I'm much further into the game now and have way more pins, and it turns out it's just that the Fire one is hard to use, because every other one is pretty smooth. Battle is still tricky, but not impossible, because after you join up with Shiki you get double battles. This requires you to use the control pad to control Shiki (or your other battle partner) in the top screen and Neku with the stylus in the bottom (man, sounds like a Clue conclusion). It's very difficult to pay attention to two screens at once, but the AI is pretty good so you don't have to worry too much. And thankfully, they thought about left handed people in the battle design, because the D-Pad or the right buttons will work to control your partner.

The storyline is still pretty murky, as we don't know *why* we're in the Reaper's Game--except that we had to pay a price to pay. Neku is still kind of a prick, but he seems to be softening up, the Reapers are pretty awesome, Shiki I don't have any opinion on, but Beat bothers me somewhat. This mostly has to do with his speech. I find it a personal pet peeve when people from middle class or foreign countries use ghetto slang. To me it seems silly and pretentious, and I keep wanting Neku to just say, "Beat, you're not black, knock it off."

Otherwise I love the character designs. They seem unique and interesting, but still like something you'd see people where when walking through the real Shibuya. The clothing-as-armor and food system is really cool, and fun to use. A lot of games take place in modern cities, typically in post-apocalyptic settings, so normal, everyday items are either not used, or expected to be McGuyvered into weapons. So this game's system is unique, though I wish the clothing attached to the character would actually show up during battle, like weapons and other items typically do in other games.

The graphics I'm not totally sold on. There is a lot of detail in the backgrounds and things, and I get the style is supposed to be like a comic book, but I still can't shake the feeling like a lot of corners got cut in terms of animation.