"It's a wonderful world, isn't it...?"

This is The World Ends With You or It's a Wonderful World in Japan, just changed to The World Ends With You since it sounds cooler and isn't It's a Wonderful World a song? Anyways, this game is simply put the best game for the DS in my opinion. This game will keep you hooked for hours on end. Ever wonder why it got so much acclaim? Lots of recognition? The World Ends With You (from henceforth now abbreviated as TWEWY), is a unique action-RPG, praised for it's cast of characters (very nice characters I might add), it's cool gameplay, and good music. Now, you've heard the gameplay uses both screens, right? No? Well, it does. If you can't deal with that, don't worry.

This game not only uses the touch screen, it uses the top screen as well, controlled with the D-Pad for right-handed people, or the buttons for lefties. Basically, on the top screen, you use the pad (or buttons) to navigate through a "Combo Map", by following the arrow it's pointing toward. You do damage as you go through. On the touch screen, you obviously do lots of things such as touching an enemy, touching an empty space, slash across an empty space, press down on an enemy-- so on and so forth, even utilizing the microphone's capabilities. On the touch screen, you use Pins, the name of your arsenal of things in the touch screen. Sound like too much? No sweat. You can change the difficulty, you can allow the top-screen to be on Auto-Play, which does the work for you until you get used to the controls, and it's not that hard. In the overworld, Shibuya, you basically walk around, use the Player Pin to scan for Noise, the enemies of the game, and use your pins to erase them. Simple. You can also read people's thoughts (most of the time it's pretty boring, but hey, it's almost always different each time you enter a street, so listen up. You touch the Noise symbols to start a fight, though some, the gray, come to you so stay alert. Red is just generic and you can choose to fight them or not (you may need to erase them to get past a wall Reapers put up), orange ones are required to get through the game, the gray ones were mentioned, green symbols are pigs, who give nice rewards, but flee in a while, and the super-rare blue ones are bosses, though only few are actually found in the main story-- you see more in the post-game. Sound pretty complicated? Again, don't worry. The first part of the game holds your hand through it, but afterward things do get kind of complicated.

You wear clothes, your equipment, to boost stats and give abilities. You have to earn the cashier's trust (it's crazy, but listen.) to get the abilities, and get chances at new items and whatnot. There are pins as mentioned, stickers, which are permanent add-ons to things (your attack increasing, etc), food and books. The books give you info on things, of course. Food? What the heck? Yes. Food. You can eat food, and it's determined by a meter... called bytes. If you have digest food that was 14 bytes total, you can only have something that has ten bytes or less. Basically, food has a number on it, and depending on how much is in your meter, can you choose to eat it or not. Max is 24 bytes, so if you ate something that required 24 bytes, fight 24 battles to digest it. Make sense? Sounds kind of complicated, but even if your meter's full, you'll still have at least six leftover, which could help you gain a stat or two. You can buy an item later on to bypass this. Clothes are your typical RPG equipment, as I said. And now the pins! There's tons of them, and they do many things. Some are limited use (you touch them most likely, likely to heal), most have a gauge and some are support, which activate on their own. Take a Shockwave psych pin for example. Slash an enemy, and you... well, slash it, and do damage. Pins can be mastered and leveled up to stronger forms and such. Some are complicated and require other pins to be in your deck. They also have classes. You can only have one Reaper class Pin, one Angel class pin, and so on and so forth. Some might evolve and be completely different pins and such, and you need PP to do so. Battle PP is gained from battling, easily the most simple choice. There is also Shutdown PP and Mingle PP. Shutdown PP is gained when you have not played for a long time, and Mingle PP is gained when you Mingle, or when you come across other Nintendo DS's. The other two kind of PP's probably won't be used that much (save for Shutdown, I guess. But after I got it, I just couldn't stop playing, so I rarely got this. Heh.) so just battling for Battle PP would be recommended if you like.

Alright. So here comes the story. Enter Neku Sakuraba, a 15-year old antisocial (emo, if you will) person living in Shibuya, Japan. He awakens in the large scramble crossing, only to find no one can hear him, and he has obtained a weird skull pin. He uses it and he reads the minds of the people. He has entered the Reaper's Game, a game run by the Composer, with the Conductor and Reaper officers in charge of the Reapers. The Reapers give you missions in this Game, and complete the task within the seven days (don't worry, it's not real-time seven days.) and you win... maybe. Neku meets people called Players, who also play this game, and partners up with Shiki, a Player, in order to survive this Game. If you lose, you get erased. That means you lose your rights to exist, and... well, die. If you win, you get a chance at life again, because when you have entered the Reaper's Game, you are dead in real life, awakening in an alternate version of Shibuya. To enter, you have to give up something you value most.

This game hosts a pretty interesting cast of characters. From the anti-social, spiteful and lonely Neku, to the vain, all-about fashion and beauty Shiki, to even the brash, arrogant, loud-mouthed Beat, who however does care for his very quiet sister, Rhyme, as well as the mysterious, yet prissy and possibly androgynous (...just look at the first page of the manual. That thing with silver/gray hair.) Joshua, who seems to know Neku... somehow. The Reaper's are most of the time, generic, though the Reaper officers are pretty damn cool. You get a big guy who loves eating, a guy who is dressed cool, sports a megaphone and makes math look AWESOME, a cold-and calculating maiden that has glasses and nice boobs, and an enigmatic figure who is the Conductor. I won't be saying the names of the four, you'll just have to find out. =P I will say that those last four have to be the coolest bosses of any game I've ever seen (well, maybe excluding a few. I don't know.).

The graphics are pretty anime/manga-like, and the clothes the character wear look pretty damn cool. That hoodie (?) that... Neku is wearing, that has no sleeves and he seems to keep around his neck, covering his mouth and lower, to Shiki's... outfit, which may just interest you... and the graphics look pretty good for a DS game. Very similar to Kingdom Hearts, I suppose. If you're not a fan of anime, then back away. Though I still suggest you at least take a look, it might pique your interest. Personally, I actually think it's more similar to Sonic Battle... maybe it's just me.

The music this game sports is all about Jrock, Jpop, rock, even some rap in there. o_O; Yeah. I can't fault it for being like that, since I LOVE IT! It might get repetitive, but unlike most RPG's where the battle-music's the same song, despite there only being 34 songs in this game, the first 7 are used in the overworld, the others being in battles, and I say, it's much better than hearing the same things over and over, the music in battles changes each battle. From cute vibrant tunes, to raging boss-battle-like-yet-dance-y vibes. The soundtrack is simply amazing, and the main theme Twister (not Lullaby for You or It's so Wonderful as people say. It's Twister! Heard in the beginning and the end, remixed twice and is in Japanese too.) is so catchy you'll start humming the rhythm or singing the words. You will love the music, trust me. It MIGHT get a bit repetitive later on, but eh.

Overall, this is perhaps the BEST GAME FOR THE DS. In my opinion anyway. The music is great, the graphics are good, the characters are zetta awesome, there are many quotes you'll love, the battle system is unique, and the story, although a bit complicated, is understandable after a while. 10/10 for me. Buy it now. Rent it... well, if you do, you won't enjoy the entire game, so BUY IT! It's a very nice departure from Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, the recognizable titles by Square Enix-- and like I said, perhaps the best game for the DS.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/08

Game Release: The World Ends With You (US, 04/21/08)