The World Ends With You. Sounds odd? It is. Sounds exciting? It is. Sounds clever? Not exactly, but it is. Sounds like an RPG? Not realy, but it is. Sounds like the world’s greatest RPG? Is is.#

Playing a Neku, a teenage boy living in Tokyo, you wake up one morning in the middle of Shibuya, Japan’s trendiest district, without a single memory in your head. Soon enough, you meet Shiki, a girl with an eye for fashion, and a mysterious addiction to her mobile phone.Soon enough, your own phone rings, delivering a mission for you to complete.

After forming a pact with Shiki, you head off to complete the mission: You’ve been entered into “The reaper’s Game”, and to say anymore is spoiler territory, and they’re no way we’re going to spoil what is the most vibrant, amazing and overall best plot we’ve seen in a game for absoutly yonks. To say we cried on Chapter Two, (We where roughly 1.75 Hours into the game) says it all- Square have realy pulled it off this time, and once you get into the superb story telling, they’re no going back.

Another thing theyr’es no going back from in The World Ends With You is the battle system. When we (And pretty much everyone) first heard of it, we where sure it wouldn’t work- You have two battles going on at once, with Neku being controlled with the stylus on the bottom screen and his partner on the top using either the D-Pad or buttons. (We ended up using the D-Pad, but Grancko -Being a leftie- used the buttons)

At first this is a bit like patting your tummy and rubbing your head, but once you get use to it, (Which we did after two battles) it becomes second nature. Neku’s attacks are done with the Pins he collects over time. You start off with just the one, but grow to have many. Personalising Neku’s arsonal is just one of the lovely touches that Square and co-developers Jupiter have added.

Examples of these include the first one, fire, where you draw a path of fire with the stylus where you want it to go. This highlights The World Ends With You’d main problem though, the sometimes fiddly controls.

While it happens very rarely, it’s the only real complaint we can file against Square’s latest, (Besides how sad it’s made us feel from time to time. *Sniff* Chapter 4’s ending *Sniff*) and we’re supposedly supose to be showing the good and the bad, even if that amounts to very little. Occasionaly, when you try sliding the stylus to move Neku, it instead creates a path of fire. While this is fine if you’re escaping an attack and have set them alight instead, if you’re just moving to get a better range so you can then unleash the fire, (Each move needs to be recharged- At first this means you’ll be having to evade attacks, ut later on it means skipping between your moves) it’s irriating.

There are other moves such as the Icicle, (Draw a straight line upwards to create a pillar of ice that smashes enemies) Basic slashes (Move the stylus across an enemy to let Neku thump it. You can chain it together with other quick attacks to add to the damage racked up)and item throwing (Scribble a lnie over an bject to send it flying in the direction you wanted- The faster you made it fly, the more damage it does when it hits.) that confuse each other for theselfs, but on the whole it’s a fairly simple ado.

Since the battle and collectable system is so rich, we’ll give some more examples in this# footnote, but we’ll have to move on now: Neku’s main pin appears in the corner when exploring, which allows him to scan the area using his telekinetic powers. This is put to realy good use at some points in the game, but we won’t spoil them for you.

The best bit of the scan? Mind Reading! We’ve all wanted to do it, and Square realised it and decided to give it to us.# It can be fun randomly scanning peoples thoughts then seeing what you thought was a completely random idea put into the game just because Square are nuts (Which they are) but because it makes a major appearance later on in the game.# Best bit? Actualy dealving into peoples minds, and planting ideas or words into there heads- Sometimes this can have hilarious conciqenses, while others can carry real emotional depth, patching up two girl’s relationships after they fell out, for example.

This is packed with other features that are too good to be confined to mere footnotes, too- You can level up not only yourself, (Well this IS an RPG…) but also your pins- Most have a maximum level of bellow 10, (Many are even as low as 3) but this means levelling them up will be faster in the long run, but slow when doing it, as they require more EXP (As we said- it’s an RPG, what do you expect?) to improve, so you can be realy weak but still have lots of strong pins to help you out.

The other briliant points about Leveling Up are A). The idea that you can make yourself weak in order to risk getting better pins in return, more money and more EXP, plus if you’re unable to play for a while, you can get PP (Pin Points) for the time you spend unable to play. A problem we’ve encountered, as we’re unable to put the thing down. Damnit.

More? Square’s got more- Pigs that get you money, aliens that can become your friends in the multi-player mode#, many vibrant characters, pin customisation, improving via. fashion, (This is actualy a major part of the game- So major infact, we have to dedicate an entire footnote to it. It should be in our rveiew more, but anyway. The footnote is here#) tons of towns, hundreds and hundreds of itmes to collect, even more pins, plus a Pokédex system where you’re given the extra objective of facing (And beating, sicne you can’t save if you die) every single type of Noise.

Now, if the world ends with us, then how long do we have left to play it? Because if the world actualy does end, we’d want to spend our last moments with this game…

95%

-----------FOOTNOTES-------------

1 Other ways we thought of starting this review includes: Does the world realy need to end? We’re having such a good time…, Square Enix: Greatest RPG developers in the world. Final Fantasy: Greatest RPG series in the world. By Square Enix. The World Ends With You: Greatest RPG in the world., and some more which will eventualy be posted on KN. Maybe.

2 There’s a can of cola that refils health when drunk, as it gains level you can use it more times; Some just give you money when you cash ‘em in; one that creates a force field for Neku to use untill he’s struck, where the energy hit an oponut, and our most used- A lighting strike that electrocutes enemies, plus you can chain it onto multiple Noise -The beasts that you fight- to take them out more easily. Theres also a super-move that can only be pulled off when Neku and Skiki are “in Synch”, which damages every enemy and recovers a little (50%) HP.

3 Next please: X-Ray Vision. No, not for that reason…

4 Not all of ‘em, natch. Some are just there because Ol’ Enix are NUTS.

5 OK, it’s not PROPER multi-player, but you can set up a shop and get money and items from people. It’s realy well pulled-off for such a simple idea. Brilliant, square, have another medal.

6 Fairly early on, you’ll realise that your phone has a “Brand Chart” on it, and being high up on the brand chart for that certain area (It changes in everyone) will improve your power against the Noise. This is explaned in more detail around Day 3 or 4, we can’t quite remember.