The World Ends With You (Subarashiki Kono Sekai or “It’s a Wonderful World”), is the odd-child of DS gaming. The antagonizing, “don’t-give-a-damn” gathering of anti-social dispositions set against innate Shibuya cultural musings has been done many times in Japan — the manga Gantz and Jet Set Radio come to mind. Though it received it’s fair share of media attention, thanks in part to the Kingdom Hearts team (led by Tetsuya Nomura) collaborating with developer Jupiter (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and the under-rated Picross DS), no one expected the game to be this technically impressive. However, with it’s eclectic mix of Shibuya youth culture, a varied and excellently orchestrated sound track, vivid visuals of anime-esque detailing and graffiti mantels, sharp 2D sprite animation and background design, The World Ends With You presents a compelling, addictive and lengthy package for any RPG and DS gamer alike. And if that weren’t enough, it perfectly follows the guidelines for stellar Japanese game design: easy to get into, full of depth; original yet still staying in it’s carefully constructed mold.

For a company famous for it’s melodramatic teenage Friends-esque casts, we’re spared of the traditional shoujo-ai and shoujo (for both, read: sissy sap) romantic trappings. The story may look all typical animated colourful garbage on the outside, but a trip through Final Fantasy-land this is not. We start off with anti-social hip-cat Neku Sakuraba who mysteriously awakens in the Shibuya shopping district with no memories, a strange black Player pin and a cell phone message from The Reapers threatening him to reach 104 Street or face erasure. The Reapers let loose their own nasty inventions called Noise to erase Neku, but thanks to the intervention and partnering with the extremely cute Shiki Misaki, Neku calls upon strange new abilities called Psychs to defeat the Noise. Neku subsequently discovers he’s playing The Reapers’ Game in Shibuya Underground, a parallel world to the real Shibuya, and he and his partner will have to win if they wanna live.

The game only gets more heavy-handed from then on. The story has a tendency of hitting you upside the head one too many times with its plot twists, inexplicable, varied and insane as they come. You’ll meet other characters (some who’ll also form a partnership with Neku), like the moronic yet big-hearted Beat, timid yet kind Rhyme, arrogant yet intelligently vicious Joshua, and the warm yet enigmatic Mr. H, along with the psychotic Reapers. You can be sure that almost every character evaluation made from the onset will be turned on its head by end-game time. Right from the animated intro to the tormented climax, in terms of narrative value, The World Ends With You is a classic case on not doing things the typical way—and running with it all throughout.

Playing the game is even more trippy. You have your cell-phone — your normal Start menu that manages your items, character level (increasing or decreasing it dictates the Pins picked up in battle), the game difficulty, and which Pins you can equip. Pins in this game are the rudimentary McGuffin — there are Psych pins, Money pins, Mini-game pins and what-not. The Money pins can be converted into cash, and the Mini-game pins are used for Tin Pin Slammer, played via the touch screen and reminiscent of the Western marble game Ringer where you attempt to knock your opponents off the table using pins. It’s fun and a great distraction, but it can take a lot of initial practice. Also, it’s a mandatory story insertion tool, so giving up and going home in dejected Pokemon trainer fashion is not an option here.

The Psych pins decide which abilities you’ll be able to use when you enter a battle. There are several options like avalanches, dancing flames, solar beams, lasers, bullets, even psychokinesis and black holes. Some augment dormant skills like Attack and Defense Break while others allow you to overcome various status effects and heal yourself. Once you activate your black Player pin and scan the surroundings, you can select the Noise you wish to fight.

And the battles of The World Ends With You are the main meat of the gameplay. In battle, you control both of your characters simultaneously. Your partner is controlled using the analog pad. He or she will remain stationery and by pressing either right or left, you can attack Noise on either side of the screen; eventually, partner characters will gain other skills like mid-air strikes, blocking and side-stepping. But Neku is your main fighter — you’ll be dodging enemies and delivering beat-downs using the stylus. This mechanism may sound complicated at first — especially when you figure in Chain attacks, where your team unleashes a special limit break that also recovers some health, and the Light Puck, a shining green discus that moves back and forth between the team with successive combos, allowing the holder to deal more damage. The best part is if things get too hectic, the AI can do the fighting. You can adjust how quickly you want the AI to take over in a fight when you’re attention needs to be on a single screen. It is important to mention though, that most of your fights will be won only when you can skillfully control both characters at once. Give it time however, and you’ll be annihilating even the toughest of Noise with minimal exertion.

Noise Erasure dictates more than just Psyche Skill or your stats — believe it or not, the popularity of clothes, pins and accessories you wear, culled from 13 different designers, also dictate the effectiveness of your equipment. The more popular a particular designer is, the more potent your attack will be; conversely, enter an area dominated by a rival fashion and witness your attacks rendered weak. However, it doesn’t take much to make a particular brand the dominant fashion, and with a Top 3 list, it’s easy to manage multiple fashioned pins.

With all the things going on in The World Ends With You, including Taboo Noise hunting and Tin Pin Slammer, you’d probably expect it to log in about 7-10 hours. Shockingly, not only does it clock in easily at about 15+ hours, but an entirely new scenario centered around Tin Pin Slammer (featuring some genuinely funny incidents) and the New Game+ mode centered around the collection of several secret reports further fleshing out the game’s incidents are unlocked upon completion. That’s a lot of content, all wrapped up in an easily accessible package. Kingdom Hearts 2 deja vu? You bet — and it gets even better. The English localization is top-notch, and thankfully, NRJ gamers can get their fill on Shibuya’s history. The various voice actors, providing both full length dialogs and small effects do a great job. Special mention must be made of Jesse David Corti as Neku, for bringing out the right amount of aloofness and boyish charm without over-angsting the more sensitive bits. The ending epilogue with Neku is easily one of the best instances of closure in a DS game ever.

A lot of noise (no pun intended) has been made recently about the power of the PSP, especially with Square-Enix’s Crisis Core. The DS delivers in much the same way for The World Ends With You, but takes an entirely differently approach to its art. With the massive worlds being designed in a sort of faux 3D graffiti pallete and the characters and spell effects completely sprite-based, you’re looking at a lot of raw art on the screen at once. Tetsuya Nomura’s character designs used in the cut-scenes and dialog exchange are intricately designed and highly detailed, right down to the stitching on Shiki’s mini-skirt. The one thing that makes more of an impact than the graphics, however is the music. Composed by Takeharu Ishimoto and various local artists, the soundtrack spans various genres like rock, electronica and hip-hop — it’s release as a separate album in both the USA and Japan is a testament to how good it actually is.

There are little to no flaws to speak of in The World Ends With You. Sure, you may be flummoxed by some of the missions, like the Reaper Review quizzes, and the boss battles get pretty brutal later on in the game (some people may complain that the end stretch consists of nothing but big battles), but these faults do precariously little to blemish the final product. If the DS has been waiting for it’s definitive RPG, then make no mistake — this is it. It’s ironic that Square-Enix, the team behind the most best selling home system RPGs, was to bag that honour, but The World Ends With You stands firmly on its merits as a perfect, appealing and fulfilling example of portable gaming, if not a shining example of the genre itself.

9.5 / 10

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• h3lios Says:
  May 27th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

  Who is the asshat behind this review? He deserves a few dozen beers! Good stuff:) !