I’ve been playing a lot of NEO: The World Ends With You lately. Officially released on 27^th July for Nintendo Switch and PS4, it’s the sequel to the Nintendo DS game from the late 00s; a game which threw away the JRPG rulebook to deliver one of the more intriguing entries for the genre. With a modern urban backdrop and active battles that used touchscreen gestures and directional inputs, it stood out as a contrast from the typical template of turn-based politeness and medieval fantasy. It was far from perfect – some people found that the battles were a mess, and some of the activities outside of battle were kind of forgettable – but it made such a strong impression that fans welcomed the recent arrival of NEO: TWEWY.

NEO: TWEWY – player synergy

The game follows a group of youths embroiled in a dangerous “Reaper’s Game” where they must fight battles, solve riddles and overcome rival groups so that they avoid facing “erasure.” In gameplay, this sees the player moving around the streets of Shibuya, talking to NPCs, engaging in minigames and fighting hostile creatures known as Noise. It’s pretty standard RPG fare, but a few smart decisions elevate NEO: TWEWY above the competition. For instance, battles against Noise are often player-instigated unless the story demands that a battle takes place. This means that you can grind as much or as little as you like… although typically you will need to maintain a strong party for when you’re forced into combat.  Furthermore, a lot of time can be spent customising gear for the best team synergy – every battle ability in the game exists as a “pin” that can be equipped on your party members, and each pin’s ability is mapped to a controller button. These abilities have independent cooldowns to maintain the sense of a turn-based system, so it’s up to the player to find a working combination of offence and support, or to equip a variety of elemental attacks. Further stat tweaks can be made by purchasing different “threads” (essentially armour and accessories) for your party, or going to diners and restaurants and ordering food that offers stat boosts.

Feel the Groove

When you’re in a fair fight, this customisation sees NEO: TWEWY at its best. Elemental weaknesses and bonus effects provide more agonising over pin configurations, and the “pass the puck” system of the original (where you would be encouraged to switch between directional commands for one character and touch commands for the other) is substituted for a “drop the beat” mechanic, where you’re given a small window of time to start using a different character’s ability. Do this within that window, and you’ll build up your Groove – and when your Groove is at certain thresholds, you can unleash a super move. It encourages the player to make sure their other pins aren’t in cooldown at the wrong time, and adds just enough depth to ease any fears that this is dumbed down from the DS game’s equivalent system. Certainly, the later missions and bosses demand that you’re paying attention to attack patterns whilst also managing your Groove (and if you haven’t dropped the beat for a while, the Groove will begin to decrease.) Meanwhile, encounters with regular enemies can start and end pretty quickly if you know what you’re doing – movement around each battle arena is much smoother than the awkward stylus dragging in the first game, and it’s satisfying to string together combos. NEO has even retained the original game’s ability to “level down”, sacrificing character levels for increased pin drops. This is particularly helpful if you feel like you could have more options open to you in combat.

Outside of battles you can expect to roam the streets gathering information from NPCs, “scanning” zones to read people’s thoughts and gain extra information, performing a thumbstick-twiddling minigame to jog memories of key characters, or sometimes “diving” into characters who have been influenced by Noise (which leads to a forced battle, or series of battles.) There’s enough variety to stop things getting stale, and even outside of the minigames and battles you’ll want to keep gaining experience and earning money for food and gear. Besides, these minigames definitely feel like an improvement over some of the activities in the DS game (you’ll finish the main story and will have never been asked to play “Reaper Creeper” – a minigame in the original where you slowly nudged objects with your mind in order to fool people into believing in spiritual intervention – so that’s reason enough to recommend NEO: TWEWY.)

NEO: TWEWY – a cautious recommendation

Generally there’s enough in NEO: TWEWY to keep fans happy – the things that worked in the first game are left intact, whilst there are enough new elements to stop this feeling like a reskin. Somehow it has retained its hip stylings (although it may look a bit silly in a few years) and wraps a satisfying blend of combat and investigation in a catchy soundtrack and vibrant backdrop. It’s pretty much exactly what I hoping for in a new TWEWY game… but sometimes what I think I want isn’t always what’s best for the game. Those battles forced upon players by the story can occasionally leave you feeling a bit underpowered if you’ve been running to the next plot-critical location without bothering to fight anything – sometimes you’ll be given objectives before a route is unlocked (defeat Noise in a chain of three battles; defeat Noise whilst wearing threads of a certain brand), which can help keep your skills sharp… but it’s easy to run into a boss (or miniboss) encounter and feel overwhelmed. If anything, I would have preferred more gating of progress so that the pace was dictated more by the game and the player was forced to improve their party – even with the compulsory battles that are there, you’re still expected to do a lot of the work yourself.

Happily, these moments are fairly short-lived – I’ve caught myself ranting on Twitter about a particular encounter one day, and then completing it shortly after… but it’s still not a feeling you want for an extended length of time. I published this before the credits rolled, but it turns out I was at the final encounter anyway, and so a lot of my initial observations remain true. (That final encounter turned out to be another moment where the player can feel underpowered, but given that my rematch after one grinding diversion was successful, I don’t think I was that underpowered.) Beyond this, a post-game bonus chapter offers an amusing side story and a few returning boss battles, but progress is a lot smoother during this additional chapter. If you liked the original game, you should absolutely pick up NEO: TWEWY – and if you missed the DS title, there’s a demo of NEO: TWEWY available via your console’s storefront which should give you a small idea of what to expect.

Neo The World Ends With You is out now for PS4 and Switch – you can find our news article about the game’s announcement here.