Review for The World Ends With You: Final Remix. Game for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 27/09/2018
When The World Ends with You landed on Nintendo DS it stood out for being a title that dared to be something different, dripping with style and creativity, with an art direction outside the box compared to the many classic fantasy JRPGs that had found a home on the Nintendo console. ; and above all it was one of the few games to exploit the hardware possibilities of the DS to the limit with its battle system.
More than ten years after its debut, it's back on the Nintendo Switch in this one The World Ends With You: Final Remix, an enhanced port that tries to fit into a console other than the one it was conceived on, and obviously with some more content.
The main character is Neku Sakuraba, a rather misanthropic teenager who wakes up in the middle of Shibuya (one of Tokyo's busiest and most dynamic neighborhoods) deprived of most of his memory. She soon realizes that lack of memories isn't her only problem: he and other young people are in fact in a parallel dimension of the city where the majority of the population cannot see or hear him. In this dimension there is a prevailing "Game" managed by entities that define themselves as "Demons" and where ruthless rules apply: every day the involuntary players receive a mission that they must complete, if they do not succeed they will be eliminated from existence. To worsen the situation is added the appearance of strange aggressive creatures called "Noises", ready to put a spoke in the wheel.
Neku will therefore have to know and cooperate with other young players to survive this cruel game. At the beginning of the adventure, the protagonist will be extremely intolerant of others and mostly interested only in himself. As the other characters also lay bare their complex personalities, Neku will also begin to open up to them becoming more agreeable and determined. The story of The World Ends With You revolves precisely around the themes of internal struggles common to many teenagers struggling with the acceptance of others and the with society. It's probably a story genre that will resonate more for younger players. Fortunately for the occasion, a translation of the dialogues written entirely in Spanish has been included.
The core of the gameplay of the original The World Ends With You was developed from the experience of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, refined and made less restrictive for the player in an action RPG formula. To fight the enemies you need to perform specific movements on the touch screen thus activating the skills that Neku has equipped in the form of pins; each will require a type of movement to activate. On Nintendo DS, thanks to the two screens, the player could control Neku with the touch controls, and at the same time another character using the normal keys or the directional cross. In 2012 the game was then imported to mobile devices and the management of the partner was entrusted to the CPU. Even on Nintendo Switch we find ourselves with only one screen, but Square Enix has found a compromise: now even the attacks of the second character are managed by the player through the same screen.
It is easy to understand that this solution, although it returns a good part of the control in the hands of the player, inevitably creates problems of accuracy. Since the on-screen commands trigger both Neku's movement, his attacks and his partner's, it often happens that these commands overlap and you can't do exactly what you want in the right order. More than once we have happened to activate an attack instead of moving across the screen or vice versa, with repercussions on the ongoing battle. It is true that with practice you become more and more precise, but the game action is still quite confusing. The situation does not improve if instead of touch controls we use those via Joy-Con, which inevitably are less precise than our fingertips. In particular, with the console in docked mode, the recognition of the pointer suffers from recurring inaccuracies, forcing us to re-center it using the Y key.
Net of some problems, the gameplay of The World Ends With You: Final Remix is still dynamic and engaging, and offers a good degree of customization. First of all we will be able to choose our skill set through the various pins, which we can develop with experience points and even make them evolve. Our effectiveness in battle will also be determined by the brand of our clothing. That's right, depending on the neighborhood we are in, wearing the right brand of equipment will give us a stat boost; However, if we don't have the right equipment or simply don't want to follow the trends, the good news is that we ourselves can change the fashion of the neighborhood by dint of fighting.
For this version on the Switch, the Co-op mode has also been included to undertake the fights together with another player who will take control of the second character. A feature certainly interesting since there are not many games of this type that can be played in the company of a friend, although the simultaneous presence of two cursors on the screen that swirl around can be quite confusing.
Finally, the Final Remix version includes a additional chapter with a new character who sits after the game's ending, opening the door to a potential sequel.
On the graphic side we see a further improvement compared to the mobile version of 2012. Graphically the game has made significant steps forward compared to the DS version, with sprite models in high definition and more accurate animations that give life to the particular design
The soundtrack by Takeharu Hashimoto (former composer for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Type-0 and the various Dissidia) for his part effectively immerses us in the metropolitan mood with tracks ranging from hip-pop, funk and JPOP. For this version it has also been remixed, but with the possibility of switching to its original version for the more nostalgic.
The World Ends With You was really a little gem for the Nintendo handheld, and if you missed it at the time, this is the perfect opportunity to recover it; as long as you know how to appreciate its blatantly metropolitan style, as well as the typically Japanese themes. It's just a pity that its original formula forced an uncomfortable and precise compromise. Considering that The World Ends With You: Final Remix is sold at a considerable price, if you have already played it on DS or mobile there may not be great reasons to take it on Nintendo Switch as well, unless you really can restrain your curiosity about the extra chapter, or feel like playing it with a friend.
► The World Ends With You: Final Remix is an Adventure-RPG game developed by Square Enix and published by Nintendo for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 27/09/2018
