World’s End Club – Review

Our Rating: 7/10

World’s End Club is pitched as a puzzle and action game with elements of adventure and survival right off the bat. It begins with a cinematic that transports us to Japan in 1995, where several children converse animatedly on a school bus. The Go-Getters Club is a group of young students who spend their free time together.

Everything appears to be normal; they’re on their way on a journey while watching a film about a deadly survival game. It’s then that a meteorite lands in Tokyo and everything goes dark. Our protagonists awaken in a macabre amusement park, hidden behind a layer of darkness.

Pielope, a strange being, appears and invites them to play a survival game with him. In essence, each character wears a bracelet that displays the task of a different partner. Your objective is to figure out who is in charge of your task and to complete it. There will be only one winner, and the rest of the contestants appear to be dead.

It is striking, although it employs a fairly exploited premise in various audiovisual markets. Connects the dots. To be honest, I think it’s fantastic. As a result, we begin a death game whose sole purpose is to serve as a tutorial. We outplayed the game and saved our friends, spoiler. This occurs in the first hour of play; it’s a shame they don’t capitalize on this dynamic further.

The end of the world, but why?

When we’ve had enough of the death game, we leave and return to the real world, only to discover that something or someone has destroyed everything in their path. I also don’t want to tell you much more because it would ruin the experience. What I can say is that it has a compelling story and a well-crafted plot.
The plot is strong from the beginning and continues to be so until the end. The script is well-written, eye-catching, and intriguing. In this regard, World’s End Club is written as a mystery novel with elements of suspense, but with children as the protagonists.

It’s crucial, given how difficult it is to follow the story. The script’s structure is logical and coherent, despite its complexity. It does a good job with mystery and reinvents itself thanks to a mostly engaging story. He rises to prominence as a result of his dialogues, which are not only well-written but also have personality and include numerous cameos.

Aside from that, it has a fairly charismatic cast, an adequate narrative rhythm – the gameplay, while very slow, remains in this regard – and minor script twists. It can be predictable at times, but it can also be surprising. Also, I liked how you used flashbacks. They not only serve to recapitulate information, but they also employ a unique style: a disfigured and corrupted pixel art illustration. It has a catch.

Without going into specifics, we will know that one of us is a traitor, but if we are to survive, we must trust the others. The mechanics will be straightforward: we’ll travel across Japan, trying to figure out what’s going on. We’ll have to make decisions along the way that could change the game’s dynamics. How? Simple: depending on our decision, we may go with some colleagues or not, or certain things may or may not occur.

The first major decision is whether to travel to Oita or Fukuoka as our first destination. It’s only a hypothetical situation. Oh, and while Reycho is the most prominent character, there is no typical protagonist. He’s the club’s leader and the protagonist of the story.

Outstanding narrative, poor gameplay

The World’s End Club’s strong suit is the plot, as you could conclude with a simple sentence. The gameplay, however, is the polar opposite. Not only does it disrupt the narrative’s natural flow, but it also doesn’t work. Overcome the death game (which is similar to the tutorial) and the game will end.

From this point forward, the study proposes a sort of adventure and puzzle game with no real challenge and a rather irritating delay in the actions. A 3D sequence with side-scrolling and special powers will usher us into the world. Some will harden into rock-like forms and roll or throw objects with great force.

The issue is that the platforms and puzzles aren’t functioning properly. For starters, let’s talk about controls. They aren’t very precise. They also have a sluggish, heavy feel to them. We can’t transform into stone quickly, for example. On the contrary, we spend “too” much time doing it. Its primary purpose is to defeat enemies, but it takes so long that we’ve had to wait for them to come down from a slope we can’t climb on more than one occasion before proceeding.

Outcome? Waiting for five, six, or seven seconds. Boring. It would be something else if the puzzles were even remotely challenging, but they aren’t. Consider throwing rocks into a jet of water to climb a hill or filling a bucket with water and throwing it to the ground to break a mechanical device.

Another example is throwing: what mystery is there in throwing an object at a secret element if it appears every time we need it, by chance, like a tree with fruits or a pile of stones? You don’t need to think about anything; simply look around the stage for a few moments. Similarly, the hitbox is unreliable and inconvenient. World’s End Club is a simple game in some ways, but it’s also a frustrating one.

Almost always, if you reach game over, it’s because the controls didn’t allow you to do what you wanted. Another possibility is that you will make a poor decision, but that is a different story. Delay the plot, which is the most intriguing part of the story. He does not provide any support. Neither the puzzles nor the battles against the pseudo-boss. I prefer exploration because the scenarios have always struck me as beautiful.

Final Thoughts

One is lime, and the other is sand at World’s End Club. To begin, the platform gameplay is extremely poor. It doesn’t add anything to the genre, it’s awkward to watch, and it’s too simple. Simple, but annoying. I know, it’s weird. The narrative and story, on the other hand, are true marvels, and they are what truly distinguishes it as a good game.

Thanks to the narrative, we’re able to recommend it because it’s fascinating to learn what’s going on and why. Furthermore, it encourages us to replay certain scenes, such as when we must choose between two options. So we’ll have one end or the other depending on the route. Many come to mind. We must review all of the roads if we want to know the entire truth.

I haven’t mentioned the graphics yet, but I can tell you that they are quite lovely. The settings and character designs were enjoyable, though I’m not sure why the main character wears pants with a pink ass; he looks like a chuck. The soundtrack is excellent. It has some intriguing themes that go well with the rest of the game.
We’d be talking about a fantastic game if it weren’t for the erratic gameplay. Those who came looking for something similar to Danganronpa should turn around now: this is not a survival game. The plot takes a completely different turn.