Home  Blog The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS) Review by Zidart
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The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS) Review by Zidart |
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Written by Zidart
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Saturday, 07 June 2008 |
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Search for The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS) at the Game Addiction store. (Click Here)
The World Ends With You is possibly one of the most innovative games ever released for the Nintendo DS, and the deepest RPG set on the Nintendo DS. The game breaks a lot of molds and is innovative from the story, the game play, and the setting, which is in modern Japan. Trust me you won't find anything like this in any other console.
Story
The story of the game is amazing and the game itself is unique.
The story starts with Neku Sakuraba who randomly wakes up in the middle of the Shibuya District in Tokyo, however, he is in another parallel dimension where no one is able to see him. Neku wakes up with a weird pin in his hand that gives him the ability to read minds. He then gets a message telling him that he must complete certain missions every day during a week or he’ll be erased. This is called the Reaper's game, and he must finish the game with the help of his surprise partner Shiki Misaki. Both have to make a pact to work together to beat these missions and the game's monsters, which are called the Noise.
Telling you ANYTHING past this point would be considered a spoiler. The story is filled with tons of revelations and plot twists, and while you can try and guess what is going to happen, I don't think that’s going to help. The story has the style of a Japanese anime/manga, and it also teaches many lessons about life and yourself.
The game is divided in 3 BIG episodes, each with their own new partner (Beat and Joshua). The most important thing is that the story is not a typical "lets save the world", it is more centered on saving yourself from the Reapers and the Noise, and at the same time understanding why you are there and what is the deal with this "Reaper's Game"
Story : (9.8/10) In my opinion a great new story with the only flaw being one little part of the game where your objective is unclear and you are dragged around by a certain character asking him "what are we looking for?"
Characters
The characters in the game are one of its highlights too. Almost every single character has a personality and development(even the store clerks but more on that later). The game has characters from all forms and colors, from math and food addicts, to rappers and fashion girls.
Neku starts off as the type of guy who is against society and hates people and is very rude and inconsiderate, but as you play the game he will learn more about himself. Shiki is the fashion girl who is very friendly but she has a little hidden secret. Beat is a rapper who is not very bright but values friendship and his sister Rhyme, who is a girl with lots of dreams and love for his brother. Last but not least is Joshua, the enigmatic and sarcastic (and creepy) boy. Each of them starts with mysteries and personal problems and they all develop as the game continues.
But that's not all, villains have also charm that will make you love them (or hate them more) like Sho Minamimoto who is a math addict with certain phrases like "you are out of your vector" and "so zetta slow."
Even store clerks and NPCs present some depth in their personalities in the way that when you buy items from a store the clerk will grow to like you and start a bond of friendship with you, and he/she will give you abilities or new clothes on sale, and you can Scan NPCs mind to learn what is up with their life and learn a funny thing or two.
Characters: (9.5/10) Simply fantastic how the characters are in this game, the bond with them is so strong that you might miss them once you finish the game. However, some characters are just annoying.
Gameplay
The game's game play breaks many molds especially in its battle system, where you control two characters at the same time. Neku is controlled with the touch screen and your Partner attacks with the arrows (or buttons if you are lefty). Neku uses Pins to attack, they are like the materia from final fantasy VII, however the pins here are controlled by simple gestures of the touch screen like touching, taping, slashing and even screaming into the microphone. All of this happens in real time and you control both characters at the same time, however every time you do a finishing move with any character a ball of light called puck will go to the other character. Keep the puck moving and you’ll have not only a attack power boost, but also a good rhythm and a guide to know where you are supposed to be concentrated.
The learning curve is without a doubt high, but the game gives you options to master it. Things like auto-play for the partner, change in difficulty level at any time, and if you feel like it lowering your max LVL to get higher pin drop rates, once you get used to the battles system you can set all these options to the ones you feel comfortable with, but keep in mind that higher difficulty and lower level drops more pins.
Another keypoint are your partners. While they don't obtain new attacks like Neku, they are really important because they share the HP with you. Each partner has a certain type of card game (matching, high or low, and poker). For example, Joshua’s card game is high or low, on top part of the screen there will be a card and a sign that says higher, lower, or equal (for this example let's say 9 lower). In Joshua’s combo map there are 3 cards (for this let’s say 3, 4, and 9) if you successfully follow the combo map to get a card lower than 9 then you get a fusion point. Fusion points are used to do devastating Fusion attacks that do damage to most enemies on screen.
There are tons of other features in the game:
- No random battles, you choose when to fight.
- You can use mingle with other DS's (just picking up their signal, another "The World Ends With You" is not needed) so you can get experience points and money.
- When you turn the game off, the game still gives you experience points even though you are not playing (so you do your homework and come back ready to battle).
- There's a food feature, where you give food to your characters and they take time to digest it. Also there's a limit of how many bites (how much food) you can eat in a day.
- There are over 300 pins to train/evolve and master.
- The game features an exact map from the Shibuya district of Tokyo, so if you ever wanna go there you can use this as your guide.
- Also, you get a boost of stats if you use different combination of clothes in different areas (for example in some areas summer clothing is more popular so summer clothes give you a bigget boost in those areas), but you always have to keep your clothes with style. However, you can change the popularity of the brands of clothes you are wearing by using pins of the same brand in battle.
- There is some kind of multiplayer, a mini-game called tin pin slammer, where you let pins fight each other. Each pin has a number of set abilities to use in this minigame and the point is to throw the other pin out of the set stage.
- Every piece of clothes have a certain ability but you won't know what it is until the store clerk tells you, however you must develop a friendly relationship with the clerk in orther for them to tell you these abilities and to sell you more clothes. There are lots of clerks out there so you gotta buy lots of stuff.
- You can also play a bit with people's minds and insert certain thoughts into their minds, and change the way they think. Also, you can help them make decisions without them knowing you are there.
Gameplay: (10/10) Simply amazing and outstanding, nothing like this can be done in any other console; it pushes the DS to the limit and it just has tons of depth never before seen in a handheld.
Presentation
The presentation is outstanding, the art style is very creative and modern, and the character design comes from Tetsuya Nomura (obvious because Neku looks like Sora).
The 2D graphics are the best you can find on the DS. The sprites look beautiful and very colorful, very good looking cut scenes and voice acting as well. While most parts of the dialog doesn't have voice acting, some little phrases here and there help portray the personality and mood of the character while he’s talking (helping to determine if the character is being sarcastic).
Music is probably the best part, there are tons of different songs in the game and most of them are very addictive. They are modern from Rock to Japanese pop and techno (with some rap here and there), and while you might not like some songs at the beginning of the game more tunes are added to the mix as you keep playing. Also you can pick any song you like, buy the CD for it in the game, and listen to it every time you go to the game’s menu.
Also I like the fact that they did an exact copy of the district of Shibuja for this game (they only changed some of the store's names for copyright purposes).
Presentation (9.5/10) The presentation is outstanding, however I feel like they could have used more voice acting during dialog and scenes.
Replay value
The World Ends With You has tons of stuff to do after you beat the game, it has a mission mode where you must fulfill certain extra missions in each chapter. Also, you might want to train/evolve and master all the pins in the game (which are over 300), get all the store clerks to like you, complete your item list, get the noise list complete etc. The story itself is 20 hours long (more if you play many battles), but getting everything complete might take you 50+ hours. A long time for a handheld game if you ask me.
Replay value (9.0/10) While the game has tons of things you can do to complete it, it might feel like a chore sometimes, but overall you get your money’s worth.
Overall ranking (9.6/10) Honestly this is one of the best RPGs I played in a while. It certainly breaks Nintendo's view on what the console is capable of, and is ironic that is on a handheld where RPGs are not considered as good as consoles. This game breaks many molds and barriers so is not a surprise, I recommend you try this game because with all this content you get your money’s worth, however I must point the fact that it has only 1 save file and that its difficulty might scare some players away. But you never know until you try. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 June 2008 )
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