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The World Ends With You (It's a Wonderful World [japan title])Reviewed by Chris Hori
Created by the same group who designed Kingdom Hearts, this game continues the Action-RPG genera. But don't be fooled into thinking it’s a Kingdom Hearts clone in a different setting. This might be one of the most original Action-RPG's that I’ve played in a long time. I'm almost confused to say this but as of late, I’ve enjoyed Square-Enix's games MORE when the words "final" or "fantasy" isn't in the title You start the game as Neku, a boy who seems to have lost his memory. (Ok I admit this is standard Square storyline so far). But that is where the Square stereotyping ends. The game is set in Shibuya,Tokyo in a modern day setting. In fact, the game has taken great care to recreate a recognizable setting, including such landmarks as "the Hachiko statue", The Crossing, Shibuya's train station, and a mix of shops and businesses that you can interact with in the game. This leads me to my first bit of praise. This game has a surprising number of things you can do that are neither a 'side quest' nor part of the 'main story'. The main story is your standard linear RPG, but there are a handful of extras. The first is that Shibuya is a pretty trendy place to be. Since this is a business area, people are conscious of things like clothing brands and trends, and this game takes note of that. There are various shops that sell different brands of clothing. You can equip the clothing for stat and ability buffs, but depending on what part of the city you are in, some brands are more popular, and others are flat out uncool. The bonuses are further modified based on these trends. Plus if you don't like the trends, you can influence them by wearing your favorite brand and being active in an area, and people will begin to adapt to your style. It's not necessary and you could play the entire game without any extra clothes but it does add an element of game play. Next are your weapons. In The World Ends With You, players equip pins. Different pins give you different abilities and using a pin levels it up. Sometimes the pins can evolve into a better version of themselves. This is where the game gets interesting. The combat system takes place on both screens at the same time, but are separate from each other. The upper screen uses the D-pad (or ABXY for left handed players), while the lower screen uses the stylus in creative and intuitive ways to fight. You control both characters at the same time and must defeat enemies on both screens to kill them. It sounds difficult at first, but the game eases you into the system nicely. If it gets to complex, you can set the computer to control the top screen while you work only the bottom one. Another element of combat is the ability to adjust your difficulty and your level (except while in the middle of a fight). In addition, adjusting the difficulty alters what items enemies drop, so at times you may want to switch to easy or difficult to ensure a specific item drops (the game also keeps records of what items drop from what enemies and at what difficulty). To match with this, you can adjust your level. By setting your level lower, you can increase the drop rate of these items. I've found that by setting your characters to their highest level, you are easily able to clear bosses at the hardest level, so I often have my characters set to half their max level (at most) to ensure a decent drop rate. This makes it so the game is as easy or as hard as you want it to be. A third element which I really enjoyed is that characters can eat. Normally eating refills your health, but in this game, you start every fight at full health. So eating instead gives you permanent stat boosts. Different types of food are sold at different stores around the city. In addition, you can only have your characters eat so much in a 24 hour (real time) period. Add to all of this an awesome audio track (you can shop at CD stores for different background songs), a visual style that is takes cues from modern Shibuya youth culture, and a story that actually makes sense and you have a game that I’m finding really hard to complain about. If I have to complain about something, it would be that the characters don't actually appear on screen in the clothes you buy for them. I attribute this to the fact that the pre-scripted scenes have the characters drawn in their normal clothes, and that it's the DS so designing an in game animation for every bit of clothes might be asking for a bit much. This isn't an actual game flaw, but I have hopes for a sequel. For people who have the urge to explore, this game will provide you hours of entertainment. For people who want something new and like Action-RPG's I can't recommend this game enough. More Screenshots (click image to enlarge) :
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Developer:
Square Enix / Jupiter
After you complete the game, you unlock all of the characters and areas in the game. This lets you explore the city, buy things from the shops, make friends with various shopkeepers, and just overall enjoy the setting of the game. While it doesn't sound like much now, once you play it, you will be thankful because it allows you to focus on the main story early on without having to worry about 'missing a one time area' later. The best part is all these "extra" game play elements aren't necessary. If you don't want to buy clothes, then you don't need as much money. If you don't need money, you don't need to set your characters level so low because you don't need the higher drop rate. At high level, you don't need the buffs from clothes to win. It just works out so beautifully. Keep in mind there are no items as your pins provide everything from attacks to buffs to healing. Anything that you NEED, the game gives you via essential fights. 
