The World Ends With You
My DS had been sitting in a drawer for months. Not neglected—actively ignored, the way you ignore something you know requires a decision. Sunday I finally decided to make one, which meant two hours of trawling Media Markt, forum threads, and online stores before admitting I’d found nothing I actually wanted. I was genuinely about to buy Anno 1701 DS—I have a soft spot for city builders and the low-grade cruelty of managing tiny populations—when I found out that The World Ends With You was coming out later in the week.
My relationship with Square Enix had been cooling for a while by then. The newer Mana games felt like the franchise eating itself, familiar aesthetics wrapped around something hollow. Final Fantasy had started to feel like a legal obligation—the stories grown so baroque and self-serious that playing them felt less like an adventure and more like sitting through a lecture on the nature of hearts delivered by someone with incredible hair.
The World Ends With You looked like none of that. Set in Shibuya, contemporary and specific and street-level, built around music, graffiti, urban fashion, and what I can only describe as anxiety made playable. Two characters fighting for survival through a game run by the dead, wielding psychic pins, their actions split across both DS screens simultaneously. The whole thing looked kinetic and strange and genuinely Tokyo in a way that most Japanese games flatten into something universal and safe.
Square Enix actually trying something new, for once. I’m first in line.