If you haven’t played the first The World Ends With You (TWEWY), please play it. What was an incredible 10/10 game in its own right, has now turned into a fantastic series that stays strong with its sequel.
Neo is a JRPG unlike any other you have seen. It’s emphasis on music, unique art style and original combat system really defines it is as a special experience.
This game grips onto you, like a group of friends you long to see much like Persona 5 and FFXV. It gives you a sense of home and friendship as you go through it’s fantastic storyline.
It’s hard to talk about TWEWY without mentioning and really emphasising how good the music is. I mean, if you want unique music that sometimes, I genuinely can’t believe a human came up with it all. Then just listen to its OST.
It will have you dancing and living your life without the best background music you could imagine.
I honestly want to give this game a 10 with just how good the music is.
Aside from the music, you have a unique combat system that delivers what the first game was doing in handheld platforms and transforming it to work on other systems, eg. PlayStation 4.
It’ll have you pressing every single button on your controller as you use pins to damage enemies known as noise with the incredible OST backing your every movement as you experiment your way through different battles.
As you face the combat, the story progresses in a wonderful way. I adore this games characters. Perhaps not as much as the first game but don’t let that get you down.
This game offers so many brilliant characters that you’re bound to love so many of them and enjoy their banter throughout the game.
There is some issues I encountered in the game that did lower my score for it. Which is weird in a way because the game post game does actually address my problems that I had.
It’s hard to shrug off some odd character choices, weird plot lines that I really didn’t care for.
Overall though, despite some slight problems I had. This game is genuinely an incredible experience that I loved playing with my girlfriend from start to finish.
It’s a series that is dear to us and I’ll forever associate it with us playing the first game together and playing this.
If you like JRPGS, Any form of anime, down for good music or just want to see a good solid game from Japan.
Please play Neo The World Ends With You.

NEO: The World Ends With You is a sequel that manages to define itself much like its predecessor did back in 2007. While that game was undoubtedly the peak of its respective system, NEO doesn't quite reach the same heights. But this series comes back from the dead swinging bigtime, sporting a heavier soundtrack that is an absolute treat for the ears. The game also remains on top stylistically, managing to set itself apart from other rpgs on the market with elegance. The gameplay is single screen now, with each party member being assigned a different attack rather than Neku using all psychs with one partner. Nowhere near as innovative as the first game, but still a good system.

I waited years for this game to release. It was the number 1 thing I was looking forward to playing. I tracked every pre-release review, clues in mobile games, scraps of info after Final Remix. Anything. TWEWY is my favorite game of all time. I wanted to love this game so, so badly. When it came out, I played it all in a weekend start to finish. Needless to say, I never anticipated something more in my life. I was ready to get absorbed in everything all over again with a new cast and learn new lessons tailored more to the modern era.

...That's why I'm sorry to say this part. If you played the original, do not play this.

Not because this is a "bad" game or because the art quality suffers or music is bad, no no. It still maintains all those qualities of the original and expands on them tenfold. It really is a Gorgeous game all the way through. I commend the team for what they were able to accomplish with respect to the battle systems, Nomura modern fashion tastes, impeccable music, and the incredible 3d background designs. I think the world of this game is one of the most gorgeous I've ever played. Now, with all that out of the way, what could possibly be the problem with it?

The writing. It's very much a Safe game. It doesn't challenge the player in any way that appealed to me so strongly about the unique vision of the original DS TWEWY. The characters straightforwardly perform all their goals and don't face lifestyle challenges or interact the same with mechanically that Neku was able to with his cast. The game is bloated with meaningless dialogue from minute one to 200 hours in. The characters talk but don't have much to say that is challenging or engaging like Neku's examinations into his loneliness and scorn towards others. I do not feel compelled at all to get the secret reports or do the bonus modes the same way I was for the original. Nagi is introduced as a perfect social communicator despite her neet background and then that's it for the rest of the game. She's able to handle every social scenario onwards and faces no serious shortcomings in the plot. She's another one of Rindo's lackeys. She has a crush on Minamimoto. She has a rivalry with Fret. That's... about it. She's subversive because she's not a depressed nerd, but the writers forgot to give her meaningful actions and arcs beyond that. The whole game is like this but I don't have the energy to go into every nitpick. It's just a very shallow game.

When I finished this game, the only thing I thought was "Well... That was fine I guess." which to me is the biggest sin a piece of art can commit. I so desperately do not want to be a hater for this game. I wanted to love it so badly. But between the troubled development of the title leading to three massive rewrites over a decade, Final Remix, and Nomura's ideas for the story getting tossed aside for Ishibashi's... This is not for me. This is for someone who loves shonen and thinks being a cool teen with powers is cool. And that's a perfectly fine thing to be. It just isn't the mechanically rich and narratively rich character analysis I so deeply loved about the original. It's mindnumbingly just a button masher with stylish characters with no substance beyond that. Worst of all, it's a game that makes me go back and think "did I even really love the original?" And if you loved the original in that same way, you won't love this game.

Such a massive downgrade from the first. By the time the 3rd week came around, I found myself to be tuning most of the game out, but by that point I was already 2/3 through the game.

The strongest part of the original TWEWY, was in how it directly constructed its story around the character’s conflicts. In order to enter the reaper game, you must have an entry fee, which takes the form of your most precious belonging. In the original, that simply plot point earned each character an instant character point, and gave way for what each of their arcs would become. All of the original characters gain an insane amount of depth for what is a 15 hr DS game, so it’s quite underwhelming, and downright disappointing that this 40 hr game doesn’t have a single character that gets near to touching any of the original characters. That’s most likely why the entire last 3rd of Neo rests entirely on the expectation that you care about the original characters. Thankfully I do, but I still want the new characters to be up to par if I’m expected to be with them for a full 40 hours.

Then there’s the repetition of the story/gameplay. The original TWEWY was structured the exact same way as Neo, but the positive of TWEWY was that it was only 15 hrs long. It doesn’t waste your time, and the mysteries of this world we have yet to experience fuel every single day. Each day in the original was a learning experience for furthering the plot, but it seriously becomes an issue with Neo, where the plot drags its feet in almost every day besides the finale of each week. The story doesn’t actually begin to get to the point until week 3, due to one of the teams stalling for story reasons. But that is absolutely no excuse for how dull some of these days get.

Neo does improve massively on the combat of TWEWY. Basically anything would be better than the original’s, but somehow Neo manages to balance up to 6 whole characters being controlled simultaneously. I’ve never seen a game do that before. It’s quite a large undertaking to not make the combat cumbersome with such an ambitious idea, but it certainly makes it work.

Again, like the original, Neo has just as much style and purpose with its design choices as its original. The cutscenes in particular got a major upgrade. Both the 2D and 3D cutscenes make the effort to remain unique in their presentation. It innovates on TWEWY’s simple 2D character portrait cutscenes with comic book-like panels that reveal each character’s sprites in segmented fashion. It’s quite an interesting way of presentation that I’ve never seen before.

Bu oyun Square Enix'in boktan pazarlamasının kurbanı. DS döneminin en çok ses getiren oyunlarından birine devam oyunu çıkartmaya karar veriyorsun ama bunu hiçbir yerde pazarlamıyorsun. İlk oyunun fanları bile bu oyunun çıkışından haberdar olmuyor, sonra oyun kötü satıyor.

Bu oyunu ilkiyle kıyaslamanın daha doğru olduğunu düşünüyorum, çünkü ikisin de benzeri yok:

Combat:
İlk oyunu combatı DS touchpadi için tasarlanmıştı, o yüzden yıllar sonra gelen portlarını oynamak biraz zor geliyordu. O sistemin kendi artıları ve eksikleri vardı, genel anlamda güzeldi. Bu oyunda çitayı aşmışlar, aşırı keyifli bir button mashing sistem yapmışlar. Oyunun combatı o kadar eğlenceli ki oyun benden grind istemese bile ben sırf daha fazla savaşabilmek için full grind yaptım. Onun dışında pin sistemini benzer tutup, üstüne birkaç yenilik eklemişler. Yeni pinlerin bazıları birbirine çok benzese de genel anlamda iyiler. Bosslar konusunda da iyi bir iş çıkartılmış, aşırı iyi demem ama başarmak istediğnii başarıyor.

Hikaye ve Karakterler:
Üzgünüm, ilk oyun daha iyi. Ana karakter kadrosu ilkiyle kıyaslandığında çok sönük kalıyor, tek istisna sanırım Fret.

Müzik:
Peak

Daha uzatmak istemiyom oynayın, hakkı yenmiş bir oyun.