The World Ends With You came in the mail today and I've finally gotten a chance to play it, but only about 40 minutes before my DS died. So what was my first, short impression?

Follow up:

The World Ends with You is about Neku, an antisocial kid who gets transported to an alternate universe version of Shibuya, the fashion district of Tokyo. So there are lots of recognizable landmarks from Tokyo that you have to run by. After finding a pin, getting a weird text message and getting attacked by some really vicious killer frogs he runs into a girl named Shiki who tells him he has been pulled into the Reaper's Game, and if he wants to live he has to play along. Neku is reluctant at first, but after the whole 'going to die if he doesn't play along' thing he gets with the program.

I haven't had a chance to get into the story much because I was more worried about my batteries. Neku is a jerk, but his sarcastic sense of humor makes him a lot more likable than some of the other Emo Squeenix heroes. The art style is really cool, and not buckle/zipper city like Nomura is always accused of designing. The cut scenes are a bit too static, but the battle graphics aren't bad. And the background music is amazing.

The battle system is a little sketchy, however. I don't know if it's the game or my touch pad, but getting Neku to run away from his foes as opposed to crashing into them has proved to be a challenge as well as getting the fire attack to work. The tutorial says just strike the ground, but more often than not I move Neku instead of attacking something. Instead I've found scribbling on the ground to work a lot better, though I use up more of my attack power that way. I've only made it past the first mission, so I'll see if other attacks are easier to use.