TWEWY Review

HELLOOOOO READERS. Tsuki here for the first CAPS-filled review on the great DS JRPG, The World Ends With You! I just LOVE how “review” rhymes with “The World Ends With You”!

By the way, just so you don’t have to rip your hair out for stumbling upon this by accident, I’m just going to tell you, YOU LOST THE GAME. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then just carry on~

ANYWAYS, for a brief summary, TWEWY is a Squenix (Square Enix) game for the DS, like I said. The main character is Neku Sakuraba, who is very comparable to a couple other Squenix doods. SPIKY HAIR. EMO/ANGSTY. JUST THINK ABOUT IT. Ahem, so he’s thrown into “The Reapers’ Game”, a test full of jacked up staff, dead people, too many pins, and monsters for three weeks of hell. If you haven’t played TWEWY yet, just keep wondering. :D

Because now I’m bored of summarizing and just wanna review. Soooo, first of all, I want to talk about the COMBAT. I thought it was clever and really enjoyed it! You have a set of pins to wear, and different pins have their own set power that you use by scratching/tapping the screen according to whatever movement is set for the pin. It’s a lot more fun battling actively like that instead of just clicking on moves or pressing buttons. AND, if you want to, you can control your partner on the top screen with the buttons! Otherwise, your partner will automatically fight by themself. OH HO HO! You can run around in any direction, but I personally didn’t do much moving unless I had to. There is a teleporting pin you can get, and that’s when I started to move more.

Plot, plot, plot. Hmm, how can I even describe the storyline? You’re given missions every Day to carry out in a certain amount of time (you’re not ACTUALLY timed though, thank goodness) and stuff happens here and there. Discoveries and other confusing things unfold, blah blah blah, and they dish out all of the answers in your last week of the Game. I may not sound very happy with the plot, but I really am, I thought it was cool :D I’m just not completely sure how to explain it; play it yourself to figure out how to correctly review it. Uhh, though at the end of the game I thought it was kind of weird. Like, “I did all of this because you want to destroy the city? LOVELY, I could’ve just moved or stayed dead.”

Surprisingly, there is A LOOOT of stuff to do to 100% your game. There are a crapload of items you can get that range from food to pins to music to clothes, and even more. And there are sooo many of each category. -__- PLUS, the full completion of each Day! There are stars for every Day and you get them by doing this and that. So, when you really think about it, TWEWY was done pretty deeply. Every single frikkin’ item created and described and named and given a small picture, you can change your combat difficulty, when you level up you can even decrease your level to make it more challenging for you or just keep at your achieved level (the max is 99). Then there are BRANDS. Pins and clothes have brands, and different brands are popular in different areas of the city. You can raise the popularity of brands by fighting with the branded pins and wearing the clothes as you fight. Though I really didn’t see much difference in combat when I was wearing weak and strong brands. SO GO AHEAD AND IGNORE THAT BUT CONGRATULATE THEM FOR TRYING ANYWAYS. Moving on…to more talk of deepness, because there’s even PIN MASTERY. For every pin, you can raise its level by using it more. OMG. I, AS A PERFECTIONIST, HAD MY SISTER DO MOST OF THE 100%ING GAME FOR ME.

TWEWY doesn’t have many side-quest things or minigames. There’s just one minigame that is so popular among the people even though it’s THROW-THE-DS-AT-THE-WALL FRUSTRATING! ...to me. Tin Pin, it’s called, and you use pins of course. Opponents just have to knock each other’s pins off a platform like 3 times then YAY I WIN! But noooo, the pin is hard to control and aim properly, so if you miss your opponent when you’re at the edge, YOU SIR, ARE SCREWED. Luckily, each pin has a set amount of each of 4 kinds of “Whammies”. Two of ‘em knock out your opponent if successful, one protects you, and one saves your ass if you’re falling off the platform. I depend on the Whammies to win at Tin Pin (RHYMES, RHYMES!). :P

CHARACTERS is also something I wanted to talk about. Not all of them well-done and backstoried and everything, but…wait, none of them are. There are only a few backstories for the Players of the Reapers’ Game and they aren’t really a huge subject (though, I love how 3 of the main Players were hit by a car). But I still really love the characters just for their character! Most of the important ones have their own distinct personality. There’s a crazy bipolar bitch, a couple of laid back doods, some rhino who compares things to food, a twisted guy who loves to mess with people, a skater dood, a girly girl, of course there’s an emo guy (this is a JRPG after all), some serious obedient secretary-like person who’s always like “My analysis was correct”, and MY FAVORITE, A MATH-OBSESSED GUY WHOSE AWESOMENESS JUST BLOWS YOUR MIND. Ahem, but I did say that they aren’t really backstoried, which is true. But they have their goals and whatnot. And for all of you people who DID play TWEWY already, JOSHUA ISN’T GAY. SHUT UP.

The graphics and sound? Well, they don’t really matter. You have your small, sort of pixely sprites when you’re running around or fighting and the regular character looks with the various expressions when you’re in conversation/cutscenes. Now, the cutscenes are pretty short and don’t have much movement or dialogue in ‘em, so that’s kinda meh. But there aren’t many cutscenes anyway!

Over all, I think this is an excellent game and I go crazy fangasm whenever I find out someone has played it. It has a different style in some ways and it was fun! So YAY FOR TWEWY THAT GETS A 9.0/10!