THIS POST CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF GAMEPLAY AND STORY SPOILERS FOR THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU
There were plenty of new gameplay elements unlocked, but most of them didn't feel very important.
A monster database opened up. I'll use it to check on monster vulnerabilities and maybe item drops. But I can't see me spending much time with it in the long term. It did show me that I still have two more difficulty levels to unlock. Since I'm winning fights with very high rankings, I'm looking forward to turning up the difficulty for the greater rewards I'm sure it will bring.
There was a wrinkle in the food mechanic. Since I still had a few bites undigested from a day and a half ago, I didn't get my full 24 slots to use today. Ideally, I'd spend extra time fighting to use up all my hunger slots before shutting the game down. Meh.
One of my pins evolved, becoming more powerful. I'm not entirely sure how. It may have something to do with the fact that I spent a lot of time fighting where it's brand was strong. Yes. Some pins have brands, just like clothes. My money pins say then can evolve, too. But they are unbranded, so I have no idea how I might get them to evolve, or what they would turn into. Hopefully, they'd get more valuable, but who knows?
A mini-game called Tin Pin is now unlocked. Two pins are on a table. Flick your pin into the other pin to knock it off. Apparently it's the game's multiplayer mode. It seemed pretty simplistic.
Less simplistic was the mingling mode I unlocked. Basically, I can leave the DS on in mingle mode, and it will pay attention to other DS wifi traffic. If it detects wifi traffic from other games, I get some kind of bonus. If someone else has TWEWY and is in mingle mode, we become "friends". We trade "cards". And we can buy things from each other's "stores". That's a lot of quotes. That's because I have no idea what most of those things really mean. Besides, while I'm mingling, I'm not getting free pin XP, so unless there's a lot of DS multiplayer going on in my apartment complex that I don't know about, I'm better off leaving my DS powered down.
Shiki's counterattack ability was unlocked. It used to be that if she was attacking in one direction and the enemy behind her attacked, she was boned. Now she can interrupt her forward attack to perform a counter to any attacking opponent behind her. I'm not paying enough attention to the top screen to make that pay.
I love me some counterattacks, though. It just feels awesome to let an attack whoosh by and follow up with some precision pain. I'll probably start to spend a little more time observing the top screen. Some of Neku's projectiles knock foes back. If I can space my shots out to keep the bottom screen opponents off balance, that should let me make better use of the top screen.
The one new mechanic that is truly awesome is fight chaining. Instead of having to scan, pick an enemy group to fight, fight, wait for the post fight screen, and then start over, I can select up to four enemy groups to fight consecutively. It's a little more dangerous, because I don't automatically heal between fights. But I'm kicking enough butt at this point that it doesn't really matter. Plus adding more consecutive fights increases my XP multiplier, so where I was earning seven or nine points for a single fight before, I can now string four fights together and be walking out with sixty odd XP or more. In a way, it makes the game go by too fast. Day 4 was much shorter than Day 3, so much shorter that I just wanted to dive into Day 5 immediately. Also, four fights at a time lets me start to get my action groove on. I'll be keeping an eye out for opportunities to increase my chaining limit. I'd love to be able to just take on all the enemies in a territory in one long chain. Of course, I'd have to eat a lot to be able to do that.
When I had only two bites to digest, the game only let me chain two fights. That seems really arbitrary and annoying. Ice cream takes five bites to digest. That means I have to eat, do a real fight, then do a waste of time fight before I can eat again. I like the bonus bravery ice cream gives because Neku is a wuss and is going to need a lot more bravery to wear cool clothes. But I don't know if I'll mess with it if it slows down the combat too much. I asked for a four chain fight. I'll take the sync penalty in exchange for the extra loot and XP. Please let me make my own choices. :P
On the story side, I've been watching a lot of Reapers talking. Reapers are the human enemies. They don't actually fight though. They just summon Noise (the animal like monsters) for the characters to fight. In the opening for Day 4 the Reapers are all in shadow. One of the Reapers looks and talks like the main character of the game, who just happens to be suffering from amnesia and blackouts. Fight Club anyone? But that's just speculation.
REALLY BIG STORY SPOILER
DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT (OR MIGHT NOT) WANT IT SPOILED
At the end of Day 4, Rhyme dies. It's not for sure that people who die in the game die in real life, so they may bring her back, but it's supposed to be a big deal. Neku doesn't react externally, causing Shiki to accuse him of being as empty and evil as the Reapers (which may be the case if the game is pulling a Fight Club).
END REALLY BIG STORY SPOILER
So there is plot and character development and a few funny bits of dialog. I'm still mostly a Neku hater, but it's not getting in the way of the gameplay, so who cares? Oh, and we discover that Shiki makes her own clothes in this episode. I can't decide if that makes it more or less baffling that her skirt is so loose fitting and rides so low. Regardless, it's completely inappropriate. Shiki and Neku and Rhyme's medically troubling lankiness is also an element of the art design that doesn't sit well, but these are the kinds of things one learns to overlook in gaming, like all these children running around Shibuya being white. :P
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