twewy love letter

<02.09.2024>

disclaimer

my opinion is extremely subjective but since it's my website, i'm right and if you disagree you are wrong but you can try to arguy buy emailing me

THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU IS THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY JRPG SINCE CREATION OF JRPG

lets start from my history with jrpg. I'm not trying to be some kind of elder knowledge keeper of jrpg's, but i played them enough to somewhat understand how them work and their cliches, but if i'm wrong then o welp my fault

small list of jrpg's that i have beaten

pokemon (from second do seventh generation)
persona (first for psp, innocent sin, 3 portable and 4 golden)
undertale deltarune (they counts, right?)
remake of dragon quest IV for ds. I tried other ones but they did not caught my attention that much
almost completed final fantasy X
and the world ends with you, of course (only ds version though)

so lets talk about how the world ends with you so much different from others and why it's the best

gameplay

I think that gameplay is the most important aspect of the game, without it you might as well just watch a movie or read a book most of jrpg have some basic blocks, like unbreakable dogmas, which travels from game to game, sometimes changing juuust a little we have a group of several characters, safe zones where group can rest, resupply and do the plot thingy (usually cities or villages), we have dangerous zones like overworld and dungeons where group engages in battles with random encounters and bosses and after battles group gains reward which makes them stronger and let them engage in battles with stronger enemies and move forward with the story, repeating endless cycle. in twewy (from here and onward i'll call the world ends with you that) said "screw that we ball" and merged everything in one place - underworld of shibuya, tokyo. Here we run around zone filled with shops where we can buy equipment and stuff, move with story and fight monsters mostly if we want to (i mean there is no random encounters, you have full control of when to fight overworld enemies). I have a feeling that you can beat game without fighting any optional encounters. oh by the way about

battles

we have to fight with noises (main type of monsters with whom we have to fight with, generally it's animals with cool graffiti parts)
and we have to do this on two screens.
and it's hard.
and it's cool.
i won't get deep in the details, since it will take eternity, but in short you control Neku (main character) touching in different ways bottom screen, from drawing circles to throwing enemies in each other. Actions depends on equipped pin, about them later. On the top screen you control your partner with d-pad or buttons. Pressing buttons in specific order you take one of the cards, and if you take cards in right order (depends on partner) you will get charge. If you get enough charges you can make a cool attack, which deals damage to all enemies and restores some hp. But! if you get even more charges, you can perform REALLY cool attack, which deals A LOT of damage to all enemies and recovers almost all hp To be fair, on the normal difficulty fighting regular noises it was enough to just hold d-pad in direction of enemies and focus on Neku, but with bosses I not only had to increase my hp, but also give equal attention to both of the screens.

hold on a second!
you will ask
increase your hp? it's like temporarely by eating something or what?
and now we finally arrived to one of the most interesting aspect of the twewy, which in my opinion every jrpg should adapt, since it's enriched my experience a lot and would enrich yours if you will give game a chance regarding of your skill level

dynamic difficulty

player is free to tweak several aspects of game difficulty:

first you can choice at any point one of the difficulty level of enemies. as I understand it, it affect enemy health, strength, resistance to attacks (i mean it's harderd to throw them on ground) and make attack patterns harder and more frequent. it's not only makes your life harder/easier, but also each difficulty have their own loot pool from enemies, even at easy difficulty sometimes have pins drops which at hard difficulty don't
second you can set your max hp - the more you have it, the more you have it (duh). but if you lower your hp, you will have much more rewards after battles
and third as i said before fighting overworld encounters is optional. However before attacking them, you can chain up to 5 enemies in one pack, and then you will have to fight them one after another, which also increase amount and quality of rewards and so it's really easy to make game difficulty to your liking - for example i completed game on normal difficulty with a really lowered hp, so i would get a lot rewards if i played well but when i got hit it would hit a lot. And i think that mechanics like that would not be that hard to include in other jrpgs, since they do not depend on battle system, and the fact that those mechanics not only not common, but not even was used in other games is a shame for the whole genre.

pins and equipment

One of the most important parts of the game is pins. they grant Neku abilities in battle and they drastically change what you do in battles. you get pins after battles, in shops and by moving along story. Also in shops you can buy clothes, which not only improve your and your partner stats, but also every piece of clothing have an ability. What ability? You wont know if the seller wont tell you, and he will tell you only if you buy some stuff from him and now you are frens. Abilities of clothes also vary a lot, from simple + to stats to "changes patter of your partner attacks to spear" or stuff like that. Also also keep in mind that if character is not "brave" enough, he won't be able wear some clothes. For example women's clothes requires A LOT of bravery, so from the beginning only Shiky can wear those, but with enough dedication.. Oh by the way, bravery is improved buy feeding characters with food (and not only bravery, but also health, strength and other stuff) Food each character eats little by little after each battle, and every (real time) day they can eat only certain amount, so you cant just in one day up your damage to max. But back to clothes and pins - all clothes and pins are from one or another brand. And the often you wear clothes or use pin of specific brand in battle, the more popular it is in the part of shibuya where you were fighting. The more popular brand, the stronger it's pins and vice versa. By the way, all the brands have really distinct individuality, so you'll never mistake "sheep heavenly" for "wild boar", and if stuff like that was in really life maybe i would actually care about fashion.

I think i talked enough about uniqueness of gameplay and gave good example of how every detail of gameplay is thought trough and interacts with others parts of game. And all said above is just top of the iceberg, i havent even talked about pins evolution!! I'm as a big gameplay nerd really happy with that, but for some people it's not enough. For example they need pretty graphics, interesting plot or catchy music. WELL

Graphics

Games is in 2d and it EXTREMELY stylish, characters show their characters well through clothes (for example how Neku is always in big headphones, hiding from outside world and ignoring others) although some people may be repulsed by anime-ish character designs... background are distorted just enough and all of the enemies have a uniform spiky graffiti elements in them, and thats all make it feel like the game is inside graffiti, which, of course, not for everyone, but i just love it. By the way in ds version everything if pixel-ish, but thanks to the screen of the console it's nice crisp and tasty!

Plot

iduno how to share how great it is without major spoilers. it has happines and losses and all the other stuff that makes us feel stuff. most of a characters were interesting for me and even guy who seems friendly have their reasons and not that simple. Also thers a lot of thinking about different difficult topics, like for example how much we really can understand each others, which made my brain gears spins :p

Music

Simply the best.
It's one of my favorite videogame ost. 90% of music is amazing by itself, 9% is ost for shops and such which do their job perfectly and 1% is that one annoying song for uneasy situations. But every time you listen to the good one you can't not notice something new. Heres' my favorite ones : Вот мои любимые :

Game over
Ooparts
Three minutes clapping (yes, they are really clapping for three minutes)
Runaway it's one from remixes but still great
Owari Hajimari and remix which is different but still cool

In the end

If something said above interested you even a tiny-winy, you SHOULD try twewy. I don't recommend emulating ds for that, so if you dont have ds, then you'd better play solo remix for phone, i'm sure they are practically the same, except music (still cool), graphics quality (still pretty) and battle (still neat but without second screen) tldr: you should play twewy it's a masterpiece of videogame industry