Developed by Team Jupiter, the same group that made Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends With You is a new action role-playing game (RPG) that breaks the cookie-cutter mold of the traditional knights and dragons RPGs.

Following a similar beginning to Kingdom Hearts, the game opens with an unconscious hero, Neku Sakuraba, who is an apathetic prepubescent teenager who hates the world and doesn’t try to hide it. Neku wakes up in Shibuya (the shopping district of Tokyo, Japan) to find himself with no memory and somehow involved in a game that spans for seven days. If Neku, along with a partner, doesn’t complete every mission within seven days, they will suffer “erasure,” or cease existing.

The missions are set up to include iconic locations in Shibuya, where the characters must complete dangerous tasks in order to advance in the game. Alongside with exciting missions, no RPG is complete without an intricate battle system. While on these missions, Neku encounters his enemies, which are the physical embodiments of stress and negativity known as Noise.

Like in many video games, the hero just happens to be a genius in whatever type of fighting the game provides. Neku’s fighting specialty is wearing pins that allow him to attack in various ways. More than 300 pins can be obtained through the course of the game. Each pin has its own unique power and drawing technique.

The game utilizes the Nintendo DS’s dual screens and combines the touch pad with directional pad to allow the player to control both characters simultaneously. This bold new system proves to be imaginative and refreshing for an RPG.

It is extremely difficult to get used to at first. However, the best part about the battle system is that the characters gain experience even when the DS is turned off for several days.

Aside from the endless character customizations, amazing soundtrack and smooth interface, The World Ends With You is sorely lacking the amazing cinematic cut-scenes that many would expect from Square Enix. Instead, we are left with moving character portraits, very little voice-overs and a lot of text to tell the story.

The World Ends With You is an experience that is unmatched by any other RPG or any other game on the DS.