Review: The World Ends With You: Solo Remix

An already popular game, there was another challenge beyond just the controls: price.
The World Ends with You sells for an unusually hefty $19.99 for the iPad. In a market where spending $0.99 is regarded as a serious purchase, slapping down a twenty merits great consideration from all but the most headstrong app shoppers.
But ya know what? It’s worth it. The World Ends With You: Solo Remix is really, really fun.
Should you be intrigued by such an odd product (and rightly so), here’s some information to aid in your consideration.
Tragically stereotypical lone-wolf misanthrope Neku, of teenage years, finds himself trapped in some bizarre version of the city he lived in in which only fellow participants of a twisted event called ìthe Reaper’s Gameî can see and hear him.

A typical battle is pretty graphically busy, but combat is surprisingly intuitive.

Neku is almost immediately forced to join forced with a similarly-aged girl named Shiki, who assists him in fighting off a host of abominations composed of living flesh and animated tattoos. Naturally, Neku and Shiki must work together to learn everything they can about the Reaper’s Game, all while under the threat of ìerasureî (which is presumed to be some form of death).
Controlling Neku as he explores the urban environment is a simple matter of tapping where to go, but touching the black and white ìpinî in the corner will switch the view to reveal enemy icons, or ìnoise.î Touching those initiates battle. Neku and his partner battle noise using a set of collectible pins that is entirely custom.
For example, you can have a pin that fires projectiles at a short range when you tap empty space, a pin that causes a spike to thrust upwards from the ground, a pin that gives you an orbiting shield when you draw a circle, etc. Using pins in battle gives them experience and levels them up, making them stronger and/or more efficient to use. Some pins even evolve, giving them stronger or additional attacks.

You need only play for a few hours to start unlocking a huge variety of pins and abilities.

The unique combat system is intriguing enough, but The World Ends with You adds a massive risk versus reward system that makes fighting truly great and skill-based. There are two ways to make fighting noise harder and more rewarding: One is to chain battles together.
After a few hours into the game, you gain the ability to tap multiple noise icons at the same time, triggering a marathon battle in which you fight each group of noise separately and with no break or healing in between.
The other way is to set your level to a lower one. Neku gains experience just like his pins do, except that the only change is how much health he has. Fighting battles with less health multiplies the rewards substantially. Such a system allows hardcore players to stack the odds intensely against them to the point where succeeding in a single battle floods your inventory with riches and new pins.
Between the interesting aesthetic, well-thought-out controls and fast-paced, set-your-own-difficulty combat, The World Ends with You makes a fantastic transition onto iPad. Despite its hefty $20 price tag, a playthrough is absolutely merited for both casual and hardcore fans of action RPGs. The World Ends with You is both developed and published by Square Enix.