The World Ends With You

I've blogged about two PSP games so far, but I'm really a Nintendo DS guy. Recently however, it seems like my DS Lite is screaming for retirement. The top screen's colors are a little off, and the D-pad is not working. This means that I'm stuck with the touch screen games, but I'm not missing out much. I still have the Ace Attorney series, Trauma Center, Elite Beat Agents, and thankfully, The World Ends With You (TWEWY for short). I love it so much I named this blog after it.

The reason why I love it so much is because everything about it is great. Here:

Gameplay:

The gameplay is really unique. There are no random battles. You can see enemies on the screen, and you just click on them to activate the battle. The battle itself is confusing. You will fight on the top screen using the D-pad, and the touchscreen below simultaneously. But it's not that hard. Your abilities and money come in dozens of button pins, with each pin artwork having a unique ability. You get your stats from the clothes you wear to the food you eat, all of which can be bought from shops around the city.

Graphics and Music:

The graphics are in 2D with characters in sprites. The backgrounds and the overall artwork are just plain cool. The music is purely J-pop. So you have these songs with pretty cool beats, and the not-so-cool lyrics. Here's the game's trailer to show you everything I just mentioned:

Story:

TWEWY is a Role-Playing Game (RPG), set on the Shibuya district in Tokyo, Japan. It's about a boy named Neku, who woke up in the middle of the street, with amnesia, and everybody else can't see, hear, or feel him. He met a girl named Shiki, who told him that both of them are players in a game. Here's how the game works:

1. You can only become a player when you meet a certain condition.

2. You should give up the most important thing in your life as entry fee to the game.

3. You find and team up with a partner. If you can't, you get erased. (You Lose.)

4. With your parter, you do seven missions in seven days, given by the game master.

5. Finish a mission and the mission is accomplished for all the players.

6. If nobody finished the mission, everyone will be erased.

7. Noise (monsters) and Reapers (in-game characters) may fight the players and erase them.

8. After all the missions are completed, the game master chooses the winner who gets the prize.

Players on the foreground, Reapers on the background

Now I need to tell the spoilers to show how the story goes, but trust me, there are lot more great twists, plots, and sub-stories that I won't mention here. If you don't want any, then my post ends here.

Neku has amnesia, so it's pretty obvious that his memory was the most important thing that he gave up to enter the game. The certain condition to become a player? Death. All the players that enter the game are dead. And the prize? You guessed it! Another chance in life.

Neku gets to finish the game, but because of certain interferences that happened within the game, he gets to play it again, and then one more time, each with a different partner and a different game master. In the end, if everything turns out right (or wrong depending on how you see it), the world does end with him. Oh, and he finds out everything about his death.

Pretty nice story huh? That's the thing I love the most about the game. I play games like I read books, I'm all about the story.