The World Ends With You

When worlds collide.

In an industry dominated by sequels, reboots, and other unoriginal material, its refreshing to see a game like The World Ends with You. Designed by Square Enix, the company responsible for Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends with You (TWEWY) is an entirely new IP with a unique setting. It's certainly one of the more original role-playing games to come out in the past ten years. For a handheld game, TWEWY is packed with substance, including a mini-game that can be played with friends via Wi-Fi, and lots of post-game content. Its animation is great, its music even better, and its combat system, while potentially troublesome for younger players, is inspired.

Shiki and Neku.

Unlike the fantasy settings of many Square Enix games, TWEWY is set in modern day Tokyo, in the Shibuya shopping district to be precise. The bustling metropolitan essence of Shibuya is well presented in the game, and also incorporated into its gameplay. Elements of Japanese youth culture -- food, phones, graffiti, fashion -- frequently play important roles in missions. The game's heroes are cultural warriors, so to speak. They include Neku, an antisocial 15-year-old who loves his own freedom and nothing else; Shiki, a fashion-conscious teenager; Joshua, a mysterious and somewhat snobby young adult; and Beat and Rhyme, a duo that's equal parts brains and brawn. All have been thrust into a mysterious "game" run by a cabal of "reapers." They have seven days to pass the reapers' challenges, or "face erasure."

Shiki fights above, Neku fights below.

TWEWY is an action RPG. Players control Neku and his parter du jour as they search the various neighborhoods of Shibuya trying to complete missions handed down from the "game master." Some neighborhoods may be inaccessible depending on the day and mission, so Neku and partner must satisfy certain requirements to open gates guarded by reapers. Most often this involves defeating "noise," the main enemy in TWEWY. Attacking (or being attacked by) noise opens up the combat screen; this is where the game really shines. The developers at Square Enix and Jupiter made a bold move by deciding to incorporate the dual screen and touch screen functionality of the Nintendo DS into their combat system, instead of taking a more traditional and safer route. The result is an inspired combat system that plays out in the top and bottom screen, and sometime requires simultaneously button presses and stylus movement.

But Square Enix and Jupiter didn't stop there. They introduced a few more innovations, making use of the DS' internal clock to allow pins (Neku's weapons) to evolve while the system is shut off, and allowing players to change their level before every battle. Now, all role-playing games are about "leveling up," but in TWEWY, players can level down. Using a slider in the status menu, one can lower levels, exchanging health for higher enemy drop rates. This is a brilliant risk vs. reward system that permits players to live dangerously to obtain more money and rarer pins.

After the game is over, TWEWY allows players to experience each chapter of the game again, in order to beat hidden challenges and get answers to some unanswered questions. There's also Tin Pin Slammer, a multiplayer mini-game that can be played with other DS users. Yet even without all the post-game content, TWEWY would still be an amazing and impossibly ambitious portable RPG. Square Enix could easily have chosen to produce another handheld Final Fantasy. Instead it developed a new IP; created a beautiful and challenging story about friendship, memory, identity, life, and death; and broke several RPG conventions in the process.

Score: 8.5