Gaming The World Ends With You

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/04/20/the_world_ends_with_you/1

Square Enix is best known for the Final Fantasy series, but in a departure from the norm the Japanese developer has just released The World Ends With You - an action RPG for the DS which plays on topics of fashion and graffiti - but is it any good?

 

It looks like just the thing to counterbalance playing STALKER, a few hours of grim dying of radiation sickness, followed by a bit of colour and fun...

 

Ooh, think i may pick this one up

I'm becoming something of an RPG nut lately

 

sounds good, if a little insane. Oh and Tifa's well hot

 

actually, fairly early on into the game you pick up some random item that allows you, if you die, to retry the battle + retry the battle on easy.

the dual-screen dual-combat concept was neat, but i just couldn't keep track. what i did instead was just set it on autopilot and made neku extra powerful. with the number of attack slots i have, i'm unleashing a continuous stream of attacks against the enemy anyway (regularly getting 100 hit combos), so i don't have time to bring my attention to the top screen.

what i really like about it, though are the selectable battles. no more random encounters!

it has a very good loot system which i think deserves a mention- you can choose to lower your own level, increase the difficulty of the enemies, and/or fight more enemies at once to increase the amount of treasure you get.

 

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the music.. Its so fantastic!

I've been trying to find the soundtrack, but no such luck.

 

really? i thought the music was pretty bland. kinda upbeat, hip-hoppy but nothing special.

 

It's ok and catchy for the first five minutes. By the time it looped the same ten second sample for the billionth time I felt like eating my own eardrums though.