The World Ends with You

I need to clear this out of my backlog. I got through a few days on my holiday flight last week, and a few more on the way back; at this point, though the game isn't engaging me on a moment-to-moment basis, I'm interested in finding out what happens in the end.

Previously, I blamed my inability to get into the game on the main character being a toolbag. Now, that isn't bothering me so much - I've simply resolved to not care about the characters at all. This is pretty easy to pull off, as, although they're all well-identified and characterized, none of them are really interesting as people. I maintain a detective-like curiosity in their stories: I'd like to know how they got where they are, but couldn't care less if they live or die.

There was a day or two where I really got into the hyper-complicated battle gameplay. At its best, focusing on one screen and blindly issuing commands to the other, switching between them on a semi-random basis, is pretty intense. But once the game actually starts to become difficult, this is utterly infeasible - the moment I stop paying attention to a screen, the battle starts to slide downhill.

Since Neku can't do anything on his own, my resolution for this is to set Shiki to immediately auto-battle. This doesn't do great, but at least keeps her out of trouble most of the time, and having a healing item equipped helps me get her out of any significant jams.

There are a lot of bizarre gameplay twists, like clothing (and clothing brands!) and food and quest items and shit, which I've been trying to ignore, but have had to pay more and more attention to as the difficulty ramps up. Any buffs I can get are helpful. But the insane complexity of all the game's item types and attributes, and statistics that I still don't entirely understand, is baffling. Why is there so much crap? It adds nothing to the experience. Really, it only serves to dilute the game's strong points ... which I am still having trouble identifying.

Progress: Day 7