Paranormal games about teenagers in Tokyo are a dime a dozen these days, but they were quite a bit less common when The World Ends With You dropped almost fifteen years ago. Can its sequel dial up the volume or is it background noise? Was NEO The World Ends With You worth it? Let’s go underground and find out!
Table of Contents
Background
The first game was niche, but incredibly seminal. It took advantage of the Nintendo DS’ dual screens in a novel way, forcing a generation of players to learn a brand new form of gameplay. On top of that, the plot and characters are extremely well-written and memorable, and it was backed up by a stellar soundtrack. Some of the songs and the protagonist were even featured in Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance.
Fast forward to the present day, and we get a sequel. It’s been teased for a while, as they’ve added tidbits of content here and there, such as new characters and plot points in the rereleases of the original game. They also recently released an anime…of the first game. I haven’t personally seen it but from what I’ve read, it seems like you may want to pass on it. The first game is easy enough to track down, either on the DS, Switch, or through emulation. I recommend playing the first game or catching a recap video, as this game leans heavily on the plot of the first game.
What does NEO: The World Ends with You do well?
There are some areas where the game really excels.
Sound
The music is great, and callbacks or remixes of tracks from the first game are fantastic. Even after getting sick of the game, I still listen to the soundtrack on Spotify.
Parasocial relationships/Influencers IRL
These days, people, especially younger viewers, tend to see their favorite influencers or content creators as role models. This game addresses this and brings an incredibly salient perspective to the “never meet your heroes” idea.
Fanservice
Fans of the first game are going to be ecstatic. This isn’t really a spoiler since he’s on the box cover, but it’s great having Sho Minamimoto early on. Many of the survivors from the first game also make appearances, and their presence becomes very plot-relevant.
What could NEO: The World Ends with You do better?
I’ll be speaking in broad terms to avoid spoilers.
Combat
In the first game, Neku was the one wielding several psychs (attacks and spells), while each of his partners had their own gimmick. In this game, each character in the party wields a single psych, which means that you don’t actually reach full power until pretty late in the game when you have a full party. This also results in a big difficulty spike at one point when you’re low on party members. Sure, it’s intentional and it makes sense within the game, but it’s still annoying.
You’ll find that your psychs are constantly on cooldown. There’s no real way to avoid this, as staggering your psych usage just means that you won’t have enough psychs available to take advantage of combo opportunities until the very late game. For most of the game, I used a 4-1 strategy: I would use the psychs of four party members and wait until they were recharging to go in with Rindo. It was better than simply waiting out the recharge times, but it didn’t feel optimal. It got a bit better with a full party, but it never quite clicked.
Enemy Types
Almost every enemy type in this game is annoying, but there are some that dial it up a notch. Shoutout to the invisible enemy that can’t be targeted. You’ll face them as a boss but later they become a regular mob.
Pin sets
I’m not sure that the game ever addresses that certain pins will give bonuses if you have them all equipped, and I didn’t figure this out until I was reading threads on a forum. This is a big deal, because some pins will have a huge impact when you complete the set. Make sure to read the flavor text, especially on late game pins.
Difficulty
The game isn’t hard. The only time I lowered the difficulty from Hard was on the last third of the game when you start running into some very annoying enemies during a difficulty spike.
This might be due to the fact that you can eat endlessly. In the first game you could only eat so much per real world day. You also had to clear battles to actually digest the food to gain the benefits. This is a big deal because eating is how you boost your stats; Leveling up only increases your HP.
Replayability
Replaying certain sections of the game to unlock different results, memes, or items was a big part of the postgame of the first TWEWY. You still collect secret reports in NEO: TWEWY, but they most come from defeating certain noises.
Unfortunately, replaying days can be a bit of a slog. Certain events can be tiresome to sit through multiple times, and for some reason there isn’t a way to skip dialogue scenes entirely.
Shibuya Slams
This is a point-scoring game that pops up a few times in the story. It’s tedious, and it’s enforced grinding.
Characters
There are a couple things to touch on here. The first issue is that you don’t actually get all the characters together until the postgame.
Second, there’s a pretty clear tier differential between characters. The returning characters are all good (except Coco). Many of the side characters and party members are decent, or at the very least, have enough personality.
However, the main protagonist and antagonist are definitely the worst part of the game. Rindo is a plank of wood with no charisma and doesn’t ever really get a character development. This is in stark contrast to Neku from the first game, who had a clearly defined personality as well as personal growth. The antagonist feels secondary to many of the minibosses throughout the game, as they do a much better job of harassing and annoying the party. They also have a lot more personality. The main antagonist gets a very brief character arc and it absolutely fails to land.
Character Dialogue
Some of the character dialogue is pretty rough. Very “how do you do, fellow kids” level, especially when they repeat the same outdated meme several times. I can’t help but wonder if this game was initially written a few years ago and got shelved for a bit. There was some discourse regarding the translation, and while I’m sure it’s not 1:1, it gets the point across. The bigger issue is that the dialogue in this game shouldn’t have felt dated on release…maybe there’s some merit to the localization complaints.
Is NEO: The World Ends with You fun?
I enjoyed it, but there are some issues with narrative pacing. Combat is fast-paced and battles are short enough to where it doesn’t ever feel like a slog, though there are slow points that could have been addressed.
Is NEO: The World Ends with You good value?
It’s a full JRPG – you won’t be breezing through this in a single afternoon.
Was NEO: The World Ends with You worth it?
This game leans heavily on the lore, songs, and characters of the first game. If you weren’t already invested in the plot, then this game isn’t going have the same impact for you. Could it have used a bit more polish? Yes. However, it’s still an easy recommendation. If you want an action JRPG with a great soundtrack, then this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, Square-Enix has already announced that this game didn’t meet sales numbers, so don’t expect a follow-up anytime soon.
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