The World Ends With You: Proof in the DS Pudding

[Dracos]

I'm not used to very good things coming out of Square Enix anymore.  Sure, I'm a fan of Dragon Quest.  I've played almost everything they've ever produced.  Out of the box thinking is not exactly something I recognize from them in the last several years.  Everything I've seen has been a natural design evolution either from their own stuff or from someone else's obviously profitable project.  They've got some of the highest production values in role playing games, but creativity is not something I expect from them so much anymore.  The last game they made that wow'd me was Kingdom Hearts 2, and that was more "Way to Go".

The World Ends With You wow'd me.  It wow'd me propers.

It's like one of those games that you'd expect out of Atlus that some no-name guys that don't know about video games developed and atlus took a bet on.  Or Enix in the old days.  The Enix that said "You know, Quintet?  We think you got something here.  We think you got a Soulblazer.  Trilogy."  It's not something I expect out of Square-Enix of 2008.  I am impressed.  It's not simply an evolution.  It's not simply a stolen concept.

Someone took the DS and said "What RPG can we make on here that couldn't be made anywhere else".  And then did it.  That is what I find fucking awesome point number one.  It is the first RPG I've played on the DS where the stylus wasn't a nuisance but the natural and proper way to handle the game.  Where both screens were used for action at the same time in an effective manner.

They would've just gotten kudos with that and all.  You know?  Congrats, you did awesome.  Bitches, you made that system yours.  Way to go.  Rest of you slackasses?  Take note.  I want to see ten RPGs that are this good next year.

But no, that wasn't it at all.  They went and made an awesomely modern RPG.  They played with the conventions.  They worked on story cases that fit different playstyles.  They made a game that suited this gamer that's seen it all very nicely.

I'll go into that later.  That's right.  Instead, I'm going to talk Story.  With a capital, S.  Subtle that is.  The game has a multilayered story around an amnesic main character Neku and a game which Reapers play with the lives of the players on the line.  Hey, Amnesic?  We've heard that before.  It's really tired.  Oh, I bet he has a dark and mysterious past and shite.  No.  He doesn't.  In fact, they pull that plot point off well.  They pull almost all of the plot points off really well.  You find a character irritating?  So does Neku and they usually intend for it.  I've not played a game in ages where I felt so in sync with the main character's thoughts of others.  You know how the main character is often dumb?  So other characters can explain things to you?  Neku has none of that crap.  Neku just goes and does things.  He tells the others what is going on.  Or doesn't.  It's obvious to him, and isn't it to you the player too?  Yes, yes it is, and it didn't even need to be said, thanks for just going with it!

So, the game follows Neku's journey and battle through this game of death where the losers cease to exist and the winners?  Well, they get to live another day.  The first layer?  The game itself.  The next?  Who is Neku.  Third?  You'll just have to find out, but the core is a game that very deeply integrates the concept of a psychological journey into the entire experience and reflects that strongly in the decisions they made.  Neku's a guy good at keeping people away.  Get close?  He'll hurt you.  Look his way?  He'll push you away.  He's a psych master.  There's no trick to hurt others he doesn't know....or does he?  The story is all about Neku.  But then, it's not about Neku at all is it?  He's just a guy who happens to be there.  Or is he?

The game does a very good job at suggesting scenarios, laying out the evidence to support them and hiding the evidence to oppose them...until just the right time for a very solid plot twist where one or two pieces of evidence significantly shift the playing field.  Indeed, someone even comments on it at some point that you're changing the game, but you don't even know who you're playing with or what the stakes are.  The characters piece them together fairly intelligently, admitting denial when its happening, and generally not acting blind to the events going on around them.

I know, I know, I ramble.  But I appreciate this.  The characters know what the player knows...and largely draw reasonable conclusions from the data available.  I appreciate that.  They're not all crazy 'we got to slay the evil' teenagers either.  They feel fairly human for a lot of it, which is a nice shift from the variation between ridiculous antihero and supersmiling good doer.

Additionally, they've got good quippy line writing that shows a solid english translation.  But that's icing on the delicious pudding of your doom.

The theme'ing they chose runs throughout it solidly.  This is a modern Shibuya, grafitti and all.  Hip hop is king, and the world is full of teenagers showing off for each other, wrapped in all of their little insecurities.  The theme, which should've been very off putting to me, was delivered so straight faced and completely that it felt very natural to play through and experience.  This wasn't a set of fire and ice dungeons slapped onto a generic fantasy world only 'modern' but something that largely felt contemporary to the time period entirely and kept away from things that would disrupt the theme they were going for.  This is most evident in the art style and the music...which you can hear both by going to their site, so I'll just say they're nice.  All hip-hop or punk songs...but also songs inherently about the overall game that you're playing.  It's both 'hey, you're listening to what he is on his headphones' and 'this song is about what is going on here and now'.  This is really the case of it being pop music, but pop music that was composed not only for the game specifically, but informed by the intent of the game experience.

So, what else makes the game great?  Ah, I should devolve here and talk about the minigame...

Not.

Push Your Luck.  Really simple game concept.  Emphasized I believe in 'break it' or the more familiar 'red light/green light'.  Basically, the game mechanic concept says that it is fun to reward a player higher for pushing their luck on a challenge.  The World Ends With You embraced this.  First, you get the ability to lower your level.  Why would you want to do that?  Because in this game, your drop rate is multiplied by such.  This lets them put rather ridiculous drop rates, as EVERY GOD DAMN GAME DOES, ...and it mostly not be obnoxious.  With a single exception of a .03 that seems more a typo that slipped through, every single drop was attainable without a single bit of grinding to get it.  First try.  ...Provided you were willing to push your luck enough.  What else does it do?  Well, it lets you decide when you fight, for the most part.  You can choose to never fight but the boss battles.  That'd be really hard, but you could do that.  When you choose to fight, you see various battles around you, floating in midair.  You could choose to fight one...or more than one for a multiplier...to your multiplier?  Long story short?  By end game, I played at level 1 with my highly optimized death dealing squad and a minimum drop multiplier of 120 and an average drop multiplier of 800 something.  The enemies came and were vicious and could do half my life bar....and every last one of them dropped an item every single time for my victory.  Eat that Castlevania of 'kill enemy X 1000 times per drop."  That .03 that seemed like a typo?  3 tries.  And then I got a half dozen more.  by accident.  It wasn't even a good item and I already had two.  That's how the game rolled.  None of this 'grind like mad' bit.  They didn't need to.

The game was fun to simply play.  I devoured the main game content and the post game content which was probably well upwards of a hundred hours of near non stop play.  I never grinded for difficulty.  I grinded because I wanted 'x'.  And even then, if I'd been patient, I would've gotten 'x' anyway without it.  I could just get it now...by using force lightning.  Who would've thought :P.

Maxing the pin collection was a grind though.  Not in collecting them.  That was easy.  But in maxing them all out it could take quite a long time.  Not necessary at all to beat the game, but there's quite the consumption level to collect everything.

I'll stop rambling and simply go with I highly recommend this title :)

[thepanda]

I'd like to point out that maxing your pins isn't nearly as grindy as Dracos makes it out to be. He spent most of the game at level 1 so he wasn't getting the rather huge pp bonuses you get at playing at your correct level. That's one of the trade-offs of messing with your levels. Go low and you get high drop rates. Go high and you complete battles quickly and efficiently, rewarding you with massive pp payout.

Add to that the fact that you earn pp during the time your DS is off and how your DS interacts with other people playing the game. . .

[Dracos]

I meant maxing 'all' your pins. :)

I maxed roughly 98 percent of them during the course of my game, but you can easily finish every bit of quest and such, getting star rank and max bonuses for every fight, and still come short of enough PP to max every single pin in the game.  At least, I did. :)

SPecifically, the last 15ish-20ish pins take thousands upon thousands of PP to max.  Everything else pretty much maxes in fair order, but getting a maxed shiro, for instance, is definitely a bit of a grind.

[thepanda]

100% completion is for lesser men.

I have a stack of  unopened RPGs sitting by the TV calling me! ^_^

[Roku]

WEWY was indeed a pleasant surprise.  For the main game, I mostly stuck to specific types of pins, so I hardly mastered any of them.  In post-game, I've started to do so, but since there are 3(?) 4(?) types of experience and I only have ways of getting two of them, not to mention the fact that I have no idea which types go with which pins....I've kind of lost the motivation to do so.

[Dracos]

Three types of experience.

There's really no reason to do it.  They don't make it easy enough, especially if you start at end game.  Getting any of them are easy, but the whole setup is more a chore.