back. You can also buy tracks from stores and set them as your menu music.
There's some bits of sparse voice acting, a la Skies of Arcadia, but it's nothing to write home about. It's just a nice touch.
Overall: Worth the "Square Enix tax", as it were, but I can see this one dropping in price within the next couple of months as sadly, new IPs don't typically do as well as older ones, no matter how many stellar reviews they rack up. However, if you're in desperate need of a good RPG to play and get hooked on, buy TWEWY now.
P.S. - If anyone can find me an MP3 of the full version of "Three Minutes Clapping", I will love you forever.
Short review long: Remember the Squaresoft of old? The one that gave us unique experiences on a regular basis? Some of them good, some exceptional, and some downright horrible, but all of them unique? Even when they spin off into franchises of their own, the sequels were typically welcome. Actually, in some respects, the same could be said for the Enix of old...
Now, after a deluge of ports, remakes, and spinoffs, it seems Squeenix is finally starting to come back to its senses full-time. Additions in recent years to the tiny Musashi and Valkyrie Profile universes (as opposed to the bursting FF and DQ ones) as well as several upcoming new IP (The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery [with Tri-Ace], Sigma Harmonics, and Nanashi no Game amongst them) point squarely (no pun intended) in this direction. The first, gutsy step seems to lie with The World Ends With You, alternately known as Subarashiki Kono Sekai, or It's a Wonderful World.
I first heard about Square Enix/Jupiter's new game (which I'll refer to from here on in as TWEWY) back in March of last year, before its Japanese release. The visuals alone left quite the impression on me. When the limited-edition DS Lite was annouced, I agonized over whether or not I should get one. Then I saw the official website and became hooked on the music; thus, I picked up the soundtrack.
The entire time, I had very serious doubts about whether the game would see the light of day outside of Japan. When it was announced for European release under a new name, I was all ready to find a way to get it from the UK. Not long after, the North American date was announced. I bought it the day it came out, but had some other games to play first, so let it sit for awhile. In the meantime, I was exposed to a couple of spoilers (bleah), but not major ones, as it turns out (though one definitely tows the line between "major" and "minor").
So now I've been actually playing it for about a week. Holy shit, it was so worth the wait. Though I'm not a big fan of this sort of thing, TWEWY is so fucking huge that I just have to break this review up so as to cover all the specifics.
Story and Characters: The game centers around Neku Sakuraba, a teenager who wakes up with his memories gone in the middle of Shibuya. Here, he finds that he has been thrust into a "game" run by a group called the Reapers which lasts seven days. If he fails the game, he faces erasure. It's a simple premise, but one that serves a story that grows more and more complex with each passing day. The dialogue is peppered with slang and the script contains some genuinely funny moments. Overall, it's a refreshing breath of fresh air from your typical JRPG fare.
Neku himself is a loner in the mold of Cloud or Squall, one who finds himself alone in the streets of the big city-and likes it that way. Additional characters-including Reapers and other "Players"-lend further depth to the game and help us understand Neku and the world he inhabits.
World: TWEWY takes place in a partially fictionalized version of Shibuya, the Tokyo equivalent of SoHo (NYC), South Street (Philly), Coconut Grove (Miami)... basically, anywhere where young, hip, affluent, creative, etc. people congregate. You know, the types of places that you love and hate at the same time. Some aspects of this Shibuya exist in reality (most famously the Hachiko statue), others are fictionalized for obvious reasons (AMX and Towa Records seem to be replacements for HMV and Tower Records, respectively). The clothing and brand names are all fictional as well, though very much feel as they could be mentioned in a real-life issue of FRUiTS. So in short, it feels authentic, and even if you've never been to Tokyo (*raises hand*), Shibuya should feel familiar to anyone, especially my fellow urbanites.
Gameplay: Now, on to the meat of any game, and what a dish TWEWY serves up. The game's major hook is that it is played on both screens simultaneously, using both the buttons and the stylus. It's a messy system and takes some getting used to, but it's a stunningly beautiful mess. For the most part, a player will want to focus on Neku, but devoting time to the character on the top screen as well can lead to racking up points toward combo attacks, which can come in handy at times.
Clothes can be worn to help beef up characters' attributes, food can be eaten for (both temporary and permanent) stat boosts, and of course, pins grant attack moves and certain other effects. However, the catch is that each area of Shibuya is subject to trends, and how effective your clothes and pins are depends largely on their coolness (each clothing label has its own distinct style, from haute couture to Gothic Lolita to punk). This leads to a lot of item-swapping in the menu as you travel from one area to the next, and also a lot of shopping so that you have a diverse enough selection of brands to choose from.
And if that weren't enough, the game is time-sensitive: pins can earn PP to level up while the DS is turned off, and only so much food can be consumed within 24 hours. Also, the characters' levels and the difficulty of the enemies can also be adjusted at any time to make getting those hard-to-find pins (and racking up pins in general) a bit less of a hassle, but at the expense of easier battles.
And I haven't even mentioned chaining, or pin evolution, or Pig Noise, or memes, or Tin Pin Slammer...
The gameplay in TWEWY isn't just meaty, it's a banquet.
Graphics and Design: Sharp and stylish as hell. Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi's character design work does not disappoint, and it's all set against flat, clean backgrounds. The monsters (called "Noise") are all animals with one or more of their appendages replaced by colorful graphics inspired by graffiti and tattoo art, and though a little bizarre, these enemies fit in fine with the game's overall environment. Speaking of graffiti, there's a lot of graf-inspired text and such in the game, and thankfully, it comes across with a certain authenticity (as far as I can tell, there's no wack "graffiti" fonts used here, folks). Finally, the menus are well laid out and a breeze to navigate.
Music and Sound: I've already written about the music in my soundtrack review, and my opinion of it hasn't changed. It's good and fits in with the setting very well (it's also now on iTunes and features one of the tracks which wasn't in the Japanese version of the game! Sadly, said track isn't the supremely catchy "Three Minutes Clapping"). One particularly refreshing thing about how the music is handled is that, during regular field exploration and battles, the tracks cycle, so they're almost never the same back-to-back. You can also buy tracks from stores and set them as your menu music.
There's some bits of sparse voice acting, a la Skies of Arcadia, but it's nothing to write home about. It's just a nice touch.
Overall: Worth the "Square Enix tax", as it were, but I can see this one dropping in price within the next couple of months as sadly, new IPs don't typically do as well as older ones, no matter how many stellar reviews they rack up. However, if you're in desperate need of a good RPG to play and get hooked on, buy TWEWY now.
P.S. - If anyone can find me an MP3 of the full version of "Three Minutes Clapping", I will love you forever.