Challenging, Invoking, Innovative, Addictive, and the Intrigue - oh the Intrigue!
The World Ends With You is a great game up and down. In this review you will hear so much about the good things of the game, but I will try and hit on the things that were a bit laden.
Synopsis: You are the protagonist named Neku who is from some part of Japan. You suffer from a bit of Amnesia and have a strange talent to control Psyches, which are powers you control via your stylus and variants of strokes to defeat monsters known as Noise. Noise are basically monsters like wolves and frogs. Lame? Think again. You're also followed around by what Weeabo would call a Kawaii pink haired girl who is obsessed about your dark mystery.
Game-Play: 10
Sound: 9.5
Visuals: 9.5
Replay: 9.5
Game-Play: You fight with two and battle as one. That is the name of the game. I play this with my friend actually. I will get into that later. The game starts off with a lengthy tutorial and outrageous graphics and surreal Neo-Tokyo feel. You're a young man named Neku who wears Headphones in which his nickname Phones derives from. You find yourself awoken in a strange place and soon accompanied by a young girl. She teaches you how to use pins [Like those found at trendy markets like Hot Topic] which give you representative powers known as Pyches. An example would be Pyrokinesis,
The game play gets even more complicated as you can control your top screen while you slash across your bottom screen with your stylus. The top screen is controlled by either your D-Pad or Button pad depending on your Hand-Preference. Using certain combinations of ordered button pressing your partner friend will deliver attacks to the enemies you're fighting on another 'plane'. Complicated? In many ways. The game explains that there is the UG [Underground] and the Real-World. To defeat the Noise you must defeat them in both, so you both fight the same monsters, but not side by side in the corporeal sense.
The storyline is a bit melodramatic, but the simplicity of the emo-boy you control is made better by the surreal use of colors and imagery in the game. The game – right. You're stuck in a game known as the Reaper's Game. Reapers are hipsters with wings and seem a bit immortal. Their job is to destroy the Noise, Players, and not be destroyed. You are a player – but you play their game. The reaper game lasts 7 days in which exist 7 missions. Within these missions are small side quests which allow you to go off on your own, level up, gain gear, and all sorts of things.
Deeper in the misc. parts of the game are foods, cosmetology, and wear. You dress up your characters in faddish gear to gain stats. The crazier the wear the higher your 'Bravery' stat must be. And yes Bravery exists for wearing some of these garments. Sounds lame right? Well it's pretty cool actually, because you don't wield weapons, you're youngsters with unique powers.
Along with the unique powers, like I said, you control them with your stylus. You can control up to 7 psyches at a time. That's right, you don't have to weapon select. You pre-configure your pin deck and go to battle. No button pressing or tapping on icons to select your move, nay, you are in real time combat. You use certain motions with the stylus to deliver ground breaking and breath taking combinations with all your psyches at once!
The game play is innovative in this game and should not be missed.
Sound: The sound is amazing. The sound track, though limited, is very acute in dimensions. Which is good. Obtuse sound would be monotone and blaring. The music actually has simplistic lyrics you can hum or even sing too and it doesn't get too repetitive since your guys talk while in battle and sometimes during dialogue. That's right, finally a game with decent speech on the DS! And it's actually good! You can even collect the sound track in the game. I know! LAME?! But it's not, the music isn't so bad.
Visuals: OH EM GEE, CHRISTY! Yes yes! Why EE Es! Yes! Finally a game that encompasses digital shading, the compromise of CG, Sprites, and Cell Shading. It looks utterly amazing. Combined with over eccentric curves on your characters, making your B-Cup partner having a size 0.3 waist look pretty cool during battle.
The graphics are simply stunning. If only game series like Pokemon would take the hint and up their look a bit. Every character looks different, you can actually remember them by their faces. Each of them have sound bits that make them – them. Like your girl will whimper, scream, and such to get your attention. But that's besides the point, the graphics are amazing for the DS.
Replay: You won't stop playing this, even after you beat it. The game is amazing.
Conclusion: This is the best game on DS right now. I am not a Square-Enix biased person. They make great games and they always make the game field broader and set the bar for others. Thank you.