The World Ends With You

[SuperBeatBoy]

Developed by the same Team that brought us the excellent Kingdom Hearts series. The first thing about the game that catches your attention is the wonderful Presentation it has. Everything just leaps out of the screen with its extra big black lines and visual punk flair. Check out my current Avatar to get an idea, Tetsuya Nomura is a god!

As soon as you put the game in your also knocked out by the game's wonderful music, a mix of chart-topping Japanese Pop to Hip-hop. Its the first game thats come close to the visual genius and musical design of Jetset Radio & Persona 3. There hasn't been anything else quite like it.

The story starts off very EMO, kind of like any Final Fantasy on the PSX. You wake up stuck in Shibuya (hence the music and clothes design fashions). The main character Neku can give Squall a run for his money in the angsty department. The dialouge so far is well written and nicely translated. Hopefully later on in the game the character will open up more.

But don't let that put you off, the combat system couldn't have been done on any other system. You work in a 2 person team, one character at the bottom the other at the top. This works by controlling the bottom character using the touch screen and the the top uses the d-pad or buttons, depending which handed you are. This can get very confusing at first due to the multi-tasking you will have to do but if you persevere you willl get the hang of it in no time.

The battle system consists of EMO Pin Badges which allow you to control some method of Telekenisis e.g. Fire, Thunder and other direct methods of attack. These also level up the more fights you win. The more you get the hang, the more combos you can pull off between both characters.

You can also customise your character as you see fit, moreso than any Square-Enix game in awhile, which is very western in its design but very Japanese. E.g. You can buy noodles that increase a certain stat of your choosing, but you can only eat a certain amount per day and you have to fight numourous battles to acually digest your food and aquire it.

Im suprised no one has made a thread of this yet. Be sure to give this one a chance as there hasn't been any PR whatsoever.

To quote the original japanese title It's a Wonderful World, It's a Wonderful Game to play!

[Silvergun X]

Persona 3

That is *EXACTLY* what the introduction to this game reminded me of. The music when you first take control of your character.

[crocky-chocky]

Sounds grand. I ordered this ages ago but it still hasn't arrived...rats.

Great to know it's got a Persona 3 aura. That game is freaking immaculate design wise. Did this Nomura guy do the art for the PS2 Musashi game? It had an awesome intro which reminds me very much of 'The world ends with you'.

[Eight Rooks]

The music isn't licensed, it's all composed, and it's nowhere near as good as JSRF, sadly.

Oh, and Nomura's only down as artistic director/original designs - it's not really "the Kingdom Hearts team" AFAIK, although Jupiter did do the original Chain of Memories (plus the Spectrobes games, apparently!).

The fonts in the intro are horrendous, I don't like the voice acting that much, and the 'tude is annoying.

Still the same brilliant game as the Japanese release, though. Too easy by default, a couple of nasty difficulty spikes and the dual-screen combat system is somewhat under-used; I went most of the game with it on Auto and never had any trouble. Other than that, it's gold. Hugely recommended, and one of the best - probably the best - DS control scheme(s) out there.

[SuperBeatBoy]

The music is up there with JSRF though. JSRF is of course one of my fav gaming soundtracks of all time. And Nomura did PS2 Musashi Crocky.

Is there much voice acting in the game? Ive played it for a few hours, but all ive been doing is levelling up and battling. Its really hard to put down in that regard. So all ive come across is just text.

Eight Rooks, you say you played the Japanese version? Do you know if theres anyway that Neku lightens up, hes worse than Squall from FFVIII and thats saying alot. Im hoping as a character he develops more.

[Eight Rooks]

I barely understand a word of Japanese, but from what I got of the story - cutscenes, GameFAQs etc. - I'm guessing no. I liked what little I could get out of it, particularly one central story theme and how it relates to one of the final battles, but it didn't seem as if it was anything especially surprising.

There isn't much voice acting, no (at least there isn't in the Japanese game, other than the opening and ending cutscenes). I just didn't think Neku's English voice was that great, regardless.

And come on - I like the music, but it's not even close to anything Hideki Naganuma's done (even the crap like Ollie King). It doesn't sound remotely as if the composers know what real funky house, breakbeat, hiphop, pop etc. sound like - I'd never listen to it outside of the game, whereas I've lost count of the number of times I've cranked up Concept Of Love.

[Bleeders]

Developed by the same Team that brought us the excellent Kingdom Hearts series. The first thing about the game that catches your attention is the wonderful Presentation it has. Everything just leaps out of the screen with its extra big black lines and visual punk flair. Check out my current Avatar to get an idea, Tetsuya Nomura is a god!

As soon as you put the game in your also knocked out by the game's wonderful music, a mix of chart-topping Japanese Pop to Hip-hop. Its the first game thats come close to the visual genius and musical design of Jetset Radio & Persona 3. There hasn't been anything else quite like it.

The story starts off very EMO, kind of like any Final Fantasy on the PSX. You wake up stuck in Shibuya (hence the music and clothes design fashions). The main character Neku can give Squall a run for his money in the angsty department. The dialouge so far is well written and nicely translated. Hopefully later on in the game the character will open up more.

But don't let that put you off, the combat system couldn't have been done on any other system. You work in a 2 person team, one character at the bottom the other at the top. This works by controlling the bottom character using the touch screen and the the top uses the d-pad or buttons, depending which handed you are. This can get very confusing at first due to the multi-tasking you will have to do but if you persevere you willl get the hang of it in no time.

The battle system consists of EMO Pin Badges which allow you to control some method of Telekenisis e.g. Fire, Thunder and other direct methods of attack. These also level up the more fights you win. The more you get the hang, the more combos you can pull off between both characters.

You can also customise your character as you see fit, moreso than any Square-Enix game in awhile, which is very western in its design but very Japanese. E.g. You can buy noodles that increase a certain stat of your choosing, but you can only eat a certain amount per day and you have to fight numourous battles to acually digest your food and aquire it.

Im suprised no one has made a thread of this yet. Be sure to give this one a chance as there hasn't been any PR whatsoever.

To quote the original japanese title It's a Wonderful World, It's a Wonderful Game to play!

This will end up a cult hit, mark my words. It'll largely go ignored by the masses, but this is an Action RPG with the urban cool of Jet Set Radio and the collectability of Pokemon; it's ****ing brilliant!

Word to the wise anyone picking this up - read the manual. It explained things I wasn't aware of regarding the battle system, which can seem a little convoluted at first, but once it all clicks into place, you're disposing of noise quite efficiently.

Yeah, it's quite emo, sometimes nearing the point of annoyance, but the narrative is pretty good, especially one of the opening setups, where the game exudes that "one more chapter" playability.

[Dogg Thang]

Jupiter did do the original Chain of Memories

Yikes. Tht's put me right off. Everything everyone says about this seems positive but, having been burned by Crisis Core and finding barely a game in Chain of Memories, it seems everyone raves about Square games out of habit or cut scene concussions or something, or maybe I'm just missing the actual gameplay stuff.

Can you give us more info on the actual game itself? Like, the gameplay.

[Eight Rooks]

On the gameplay, in a very general sense...

It's an action RPG. Other than the general atmosphere - the aesthetics and the presentation - it's all about the fighting, pretty much. That and the collecting your weapons, the badges. The story is divided up day by day, and for each one you've got some kind of simple task which boils down to go to X, collect Y, that kind of thing. You run around a location on the touchscreen while the top screen shows a little illustration, sort of a "you are currently exploring (such-and-such a place)" kind of deal. There are no random battles - you have an ability allowing you to stop at any point and see what enemies are floating around in the immediate vicinity, then choose whether or not to fight them.

In combat you control two characters simultaneously. They're both supposed to be fighting the same enemies, but in different versions of the same location - I've really not played more than a few minutes of my English copy so I don't know precisely what geeky explanation the game uses to justify this. The hero sits on the bottom screen. You use the stylus to control him, touching and dragging him - near to make him walk, far to make him dash. He has a little deck of up to I think six weapons maximum - the badges - these are all activated in various ways, tapping the enemies, slashing the enemies, tapping yourself, tapping the badge itself, so on. Your partner sits on the top screen. You use the D-pad to control him or her. They can't actually move as such; each possible partner has their own little minigame to fight with, where tapping back on the D-pad makes them dodge, up, right or forward makes them attack and the correct combination of attacks makes them charge up a tag-team special move.

There's a lot more to it but that's pretty much the basics. Win fights, collect more badges, level your badges up, fine-tune your deck, make progress, etc. I've never played Chain of Memories and though I own Crisis Core (I've not touched IaWW in English because I just bought a PSP <_< ) I've not really played it beyond a few minutes, so I can't really compare.

[Dogg Thang]

Cool, thanks for the extra info. That does give me more of an idea of what's involved.

[mr_woo]

I really like this but I have to be honest and say I really wish I could just use the dpad to control and do the fighting (for Neku). There's nothing wrong with the stylus controls as such, they work very well and are of course needed in conjunction with the d pad for the top screen fighting but I don't know, it's probably just a personal thing, a mental block for always using the stylus. I've played Zelda and Ninja Gaiden as well and felt the same way, probably just me though.

Saying that I do absolutely love the aesthetic and everything else to do with the game, the pins are great fun and the stories pretty intriguing so far.

[Castor Krieg]

Finished it yesterday and the amount customization is staggering. Esthetics look like JSRF but the system reminds me of Persona 3 - everything is thought of. Truly unique experience and the best DS game for me right now. Also after you finish there is plenty to come back to (you can get best pins and clothes only after you beat the game).

[crocky-chocky]

Brilliant game.

I had my doubts in the first half an hour. But as the combat system opens up...so do a plethora of fantabulous ideas. I'd no clue that this was such a substantial game!

I kind of expected the fighting system and nothing else besides much mentioning of 'bling'. I love the idea of pin badges, and being able to read numerous peoples thoughts is a stroke of genius that really streamlines the exploring sections. Starting to get the grasp of combat now, and it's a lot of fun...it has a strange rhythm action flavour to it.

Obviously it looks and sounds lovely too. I find myself wandering back and forth across environments just to drink in the visuals! It's awesome how much depth there is considering it's all 2D.

My main reservation is the amount of cut-scene text, but this is probably to do with me not expecting such a substantial story. Also, the main character Neku...he's a douche.

[Eight Rooks]

To be fair to the game, it's at least in part about how Neku is a douche. You're not entirely supposed to feel sympathetic towards him. I mean, it's not Shakespeare or anything, but even in a language I don't understand I could still tell the game was doing a better job of this than FF VIII.

[Oh! My Car!]

I got the Jap version of this but have a feeling I'll be missing out alot on the storyline and character development - oh and especially reading everyone's thoughts. Hmm...

only played a little bit but seems cool so far - battling with two characters at once is hard!