The World Ends With You!

It's not very often you see a entirely new IP from Square-Enix and one look at The World Ends With You will make alot of people wonder why. The World Ends With You separates it self from the norm in quite a few ways making it one of the best DS games out there.

The one big thing that The World Ends With You does different is that it takes place in the real world. You follow Neku a boy who wakes up in Shibuya with no memory and a timer oh his hand. You soon find yourself being attacked by Noise and the story begins to unfold. Now some may say big deal who cares it takes place in real world Shibuya. Well taking place in Shibuya influenced the game alot. As some may know Shibuya is often referred to as the fashion mecha of the world where all the big trends start. The World Ends With You heavily deals with this in the game as armor takes the form of different clothing brands and styles and the more popular that brand the more effective it becomes.

The combat puts the DS's 2 screens to very good use. During combat Neku will appear on the bottom screen and his partner appears on the top. You control the bottom screen with the stylus and the top screen with the D-pad and other various buttons. Yes you control both screens at the same time and while it may seem very daunting at first once you get used to it it's not to bad. If you fail to get the hang of it you can set the game to quickly take control of the top screen.

Over the course of the game you will gather pins that each have a particular power during battle each is activated by a different move of the stylus and for the most part the stylus is pretty responsive although there are a few pins that are somewhat difficult to use consistently. The pins only allow for a certain amount of uses before they need a cool down period in which you need to wait until they are usable again similar to most MMO's. You will collect various pins and use them to build a deck for combat. There is a large amount of pins and they all can be leveled up and some even evolve into better pins so there is alot of variety in combat. Although on your first play through you may just find yourself sticking with the pins that are easy and quick to use.

The World Ends With You takes alot of chances and most of them pay off. The characters are great and well developed, the story while somewhat short is still very good, the combat and new and fresh. The positives are almost endless. So with that said are there any negatives? A few. The game very rarely forces you to fight so some may try to just rush through without leveling and that will be a big problem further into the game. The combat while great is very hard to get used to and if someone cant get used to it the CPU controlling the stop screen isn't always very good and you will often find the top screen character getting killed during boss fights. However if you don't have a problem with the combat then it's not a problem at all.

The World Ends With You holds alot of promise of becoming a franchise for Square-Enix. The game has performed well and it's refreshing to see SE do something so different from the norm. If you have a DS you should get The World Ends With You a shot you may like it and then we may get a chance to see more of Neku and company in the future.