The World Ends With You Reader Review

I was attracted to TWEWY because of the claims that it did things differently from the games Squenix has been alienating its fans with for the last decade, and to be perfectly honest, I only played the game for 2 hours, tops.

TWEWY could be described as a portable version of Yakuza: Both games are action rpg's,and both take place in their own interpretations of real-life Tokyo districts.

The first thing that you'll notice is the baroque presentation and over-the top design: fashion slut (victim being too weak a word) Tetsuya Nomura is directing here, and his style you either love or hate. An notable detail is the in-game music which has vocals, a rarity usually reserved to cut scenes.

Main character Neku is not a friendly teenager with an unusually large hair gel budget. Well at least not friendly: he would much rather be left alone but no, Spikey, you need other people to help you, and by the end of this game, you will have become a better person, thus inspiring hikikomori's the world over to get out of their rooms and make friends.

Or something.

The combat is pretty original: the top screen character is controlled via button (or d-pad) presses, and the bottom one with the touch screen. Both are fighting the same enemies. "It could be just me", as many reviewers note, "but I was unable to successfully deal with the two fights taking place simultaneously on two different screens with two different control schemes."

And indeed, it doesn't work. In my short play time, the average fight lasted 30 seconds - hardly enough time to get your head and hands around a fairly complex and hyperactive system. And while an AI can take over on the top screen, doesn't that kind of defeat the point? Add to that the dodgy touch controls which will often confuse moving, running, shooting, summoning, etc... It's a mess.

Which leads me to why I quit so fast. I lost to a boss. Silly me, I'd forgotten to save after the last lengthy series of dialogs. Is there a way to skip those? Nope. Oh well. I go through them a second time. Then, in a fit of confidence, I attack a normal, simple enemy enemy before saving. No big deal. Instead of spamming the same attack as per my previous victories, I decide to experiment a little, to try to make sense of the combat. I lose.