NEO: The World Ends With You. An Amazing Sequel.

Image from NEO: The World Ends With You Press Kit from Square Enix

Developers: h.a.n.d and Square Enix

Publisher: Square Enix

Platform: PlayStation/Nintendo Switch

Release Date: July 27th 2021

Background Information

Before talking about NEO: The World Ends With You I need to talk a little about the game that came before, The World Ends With You. TWEWY was originally released in 2007 on the Nintendo DS. In this game you played as Neku who has to work with various partners to survive the Reaper’s Game. The game play was unique as you controlled two characters at the same time. One would be fighting on the top screen and the other would be on the bottom screen.

Unfortunately I missed this game when it first came out and only was able to play the Remix version on the Nintendo Switch. They also released a version of the game for mobile devices. These versions of the game did away with the perspective of the DS version, but kept all the other game play elements. End game content was also added in these versions.

Introduction

NEO: The World Ends With You is an amazing sequel that lives up to the original game. This is a sequel that a lot of people have been waiting 14 years for. At long last Square Enix has brought back this series. I’m going to briefly go over different parts of the game such as story, music, game play, and voice actors. I will not go super in depth as this is a spoiler free review. If you don’t want to know anything about the game then I recommend skipping this post. I’ll start by talking about the story.

Story

The Reaper’s game has begun anew with a new cast of characters fighting for their lives. In this game the main protagonist is Rindo. He isn’t anti-social like Neku was in the previous game, but he does have problems of his own. Rindo’s issue is that he can’t seem to make decisions on his own. Not the best problem to have when you’re trying to survive the Reaper’s Game. Joining Rindo are Fret, Nagi, and Minamimoto to form the Wicked Twisters. This time the rules call for teams which can exceed two. Can they escape the Reaper’s Game while fighting against the other teams or will the end up facing erasure? You’ll have to play to find out for yourself.

I really enjoyed the story of this game. It starts out slow but it picks up after the start. Since this is a sequel, I highly recommend being familiar with the story of The World Ends With You. Even though I watched the trailers for the games I was still thrown off by the twists that came up.

Game Play

The game play is significantly different from the first game as there is fourteen years between their respective release dates. The battles are now in 3D and each character is assigned a pin. Each pin can correspond to a different button like square, X, triangle, R1, R2, L1, and L2. If you are unsure of how to use a pin, a tutorial video shows each pin being used. Buttons will be different for the Nintendo Switch as I played the ps4 version. Instead of players forming pairs there are now teams that compete against each other for points. In the previous game player pairs worked together, but in this game each team is pitted against each other. At the end of the week the team with the most points get erased.

While traveling around the city the music is randomized just like the original. One major new feature is the Social Network. Throughout the game you can come across side quests that you can do. Doing these side quests award you with points that can be used to unlock abilities to help you throughout the game. To access some abilities you might have to do other side quests or fulfill different criteria such as eating at a certain place three times or buying a certain amount of clothing items.

Just like in the first one you can shop for clothes as well as food to boost stats. Eating food gives you permanent stat increases for things like health and style. Style points allow you unlock abilities that clothing items have.

If you’d like to get a feel of the game for yourself a demo is available for the Switch and ps4/ps5. It allows you to play through the first two days which is about two hours of play time. If you then decide to buy the game you can transfer your save date from the demo.

Voice Acting

As I mentioned in my quick thoughts, I think that the voice actors did an amazing job. One voice actor that surprised me was Xander Mobus. He has some amazing range when it comes to his voices. In this game he was a Reaper named Kubo. He is also the voice actor of the protagonist from Persona 5. The voices are so different that you would never have guessed that he was behind them both. I only listed a few voice actors because I don’t want to spoil too much. Though I didn’t list everyone all the voice actors did a great job.

Character	Voice Actor
Rindo	Paul Castro Jr.
Nagi	Miranda Parkin
Fret	Griffin Burns
Shoka	Bailey Gambertoglio
Shiba	Shaun Conde
Kubo	Xander Mobus
Sho Minamimoto	Andy Hirsch
Kariya	Andrew Kishino
Uzuki	Kate Higgins

Music

The music in this game was absolutely amazing. It’s only fitting that the sequel has music just as great as it’s predecessor. Out of all the songs in the game there is only one that I didn’t like. There are a total of fifty-one tracks in the game. I think the music of this series has always been one of the best parts. What really stands out is how each song is unique and from a different band. Some songs from the first game have returned, but have been remixed. The remixes as well as the new songs made me buy the soundtrack I’m looking forward to listening to the music as I please. Below are some songs from the game, if they aren’t there that means the videos were removed and I’ll have to find new versions.

Conclusion

I honestly enjoyed this game a lot. I haven’t played a lot of games this year, but right now this one is my favorite. Square Enix did a great job modernizing the controls as well as capturing the feel of the first game. I would definitely recommend this game to any fan of RPG games. If you’re on the fence about it be sure to give the demo a try. You’ll be able to get a feel for whether you’ll like the game or not. I’m slowly trying to get all the items in the game, but that will take a bit. Have you played NEO: The World Ends With You? What did you think about it?

As always thank you all for reading. This was truly a great game and I enjoyed every minute of it. After playing this I need to get back to Horizon Zero Dawn.

Reach out to me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/realgamerwithg1

Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/H2H03GR23