The World Ends With You the World Ends With You Game Art

Image: Square Enix

Neo: The World Ends With You is a competent RPG haunted by its predecessor

Newcomers might get lost in Square Enix's follow-upward to a 14-year-old game

By Jul 26, 2021, xi:00am EDT

What do the games in a series or genre owe to each other? How practise they inform and build on each other? After playing Neo: The Globe Ends with Yous, a reboot-cum-sequel to a critically-acclaimed 14-yr-old Nintendo DS game, this question sits at the forefront for me. Especially since, at least according to the series' creative producer Tetsuya Nomura, Neo: TWEWY isn't actually a sequel to its video game predecessor.

Dorsum in April, Funimation began simulcasting a The World Ends with Yous anime season, 12 episodes designed to tell the starting time game's story and eliminate the demand to play the game itself entirely. Within the space of nearly five hours, viewers can get all caught up with the story of Neku Sakuraba and his friends, Shiki, Beat, Rhyme and Joshua, as they all get transported to an alternate, afterlife version of Shibuya, Tokyo chosen the Hush-hush. Trapped in the Underground with no style to accomplish anyone in reality, Neku and his friends fight a grouping of supernatural executioners called Reapers for control of their lives and the fate of Shibuya.

I didn't play The Earth Ends with You when information technology was originally released on the DS, merely it's currently bachelor as both a mobile phone game (which I did play) and as a 2018 Nintendo Switch port. There are elements of the game that are definitely dated — seeing flip phones everywhere is wild, and Neku wears a pair of Bluetooth headphones connected to a marker-shaped MP3 histrion around his cervix — and these elements are what the anime attempts to modernize, while maintaining the original game's story and bringing its emotional beats to new audiences without all the systems and lore.

As the concluding episode aired in June, gamers got a hazard to play the new game'due south demo on PlayStation 4 and Switch — the ultimate marketing motility. That demo rules, by the way — it'south a free, nigh-feature-complete gustation of Neo: TWEWY from the prologue to the end of in-game Day ii. Yous tin can level your party upward to level 15, and your save carries over to the main game.

Paradigm: Square Enix

Is watching the anime necessary to enjoy Neo: TWEWY? No, but it does provide some vital context for a lot of the proper nouns the game throws at you basically from the start. Otherwise, the beginning of the game focuses on new people in a new situation with new stakes. It doesn't really hold players' hands throughout its grade, even though there is a big glossary of terms tucked away inside one of the menus. This means the game can be disruptive, but there isn't much time to dwell on that at first — because Neo: The World Ends with You is an incredibly busy game.

Players take on the role of Rindo Kanade, a teenage Shibuya resident who, forth with his friend Tosai "Fret" Furesawa, gets trapped in the Underground and is cut off from this mortal plane, known as the Realground. Rindo and Fret are forced to team up and participate, alongside four other teams, in a deadly game chosen the "Reaper's Game," run by literal grim reapers (Shinigami, equally the game refers to them in Japanese).

The Reaper's Game sounds piece of cake plenty, if a bit dire, on newspaper: the squad with the about points at the end of the seventh 24-hour interval of play wins, and the team in last place faces erasure from being. To earn points, teams must consummate challenges the Reapers set for them, as well as erase hordes of Dissonance, the personification of the turbulent thoughts and emotions of all the people moving through Shibuya. In society to practise all of this, characters are given metallic pins chosen Psych Pins that channel their latent psychic abilities into a bevy of crushing energy attacks and useful passive techniques.

Epitome: Foursquare Enix

As a pair, Rindo and Fret are in way over their heads, simply luckily they're joined past Sho Minamimoto, who comes and goes as he pleases and helps them out when he finds it user-friendly. Minamimoto pushes the pair to find a fourth teammate, college student Nagi Usui, afterward a couple of days. Rindo, Fret and Nagi get the core of the Wicked Twisters team and the true protagonists of Neo: TWEWY.

The trio is delightful, if a flake stereotypical, in their roles as the whiplashed teens new to the Reaper's Game. Nagi is an otaku and a stan for a gacha game Elegant Strategy and thinks Minamimoto looks similar a character she has a crush on from the game. Fret is extremely as well happy-go-lucky and always flirting with the leader of the Variabeauties team, Kanon Tachibana. Rindo is serenity, withdrawn, and seemingly indecisive to a error, always deferring to others in the group whenever something needs to happen. Withal, he loves his friends and volition do annihilation to go along them safe — even going and so far as to turn dorsum fourth dimension to do it.

The Wicked Twisters split their fourth dimension betwixt battles and hanging out in Shibuya. In battles, the bulwark between the game'due south gainsay mechanics and full-on button-mashing is thin. Yous assign psych pins with different powers and button presses to unlike characters. These pins can be described every bit "rapid-tap," or projectile, telekinesis, sword and melee attacks; "tap," or flop- and trap-laying attacks; "charge," which are generally area-of-effect attacks that damage a big amount of Noise or other teams at once; and "hold," which includes a variety of attacks and powers ranging from powerful laser beams to healing moves. Putting all of these dissimilar types of moves into practice can feel like a complex dance at times, and the learning bend to perfecting this dance is fairly steep.

Paradigm: Square Enix

In that location's no command editing outside of assigning characters and pins to particular buttons. In fact, the game does not seem to be very accessible in general — on Switch, the settings are sparse, with only a single toggle for subtitles, and there seem to be no options related to colorblindness or other visual impairments. I exercise not know if this is the case on the PlayStation 4 version or on the PC release on the Epic Games Store due out subsequently this yr. This is a shame in terms of allowing the most JRPG fans possible to play the game.

While Neo: TWEWY prefers fast-paced combat to slower fighting styles (you're graded on speed and efficiency), y'all tin generally play even so you desire. Certain pivot combinations will control the field, preventing enemies from moving and attacking; other pins will do higher harm to certain enemies based on elemental type. Each pin has a cooldown charge per unit and an assault limit; reach this limit, and you'll have to wait a certain amount of time before that character can utilize their psych again. If you don't put thought into your "pin decks," or sets of different combinations of pins, you might find combat starting and stopping a lot, with frequent awkward moments where everyone only stands effectually waiting for their pins to recharge before returning to the fray. This tin can have devastating consequences in certain contexts, like boss battles and chain fights.

You shortly larn to rely on the Beatdrop system to quickly take enemies out. While individual pins might be powerful enough to defeat enemies on their own, Beatdrops let players link attacks together in wild and flashy combos. If you can successfully driblet the beat (bring another character in to attack after staggering an enemy), you lot earn "Groove," which tin can exist used to execute a massive finishing movement on the entire field. Fail to drop the beat apace plenty, and you might lose Groove progress instead.

Battles take identify when you "Scan" a part of the metropolis for Noise. They're a bit similar random encounters, except you tin chain multiple encounters together. These "multi-reduction battles" increase the corporeality of experience both the characters and their pins get, as well equally increase the likelihood for rare pin drops and more than money — not to mention less time grinding spent overall. Adding to this effect is the power to increase the difficulty before combat, which further increases the likelihood of rare pin drops, besides as the corporeality of experience points you get.

Image: Square Enix

This difficulty toggle is one instance of how much the game wants y'all to go more powerful. For example, setting the team level to i will bring you dorsum to the amount of HP you started the game with while keeping everything else — attack, defense, etc. — the same, meaning if you can dominate the field, you stand up to gain a lot of experience with no existent downside. On summit of that, at any fourth dimension yous can revisit earlier chapters with weaker enemies who nonetheless driblet high EXP, making grinding a cakewalk. Having trouble with a belatedly-game boss, like I did? Become dorsum to week one and grind out some levels while your favorite podcast plays in the groundwork. The one gripe I have is that if yous go back to a previous chapter, yous will have to sit through all the dialogue in that affiliate once more, with no "skip all" push in sight.

The game does a lot to brand you feel powerful without making you overpowered, and this residual maintains itself regardless of the difficulty setting y'all choose. Bosses are still tough as nails on Like shooting fish in a barrel difficulty, merely switching to Piece of cake gives yous just plenty of an edge to eke out a victory most of the time. I just as oftentimes switched the difficulty to Difficult and drained my HP to Level 1 in lodge to max out the amount of EXP I'd earn from combat and level up via grinding faster. This is not just tolerated by the game; it is admittedly encouraged.

Battling isn't all you do. Shibuya is fully 3D and explorable, and the different areas of the city await gorgeous. Despite beingness 3D-rendered spaces, they hold onto the painterly qualities of the second backgrounds in the original TWEWY. Shibuya is world-renowned for its nutrient and shopping, so of course, the game puts these elements front and center. Betwixt battles you lot traipse effectually the district, encountering a bevy of interesting clothing boutiques and restaurants that all brand your team more powerful. Eating a character'southward favorite food provides them with a small-yet-permanent boost to their stats; doing this repeatedly might earn good favor with the restaurateur, who will then offer a secret carte detail to you lot with a bigger bonus. (Like other games with food systems, overeating is possible, and it means y'all won't be able to consume again until your hunger meter is completely empty, which only happens when you fight.)

Epitome: Foursquare Enix

Similarly, most of the clothing shops you enter take a combination of apparel and pins that increase your squad'due south effectiveness via the game'south Threads system. They generally receive new shipments every in-game day, so ownership wearing apparel constantly is a must. Each detail of clothing provides some kind of stat boost to HP, attack or defense, in improver to an agile power that gets unlocked when a particular character's way stat reaches a sure indicate. The higher your style stats across the lath, the more clothing y'all'll exist able to take full reward of. The well-nigh interesting aspect of Threads is that every grapheme can wear basically any article of article of clothing in the game, even if the item'due south agile power is meant for a particular character, and regardless of the character'due south gender. The main merchandise-off is that you don't actually see the characters in outfits other than their main designs, so their utility is basically only for stat tweaking and battle-preparedness.

In addition to eating, apparel shopping, outfit-planning, and psych pin direction, there is i more major system: the Social Network. This is a sprawling web of connections with various NPCs, including teammates, with Rindo at the center. Each node is a different person, and attached to each person is a perk that drastically improves your game. Some of the perks are fairly easy to achieve, like "eat at this eatery three times to become a underground menu item," or "reach level three analogousness with this clothing retailer for new gear."

This is where Fret and Nagi really come in handy. Everyone in the Underground has some kind of latent psychic ability, and Rindo'due south core partners have particularly helpful ones. Fret can jog anyone's memories, which can help to solve puzzles, open pathways, and get people to practice what y'all desire. Nagi tin dive into people'due south minds, which allows you to boxing Noise that take attached themselves to targets' souls. When this happens and you practise well in battle, you can earn extra "Friendship Points" to spend on the Network and even unlock new nodes in it.

Image: Foursquare Enix

Other perks are unlocked simply by playing through the story, and these include quality-of-life improvements like "Press B repeatedly to motion through Shibuya faster and earn Groove if you can match the tempo of the background song." Even so other perks are earned through the completion of side quests that beginning showing up later on Day 4. Completing these side quests earns you Friendship Points. In that location's no right or wrong respond to how y'all spend your points. By the time credits rolled on my playthrough, but past playing the game as normal, I had completed two-thirds of my Network.

All of these unlike systems are fairly unobtrusive while actually playing the game. I didn't feel like I had to juggle anything or that I was besides encumbered by whatsoever detail thing. The game encourages y'all to find your comfort zone and doesn't effort to cajole you out of it very frequently. Even as characters were added and removed from the Wicked Twisters' roster over the form of the story, I was able to go along gameplay moving smoothly along with just a few modest adjustments to my pin deck.

Neo: The World Ends with You is more than an endless series of fights bound together by a bunch of systems, though. Every character – protagonist, antagonist and deuteragonist – has quite a bit to say and do throughout the game, and their relationships to each other grow to be pretty complex over time. Dialogue flows pretty naturally, for the about part; these teens are non portrayed every bit Teens™, there is no overuse of Gen Z (or even Gen Ten or Gen Y) dialogue to bulldoze home that Rindo and Fret and Nagi — to say nothing of the many members of the slightly older yet still supposedly hip supporting cast — are Absurd and With Information technology or whatever. Even when a character uses a lilliputian besides much slang, information technology doesn't feel super forced.

Sometimes, some of the characters exercise feel similar the embodiment of archetypes and tropes. For example, the main antagonist of much of the story, a Reaper from Shinjuku named Shiba Miyakaze, can best be described equally just "a less goofy Maximillion Pegasus, from Yu-Gi-Oh!" Some other antagonist, Tanzo Kubo, is only bizarro world Columbo. There are fashion models and popular idols who human activity, predictably, like fashion models and pop idols. Sometimes the game feels a piddling bit black-and-white in its portrayals of people and depictions of moments, but everything in its narrative works together really well, creating a world that feels both stylized and relatable.

Image: Square Enix

There are very few fully 3D in-game cutscenes, and most of them are relegated to the very end of the game. Everything else is done in much the same way every bit the original game, with characters sharing dialogue in drawn, static panels, well-nigh like a visual novel. These scenes are fairly long, only a good chunk of them are voiced, so you're not having to but sit down around silently reading thousands of lines of text. Takeharu Ishimoto (Kingdom Hearts 3, The Globe Ends with You) returns equally the freelance composer of the game'due south soundtrack, and his tracks serve as a dainty, constant background companion every bit yous play. (The classic runway "Twister" from the original game makes its return hither in a bang-up style, so be on the lookout man for that.)

Mechanically, graphically, from moment to moment, Neo: The Globe Ends with You is enjoyable, and for many players that'due south going to be enough. The gameplay hits a sweet spot between deliberate turn-based combat and hack-and-slash mayhem; it most feels similar to a fighting game similar Skullgirls at times. The voice actors audio smashing, and the writing isn't cringey. It'due south competently made.

And even so, I felt like Neo: TWEWY desperately wants to get out of its own way and be its ain game, but it simply can't pull it off. Nearly everything in the game is a reference to its predecessor. Sometimes, the game manages to make this work, like with the pin-based boxing system and its drastically improved inputs over the touch controls on the mobile and Switch versions of TWEWY. Other times, the game really wants players to think what happened in a particular, random moment of the post-game content in The World Ends with Y'all: Final Remix — content that just wasn't covered in the anime for which Neo: TWEWY is supposed to be the direct sequel, and which Square Enix indicated newcomers to the series should lookout to get the lowdown. This problem only compounds as the game reaches its decision.

Image: Foursquare Enix

I played the original, so the references landed for me, simply the newcomers the game clearly expects to attract might struggle. What messes me upwardly is the merits past Nomura that Neo would be a sequel to the anime and not the game. Neo feels much more than like a sequel to the Switch port of TWEWY — as it should logically be. You can, right at present, go back and play The World Ends with You lot: Final Remix on Switch, and I don't know why Neo is supposed to shy away from that. Ultimately, I think it's a shame that Neo doesn't know whether it wants to be a new thing for new fans or something for Hardcore Players Only.

If y'all're a fan of the franchise, there'southward a lot here for yous specifically. If yous're coming in fresh, the game is going to throw a lot of jargon at y'all in a very short amount of time, and then it's going to hit you lot with references to prior events with which yous won't exist familiar. You don't need to play the previous game or watch its anime accommodation, just doing so might help with context. If none of the narrative stuff interests y'all, there'southward plenty of in-game stuff to collect: I'm currently working on completing my pin collection, whittling down my Noisepedia and hunting downwards graffiti (the game's version of achievements). When this game shines, it really shines, fifty-fifty if perchance too much of that shine is refracted by its past.

Neo: The World Ends With You will be released July 27 on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation four, as well as on Windows PC later in 2021. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a pre-release download code provided by Square Enix. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These practise non influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via chapter links. Y'all can find additional data about Polygon's ethics policy here .

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22592191/neo-the-world-ends-with-you-review-square-enix-nintendo-switch-playstation-4-pc

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