Pins, Threads and... A Death Game? - The World Ends with You ~Final Remix~ (Review)

Join a world of mysteries and unique characters in the ever so popular city of Shibuya... but, will you make it out alive to tell the tale?

By the popular company that brought us franchises like 'Final Fantasy', NIER and Kingdom Hearts, TWEWY (The World Ends with You) is a hidden gem that has been out for 14 years!

Originally released on the DS system, TWEWY was very well received by the fans that knew about it, after all what is there not to love? Unique style, gameplay and awesome story in one whole bundle, which sadly was not well known until its ports.

As the years passed, TWEWY was eventually remastered and ported as a phone game, adding some extra stuff to further deepen the original. But the version we will look into is the upgraded one, the Nintendo Switch exclusive remastered port called Final Remix!
Now that a sequel is right around the corner, this is only proper to be done, so let us touch the PROS and CONS as well as a conclusion for The World Ends with You -Final Remix-!

PLOT AND DEVELOPMENT:

So, what IS this game? What is so intriguing about TWEWY? What could possibly be such an interesting story that will make fans stick to it? Well, it is a Death Game! You did read correctly, a Death and Survival Game in the city of Shibuya! Survive for 7 Days, do your missions and trust your partner, only then you will make it out alive... Did I make sense for you here? Worry not if I didn't! An explanation is here!

In this wonderful and happy story (note the obvious sarcasm here), the player is a young boy named Neku Sakuraba. Suddenly, one day, he wakes up in the central crossing of Shibuya, without any memories and surprisingly finds out that no one can see him or hear him. Indeed, Neku is invisible to everyone but other... Players.
Soon after he encounters an eager girl named Shiki, Neku learns that he is at what people call the UG (Under-Ground) that is a parallel precinct to the RG (Real-Ground). So why is here and how?! As stated, Neku has amnesia, so with claws he fights his way through battles alongside Shiki to find out what happened. 

He must survive, he must do the bidding of the Reapers for 7 whole days and follow their orders, except if he wants to face 'erasure' and lose any chance he has in getting his memories back. So his journey starts, to find out what causes all this, what happened in the first place and why he out of all people is in such a survival game. 

The story is slowly progressed through weeks, each week featuring lovable (and not so lovable) characters, that are sure to leave an impression on you! Something I noticed while playing through Final Remix is that every single character, every single plot-point, was executed beautifully with no major questions left unanswered in the end and every character well explained through the development of the story itself!

ARTSTYLE AND GRAPHICS:

With the legendary Tetsuya Nomura as its Creative Director, The World Ends with You has quite the unique style and graphic design. With a more comic-like than game-like design, every little character has details implemented perfectly. The dialogue is made in speech bubbles with changing portraits of the character, and that alone is enough to give the whole experience a new fresh flair. Even the way you move around Shibuya is done in a click and point 2D style!

Although some details in NPCs and such are repeated, no main character or major NPC has something similar to anyone else in TWEWY. Even the most simple of designs can shine through, a good example is the very well loved coffee dad of the franchise, Sanae Hanekoma, who although dressed in merely a typical button up and vest looks phenomenal.

SOUNDTRACK:

Our main character, Neku, is wearing headphones so we can only assume that music is a huge part of this game! Of course, assuming so is no wrong assumption! The music in this game truly covers up for the lack of voice acting in dialogues, filling the cutscenes and battles, even causing you to stop ever so often while you are running around Shibuya, just to listen to this awesome track playing in the background!

With a mix of English and Japanese songs, TWEWY has an array of tracks in its soundtrack disposal, from ballad-like songs like 'Calling', to hip-hop ones like 'Twister' and even some more abstract ones like 'Transformation' or 'Deja Vu'! One thing is for certain, not only it has music for its instances, but it gives you some good choices for future playlists you might make, since the music TWEWY has is something you can listen to your free time... Although some boss fight PTSDs might come up...

GAMEPLAY AND CONTROLS:

While playing TWEWY Final Remix I was truly scared of the controls, not going to lie, all those people saying about painful motion controls and awkward touch screen ones had gotten me into a little shaken up state, but let me give you my two cents when it comes to this game's controls and gameplay alike.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward, the tutorial of the game and the essence of the plot of 'place trust in your partner' explains it fairly well. You control Neku who is equipped with pins and threads, threads being the clothing that give you extra HP/ATK/DEF or special abilities, and the pins your main way of attack and defense. 

Each pin has its own unique ability and is used by different commands, tapping on an enemy, tapping on an empty space, dragging along the screen or pressing Neku himself are few examples of activation mechanics. Of course, you have your cooldown pins, your damage enhance ones, healing ones and generally a variety for you to construct your deck around what makes you the most comfortable.

In addition to the pins, you have a partner with unique abilities and combos, with a 'pin' of their own. That is the SYNC Pin, it is filled up to 300% and let us say that every 100% of sync something very cool happens that includes you, your partner and a lot of damage... After all the game says it itself, trust your partner to get out of there and believe me, as the story progresses your cross combos with your partner will become crucial to your survival.

Now I won't go into detail about leveling and drop rates, I will just say that EXP and PP (Pin Points) are earned through battles, battles that you can chain to raise your drop chances for pins and materials. The game even gives you the option of lowering your level manually to increase said chances, of course you can return it back up whenever you want. It is a rather unique system that I myself cannot properly explain in words I am afraid, it took me a solid minute to understand it in game myself.

As far as controls go, in the Switch version of the game that we are touching upon there are two ways to play the game. 

The first one includes handheld mode, that you can simply play the game as if it was the app store version, by touching the screen for your pin combos and using your joysticks to move Neku around. It is incredibly handy and responds well to the commands, although given the size of the switch it might sometimes be a hindrance to actually play the game like this. But, when it comes to responsiveness and easier combat, handheld is the way to go!

The second way to play (and the way I decided to play the game on my switch) is with motion controls and let me tell you the tale of 'Sora, TWEWY and Motion Controls'! TLDR; They are TRULY not as bad as people make them out to be. Sure they are a bit slow at times compared to the touch screen method, but honestly nothing major. I could see some healing pin commands would get mixed with my tapping pins at times, but besides that I saw no problems with motion controls of this port. Surely, they are far from perfect, since they do off-center from time to time and the cursor gets lost in the noise (budumtsss) of the background sometimes. Nevertheless I would encourage people to try them, they are more pleasant than what they first seem!

TIME TO PRICE VALUE:

Now this, this a quite tricky subject to touch upon when it comes to TWEWY Final Remix. A digital version of the game comes around 60€ (and around the same in other currencies from what I have seen) while a physical version might differ from place to place. A good example is Europe and the US, I have heard friends finding the game for around 20$ physically while I cannot find it for less than 40€! The price difference between digital and physical is dramatic, so much in fact that I probably consider this the only downside to this classic port!

If you are a fan of digital games I would say maybe hold off until a sale, if you like physical copies however, the price is not half bad! The whole game will give you around 45-50 hours of gameplay, including after game stories but NOT the 100% of the game. If you decide to go for that complete save file, I assume it will take more than simply 50 hours, given the fact that some bosses are extremely annoying to fight and get the drops from, drops required for quest items in shops that you will need for the complete collectibles!

FINAL VERDICT:

Well after a long, deep, inside take of TWEWY Final Remix, let us recap in a short PROS-CONS list!

PROS:
-Story and Plot (Great execution of something as classic as a Death Game!)
-Characters and Development (Not one minute passes that you think that a character is dull, boring or not well developed! Everyone gets their time to shine properly!)
-Music (TWEWY has tracks for everyone, if you don't like what you hear in Shibuya Crossing why not move to 104 and see if that track fits your tastes more?)
-Art and Design (Truly a unique design both for the game itself and the character it hosts. Colorful pallets with well complimented hues and generally a pleasant feeling to the eye.)
-Hours of Gameplay (45-50 hours of a casual playthrough is nothing to scoff at, it surely got your back if you are searching for a long but not TOO long JPRG!)

CONS:
-Controls (I know I said that it is not as bad as people seem it to be, but the controls in this game will give you some cramps in handheld or docked mode. It is not a major CON but surely something that could have done a lot better!)
-Price (Given the fact the dramatic change between digital to physical and even physical to physical depending on your region, I cannot simply not put this as the biggest downside this game has...)

WOULD I RECOMMEND?:
Now the reason why this whole review was set up; Would I recommend to someone The World Ends with You -Final Remix-? The answer is... Yes! Yes I would! If I knew that money was not an issue, I would recommend this game with closed eyes. But given the fact the period we live in, money usually is an issue to many, in that case I would both recommend but not recommend it at the same time. If it is on sale, snatch it, the story and the characters and way too good for someone to miss out on such a masterpiece! Plus... We have a sequel awaiting for us!