The World Ends With You is just a fantastic game. It’s imaginative, unique, innovative, and startlingly of all, mechanically sound. As such, I have a very hard time believing it actually came from Square Enix. Their games have largely relied on story and setting over raw gameplay for value, and since Tetsuya Nomura’s star has risen, their stories have become so inanely metaphysical that they no longer even have that going for them. Luckily, in TWEWY Nomura’s pen was used to draw stylistic art instead confusing words.

I’ve been told it actually makes sense, but I don’t believe it.

The majority of the game leaves combat in the hands of the player--something decidedly un-Squareish. Players choose when to scan for enemies and even how many to fight until they approach the final boss. The game starts to force encounters on players as they approach the end of the game. This may at first seem like an annoying break in design, but it’s done to force some experience and levels on players that may have avoided battle until that point. If the player is under-leveled, this will make final boss preparation much less arduous.

This isn’t the only mechanic by which the game ensures players are prepared for the final boss. Another forced encounter pits players against a reincarnated boss. Unless they are already overleveled (and thus already prepared for the final boss), most players will lose this encounter. This may smack of a scripted loss in their grand and annoying tradition, but this one actually serves a purpose. After the match, win or lose, the boss essentially says, "I am as hard as the end boss," before running away. The game gives players a sneak peak of the difficulty in store before throwing them at the end boss.

TWEWY allows players to experience, first-hand, the challenge awaiting them, and flat-out forces them to fight a few fights to prepare for it. Both of these techniques are meant to prepare the player for the final boss and ultimately a frustration-free experience. I can attest; TWEWY is the smoothest gameplay experience I’ve had in a long time (barring games with no challenge like Endless Ocean), due entirely to smart design. Had it not been for these warnings, I would’ve been under-leveled and frustrated when time came to finish the game.