The World Ends With You (NDS)

REASONS THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU (WEWY) IS BETTER THAN EVERY OTHER RPG

1. It's got like 20 god damn battle themes.   Probably one of the most flawed lines of thinking in RPGs is making a 30-100 hours game with about an hour and a half total of music.  That's absolutely moronic.  "The battle theme is sooo good."  Sure maybe in hour 2, but never in hour 36.  or in hour 13.  This game has like 40 excellent pieces of music showcasing the merge and clash and variety in tastes available in Shibuya (this will be important later.)

2. It's like 15 hours long.  Look I fucking love Persona 4.  It was also the only thing I played for about 3 months.  People just don't have that time.  15 hours?  That's great! 

3. The game is broken up into 20-30 minute chunks.  So you can spread that game playing across your commute or before bed or just whenever you have some time.  Again great for people with actual lives!

4. The game is like brain training.  See your fighting the battles on both screens.  On the bottom screen you're using your stylus to scratch or press or flick.  You might also need to blow or scream (one of the only possible negatives I can leverage at the game (it also requires you blow and scream for about 2 minutes once.)  On the top screen you are using either the face buttons or the dpad to pull off combo attacks with your partner.  BUT!

5. The game is only as hard as you want it to be.    See you can set it to easy mode and your AI partner to auto attack.  You won't do as well or get as many trinkets/bonuses for controlling both characters.  If you do want it ultra hard...

6. The game constantly rewards you.  Setting it on hard and bouncing the light puck between your two characters gives you the immediate benefit of "I'm kicking ass and dodging shit and totally wrecking these freak monsters."  It also gives you more money and more pins.

7. There's so much shit to collect in this game.  There's over 300 pins that give passive and active abilities.  You can also just stick with the pins that work and just moving to the upgraded model of that pin.  There's also clothes to put on your characters that give benefits inside and outside of battle.

8. WEWY is constantly asking you to experiment.  Sometimes it's forcing you, but that's okay.  You gotta expand your horizons (holy shit does that mean the...

9. There is an absolute connection between the way the game plays and the narrative.  The way the battle system works, how your equipment boosts your stats, why there are no random battles.  It's like the whole game is as cohesive as the ending of Final Fantasy Crisis Core.  Every part of the game feeds back into other parts.

10. FOR EXAMPLE use specific brands in one area and those brands get bonuses in future battles in that area.  The game gracefully explains this to you.

11. It probably has the best tutorial system on EARTH.  See this might be going over your head and I might not be explaining what I'm talking about but the game very slowly and smoothly introduces every concept.  It never feels dumbed down and it just keeps getting more complex.  You keep thinking "there can't possibly be more to this battl-OH SHIT I WAS WRONG."

12. You eventually gain the ability to restart any battle you've lost.  Okay here's one fault.  The first two hours of the game if you lose a battle you are stuck back at the title screen.  I'm not sure why they decided this should be an eventual feature.

13. BUT YOU CAN SAVE AT ANY TIME. If you aren't in a cutscene or a battle you can save.  This may sound like "duh" but there are plenty of games this generation with save points and that's BULLSHIT and we all deserve better.

14. Your pins gain experience when you aren't playing. and.
15. You gain pins merely by connecting to wireless hotspots and other DSes.  Remember THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU.  You gotta expand your horizons.  You have to break out of your bubble and enjoy the world.  Play it in cafes. 

16. There's this whole other pog like minigame you can play with other players.

 17. Our protagonist is kind of a jackass. But he really does grow as a human being/character. 

18.  The post game content is plentiful.  As I started getting towards the end of the game I was afraid to end it purely by how much fun I was having.  Good thing there is an absolute ton of post game content in the form of challenges for each Day that unlock details of the meta-narrative.

19.  There's even a gaiden side story.  Alternate goofy universe adventure to play featuring all the characters from the main story!

20.  There's more going on in the plot than bullshit just not going to tell you. YEESSSSSSS.

21. Scaling Sprites.

22. Shibukyu.  Okay backstory.  While I was walking around Tokyo one day I had a white dude approach me and go, "Do you know how to get to Shibuku?"  That's not a real place.  I instead told you.  "Uh...ShibuYA is that way, and ShiNJUKU is that way.  Good Luck."  There's a play on a department store's name in this game call Shibukyu.

23. It's just like Shenmue!  Taking any nerd that had a Dreamcast around Tokyo and they will at some point tell you this is just like Shenmue at some point. Granted I'm retarded and Shenmue is one of my favorite games precisely because it so well represents anywhere Japan.  WEWY accurately represents Shibuya.  You could probably use it as a semi-map of the area.  I could identify just about every area and store presented within it.

24. It's localized just enough.  Everyone still has Japanese names and the story doesn't take place in NYC or some shit.  But you also don't get "san" and "kun."  I think they even call "nikuman" "nikuman" and not something like "meat buns."

25. It's really fun.  The battles are fast!  The music is great!  The atmosphere is fun!  The story is on a small scale for 95% of the game.  Not buying this game when it was released was a huge mistake.  It didn't sell well.  S-E has said they aren't going to let something like this happen again.  That's a tragedy.  I want Jupiter making whatever the fuck they want forever.  They have some of the smartest game designers working for them.  This game is a marvel on a design level.  I love it and it was probably the best thing I played in 2011.