Luckily, Neku doesn’t mope the entire game, but in the first few hours you’ll be secretly hoping for his erasure as he fills every conversation with snarky, introverted thought bubbles. Unfortunately, the game does suffer from Paper Mario syndrome – there is far too much dialogue. There are also quite a lot of characters, and you’ll often find yourself wishing you could just skip a conversation and get back to the gameplay. This is especially true during the tutorials, which will continue to appear throughout the entire game. Square seems to think that WEWY is so complicated, it needs to introduce the numerous elements of the game gradually. This was a good idea up to a point, as there is a ton of things to learn about the game mechanics. However, when the third day comes and you STILL can’t use items, it starts to get frustrating.

The gameplay admittedly does appear intimidating, but really, Square makes everything seem much more complicated than it actually is by putting numbers and stats and experience everywhere you look. The nice thing about WEWY though, is that it’s only as complicated as you would like it to be. The majority of gameplay elements that are introduced to you are completely optional. Sure, it’s beneficial to learn how to use them, but it’s far from necessary. The best example of this is the battle system itself. Aside from event-triggered battles, fighting enemies (or Noise) is completely at your leisure. Once you’ve decided to fight, battles take place on the top and bottom DS screens at the same time. You control Neku using the touch screen, and your current partner with the D-pad. At first, this seems to be hopelessly impossible, but you’ll soon discover that you can achieve victory by slashing your stylus wildly and pounding the D-pad left or right. Although there are 300 different “pins” to collect in the game, each one granting Neku a different kind of stylus-powered ability, the game often doesn’t recognize what attack you’re trying to activate. Plus, the battles are extremely fast-paced and hectic, making the frantic button and stylus mashing that much more imperative. In Shibuya, offense is the best defense. This isn’t to say that the battle system isn’t fun, however. It’s incredibly addicting, and I often find myself choosing to erase all the Noise in an area rather than move on to the next part of the story. The pins that grant you your powers also level up, and some even evolve. What’s cool about this though, is that the pins get experience even when you’re not playing the game. It’s a nice incentive to come back and play again after you’ve set it down.