In classic Square Enix fashion, the battles are random and turn based, making for a classic RPG style feel for those looking for something more similar to the type of RPGs that existed 20-30 years ago.
The gameplay of the game consists of many of the elements found in free to play titles. There are multiple currencies, multiple characters that can be combined to upgrade as well as other Gatcha style elements. Luckily the game is fully upfront paid with no in app purchases at all.
All monster in game have some form of elemental attribute that is designed to be countered with an opposite element when battling. There are cards to be collected in game that can then be equipped to the players character in order to build a team that can hopefully in most situations counter a wide array of elemental monsters.
There is a battle coliseum mode in the game that allows for quick battles against regular enemies and bosses that earn the player experience points. There is no story in this mode and it is meant as more of a quick on the go session that can still earn the player some XP that can be used in the regular story mode.
The game does not properly support the 4:3 ratio as the text and graphics are cut off the screen on both sides. The game loads upside down and will not rotate to the correct orientation of volume buttons on the top of the device in landscape. There is no immersive mode support either. Overall for a $20 game the glaring lack of optimization for Android is pretty shameful for such a large company that has such a long history of making video games.
Being that all of the freemium aspects are already built into the title it may be a worry that the game could go freemium at the drop of a hat, thus burning anyone who actually paid full price for the title.
The game is crashing on the N6 and N7 upon first open. Apparently the game has not been tested on the devices that are listed as working and being sold for.
Square Enix has done nothing to polish the graphics in this port which for the price point is a little disheartening. The black borders on both sides of the screen are also disappointing.
To simplify how the gameplay works it is a bit like playing chess where in each turn needs to be scrutinized in order to find the best play on the board. Being that there is a large amount of RPG elements thrown into the game, these choices become even more complicated while also adding a huge amount of options to the game.
The touch controls use an on screen dpad overlaid on top of the game. This means fingers move cover some of the game field or action when trying to maneuver.
There is no immersive mode, which would allow this to be fullscreen on devices that have the Android navigation bar. On top of this the game is letterboxed on both sides of the screen do to it being a port of the port for iOS. There is also no other Android specific features to speak of in the game either.
Things like the original orchestrated music and voice acting that were in the original North American Playstation 2 release have been removed from the mobile version of the game. Most likely to save room.
Instead of a class system that is found in all of the previous Dragon Quest titles where players upgrade their player through beating monsters a certain amount of time, Dragon Quest VIII uses a skill system to level up the characters and learn new skills by placing skill points earned through battle into the available skill tree, this allows for a more fine grained approach of leveling a character up.
While the dungeon-crawling and recipe-management components of Adventure Bar Story could each get tiresome on their own, alternating between the two keeps both fresh.
The premium items available in Adventure Bar Story are most accurately described as optional cheats. The game is not overly difficult or otherwise restricted without them.
Purchases must be balanced between adventuring gear and cooking supplies. Adventuring is the cheapest way to get ingredients and the only way to advance the story. But adventuring will never provide enough of certain stables (salt, milk, etc.) so you'll need to spend a lot of your cash on them, along with additional kitchen equipment and (optional, but convenient) recipes. You can't just ignore cooking, either -- in addition to being your primary income, character levels are gained only by eating!
Trying original recipes is not completely essential, but definitely an important game feature. Sometimes, ingredients go together exactly as you would expect based on other in-game recipes or real-world equivalents. Sometimes, all the things that should work don't.
Only one of the two latest games released by Square Enix on Android to actually take advantage of immersive mode, which allows for games to show full screen on stock devices hiding the navigation bar.
The game has been ported to work with a touch interface. There are touch analog controls as well as touch to maneuver to location inputs. It all works pretty good.
While the characters in the game have new HD models, the backgrounds and FMVs are basically the same from the original which look out of place when compared to the HD characters as well as in general for an Android game.
There are actually no buttons on screen and the whole game is controlled with a floating Dpad. interaction with NPCs is down by just bumping into them, same with fighting monsters.
The original version of The World Ends With You was for the Nintendo DS, which utilized two screen s for the gameplay. With the Android and iOS port the gameplay has been retooled to work on a single screen.
Unlike the majority of games on mobile The World Ends With You has great depth to the gameplay. The amount of options and length definitely shows that this game was developed for core gamers in mind.
Like all Square Enix games on Android, The World Ends With You asks a very high price for what is essentially an old game. Though it does seem like at least a little bit of work was put into this port as the graphics are redone in HD and gameplay has been adjusted for a single screen.