"The World Ends With You" is a franchise that caught my eye way back when as Square Enix had attempted something new. A JRPG to say the least, but it had a new angle, the main protagonist did not wield a huge sword, and his hair was not blonde! Rather, the idea of the whole game is that you are drove straight into a fantasy world were you are dead. The idea of the game is that this dream world that you have been driven into is a Game, and whoever wins gets to go home free. Although there are twists and turns before it reaches its unexpected ending. In your travels, you meat 4 different characters; Shiki - A cheery optimist, who does not care that the main character is a dick; Joshua - A pretty boy who is just as much of an asshole as the protagonist, if not more irritating; Beat - An idiot who is more brain than brawn; and Rhyme... whom you never get to play with. The idea behind this is that Neku (The protagonist) has shut himself out from the rest of the world and hides himself away from everyone else under huge Headphones and Hair to rival Cloud, and make him understand that he has to be open with others, or he will live his life in solitude.
The storyline is mostly linear, you walk from point A to point 104 and scan peoples minds, fight monsters and receive a valuable life lesson from your partner, while getting screwed over from the game operators "The Reapers", who at every opportunity; will block your path, send you on a hunting quest, or ask you a series of annoying stupid questions, where if you are to find the answer, you must look for information. The higher ranked Reapers however are pivotal to the story and tend to stay away from you most the time, unless they feel like attacking you for some undisclosed reason.
The gameplay element, although simple enough to control from the single player perspective, is incredibly hard to control when it comes to working with two characters. On the harder difficulties, you are demanded to watch both screens to make sure you don't die, which is neigh impossible. Most times it's easier just to let the AI control the partner on the top screen but when you reach later in the game. That's not exactly possible as the combo bar that they each character is given at the start is made more and more complex, and you find yourself focusing on one screen entirely, while the person on the other gets mauled by the enemies. Saying the AI taking over doesn't exactly help as thy get beaten up more than if you were to control without looking; and the majority of the health pins that you can use are limited; which is not exactly easy considering that you need to heal most of the time against the hard bosses. Controlling individually is rather simple however; push left and right on the D pad to control the Top screen and whatever you touch will tell that player to do that action. The stylus controls the bottom screen and a variety of pins that you obtain from creatures, shops or quests determine what moves Neku can perform. Harder enemies and higher difficulties increase the quality of the pins, but this also reduces the drop rates to as little as 0.05% for certain enemies.
As you progress, you gain various levels ranging from easy to ultimate, and most fights can be handled on medium or hard. However boss fights are a whole different matter as most the time on higher difficulties, they cannot be beaten until much more grinding has been done to improve your pins, and your levels. There is an option on fights to run away, or to lower the difficulty to easy, just to make the story progress, though a good idea, is rather remedial. Bosses are generally a few levels stronger than the surrounding enemies, and much effort is required to bring them down.
Item shopping is rather complex. Every single item has an attack, defense and HP modifier; and all items come with special abilities. However the way to unlock said abilities is to buy other items from all the shops to become friendlier with them, which seems kind of pointless. Few items in one store will be given the ability by another store, which just means shopping everywhere, buying everything. In addition to this, you can trade items won in combat, or purchased, for "Quest Items", Special items which are generally better than that of the regular items. However, many items are difficult to obtain, and the good quet items are near impossible to collect upon.
Overall, the idea is good, the story is refreshing for Square Enix, and the gameplay is quite good, and the story is compelling enough to keep you seeing it through to the end (If you can suffer through mindless fetch quests)
Overall, I'd say give it a shot, and if not, sell it off on someone.
The storyline is mostly linear, you walk from point A to point 104 and scan peoples minds, fight monsters and receive a valuable life lesson from your partner, while getting screwed over from the game operators "The Reapers", who at every opportunity; will block your path, send you on a hunting quest, or ask you a series of annoying stupid questions, where if you are to find the answer, you must look for information. The higher ranked Reapers however are pivotal to the story and tend to stay away from you most the time, unless they feel like attacking you for some undisclosed reason.
The gameplay element, although simple enough to control from the single player perspective, is incredibly hard to control when it comes to working with two characters. On the harder difficulties, you are demanded to watch both screens to make sure you don't die, which is neigh impossible. Most times it's easier just to let the AI control the partner on the top screen but when you reach later in the game. That's not exactly possible as the combo bar that they each character is given at the start is made more and more complex, and you find yourself focusing on one screen entirely, while the person on the other gets mauled by the enemies. Saying the AI taking over doesn't exactly help as thy get beaten up more than if you were to control without looking; and the majority of the health pins that you can use are limited; which is not exactly easy considering that you need to heal most of the time against the hard bosses. Controlling individually is rather simple however; push left and right on the D pad to control the Top screen and whatever you touch will tell that player to do that action. The stylus controls the bottom screen and a variety of pins that you obtain from creatures, shops or quests determine what moves Neku can perform. Harder enemies and higher difficulties increase the quality of the pins, but this also reduces the drop rates to as little as 0.05% for certain enemies.
As you progress, you gain various levels ranging from easy to ultimate, and most fights can be handled on medium or hard. However boss fights are a whole different matter as most the time on higher difficulties, they cannot be beaten until much more grinding has been done to improve your pins, and your levels. There is an option on fights to run away, or to lower the difficulty to easy, just to make the story progress, though a good idea, is rather remedial. Bosses are generally a few levels stronger than the surrounding enemies, and much effort is required to bring them down.
Item shopping is rather complex. Every single item has an attack, defense and HP modifier; and all items come with special abilities. However the way to unlock said abilities is to buy other items from all the shops to become friendlier with them, which seems kind of pointless. Few items in one store will be given the ability by another store, which just means shopping everywhere, buying everything. In addition to this, you can trade items won in combat, or purchased, for "Quest Items", Special items which are generally better than that of the regular items. However, many items are difficult to obtain, and the good quet items are near impossible to collect upon.
Overall, the idea is good, the story is refreshing for Square Enix, and the gameplay is quite good, and the story is compelling enough to keep you seeing it through to the end (If you can suffer through mindless fetch quests)
Overall, I'd say give it a shot, and if not, sell it off on someone.
