The World Ends With You Final Remix Review
Many older games have been ported to the Nintendo Switch, but most of those games were relatively recent and were released in the past five years. However, recently a cult classic DS game was ported, that being The World Ends With You. This isn’t just a port with graphical updates though, as a whole new story chapter was added to the 11 year old game. So, does the Nintendo Switch port keep the spirit of the original game while bringing it to a much wider audience?
The World Ends With You takes place in Shibuya, and certain people are participants in the Reaper’s Game. The game takes place over seven days, and each day there’s a mission the players have to complete. If the none of the players complete the mission they’ll be erased. Players will also be erased if they lose to Noise, which are the main enemies of the game.
You play as Neku, who is one of the participants in the game. In order to fight the Noise and beat the Reaper’s missions he makes a pact with a girl named Shiki. They have to stick together, much to Neku’s reluctance, and work with other players to beat the Reaper’s game. However, without spoiling anything, the story gets much more interesting throughout the game, with some major unexpected but gratifying twists.
One of the best things about The World Ends With You is the characters and the writing. While I won’t go into any spoilers, the story gets so much better as the game goes on. However, the characters are even better, as almost all characters experience growth and change through the game. From the main characters of Neku and Shiki, to your enemies the Reapers, and even the shopkeepers and random citizens of Shibuya. Every character has a unique personality, and unique struggles that they have to deal with, many of which are relatable problems. One gameplay feature allows you to scan the minds of Shibuya citizens, and even their thoughts change over the course of the game, showing the depth of even the most minor characters.
While the writing of The World Ends With You gets better as the game progresses, the amazing graphics can be seen instantly. Everything in the game is beautiful and looks hand drawn, really adding to the feel of the game. Every background for each area has a completely different look and feel, helping differentiate the areas you commonly travel between. The Noise you fight also all look completely different, including the look and way they attack, which helps make the fights stay interesting and unique even far through the game.
However, the Noise aren’t the only well designed things, as all the actual characters all look great. The main characters you play as, like Neku and Shiki, all have great designs that are both unique, and display their personality as well. In fact, the personality of many characters is shown off in their design, all of which are different, although there are some intentional similarities between certain designs.
Adding to the great aesthetic brought on by the graphics, The World Ends With You has an amazing soundtrack. It’s got a great mix of songs that range from fast and upbeat to slow and somber. It also manages to reuse the same lyrics and songs, but change them up so each time you hear it they feel different, such as reusing the same lyrics with slower music after something bad happens, or adding in extra instruments to make a song more upbeat after something good happened. The music also covers tons of genres, from ambient to pop to rock and even rap. Honestly, this soundtrack just needs to be heard to be appreciated, so even if you don’t pick up The World Ends With You, just go listen to the soundtrack.
The World Ends With You has great gameplay, however, as it was originally a DS game, this leads to a difference in gameplay depending on whether the Switch is in handheld or docked mode. In handheld mode the game plays similar to the original DS game, but there’s no extra information screen, and obviously you use your finger as opposed to a stylus. The game plays perfectly here, as it’s super responsive, and the game always acts the way you tell it. However, in docked mode, the story is a bit different. In docked mode the game uses motion controls, and what would normally be easy and mindless suddenly takes more thinking. You always have a pointer on screen, and that’s how you move, talk to people, use your attacks, etc. However, this pointer isn’t the most responsive, and can lead to much frustration in battle as pins either won’t work, hit the wrong person, or the wrong pin will be used. But on that note, let’s look at the battle system.
Battling in The World Ends With You is different than many other games, even when not talking about the controls, as the vast majority of attacks are activated with different pins. Pins have a range of different attacks, and they’re activated by either tapping or slashing something on the screen. These attacks range from dropping boulders to setting enemies on fire, and even certain pins that can heal you or inflict status effects on the enemies. However, you also always have a partner who can help you attack enemies, and if you both attack an enemy at the same time, it both freezes the enemy and fills up your sync gauge. If your sync gauge reaches 100% then you can unleash a huge attack all over the screen.
When it comes to The World Ends With You Final Remix, porting this game was a large task. It had to change things up from the DS original, both graphically and control wise, as well as add in new features, and try to bring in new players of this cult classic game. However, it managed to do all of these almost perfectly, with a few minor exceptions. This is one of the most unique and downright fun games on the Switch right now, and it has an amazing story that’s complemented with incredible gameplay and a soundtrack that is downright amazing. While the $50 price tag may turn some away, it’s definitely worth the cost for everything that it manages to do.
