Game Review - NEO: The World Ends With You

Second review here we come.

NEO: The World Ends With You(from here on out shall be referred to as NEO TWEWY) is the sequel to The World Ends With You.

You might be asking, "But Nehiri, why aren't you reviewing The World Ends With You before NEO TWEWY"

Which to that I say: I just don't really want to. The original TWEWY was a game only available on extremely old phones and the Nintendo DS. It was an absolute pain for me to even be able to access the original yet alone play it properly so I just don't feel like doing it.(Although this doesn't mean I won't review games that I dislike, I would look like IGN if I just only give 10/10s)

Anyways let's jump into it!!!

Gameplay(4/10):

I can't think of any words to describe NEO TWEWY's gameplay other than "Unique"

The main movement and flow is simple with you running around in Shibuya and fighting creatures named "The Noise". The game has an interesting mechanic where once a Noise touches you, combat doesn't immediately begin. Once a Noise touches you, you have a couple seconds before combat begins and during that wait time you can run around and touch more Noise to stack more and more up. When combat starts, you have to fight all the Noise you touched at once which is risky but the more Noise you fight at once, higher your reward multiplier becomes.

Another way your rewards may change is your difficult and level. When you start the game you're forced to play on medium difficulty and have to unlock hard and easy modes as you play the game. The reason for this is changing difficulty is a mechanic where each difficulty setting having different sets of loot for each enemy. Also as you level up, your max health increases but if you sacrifice levels you gained, you can increase the enemy item drop rate.

Now on to combat and I'm not gonna beat around the bush. It's bad.

The combat involves you spamming weapons and fighting a bunch of enemies at once. You're expected to control multiple characters and their weapons at once while keeping track of their position, their weapon's charge, whether or not they're currently grabbed by an enemy and teammates still take damage if they get hit while you're not controlling them.

This isn't bad spamming weapons but especially near the end of the game having to press so many buttons at once to get combos can REALLY hurt or tire out your fingers. While it is still a bit fun and satisfying at times, it's really not that good.

Story(9/10):

Now there's a massive elephant in the room with the story. NEO TWEWY is a SEQUEL and it takes place in the same city as the original TWEWY along with returning concepts. So this may lead you to think you have to play the first game to understand the story and the overarching characters.

But in reality? You don't.

NEO TWEWY does a fantastic job at explaining every single concept and element from the previous game along with making sure you understand how important some main plot devices from the previous game are. It never feels over or under explained and yet you still feel like you understand the situation rather clearly without the game just sitting you down and schooling you.

The story of NEO TWEWY is really well written with important plot points being foreshadowed pretty well where nothing makes you say "That doesn't make any sense" no matter how outlandish some stuff may be.

The characters I think are the strongest part of the game where every single character is unique, fun and well made. No character in the game feels unloved with everyone having plenty of screen time and memorable moments. Even side-quest characters you expect to see only once or twice are expanded upon. I unfortunately can not go into much more detail about how the characters are due to spoiler reasons.

Music(10/10):

The music in this game is nothing but bangers without a single miss. Every single song gets you pumped up for whatever story arc, battle or just vibe you can think of. The songs are very fitting for the game and hypes you up just right for the next bit. Songs have amazing beats, melodies and lyrics that just stay with you after you stop listening.(Personally have around 8 tracks from the game in my playlist)

Overall:(7/10)

NEO TWEWY is a fantastic game with an amazing soundtrack. While it is hindered by it's slightly bad gameplay, the game is still very much enjoyable and the story mixed with the beats in the background always gives you the strength to fight further no matter how much your fingers are aching from pressing so many buttons at once.

If you want, watch the TWEWY anime or play the original TWEWY on your DS somehow. While I totally recommend doing it just because it still feels better that way, as I mentioned before the game can easily be experienced and enjoyed by itself too.

Thank you for reading, the next review will probably be Tales of Arise :>