THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU

This just came out recently in the US. It's for the Nintendo DS, it's produced by Square-Enix, it's an action RPG, and it looks really different. It also looks incredibly awesome.

Three things are promising. The first is that the art style is really crazy, kind of like manga meets street graffiti meets Jet Grind Radio. The second is that instead of being set in some pseudo-medieval fantasy land (which are getting a bit overused), the story is set in Shibuya; this is kind of a stroke of genius, because suddenly all the oversized belts and zippers and stuff that were kind of grating in Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts almost fit. Finally, the kicker is that battles take place on two screens at once. So not only do you guide the main character around on the lower screen with the stylus and attack monsters, etc., but you also have to use the directional keys in a sort of complicated multi-route DDR sequence to attack enemies on the top screen with you other character, while you play a memory card-game that allows you to use "limit break"-ish attacks. You have to do both things at the same time, and while you can set the top screen to auto, determine the A.I., totally adjust the difficulty at any point in the game, etc., since both characters share the same HP bar if either one is getting beaten up, you are screwed.

It gets a lot stranger than that, but anyway it looks really interesting and anyone not turned away by J-Pop or unlikable protagonists should really check it out. It's been out in Japan for a while, and reviews have generally been positive, sometimes really positive. I'm having a lot of trouble posting images on this forum so I can't really post any screenshots, but the trailer pretty much sums the whole thing up anyway so there's a link to it right below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0EhEm4r50Y

Another trailer:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33167.html

...and other features include:

-Enormous hip-hop/J-pop/techno soundtrack which fits pretty well with the setting, so long as you're used to that sort of thing
-No random encounters--you literally choose when you want to fight battles, and can even chain battles together using psychokinetic powers for bonuses
-Your character is invisible to the mortal eye, so in order to carry out objectives you have to read people's minds, implant "memes" into their heads and mess around with other people's ouija boards
-You gain a bit of experience if you leave off playing the game for a long time and then return, sort of like in World of Warcraft, except different
-You can also gain experience by using Wi-Fi to connect with people who also have a copy of the game; you can even set up a shop for people who own copies of the game to buy from for extra cash
-You can change the difficulty at any time, and even decrease your character's level while out of battle; the weaker your character in comparison to your enemies, the more loot you get
-Since the game is set in Shibuya, there is a lot of shopping--wearing clothing increases stats, but your character must have enough Bravery Points to wear certain types
-This being Shibuya, different brands are more trendy in certain areas than in others; so in a district brand A might be twice as powerful while brand B might only be half as powerful, but by fighting enough in an area the equipment you use gradually becomes more "in", etc.
-Instead of raising levels, your characters must eat food; food requires a certain number of bites to digest, and since the game is divided into days you only have twenty-four bites each day to digest
-Plus, 300 pins to collect and use in battle; you can even level them up (although since some pins are different brands, a couple of the effects are repeated)
-There is also a minigame, but people tend not to care about those

The game itself isn't very long, but there's a lot in it.