What would such a game look like? Thick stylized artwork and colours that pop. What would it play like? Different. Fairly different. What's it called already? The World Ends With You.
A bold title for a game based on a shopping district.
Fun Times
I had absolutely no idea what The World Ends With You was about before diving in. Didn't know what genre it was, the setting, nothing. When it looked like some kind of comic book, I was gearing up for something that could well be pretty cool, but this kid with his silly hair, stick-thin limbs and emo attitude wasn't quite the start I was expecting.
If you're going to suddenly develop the ability to read peoples minds, the middle of a crosswalk perhaps isn't the ideal place, but then The World Ends With You isn't simply about the ability to read peoples minds. A mysterious pin badge has appeared on our person too, and it's only going to get stranger from here.
Our phone receives a message from the Reapers, and tribal-ish art splashes across the screen to tell us in no uncertain terms that we're on a time limit. It's even burned into our palm. Whatever we were walking the streets of Shibuya for before, we're probably not now.
Out of rips in spacetime, for want of a better explanation, emerge large frogs intent on harm, and we're given our first taste of how The World Ends With You is going to play, as we get ready to swipe our way around the arena to run and dash out of harm's way.
Despite the angry hair and purple colour scheme, we're not capable of fighting back, so after both screens flash a tutorial for how to move, we're given a tutorial on how to run away.
Something is definitely amiss, and it's time for a mid-2000s era arty intro video showing us characters we'll inevitably meet to the sounds of some awful song. A heads up: the music is repetitive in this game, and I don't like it one bit.
While I'm here, I don't like the art style either. The characters are too stylized, too absurdly stick-like. Take a look at the first new face we meet, Shiki.
We sort of learn that whatever's going on in part of a game, and it's best - indeed, required - to team up with someone, forming an official pact to help each other out in defeating the Noise, currently taking the form of a bunch of frogs.
How do you deal with frogs? How about a pin with a flame on it, representing a fire attack. Shiki can't use it herself for reasons unknown, so it's up to us to click and drag a path of fire over a bunch of frogs until enough damage is dealt for them to disappear from existence - much like anyone who fails the objective given to them by these mysterious Reapers.
I must admit that it was a brief while before I actually knew how to use this fire attack properly. I'm definitely not confident in the use of a stylus to draw attacks on the screen.
Frustrations
I'm also not confident in my ability to like these characters. They're not doing anything for me at all. It's not voiced, save the odd reaction to something alarming, so we're left to get an idea of what they're like from the words they choose and the look they've got.
What a ridiculous look these people have. Was this really influenced by the actual styles on display in Shibuya back in the day? Did people not freeze to death back then? Did they not get lost in their hoodies? Or is this just exaggerated like animation tends to be?
After some chit-chat that I start losing the will to follow along with is done, we find ourselves in a fight where The World Ends With You reveals it's big gameplay hook. The Nintendo DS has two screens. You have two characters. You have two hands. Control both.
I'm sorry, what?
Sure enough, you control both characters, one with the D-pad or face buttons, the other with the stylus. When Shiki performs attacks up top, you can perform them down below, and if you can chain together attacks one after the other, you strengthen your partner for their next attack.
If this is too much for you to keep in mind at once, don't worry, as the game will take over control if it detects a lack of inputs for long enough. This is important because enemies must be defeated on both screens, otherwise, they're not defeated at all.
So you swipe to dash and draw flames down below, and press left or right to start an attack chain leading to something I literally have no idea about, and you just wait for the fight to finish.
Well, I'm sure skilled players don't just wait for the fight to finish, they actually work towards finishing it efficiently, but me, I was floundering. There's no way I could look at both screens, and I don't think they want you to either. Concentrate on one at a time. Input an attack, switch screens, input an attack, switch back.
It makes some sense, but in execution, I didn't like it at all. I wasn't able to fully pay attention to anything, really. I'm not sure if that's because the characters didn't stick out from their backgrounds or whether I was trying to do too much at once, but it just wasn't clicking comfortably, and this is the whole point of The World Ends With You...
However. We've made it to wherever we were meant to be within the time limit, and it's time to advance the plot. Shiki get's another mission on her phone. Another countdown timer is burned into our hand, and I discover a pocket full of badge pins, and pins mean attacks and special abilities.
What follows is a series of tutorial fights for a whole manner of attacks, from chaining lightning strikes to shooting something out of your hands, to lobbing things at opponents with telekinesis... if you can work an attack into some kind of swipe or jab of a stylus on a touchscreen, there's a pin for it, and you'll be able to make use of it when fighting frogs.
All of this happens in real-time, of course, where you have to dodge jumping frogs by accurately swiping to a safe space, which then probably reduced my options because I made it harder to swipe on a motorbike or gave myself no space to set everything on fire.
At the end of the day, I just wasn't having fun with The World Ends With You. The controls were too much for me. The characters are too unlikable. The plot was too silly and full of frogs. The style a little too stylized, and the music too damn repetitive and dated.
To sum it up:
Final Word
I probably wouldn't say I've given The World Ends With You a fair chance to impress, but if I don't like what I see and read, and don't like how it feels in the hand, even under emulation, how much of a chance should it get?
There are games where you just know you won't get along with, and that's fine. This is one of them. I just don't see myself paying any further attention to it. It's not for me. But the controls, and the idea of fighting as two people more or less at once, are at least something different to have a look at.
If that's the whole point of this 1001 list, and to a great extent it is, then The World Ends With You is definitely worth checking out because it tries something different with the hardware it finds itself on. Does it succeed? Not in my hands, no, but it might in yours.
You might be looking for a cartoony action-RPG inspired by the youth of a Japanese shopping district, and if you are, you've hit the jackpot. I don't know how big the prize is, but here it is. For the rest of us, it's worth a look at least.
Fun Facts
The in-game Shibuya is supposedly close enough to the real-world Shibuya that fans have gone on tours to compare the two.
The World Ends With You, developed by Jupiter, Square Enix, first released in 2007.
Version played: Nintendo DS, 2008, via emulation.