The World Ends With You - Squeenix Fashion-Dance-JRPG!

[gaggle64]

I've been seeing this game from Squeenix around, and I'm actually quite interested in it. Called Subarashiki Kono Sekai in Japan, I was immediately grabbed by it's style, but it's story sounds doubly awesome, just so bizarre and off the wall -

 

Set in Tokyo's trendiest district, the story begins with the lead character Neku waking up to find a phone message stating he has only 7 days before he will cease to exist. Only with the coolest fashions, friends and fighting skills can Neku restore hope to the city's population and prevent being stricken from existence altogether!

 

Anyway, it's on it's way to Europe now as The World Ends With You. Will probably appeal to Heroes fans. Coming Spring 2008.

 

Shots:

 

 

 

 

[flameboy]

This looks awesome remember seeing videos of it ages ago and it just looks so stylized and unique cannot wait to pick it up.

[Tales]

Huh? What about NA...?

[Jonnas]

Huh? What about NA...?

 

Remains TBA. Glad to see another game arriving here first.

 

 

Anyway, this game looks great. Quirky style, unique gameplay, (seemingly) good use of the DS capabilities...

 

Definately looking forward to it.

[Shino]

So, its a rhythm game? Love the style.

[Domstercool]

Most of the gameplay focuses on finding clues and battling Noise. Players can use Neku's mindreading abilities to hear people's thoughts by using the touch screen of the Nintendo DS. The game's combat system, called the "Stride Cross Battle System", uses both screens of the Nintendo DS. Neku has three partners, one in each and specific chapter of the game. The player can freely choose which partner to use, once clearing the game. One of the three partners is displayed on the top screen, while Neku is displayed on the bottom. Battle actions take place simultaneously between both characters. The touch screen is used to move and attack with Neku, whose abilities depend on the badges equipped. On the top screen, movement can be controlled with the D-Pad, which is tapped for specific techniques.

 

 

Something like that

[Guest Jordan]

Sounds complicated.

 

I love the style, but i prefer the old name... we'll see how it does in a reviews. I'm not generally a fan of RPG's, but you never know

[Dante]

The Japanese version topic has lots of infomation.

[darksnowman]

The World Ends With You given official European release date

London (6th March 2008) – Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories, today announces that THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU™, an exciting new title from the makers of KINGDOM HEARTS, will be released across all PAL territories from 18th April, 2008 exclusively on the Nintendo DS™ system.

 

Previously known as Subarashiki Kono Sekai™ on its release in Japan. THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU is an innovative new title from Square Enix that fully utilizes the capabilities of the Nintendo DS, and takes major influence from Japan’s modern day culture including its people, music, clothes, food and design.

 

Set in Tokyo’s trendiest district, the story begins with the lead character Neku waking up to find a phone message stating he has only 7 days before he will cease to exist. Only with the coolest fashions, friends and fighting skills can Neku restore hope to the city’s population and prevent being stricken from existence altogether!

 

John Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix Ltd. comments, “Square Enix has traditionally been associated with RPG’s set in fantasy lands, but THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU is our first ever game to be set in modern times and real-life locations. We believe gamers of all ages and abilities will be able to enjoy all that THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU has to offer.â€

 

For further information about THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU, please visit the official website at http://www.theworldendswithyou.co.uk

 

About THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU

 

Story

The story begins as our hero, Neku, wakes up amidst the hustle and bustle of Shibuya, Tokyo. Confused and disoriented, he receives a message on his phone warning him that he will cease to exist unless he completes a certain mission. With his life seemingly on the line, Neku plunges into the back streets of the urban labyrinth…

 

Features

- Experience the urban grit and neon of the coolest district in Tokyo with a distinctive, high quality style of in-game artwork

- Meet an achingly hip cast of characters each with an interesting personality and stylish sense in fashion, music and culture

- Highly innovative and intuitive combat system that makes full use of the Nintendo DS Dual Screens and Microphone like no other game before it!

- Use fantastic psychic powers to read the thoughts of the population, put words into people’s minds, and move objects to help you progress in your adventure!

- Immerse yourself in an amazing audio soundtrack featuring a diverse fusion of bleeding-edge hip-hop, rock, and techno

- A tale of friendship, hope and overcoming your challenges, creatively told with a modern edge

- Shop till you drop! Keep abreast of the latest Trends to stay one step ahead of the fashion scene and your enemies

- Action-packed minigame fun that can be enjoyed by up to four players via DS Wireless Play!

- Engage the Chance Encounter mode via DS Wireless Play to share data with fellow game users you bump into in the real world

 

GamesPress

 

Its in for April 18th.

[gaggle64]

I'm so there. Down to the store, absolutely day one.

[Dante]

IGN Hands-ons The World Ends With You

 

At first, The World Ends With You looks to be an extremely daunting experience, but it all comes together into an impressive package that mixes one part anime and one part action-RPG. The entire title revolves around a yearly event called the "Reaper's Game," which is a competition set up by the reapers (or judges) that enforce the spirit world, where a group of teams have seven days to complete all of the challenges or face annihilation. The story focuses on a young boy by the name of Neku who is randomly transported to an alternate world in Shibuya, Tokyo. Known as "The Ungerground," this new Shibuya is the home to the reapers game. Neku and all the other participants can see the real world existing and moving around them, but they're trapped in a dimension away from reality, with obscene new abilities and rules within it. Upon entering New Shibuya, Neku meets up with his partner Shiki -- a spunky young girl with an odd ability to control her stuffed animal "Mr. Mew" -- and learns about the Reaper Game, his quest, and what New Shibuya is all about.

 

The basic premise of the game is simple: Progress through the linear story, and work through all seven days of the Reaper's Game. Obviously, there's more to the story than that, but we'll keep spoilers out of it. The entire cinematic side of the game is told with a very unique style, using slide-in character portraits and moving animated backdrops for the "cut scenes," and always fusing this Jet Set Radio look into the actual game.

 

As for the gameplay, The World Ends With You is an extremely unique experience. Players control Neku (with Shiki following) by use of either the D-pad or touch screen, having the characters run around the world in Phantom Hourglass fashion. The screens shift and pan, but it's set up like pages of a comic, so you'll run to the edge, the screen will fade out, and a new area will pop up. All along the Shibuya strip you'll find side roads to run down, individual stores to enter and shop in, ramen houses to eat at, and the like. You can save at any time, and of course manage any items or equipment via an extremely deep sub-menu. On its most basic of levels, The World Ends With You is about navigating the city, talking with people, and slowly but surely figuring out how to complete each day's mission.

 

But that barely scratches the surface. Dig deeper and you find a totally unique gameplay mechanic, and it all revolves around the Pin System. Using badge-like pins, players in the Reaper Game can harness powers of the underground, allowing them to read the minds of civilians existing in the real world, implant ideas into their heads, and seek out "noise" that is causing distress in Tokyo. In the real world, anger and emotion feels spawned from within, but New Shibuya shows these emotions for what they really are, as Neku is constantly going into search mode and seeing actual visual representations of physical noise drifting throughout the world. Tap on the noise with the touch screen, and you'll go into battle in an attempt to remove the noise from the world.

 

Rather than having random battles, the game allows you to decide when/where you want to fight, and while some of the bosses and key events revolve around these noise battles, at any given time you can hit the pin icon at the bottom of the touch screen, go into search mode, and see anywhere from three to a dozen drifting pieces of noise in the world. Defeat them, and you'll gain a number of rewards. As a side note, search mode also lets you read the minds of specific people in the game (also the way you implant ideas into their heads), so if you're into the whole non-linear aspects of the game, you can literally explore Tokyo and eavesdrop on the drama of everyday life found within endless crowds of people. It's an extremely interesting design.

 

Battle is where things really pick up though, as The World Ends With You allows players to control both Neku and Shiki (or whoever partner he is aligned with) simultaneously via the Stride-Cross Battle System. The partner control is definitely the easier of the two to handle, as control is done with arrow combos on the d-pad (or buttons, for lefty players). Once you hit left or right, a branching string of combos pops up. Follow any of the strings to the end, and your partner delivers an attack. Each enemy exists in two planes of existence though, so the idea is to attack with Neku, send the attack energy (in the form of a green combo effect, known as a "puck") up to your secondary character, attack with them, and send it back down again. The better you use your two players in tandem, the stronger the attacks will be.

 

On Neku's side, things are far more complex. As we mentioned, the entire game revolves around players and their pins. Pins can be used to read minds and detect noise, but the main function is actually building your set of pins to take into battle, each with a different ability, strength, and potential. From the beginning of the game you can carry only two at once into battle, but as you level up your pin count increases up to five. All action on Neku's side of the battle revolves around touch, and each pin has a different effect. Swiping at enemies with one will do sword attacks, while tapping a group of enemies will launch chain lighting. Others require you to do off-enemy strikes, such as a slash up on the screen to spawn a huge ice shard, a strike along an in-level object such as car or parking meter to use telekinesis to throw it at enemies, or trace along the ground to ignite a chain of fire. There are hundreds of pins in the game, each with their own abilities and activation method (some even use the microphone for voice-activation), and each can also be leveled up as you play. Winning battles not only gains you experience for levels, but also "Pin Points" that go to each pin you bring with you. Once maxed, the pin becomes "mastered" and has reached its full effectiveness.

 

It's pretty obvious from the main battle mechanic and overworld control that The World Ends With You is about as unique as it gets on DS, but there's a ridiculously long list of added features and depth that go into the game. We can't go as in-depth with each as we have with exploration and battle (we'd be approaching the length of a strategy guide if we did), but we'll touch on them briefly. Every screen in the game is accompanied with on-the-fly tutorials, and in general it took us a full hour to really read up thoroughly, understand the game inside and out, and actually want to move on, as there's a tremendous amount of depth.

 

Pin points, for example, can be earned while the DS is turned off. The World Ends With You makes use of the DS internal clock to judge how long its been since you played last, and rewards players with implied experience just like World of Warcraft or the like. If you skip even a few days, the first day off will gain you hundreds of points, the second day maybe 80 or so, the third day 30, and less and less as the time goes on. As the game states, "You shouldn't feel bad about having to go to school or work," so it balances the need for a life outside of the game by rewarding you all the while with experience. Keep that one in mind next time you're studying for a test instead of gaming.

 

The time system also factors into a unique food mechanic, where eating food in the game adds to overall stat increases. Players have only 24 bites in a day though, and each food item requires a different amount. If you feed Neku a hamburger that is six bites, it'll take six battles to digest the food and unleash the permanent stat increase for him, but also leave only 18 more bites until the next real-time day. Play too much in one day, and you'll run out of bites, and need to wait until the following day to "stat rush" your characters. There's also a full fashion system within the game, so equipping players with hot equipment won't necessarily be enough. Different regions of the world have different styles in fashion, awarding up to 150% effectiveness to certain clothes in certain places, or penalizing you for being "out of style" in others. There's a lot to balance, but it's ultimately very fun.

 

We'll go even deeper. When leveling up, your character won't gain stat boosts (that is done through eating, as we touched on), but instead has a higher HP for both characters to share as a team, and also a strange level sacrifice mode. At any time in the game you can change the level of difficulty, set your top screen player to automatic control, semi-automatic control, or manual, and actually change your team's level on the fly. The advantage here is that the harder you play the game, the more of a reward you'll get. After each battle you're awarded with mini achievements for that bout, such as no damage taken, a high combo meter, good team synchronization, and the like. The rewards you get, however, are based on how tough you made the game on yourself. A star system shows the "drop rate" of new pins (you can find, buy, or wirelessly trade them), and it's based on what level you're set at. If you're only level two in the game, you can play as level two and have a level one drop rate. Drop your fighters back down to level one, however, and now your drop rate goes up to level two. This happens throughout the whole game, making your drop rate dependant on how many unused level-ups you've got. It can change at any time, via a slider in the menu, but we've been playing on level one for the majority of the time, instead increasing the drop rate of killer pins to use in battle and taking the hardest road possible to the end.

 

The list goes on even further with special Fusion Attacks built into the game. If your team functions well, you've got a mini card game that occurs on the top screen during battle. Use the right attacks with your partner (and a little bit of luck) and you'll "guess" each card in a row. Guess them all, and you unlock a kill-all Fusion Attack that decimates enemies. Of course that now adds three things you're watching during battles – Neku's fight, Shiki's fight, and this card mini-game – but the results are overwhelming. As with everything else, fashion, levels, and special items determine how "in sync" your team is, making it easier to pull off these attacks.

 

To say this game is deep is a drastic understatement. Square Enix has teamed up with the team behind Kingdom Hearts to deliver a portable title with console-like depth, and from what we've played thus far it has worked out beautifully. The visual style of the game is something truly impressive as well, and the music is as captivating and alive as we've seen in any portable experience. Blending the unique gameplay, visual design, and music together makes for a really unique package on DS. Yes this is a preview, yes there's far more to play, but we'd be doing the game a disservice to ignore just how impressive it is already to us. It has issues, and we'll undoubtedly find more positives and negatives as our play continues, but thus far we'd be lying if we said The World Ends With You hasn't blown us away. It most certainly has.

 

Videos

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Daft]

I was talking to my team leader about this, he tested it and he is going to buy it again when it comes out. He loved it. If you love a game after having tested it constantly for 8 weeks or so it must be good.

 

I can't wait to pick it up myself!

[Fandango]

Sounds really good, wasn't expecting much of this to be honest, but getting really hyped up for it now! Comes out next month right?

[Dyson]

http://kotaku.com/375417/the-world-ends-with-you-+-gloriously-random

 

I'm diggin' it!

[darksnowman]

Theres a UK review of this up on IGN:

 

http://uk.ds.ign.com/articles/865/865109p2.html

 

Closing Comments

What can be said, however, is that The World Ends With You combines Square’s hallmark character development and story with the collectability of Pokémon, and ties together innovative game design with the urban cool of Jet Set Radio. Indeed, the game’s appropriation of real-world themes and issues are at the heart of its success. It’s a celebration of modern life, and like modern life, it can be messy, complicated and confusing, and you might find yourself beset by minor disappointments. But you get out what you put in, and at its heart is an important message about making human connections in a world that can sometimes seem harsh and uncaring. Which, when you think about it, is pretty cool. And if you don’t want to think about it, well then you can just sit back and enjoy the game design.

 

9.5 - Presentation

The style, the setting, the sounds, the characters – everything about The World Ends With You is slick and engaging.

8.5 - Graphics

In some respects the graphics come up against the technical limits of the DS, but they’re brought vibrantly to life thanks to an excellent art style.

8.5 - Sound

The soundtrack offers the same sort of eclectic urban cool as Jet Set Radio, and it works just as well here to create a sense of style and place.

8.5 - Gameplay

Touchscreen niggles aside, there are about a million brilliant things about the game’s design, but the best is the way they all capture the confusing bustle of modern life.

8.5 - Lasting Appeal

The game spans a decent length, but there’s also plenty of replay value thanks to all the collectibles and different score rankings.

 

8.9 Overall (not an average, etc.)

 

I had a suspicion this might be a game to score a 9.5 and be one of those DS games that you simply must own, whether its niche or not. 8.9 is still fantastic and means the game is anything but a stinker.

[gaggle64]

It must be said I am purchasing this instead of Crystal Chronicles. The reason is simple - I know roughly what a swords and sorcery Square-Enix RPG looks like. I have no idea what a Square-Enix Fashion-Dance and sorcery JRPG looks like, AND I NEED TO KNOW.

 

Square-Enix have described this as their first foray into "the real world." How they view "the real world" may explain a lot.

[khilafah]

just pre-ordered US version.

[Domstercool]

Got UK version on preorder, it's out next week

 

It must be said I am purchasing this instead of Crystal Chronicles. .

 

That game is £9.99 on play right now, worth that

[flameboy]

I cancelled my preorder for this a while ago thought I'd give it a rest till another time... But man just saw the latest 1up Show and it looks incredible.

[daftada]

Got UK version on preorder, it's out next week

 

 

 

That game is £9.99 on play right now, worth that

 

 

Cheers for that! Just got an orde in.

 

I'll definitely be picking up TWEWY, stocking up on some DS games to play over the summer.

[gaggle64]

That game is £9.99 on play right now, worth that

 

...

 

*runs into virtualised shopping mall shrieking and flailing his 16-bit arms*

[Guest Stefkov]

So this is out friday? Certainly looks nice. I think I'll wait for it to go cheap or something.

[khilafah]

yeah i never knew it was out this week. cancelled US pre-order and will buy this on friday.

[Letty]

I might see if I can pick this up cheap once its out

[Domstercool]

Mine arrived today! Woo game!