NEO: The World Ends with You

We the Sheeple

One of the more interesting, genuinely-original games to appear on the Nintendo DS was Square-Enix’s The World Ends with You, which received acclaim and had many clamoring for a sequel. The game would receive an iOS/Android port subtitled Solo Remix given that the DS iteration made use of both screens of the portable system, not to mention a Nintendo Switch version entitled Final Remix. In 2021, Square-Enix and h.a.n.d. finally turned it into a series with NEO: The World Ends with You for the PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC, very much upholding the spirit of its predecessor, but is that a good thing?

NEO focuses on a new group of Players of the Reapers’ Game, including highschooler Rindo Kanade and Tosai Furesawa, nicknamed Fret, eventually joined by college student Nagi Usui, making up a team known as the Wicked Twisters that competes in many missions against other teams, with a few characters returning from the first game. The mature themes are definitely welcome, although the sequel makes the same missteps that the first game does with its plot, such as mission-based gameplay not lending itself very well to good storytelling and making the narrative feel somewhat disjointed, and there are many clichés such as time travel, a “chosen one,” amnesia, and so on.

The translation is mostly legible and mercifully doesn’t distract from the game’s Japanese setting, unlike contemporary localizations of Atlus’s Persona games not leaving in Japanese honorifics, although here there are also many missteps such as the overabundance of Totally Radical dialogue and a mix of other character dialects that somewhat clash such as that of a jive-talking returning luminary from the first game and Nagi’s Renaissance-era speech standard. The battle dialogue is also laden with many redundancies, and during cutscenes that don’t feature full voicework, the occasional voice clips rarely match up with the actual dialogue. Generally, if movies and books had dialogue like NEO, critics would absolutely tear them apart.

NEO’s gameplay is similar to that in its predecessor, albeit with many things changed due to its three-dimensional and single-screened nature. Returning, however, are enemies known as “Noise” that red symbols indicate whenever the player “scans” whatever sector of Shibuya they’re in. Whenever Rindo runs beneath the scarlet shadow of one, they begin to chase him, and during this process, players can run below other shadows to chain a certain number of encounters, similar to in the original game. Another similarity is that outside battle, players can adjust the difficulty and level their party is at to increase the quality of pins they receive from encounters.

In the game menus, the player can further equip each character, up to six, with pins that have different kinds of attacks, such as holding or tapping one of their respective command buttons to execute their abilities in combat. Depending upon how the player attacks enemies, a circular gauge may appear necessitating an additional singular attack that gradually builds up “Groove,” up to 300% towards the end of the game, to execute a more powerful combination attack from the characters. Interestingly, all the player’s characters share a single HP meter, as do bosses, and the depletion of all the former’s health naturally results in a Game Over.

However, when a Game Over does occur, the player can change pins, difficulty, or whatnot before restarting the battle, or players can restart at the same point right before the battle that killed them. Granted, if death occurred on the easiest difficulty, typically the player will want to grind pins (which gain experience and levels for completed battles) and gain levels, which grant more party health, money pins among the potential loot from combat, a certain Social Link (which requires Friendship Points invested into a dot-connected grid similar to the Sphere Grid system of Final Fantasy X) allowing for the automatic sales of yen pins to gain the currency.

The aforementioned Social Link grid gradually unlocks when the player meets important characters or those in sidequests necessitating they do certain tasks, and they gain levels with shopkeepers the more they buy or wear respective clothing brands. Players can spend money at restaurants so characters can eat food to increase maximum health, defense, and style (which can eventually unleash the hidden strength of clothes buyable at their respective stores), although the player needs to buy everyone in their party a food item to consume, and eating gradually fills a battery-style gauge that, when maxed out, forbids them from eating anything else until it empties due to combat.

Perhaps the biggest issue in battle is that one can find it difficult to pay attention to pin uses remaining (though most recharge) and the action in combat simultaneously; if you ask me, NEO would require at least an additional pair of eyes and hands to be fully playable, especially on higher difficulty settings (although greater challenge is at least bearable if you revisit days you’ve completed a long time ago), and I constantly found myself playing Twister with my hands just to chain attacks against enemies. There are also things that the game doesn’t explain well; for instance, I didn’t know you could dash/evade enemies and their assaults until after the first week of the story, and while there are plenty of good ideas and occasional fun moments, the game mechanics somewhat falter in execution.

As mention, NEO has a mission-based structure like its precursor, being mostly linear and devoid of traditional dungeons, at many times indicating how to advance the central storyline as well, although there are occasional Guide Dang It! moments, and I didn’t exactly initially get a good handle on things such as Fret’s scrambled “remembrance” pictorial puzzles (which necessitate the player tilt each joystick on whatever controller the player uses certain directions). Furthermore, sure to annoy completionists, while in clothing stores the game indicates if they have certain pins and clothes in their inventory (with percentage completions in the game menus), restaurants don’t indicate if any character has eaten a certain food before. Generally, the interaction aspect could have definitely been better.

NEO’s aurals are, however, probably its strongest aspect, utilizing a vast array of hip-hop tracks that mix Japanese and English vocals, with a few admittedly catchy such as one that goes, “Gimme gimme chance!” (chiefly featured when combatting Pig Noise, also returning from the first game), although most of the soundtrack is fairly unremarkable, and battle voices tend to drown out combat music. The voice acting, moreover, definitely won’t win any awards, with many annoying voices, although players can switch to the original Japanese performances. Ultimately, while sound is the high point, that’s not saying too much.

Graphically, NEO is aesthetically pleasing, given its cel-shaded style, plenty of trippy curving environs that bring to mind films such as Inception, great colors, and excellent character designs. However, the visuals are very technically weak due to things such as the grossly-inconsistent framerate and choppiness that especially shows in combat, the constant need to pay attention to many parts of the TV or Switch screen in battle, and many reskinned enemies. Furthermore, the clothing the player can purchase from shops doesn’t affect character appearances, and the manga panels chiefly narrating cutscenes don’t show any scenery around those participating in conversations, with things like physical actions sometimes leaving players in the dark. In the end, the visuals could have used more polish.

Finally, given the absence of an in-game clock, total playtime is indeterminate, and while there are plenty sidequests and percentage completion rates for things like items and food, the game isn’t enjoyable enough to warrant additional playtime.

On the whole, NEO: The World Ends with You very much upholds the spirit of its predecessor, given the general good replication of its game mechanics from the first game, story structure, occasional catchy music, and its visual presentation. However, that isn’t always a good thing, as the sequel, especially if the player doesn’t spend time on sidequests such as early on opening the Social Link grid, can be hard at times even when always using the Easy difficulty setting, the control mostly shows its weakness in combat, the English voicework is hit-or-miss, and technical issues often plague the graphics. Granted, those who enjoyed any iteration of the first game, especially if they consider any incarnation nigh-infallible, will likely appreciate the sequel, but it’s certainly not a must-play title.

This review is based on a playthrough of a physical copy for the Nintendo Switch borrowed by the reviewer.

The Good:
+Upholds the spirit of the first game.
+Some decent music.
+Plenty of extra content.

The Bad:
-Somewhat-clumsy gameplay and control.
-Story too similar to first game’s.
-Technical issues plague the graphics.

The Bottom Line:
A sequel that well replicates the first game in 3-D, but that’s not always a good thing.

Score Breakdown:
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Game Mechanics: 5.0/10
Controls: 3.5/10
Story: 3.5/10
Localization: 4.0/10
Music/Sound: 6.5/10
Graphics: 5.0/10
Lasting Appeal: 3.5/10
Difficulty: Adjustable
Playing Time: No in-game clock.

Overall: 4.5/10