![]() ![]() During battle, the “noise” appear as animal-flashy-car hybrids: kangaroos, bats, bears, and frogs painted in vibrant neons and decked out with flames and tribal tattoos. bonuses are the result of purchasing maid bonnets and logo-laden shirts. Power-ups come from graffitied pins that you level up, and stat. Gone are the hills, mountains, and forests of the typical JRPG, replaced instead by metropolitan Japan of the future. ![]() Every character is a too-skinny, fashion forward Japanese teen steeped in Shibuya street culture. Mirroring Solo Remix’s theme of identity, the entire aesthetic is a self-aware nod to the trendy cutting edge – and the feeling that you always have to be there. To that end, Square should be commended for the image of the game itself. And as links are established between Neku’s “game” and his real world, players are ultimately presented with a dark, introspective storyline that tackles the perils of growing up, fitting in, and making sense of the world and your image within it. Solo Remix is about the long game, and every puzzle piece that falls into place brings new light to who each character is, and why they act the way they do. On the other, however, the narrative payoff here more than makes up for the time-worn tropes. On one hand, the game falls prey to all the overwraught character melodrama and clunkily written dialogue that have come to define the Japanese RPG, which many very well turn off non-fans of the genre. This sets the stage for three major arcs in which you get to know the other doomed travellers accompanying you as game “players,” and slowly discover how their fate intertwines with that of Neku’s forgotten self. ![]() The mission? Survive for seven days against hordes of static-turned-monsters known as Noise. Waking up in Shibuya with no knowledge of how he got there – or in fact what the district is – Neku quickly realizes he’s inside an improbable, very deadly digital nightmare playing a “game” organized by a mysterious group of super powerful beings known as Reapers. ![]() The game puts you in control of anti-social teenager Neku Sakuraba, who would rather zone out to music than listen to another human voice. As it turns out, it isn’t: it’s much stronger.įor those who missed out on the original’s shamefully small release, The World Ends With You is an RPG of a different breed, inspired in part by Japan’s hyper-metropolitan Shibuya shopping district, and in equal measure by modern technological parables like The Matrix. As it turns out, speculation was right! So for most of the days that followed, I’ve been lost in dystopian Shibuya, Japan, determined to see if this version – dubbed Solo Remix – would be as strong an offering as the original. A videogame port that surpasses the original? The world may just be ending.Ī week ago, I reported on the speculation that Square Enix’s cult classic RPG The World Ends With You would be making the jump from Nintendo DS to iOS. ![]()
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