The end Square’s rehashing of old concepts

by Pramath Parijat

Fun factor: Fun

Worth to: Buy

An effective and original social commentary on youth trends that manages to offer an entertaining and wacky game.

Square Enix likes to milk its franchises -- a lot. After over a hundred Final Fantasy titles, tons of Dragon Quest games and a plethora of Kingdom Hearts spin offs, that much at least becomes very clear. And while gamers are still waiting for the next Chrono game, or maybe the new installment of the Xenosaga, Square Enix have in recent years carved out a comfortable niche for themselves, simply releasing sequels, remakes, rehashes or recycled content on an almost monthly basis, to the extent that one can confidently claim that it’s been almost a decade since Square last released a fresh game, some original content that wasn’t bearing the burden of being a part of some million selling franchise.

Against this backdrop, Square Enix released The World Ends With You, an almost unassuming title that, on the face of it, doesn’t really stand out from the sea of RPG’s that are already available on the platform. In this case, the game not bearing a well known brand name might have worked against its favor -- sales of The World Ends With You haven’t even cracked a million -- but being freed from the baggage of living up to millions of fans’ expectations have made this game one of the most inventive and unique RPG’s in years, and a breath of fresh air from a publisher that’s not really known for forays into new intellectual avenues.

Clichéd but fresh

Actually, though, at first sight, players might feel different. On the face of it, this is a new IP, but once you start playing, you’re immediately assaulted by all manner of JRPG stereotypes and conventions that Square Enix themselves have invented, and then mercilessly flogged, over the years. You have your surly, angry, disillusioned teenage hero, who sports a spiky hairstyle. You’ve got the typical amnesia based storyline. In fact, at first, you’d really be hard pressed to find anything that sets this game apart from any Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, save maybe the setting of the game.



The setting of The World Ends With You is actually singularly representative of the genius behind the game -- set in modern day Shibuya, a district in Tokyo, the game is a much needed break from the oft seen medieval fantasy world, or a sci-fi setting on the verge of an all out apocalypse.

Actually, Shibuya is more than just the setting of the game’s rather eclectic plot -- it is, quite frankly, the game’s real hero, the protagonist around which the story centers. The Shibuya setting, and the choice of a teenager for the main protagonist allow this game to be a social commentary on society as it is today, as the game explores themes such as peer pressure, and the isolation felt by today’s generation, and handles them with an unexpected level of sensitivity and maturity.

And yet, these themes aren’t just fixtures for the plot, they manifest themselves in the game’s gameplay too. For example, in order to reflect the modern teenager’s obsession with fashion and clothing and looking good, The World Ends With You charges you with dressing your character with “cool” and “hip” brands. Wearing the right kind of clothes will lead to several stat boosts, whereas wearing an “uncool” or “lame” piece of clothing will result in a penalty, with several stat points being docked. While this system might be compared with the equipment system in most RPG’s, there’s more to this: for example, each locality within Shibuya has its own idea of what’s cool, and you must dress yourself accordingly, or you’ll find the going tough in battles. Therefore, you must take it upon yourself to keep up with the fashion trends across the entire city.

These trends aren’t static either, and true to the real world, they keep changing, so what was cool last week might not necessarily be cool today. To add to the element of strategy, wearing “uncool” brands might not always be a bad idea -- you sometimes get access to powerful combo attacks this way, and more often than not, that is a fair trade off for all the stat losses you incur.

An ambidextrous exercise

It’s an ingenious touch, all of it, and yet it pales in comparison to the sheer freshness of the game’s battle system, which is like an unholy mix of Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts, and yet in the end, comes off feeling just right.

The World Ends With You is an action RPG, with battles that are spread out over the two screens. The game’s bottom screen features Neku, the game’s main protagonist, battling out the Noise -- the primary enemies in the game which are explained as the “physical manifestations of negative thoughts’ -- via several commands that are activated by touch screen sensitive commands. The top screen features Neku’s current partner, who is fighting the Noise on an alternate plane of reality, and must perform combat moves corresponding to Neku’s, at the correct time. As you can imagine, controlling two characters at the same time, and via different control schemes at that, requires either extreme ambidextrous skill, or three hands, two of which the player is proficient at using.



The draw of these battles lies in the usage of what the game refers to as “pins,” fashion accessories that bestow Neku with special powers when he equips them. Each pin can be activated by performing the appropriate action on the touch screen; using pins in battles leads them to accumulating their own EXP points (dubbed as “Pin Points”), which enhances the pins’ abilities, and might even lead to an “evolution” of the pin into a stronger, more powerful version of itself.

There are over 300 pins in the game, and these can be collected (and developed) in the most bizarre of ways. Collecting pins because enemies dropped them in battle is only natural, but the game awards pins with EXP for all sorts of stuff -- for not playing the game for up to seven days, for interacting with other DS systems (even if said systems don’t have a copy of The World Ends With You in them at the time), even for interacting with other wireless Bluetooth enabled devices, dubbed rather unimaginatively as “alien” devices -- though I never did get a chance to test the last.

If all of this sounds overwhelming, it is, and it makes battles in this game an uphill challenge. However, the game does attempt to make it easier; based on your preferences, the partner character can either be CPU controlled, manually controlled, or CPU controlled with scope for manual intervention as and when deemed necessary.

The game also offers adjustable difficulty settings, though, as with everything else, they come with a catch: a lower difficulty level makes it easier for the player to romp through the game, but the yield of pins, money and accessories will be accordingly lesser. On the other hand, if the difficulty is set to high, the game becomes significantly harder, but you get a lot more pins and accessories and money, which can in turn be used to actually make the game easier (and more interesting). It’s an engaging system that offers the more hardcore players with incentives for being hardcore, whilst simultaneously not penalizing newbies.

Cheery and colorful J-Pop

Apart from fashion, the game also appropriately represents the superficiality of today’s youth in several other ways; their dependence on their mobile phones, for instance, is reflected by how Neku’s mobile is the primary mode of communication in the game. Then again, today’s obsession with angsty Hip Hop is reflected in the game twice over -- you can go into any music store to buy the latest albums. Apart from that, the general soundtrack is also in keeping with that overall theme, and in general suits the feel of the game.

Not only is the music superb and fitting to the atmosphere, but there are several superbly voice acted scenes too. Though they are few and far in between, they still make quite an impact the few times they do appear.



Complementing the sound are the game’s awesome graphics -- bright, colorful, cheery, they reflect the anime look of the Japanese toons that are usually set in their city suburbs. They also look almost hand drawn, and yet, are probably more 3D than the graphics for any other DS game on the market.

Furthering this overall impression is the way the story is generally advanced within the game, via superbly drawn comic book panels, lavishly spread out over both the screens. The dialogue itself is well written, and again, it reflects the current teenage lingo. Though some terms are a tad overused (possibly as a result of some overzealous translator), the script on the whole gets the job done, that of impressing the game’s overall atmosphere upon the gamer’s mind.

Summary

Overall, then, this is the prime example of an RPG done right. It’s new, it’s wacky, it’s fittingly inventive. Yes, it should have been a messy mish mash of the most derided RPG conventions, and yet somehow, almost magically, the game manages to make everything work in its favor. The combat, which might have single handedly broken the game, instead elevates the game’s immersion to an all new level. The story, which should have been discarded as too outlandish, instead is an effective and powerful commentary on the cynicism of today’s youth, and their isolation, and their dependence on commercialization. The soundtrack, which uses Japanese Hip Hop as its prime focus, could have been laughably bad, and yet it fits the game, and it works.

Yes, The World Ends With You is indeed a great game, that rarity where the old and the new blend together to create the perfect gameplay experience. Square Enix have crafted what is probably their finest game in years, and they did it not by rehashing Final Fantasy VII for the umpteenth time, but by boldly daring to break from the mould that it set for itself. Truly, The World Ends With You is a fine game, and it is one that every self-respecting veteran of the RPG genre should have in his or her library.