Believe it or not: The World Ends With You appeared for the Nintendo DS fourteen years ago. NEO: The World Ends With You is a completely new installment set again in Shibuya, Japan. You can read how you like the new RPG in our review.
The game was co-designed by Tetsuya Nomura, better known for Kingdom Hearts in Final Fantasy VII. You can see from the very first seconds that he helped. Characters have the clothes and especially the hair that you are used to from Nomura, which immediately creates a certain atmosphere. Speaking of atmosphere: NEO: The World Ends With You is a bit darker than you’d expect from a Square Enix JRPG. The story revolves around a game called The Reapers’ Game. This game is set in an alternate version of Shibuya and people who have recently passed away are entered for a chance to be brought back to life. It creates a pretty uncomfortable atmosphere from the start, which makes you genuinely curious about how everything works in this alternative world.
The game lasts for a few weeks and every day you have to complete missions to progress to the next day. Often these missions consist of solving fairly simple puzzles and defeating monsters called Noise. Those fights are a pretty interesting mix of hack-and-slash and combos that require some timing (but not too much). Each member of your team can carry a Pin, which is tied to a button on your controller. A Pin stands for an attack, which always has its properties. By fulfilling certain conditions, you can react to beat drops and activate the Groove, which are actually all little extras to make the fights a little smoother.
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The fighting is therefore relatively straight forward hack-and-slash, but it becomes unique because of all the customization options. You can collect an incredible amount of Pins, which completely change how you play the game. One Pin comes with an attack that is very slow and can only be used a few times before needing a recharge, while others are very fast and can be used often. As a result, you are constantly making trade-offs in how you put together your team: do you want to use four things that are strong in their own right, or do you go for a few Pins that support your favorite Pin with a certain playing style? In particular, this is what makes NEO: The World Ends With You remains interesting for a long time.
Continuing to discover the world during each chapter is especially fun because things keep changing. Characters have more to tell you, or you can “scan” around you and read people’s thoughts. It’s a bizarre world where everything revolves around idols, pop culture and fashion. It’s just far enough from our reality that this fantasy intrigues you, but it’s also just close enough to scare you.
The story, as interesting as it is in principle, is also the downside of NEO: The World Ends With You. Some of the dialogues are very nice, light and funny, but most of the characters don’t get as much depth as they would deepen. It almost seems as if Square Enix has been too busy finishing stories from the previous installment to give the new stories room to come to life. This is a shame: our overly serious protagonist Rindo deserved more. If you add to that that you sometimes have to get through a lot of dialogues to be able to try out a new fight with your latest composition Pins, then it can sometimes get a bit annoying.
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The soundtrack is top notch by the way. You get to choose music from hard metal to hip hop and everything in between. It takes the strongest level of the story to a higher level and creates a wonderful atmosphere during the battles. In other words, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
All in all NEO: The World Ends With You A very entertaining game with a lot to do. Battles are generally nice and smooth and remain interesting because you can make so many different combinations of Pins. Although some characters don’t always come into their own, the Reapers’ Game is certainly bizarre and impressive enough to want to keep playing the game for it.
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