The World Ends With You isn't a title that bodes particularly well for those of us who have grown past the tireless angst of youth, and the first few hours of the experience it offers only serves to reinforce that familiar, sinking feeling. Initially, it appears that the latest outing of RPG stalwarts Square Enix has opted to take the road more travelled; the very same road, in fact, that the irrepressible publishing duo have been travelling down since time - or, at least, Final Fantasy - began. Even the most optimistic souls will likely be broken when they see the usual credit scroll postponed in favour of an intro that seems purpose-built to showcase all the clichés of the genre. The top screen is illuminated by a series of stark exclamations, of which "just go the hell away" and "I don't get people" are amongst the least pandering, while the lower half of your DS, where we're introduced to the habitually zippered purple garb and impossibly spiked hair of the character uttering them, positively glowers. You begin to relish the prospect of taking this excellent villain down when he remarks that "I got my values, so you can keep yours" - that is until the cut scene curtain comes down and the realisation that this is your hero sets in. And then, the j-pop.

Oh, the j-pop.

But take a few deep breaths and bear with it, because despite appearances to the contrary, The World Ends With You is a thoroughly entertaining and unexpectedly innovative experience that the competition is hard pressed to match. The exaggerated emo that its opening oozes exists for a purpose; rather than being a clichéd device for the calculated targeting of a particular audience, the developers - Jupiter - implement angst as an effective theme. Protagonist Neku Sakabura does indeed begin the game as a self-involved little dolt, but the sure-footed narrative soon reveals much information that helps you to sympathise with him. At the outset, Neku awakens as an amnesiac in the Shibuya ward of modern-day Tokyo, clutching in his hand a mysterious pin-badge emblazoned with a skull on its face. Neku knows his name - nothing more. In his head, he hears a clamour of voices; or rather, the innermost thoughts of the people that bustle around him, given voice. So far, so predictable, but even in the playable pre-credits sequence, several elements crucial to his emotional evolution are brought to the fore. Neku's first stumbling steps around the central district are directionless and in your first encounter with the enemies you'll face throughout much of The World Ends With You, the noise - distinctly tribal icons that appear when you scan the thoughtspace of your surroundings - is impossible to defeat, because alone, Neku is helpless.

In short order, although not without the sort of objections you'll come to expect from him, Neku partners up with Shiki, a confident young fashionista (her pink hair speaks volumes) who explains that they're unwilling players in the Reaper's Game, a cruel fixture of the 'underground' Shibuya in which Neku finds himself - figuratively and literally. The game lasts for seven days, on each of which a mission is issued. If they fail, they face the less-than-pleasant prospect of erasure, which is to say permanent deletion from the UG, and perhaps the real world too. Only together can Neku and Shiki hope to achieve their objectives, all the while defending against noise and the rogue Reapers that threaten to derail their progress.

And so, the battle system. You will fear the battle system. Both screens and nearly every button on the DS are fully utilised, which is all well and good, except that you're expected to use them separately - at the same time. The touch screen is Neku's domain; during encounters you control him with the stylus, drawing madly and gesturing as fast as your hand is able. It's all done in real time and this would be a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat staid mechanic, if it wasn't for the fact that Neku shares his enemies and his health points with his partner. Shiki occupies the top screen and you command her with a selection of inputs on the d-pad (or, for the lefties, the face buttons). Besting her combo tree is, at its simplest, a matter of spamming in the general direction of whatever noise poses the greatest threat, but it splits in a myriad of routes that you'll have to match in order to take full advantage of her powers. At the end of each of her combo paths is a symbol, and if you can pull off the moves in the order indicated at the top of her screen, she and Neku can momentarily join together to inflict MASSIVE DAMAGE!

It's all bit much to begin with, like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time, and - aside from several story-driven encounters that can't be avoided - you can pick your way past much of the noise if you're of a mind to. The prospect certainly appeals at first, especially considering the veritable library of tutorials you have to read before you can first-foot a few monsters, but Jupiter clearly know what they're doing. You can set Shiki to an autopilot that kicks in immediately or after a few seconds of inactivity, and until you get to grips with the particulars of Neku's combat, that's exactly what you should do. Persevere, take the tutorials at your own pace and adjust the difficulty to match your growing competency - the fact that you can do all this on the fly makes for an entirely manageable difficulty curve.

The complexity isn't needless, either; each triumph in battle nets you an assortment of pins, and just as the skull allows Neku to read minds, each new pin you collect comes with its own unique abilities. Equip them according to the strengths you'd like to develop and the PP you earn after encounters levels them up automatically. Different pins drop at different difficulties, and still more can be bought at the shops scattered around the fully-fledged Shibuya of The World Ends With You. You can trade pins for yen - the better levelled your pins, the more they're worth - and purchase food and clothing to increase your characters' stats. According to the ever-changing trends of the twenty-some distinct districts around the Tokyo ward, certain brands of clothes and accessories can either help or hinder you in battle. Considering their sheer depth, the myriad mechanics behind the scenes are incredibly flexible, mostly intuitive (after the fear passes), and ultimately mean that every player's experience will be an individual one.

The stellar production values common to Square Enix games are evident in this title, too. The clean lines and vectors of its anime-influenced graphics are effortlessly appealing, and among the very best seen on DS to date. Character designs come courtesy of Tetsuya Nomura, who brought us Cloud, Sephiroth and so many others in the little-known seventh entry of the Final Fantasy franchise, as well as masterminding the Kingdom Hearts games. Admittedly they're atypical, but pitch perfect all the same. Load times have been streamlined to the point where it's hard to tell when they're happening, and overall, the team at Jupiter have done a bang-up job of working around the technical shortcomings of the little dual-screen that could. And whatever your feelings about contemporary Japanese music, The World Ends With You comes complete with a vast and authentic selection of it. There's j-rock, j-rap and, of course, j-pop, but such diversity doesn't detract from the fact that the tracks showcased here are tasteful almost without exception and compressed without the sort of catastrophic quality loss that the system's usual line-up of shovelware might have conditioned you to expect. But what gives, Square - no Gackt?

The single player story mode is a lengthy affair, but not to the game's detriment. The Worlds Ends With You will last at least ten busy hours, excellently paced and spotted with revelations, character development and boss battles. If you want to collect all the pins and play dress-up with Shiki - or even Neku - then there's an expansive range of particularly pricey gothic Lolita outfits that I'd recommend; tack on another twenty hours to your total running time for that. For 100% completion, who can say? However long you put into the story mode though, there's always something new to get wrapped up in and your efforts are always rewarded. You can carry over your final levels, stats and items to a second play-through, which nets you the option to select specific chapters to replay, as well as providing special secondary objectives that, when met, add a series of so-called secret reports to your inventory, which shed new light on the story and characters you'll have long since come to love.

You can also play Tin Pin Slammer with other DS owners, a sliding mini-game without much to commend it, but it's hard to find fault with The World Ends With You on that count; after all, the multiplayer mode of Phantom Hourglass was hardly what the great gaming public loved about Link's last portable adventure. More appealing is Mingle mode, which allows you to leave the wireless capabilities of your portable active while you're otherwise occupied. Mingling allows communication with Wi-Fi hotspots, including but not limited to other DS systems, and applies special experience points to the pins you've equipped, allowing several to evolve in unique and otherwise unattainable ways. It's a great, if not entirely original use of the portable's strengths.

Not everything about The World Ends With You comes up roses, of course. The inventory management system is a little too Mass Effect for its own good, and suffers from much the same unwieldiness as that RPG, considering the copious volume of items and collectables you must keep track of. The map on the menu screen, which keeps track of the latest trends throughout Shibuya, is next to useless for navigational purposes, while the learning curve is a little out of whack - although far from unmanageable, the sheer volume of information the game throws at you in the early stages will turn less committed players away. A little room to breathe between tutorials, to better absorb the information you've just read about, wouldn't overwhelm the narrative as negatively as the wall-to-wall volumes of stat-tracking instruction you must wade through as it stands. But if you can level up your bravery enough to make it past these comparatively minor flaws and the almost unbearably angst-ridden opening, you'll find an experience quite without par on the DS.

As essential as it is, it's hard not to fear that The World Ends With You is not fated to make the sort of splash it should. Advertisement for this minor masterpiece has been thin on the ground, press coverage only recently picked up a little, and the barrier of entry is perhaps too high for it to achieve the widespread - if not mainstream - success it deserves. The hardcore will love its every moment, but casual gamers looking for a gateway drug into the role-playing genre won't give it a second look; like an arthouse favourite or a good long book, it's slow to pick up but impossible to put down. It looks, then, to join such grand company as Vagrant Story and Chrono Trigger, with an incredibly long lifespan and a dedicated base of fans, but little acclaim other than the critical. Nevertheless, it's a great kick in the genre's tired teeth, an RPG of the highest calibre that cleverly subverts the clichés it first appears to be founded upon. An involved and involving battle mechanic is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg; profound customisation, fantastic presentation and all-round technical excellence are tied into an utterly rewarding story that's populated by a cast of characters you'll not soon forget. Better that the localisation teams had been less cynical about this one when bringing it to our shores, and allowed it to represent itself as intended. It's A Wonderful World, the transliteration goes - and it is.

Reviewed by Niall A. Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).