The sequel to The World Ends With You, which came out thirteen years after the original and three years after the somewhat divisive Switch port of the original. But does NEO prove to be a worthy sequel to a cult classic, or is this trip back to Shibuya not worth taking?
The World Ends With You quickly attracted a cult following after its initial release in 2008, being heavily acclaim for its inventive mechanics, amazing soundtrack and utilizing the DS's system features well in its design. So of course, the fans wanted to see a sequel; despite it being teased several times with character cameos in Kingdom Hearts and the original game getting ports to mobile phones (and later the Nintendo Switch), it ultimately took a long time for the game to be put into production; largely because the developers' time was so heavily focused on the Kingdom Hearts franchise.
In 2021, though, our wishes were finally granted, and NEO: The World Ends With You was released. This time as a full-3D console game rather than a handheld, though that didn't stop them from keeping the game's iconic graffiti/pop-art visual style. The game also painstakingly recreates the real Shibuya, incorporating many elements that had changed in the thirteen years between games and even using some real-life names rather than fictionalized ones (Tower Records rather than Towa Records, etc). As ever the soundtrack is fantastic, with a lot of familiar (albeit remixed) tunes and several great new ones to fully immerse you in the urban art feel of the game.
Gameplay is of course reworked for the sequel, though it's proof that more isn't necessarily better. As in the original TWEWY, the central focus is on letting you build a deck of 'pins' that afford you attacks and can only be used so many times before requiring a short period to recharge and become usable again. This time, though, rather than having a team of two, you get up to four characters at a time, with each character using a single pin and being mapped to a single button, somewhat similar to games like Valkyrie Profile and Indivisible. There's also a slightly more "fighting game" feel to the mechanics, since things like drawing lines to create chains, pressing to create fire, etc obviously wouldn't work on a controller; instead, you land a combo with one pin, then have a small window to land a followup attack and build meter; once it fills, you can press the Circle button to unleash a powerful super attack on your enemies. However, your meter will also start to drain if you go a long time without setting up and landing a combo, so keeping the momentum going is important. However, it's not always easy to do this - most pins require landing several hits before the enemy is put into a stun state, and you only actively control the character whose button you've recently pressed - while you're doing that, the rest of your team is still active on the field and vulnerable to enemy attack (although they will attempt to automatically dodge if you're not actively attacking with them). This can be pretty problematic when all of you share the same health bar, and especially so when some enemy attacks will stun characters or pin them down your characters and continuously inflict damage, or inflict them with poison, with no audio cues whatsoever to indicate you're taking damage elsewhere. Like the original TWEWY you do have to be diligent in managing your team's health and attack meters so you don't get caught in a bad spot, though with a team of 6 all active at once it is tricky at times, particularly on higher difficulties.
Some other familiar mechanics - fashion and food - remain mostly intact, though with some small tweaks applied. The food system is still your primary means of gaining stats, though you now buy food in shops and eat it right away (gaining the stats as well), with each character having foods they like and dislike; foods they like will give slightly more of a benefit to them. However, there is still a cap on how much you can eat at a time, indicated by the battery meter in the upper right; this will only decrease after you fight battles, though at a significantly faster clip than it did in the original game, making stat grinding less of a chore. Fashion is also considerably less restrictive now - characters can equip items the moment they buy them, though each piece of gear also has an associate battle bonus which will only activate if that character has a high enough Style stat; so you can still get some of the benefit of new gear without having to spend a ton of time grinding Style, but it's still to your benefit to raise that stat.
Another relatively new feature is the Social Network, which serves as a way to earn rewards like pins and clothing, as well as unlock some in-game features like alternate difficulty settings, enemy health bars, instantly converting money pins to cash, and so forth. More features are unlocked as you meet more characters during the narrative and establish links with people you already know, and you can then spend Friend Points to earn their reward once that happens. Friend Points are earned as part of the story for clearing key battles as well as for completing side missions. One annoyance is that these are sometimes tied to timed battles, and taking too long to finish them will earn you a silver or bronze ranking and, with it, fewer rewards. You can replay previous days as many times as you wish to try again, though as this also entails redoing all of the events of the story it can get a touch tedious, even with the ability to fast-forward through cutscenes. Making use of hard saves is therefore a good idea.
As in the original game, there are plenty of times where you have to stop and solve various puzzles - clearing combat challenges or searching out NPCs and getting keywords from them, then 'imprinting' them on other characters to have them take a separate course of action and, by extension, open a path for you. These can get pretty involved as the game goes on, with a lot of time traveling and trial-and-error with various keywords required to progress, and at times it does get pretty drawn-out. Certainly makes you glad that the game doesn't have forced random encounters.
NEO: The World Ends With You follows the format of its predecessor almost to a fault. It still looks the part with its pop-art colors and graffiti-inspired style, and even sounds the part with its soundtrack that fuses rock, rap and techno songs to great effect, but the gameplay doesn't feel quite as refined; in fact it gets downright manic as the game progresses, and with four characters duking it out with huge groups of enemies all running off the same health bar and a constantly-shifting camera it can get pretty tough to survive some fights, let alone get Star ranks. It is a fairly leisurely casual playthrough, but if you want to go for full completion it gets very grindy, with over 300 pins and almost as many outfits to collect through various combinations of trading, buying, doing side missions, farming from drops and evolving through battle; you'll definitely want a guide handy if you're going for that. It's still a slick, stylish and entertaining title, but it doesn't hit quite the same as its excellent predecessor.
