X-Play: The World Ends With You Review

The World Ends With You may very well be ringing in a new age for the role-playing game -- one where narrative isn't trapped in the fantasy ghetto and where entertainment isn't wrung from an endless experience grind. What gamers have here is a smartly written, visually stylistic exploration of the teenage mind. Sure, the game uses monsters and magic to attack these themes, but these aren't the same old slimes.

Neku certainly isn't the same old hero. The World Ends With You is a J-Pop remix of the role-playing game with way more to say about life than your average fantasy adventure. It's a video game parable, parsing the experiences of high-school kids as life-or-death struggles for identity. Games rarely have things this interesting to say or approach them from this outlandish a vector. Listen up.