The World Ends With You

[blissfulnoise]

In addition to having one of the coolest titles ever, The World Ends With You is downright amazing to play.

The story is fantastic, the art style is right out of Kingdom Hearts, the music is memorable and very well implemented, and there are tons of additional game-play mechanics to extend playability. But perhaps, most importantly, the execution of combat via touch screen mechanics (tapping, scribbling, swiping, blowing, etc) is just about perfect once you get your head around it. It's fast, explosive, and a hell of a lot of fun.

I really think that the Kingdom Hearts team is making some of the most exciting and original takes on the traditional JRPG. It is a real treat to see them produce something new and have it come off so successfully.

TWEWY is a must buy for nearly all DS "gamers".

[Mason P.]

I was thinking about getting it. THe price is whats keeping me from doing it. If it were $29.99 I would fo sho get it.

[Jackattack]

You're not helping me here... I've been trying so hard to not get this game because I have the largest backlog of games I've ever accumulated. What is worse is that 80% of them I really want to play! My semester just ended yesterday so hopefully I'll have a lot more time to devote to the games and I can catch up and not for bad for also buying TWEWY. Soon enough...

I'm glad to hear it's so great though! I've been wanting to play KH3 for a while now so maybe this will tide me over until it comes out.

[sirhansirhan]

I was thinking about getting it. THe price is whats keeping me from doing it. If it were $29.99 I would fo sho get it.

Either next week or week after next, Circuit City is going to have it on sale for $29.99.

I started a thread about this game a few weeks ago--I preordered a copy from Amazon, and they shipped it over a week ago, but it still hasn't arrived, for whatever reason. I'm really excited to play it.

[mailman187666]

oh man I love this game too. The story to it is great and I like how original the actual gameplay is. Definately a great experience and I'd like to give SquareEnix a big thank you for giving us such an original title. I can say I haven't really played or have seen a game like this before. I give it at the very least an 8.5/10. Maybe more because I have to play it more.

[nestlekwik]

As you said, it takes a bit to get comfortable with the battling, but once you do, the game is arguably the best released on the DS so far this year. When you experience the presentation of the art and audio, The World Ends With You is just one of those DS games where you can't believe a tiny card is capable of presenting such quality.

[sirhansirhan]

My copy came last Thursday, and I'm totally loving this game. I've been playing it nonstop, losing sleep and everything, no exaggeration. It's the best new thing I've played in a while.

Relatedly, this week is the week that Circuit City has it on sale for $29.99, and Amazon price matched them, so you can get it on Amazon for $29.99 with no tax and free shipping. If you're smart, you will.

[Sudo]

I didn't like it at all, at first. The battles seemed too chaotic and unintuitive to be fun, so I put it down for a day or so. When I picked it back up, it was like something had just clicked; I started to really like the game all of a sudden. It's extremely unique and stylish, has a great soundtrack and art style and is just fun. It's definitely a love it or hate it type of game, but I loved it after I gave it a chance to grow on me.

[calthaer]

I recently picked this game up from my backlog and started to play it, and had a similar experience to others on this thread - initially the interface seems confusing. Then things "clicked" and I started to get the hang of it.

One thing that really helped me a lot was when I started to use the "SUB" feature of the pin assignments. Some pins' control styles just clash, and you can't effectively perform the attacks you want to when you want to perform them. For instance: the "Sexy D" pin allows you to hold down and move objects, swinging them around like weapons. But then there's "Lightning Moon," where you draw a circle around your character with this spraypaint can. Too often I'd find that I wanted to pick up an object, but I'd start to use the spraypaint.

Assigning Sexy D to the SUB menu (where you hold down the L or R button to choose a separate set of active pins) differentiates these two control schemes, so I can almost always perform the move that I want to now.

I still haven't gotten good enough that I can effectively control both characters simultaneously and flawlessly. I find that if I ignore Neku on the bottom screen while I'm actively guiding the top character to the ideal symbol on their little attack menu, Neku always takes too much damage. This leads to fewer combos, which I try to compensate for by equipping my counterpart with items that will lead to shorter attack bars - meaning they'll have a greater chance of hitting the right symbol, if it comes up.

All in all, it's a really fun game. I'm enjoying it way more than I thought I would - I've typically been sort of "meh" about a lot of Square's post-FF7 RPGs.

[Skelix]

Not gonna ruin it but the character I have on top now, can't really do his moves anyway so just letting the AI control him. Ones before him I just mashed away and still did alright.

It is a fun game, but it gets really addictive to max out all the pins. And some of those pins can only evolve with all offtime xp. I turned it on the other day after weeks of not playing. Things were evolving and had no clue what was going on.

So am I the only one who gets Neku's Bravery up really high and puts little girlie outfits on him?

[Jorpho]

Holy crap, this is probably the most dangerously fun and addictive RPG I've encountered since Torment. I shouldn't have waited a year to get around to playing it.

I can't be the first to have thought that it bears more than a passing semblance to the Kingdom Hearts GBA game; it practically feels like a sequel - a vastly improved sequel, of course.

It is a fun game, but it gets really addictive to max out all the pins. And some of those pins can only evolve with all offtime xp.

Ahh, thank you. I was wondering about that. (And I was spending tons of cash buying the same pin over and over again expecting one of them to evolve.)

...In fact, now that I think about it, that's the most ingenious way to get people to stop playing for a while since the random calls from Dad in Earthbound!

[heybtbm]

FYI: Amazon has this game for $15.99 right now. Probably not going to see new copies any lower than that.

[unwinddesign]

I'm thinking about buying a bunch of copies of this game and sitting on them for awhile. Something tells me this could be a cult hit. It sold ok, but nothing astronomical (I think)...and it got really, really good reviews. I was surprised that it's available for $16.

Any thoughts?

[Bojay1997]

I'm thinking about buying a bunch of copies of this game and sitting on them for awhile. Something tells me this could be a cult hit. It sold ok, but nothing astronomical (I think)...and it got really, really good reviews. I was surprised that it's available for $16.

Any thoughts?

Yes, it has sold almost a half a million copies in the US to date. Like most modern games with widespread distribution, there is no reason to purchase extra copies for speculation. It's not rare and will never be rare. Save your money for other games that you can actually play rather than stick in a box somewhere in the hope that you will make a few dollars years down the road.

[Jorpho]

Yes, it has sold almost a half a million copies in the US to date. Like most modern games with widespread distribution, there is no reason to purchase extra copies for speculation. It's not rare and will never be rare. Save your money for other games that you can actually play rather than stick in a box somewhere in the hope that you will make a few dollars years down the road.

At $45 CDN, it is one of the most expensive games I have purchased - simply because for a very short while there when it first came out it was darn hard to find except at the indie game store that overcharged. At least it was worth it!

[Jorpho]

Man, what a ride it has been. I'm very close to reaching completion, and I'm quite pleased that I made it this far without resorting to a FAQ (though I don't know when I would have figured out the trick of evolving pins with nothing but shutdown PP).

Alas, there are two questions that keep thwarting me. Maybe someone could give me a hint?

-Where is Tin Pin Thrift? I managed to get one, but I want another one since that has to get traded away. Now I'm not sure where I found it and can't seem to get it again. Do you have to win Tin Pin in a certain way?

-How do you defeat the sleeping pig? I can manage to do 1500 HP of damage in one hit, but it's not enough. Is there some trick to it, or does it really come down to balancing everything just right to further maximize the damage you do? Maybe there's an Even More Powerful item I haven't gotten yet? (Don't say what it is!)

[Cantaloup]

-How do you defeat the sleeping pig? I can manage to do 1500 HP of damage in one hit, but it's not enough. Is there some trick to it, or does it really come down to balancing everything just right to further maximize the damage you do? Maybe there's an Even More Powerful item I haven't gotten yet? (Don't say what it is!)

There's a trick to it. Try to "think outside the box."

[calthaer]

IIRC, Tin Pin Thrift you get from a Tin Pin match sometime during the game. You will have the option to go back and get another one after you're done the main quest. In fact, you will not get 100% by the time story mode is done - it's simply not possible.

And I hope that someone has informed you of Mingle XP for your pins, right? Some pins have multiple evolutions based on what type of XP you give them. There are never more than two, because there has to be some way of maxing out the pin without evolving to get a complete collection (the third type of XP that doesn't evolve the pin).

Cantaloup is right in that there is a "trick." A very slightly more revealing hint (that doesn't give it away) in black if you want it:

Think of it as being similar to when Metal Gear Solid made you plug your controller into the second PS1 controller slot to take on that one boss.

[mailman187666]

I also think that SMT: Devil Survivor is on par if not better than this game. Very similar but with SMT style gameplay.

[Jorpho]

There's a trick to it. Try to "think outside the box."

That was all I needed. In fact, I'm sure after that line alone, anyone familiar with a variety of DS games would probably know how to do it even if he'd never played the game. (My last thought was that it was one of those annoying puzzles tied to the DS internal clock, but not this time.)

IIRC, Tin Pin Thrift you get from a Tin Pin match sometime during the game.

Yes, but which one? I've replayed every one I can think of multiple times, and it's not showing up! I might think that it's a one-shot item, but there's been nothing else like that in the rest of the game.

EDIT: I gave up and decided to see if I could see the answer from a Google search results page. Yep, replayed every match except that one. >_<

And I hope that someone has informed you of Mingle XP for your pins, right? Some pins have multiple evolutions based on what type of XP you give them. There are never more than two, because there has to be some way of maxing out the pin without evolving to get a complete collection (the third type of XP that doesn't evolve the pin).

I'd be kind of bitter if Mingle XP was really necessary to get 100%, and I'm not giving up on that just yet - combat XP evolves many pins quite nicely, albeit unpredictably. I suppose at this point someone's figured out how to make a wireless router behave in such a way as to give all the Mingle XP one needs, but I haven't looked yet.

A very slightly more revealing hint (that doesn't give it away) in black if you want it:

Black doesn't hide anything very well on the Work Safe theme, but like I said, I figured it out from Mr. Cantaloup's line.

I also think that SMT: Devil Survivor is on par if not better than this game. Very similar but with SMT style gameplay.

And I just dropped $40 on that one out of fear that I wouldn't be able to find that in the future either. Maybe I'll be right this time!