'The World Ends With You' Director Leaves Square Enix After 29 Years

This is a game I wanted to play from day one and never could afford or remember to look for a cheap option. I don't know if it's good but it looked interesting.

Shame that we'll never get another cool stylish game like TWEWY from SE.

Another legend at Square Enix departs. Its too bad Square Enix squandered the success of The World Ends With You after gaining traction on DS and mobile.

Deep down I kinda hope all of these true artists leaving their jobs are going to new development team Clovers. Having a team of auteurs within a well-funded corporation like Capcom might be just what the industry needs.

TWEWY is my favourite franchise from Square Enix. It's a shame that it never got as big as Kingdom Hearts of Final Fantasy, because their 2 games are miles better than KH and most FF games.

Here was me in my ignorance, hoping that Tetsuya Nomura had finally left Square.

Twewy is one of my favourite games of all time. I'm ashamed to admit that I pirated it on DS when flashcards were a big thing, the cover art and the title screen music really grabbed me and I've never looked back. The characters, the story, the music!

I did correct that initial mistake by getting both Final Remix and the sequel, NEO Twewy, on Switch all those years after, and completing both 100% including mastering every pin, getting every item etc.

It was also cool seeing Neku and the crew turn up in Dream Drop Distance, and I strongly believe that Twewy could (or should) be very important to Kingdom Hearts 4's story. Quadratum is basically Shibuya, which is where Twewy is set. It even has Twewy's 104 building, where the real-life version is called 109.

The style of Sora's KH4 clothes also closely matches the NEO Twewy crew and Riku seems to be in Shinjuku, which was important to NEO's story. Twewy also deals with death in a very unusual way, and has pulled the "this isn't what I really look like" thing before.

But with the director of Twewy gone, I don't know anymore...

I wish the best to him! I enjoyed playing The World Ends With You: Final Remix even if I never quite clicked with any of the control schemes. Though from what I've read of the DS original, that wouldn't have been the most optimal for me either due to the ample touch screen use. I have Neo: TWEWY, but it's backlogged. Looking forward to it sometime!

We're never getting another game, are we?

The TWEWY games are my favorite of all time. I've sunk so many hours into them. With him gone I'm guessing that's the end of that series for good this time, so I'm excited to see whatever he ends up working on next!

Also if you haven't played TWEWY or Neo: TWEWY I highly recommend them, the soundtrack and art style alone make it worth checking them out for.

@Weeze86 Probably not. I felt like there was a possibility of one more, but unless that was already in development then the odds of Nomura and Kobayashi doing it again without Kando are slow. But who knows, I had given up hope of ever getting a sequel until Final Remix showed up on Switch

The preview of this article got cut off at "thanks, Nintendo..." so I thought maybe Nintendo was poaching him.

Maybe at 30 years he would get a full pension?

The World Ends With You as a series is truly dead.

A real shame that NEO made the pivot to heavy metal, because I really wanted to love it. The music is very important for TWEWY, and the screamo killed the vibe for me. I may still revisit it with the sound turned off and just play the original TWEWY's soundtrack on my iTunes on shuffle.

Very sad to see him leave as an old KH spinoff's and TWEWY-1 fan. Fun side projects leveraging their AAA IP truly is dead.

@Misima
It's absolutely good. I got it after seeing it in a Nintendo Power issue.

It takes a bit of getting used to. The first few days kinda turned me away. But then it hooked me in a massive way.

Hope to see more exciting adventures from him in the future! Greatly enjoyed both TWEWY games