This game fucking sucks.

Okay. So we all know Danganronpa was never exactly the most well written series. It's always been a bit trashy, and hey, if ya want an over-the-top schlocky murder mystery game, the games are right up that alley. Like the goal or not, they had one and set out to achieve it. This game seems to only have one goal: waste the player's time.

You are Komaru Naegi, an annoying twerp with an arc more predictable than a parabola. Alongside her is Toko Fukawa, a character from the first game, hell bent on rivaling Komaru in that aspect. Presumably soon after the events of the first game, a bunch of Monokumas come to kill Komaru, but is saved by Byakuya Togami. He gets kidnapped, however, so it's up to our vexatious duo to save him, stop the Warriors of Hope, and get out of the Monokuma-ridden city.
The barebones idea of the plot isn't horrible. No, the real problem is what's contained in between the bread. The original series benefitted from having a colorful cast of characters who all interacted with each other, which led to a lot of lines that were funny or at least amusing. Granted, even in the original games, not everything stuck the landing, but the humor in this game makes the original series look like Monty Python in comparison. Most of the interactions are between Komaru & Toko, AKA "I'm so normal ooooooo" and "I'm so horny and bitchy ooooooo". They try to do character development but not only does it have less subtlety than American politics, but it's also beyond shallow and predictable. And then we have a generic power-hungry resistance leader, the most pointless character in the series with Kurakuma... and the Warriors of Hope.
Their gimmick of "Oh we're kids abused by adults who now want revenge" isn't... the worst idea in the world. But when the writing is this bad it fails spectacularly. I'll be honest: I like fucked up, tasteless, edgelord humor. But the thing is that fucked up, tasteless edgelord humor... is still humor. And a child having a PTSD attack because they were raped, beaten, or broken to the limit as a child isn't funny, it's just... awkward and gross. I can't tell if this game is trying to make a serious commentary of how bad adults can be or if they were genuinely trying to be funny, but they utterly fail on all possible fronts. Add in a (weirdly not as slapped in as expected) Nagito Komaeda, and you got just... an unfunny, predictable, tasteless, chiche, and yet still oftentimes fucking boring plot. This might be the worst written game I have ever played, and the last game I've beaten was fucking DmC: Devil May Cry.

At the VERY least, it isn't the worst looking or sounding game I've ever played. For a Playstation Vita game, it actually looks quite good. The game runs at full or near full resolution (surprisingly rare for the Vita) and a mostly steady 30 FPS. I do admit they translated the Danganronpa art style quite smoothly to 3D... for the most part. It also sounds good, though that's partially because most of the tracks are remixed or even ripped directly from the previous games.

Yep. I'm out of good things to say now. Back to negativity!

Imagine, if you will, Resident Evil 4. Now imagine if Resident Evil 4 was mixed with... Portal? Now imagine if you took out all the challenging and interesting puzzles from Portal, and removed all the fun combat mechanics from Resident Evil 4. Congratulations, you have created a recipe for absolute low-end mediocrity. Komaru has a bullhorn gun that can house 8 different kinds of "truth bullets". (kinda weird they call it that when truth bullets were abstract concepts instead of real things in the other games but whatever.) She can use these for combat, as well as solving Monoku-man puzzles scattered through the game. The combat is just fucking boring. Aim for the eye, kill. that's it. There are knockback bullets and a machinegun fire, but at the end of the day the game severely lacks in combat variety even despite the numerous enemies. None of them require any fun strategy to fight. Same with bosses, do the thing, attack their weak point, get massive damage, and they die. Even the final boss was piss easy and uninteresting. You can also swap to an invincible but time-limited Genocide Jack as a last resort move, and she's somewhat fun to control, but too limited in usability to save the game. As for the puzzles, they're tolerable. I can actually have some fun figuring out a good strategy. Sometimes the AI breaks but most of the time it's fine.
I think that if they leaned more into the puzzle aspect, maybe change the game from an action shooter to a more stealth-based game with heavy shooter elements, (something like a mix between Resident Evil 4 and Manhunt) and made the Monokumas more sparse but more deadly, I feel like that would be a more tonally consistent gameplay style. Instead of bad combat, make the goal avoiding confrontation and utilize your gun with numerous powers to break past them. It wouldn't fix the game but it'd salvage the good idea with the bullhorn gun with numerous puzzle-solving capibilities.

I feel like I should mention how Chapter 3 is one of the worst... things I've ever experienced in a video game. When you need to mention to the player that they are not actually witnessing child porn, you have fucked up. It's gross and uncomfortable. Also provides the one minigame in the game not tied to the main gameplay and quite frankly, once I experienced it, I had to go outside, take a breather, and let sink in the fact that numerous artists, programmers, and a director got together to make a minigame so gross I'll just say look it up on your own time.

This game is bad. One of the worst I've played. Every cutscene until the last provides next to nothing of note to the Danganronpa lore. The gameplay provides nothing interesting. The story is beyond abysmal without ever reaching the point of funny bad. There isn't a single likable character. Chapter 3. This game was a waste of time. To anyone interested in playing, just look up the final cutscenes online. Believe me, I'm saving you so much pain. Outside of that last cutscene, and some impressive graphics, this game provides nothing positive. Nothing.

2.4/10. If you do decide to play this game, play it on PS4 or PC for a higher resolution, though the PS Vita version still isn't bad. Also, reconsider that decision.

I'm not mad. I have no anger. This is just fucking sad.

DmC: Devil May Cry is not a bad game, and that is its biggest downfall, as it remains far from a good game. I went into this hoping to at least get some ironic laughs while playing through it in a VC. And we absolutely did. It was great, making fun of Donte's models, the stale animations, some of the stupidest writing in a AAA game.

But then we stopped laughing. It stopped being fun.

This game is trying to push the envelope. It's trying to truly redefine what Devil May Cry will be. And yet it tries nothing. Absolutely nothing. There ARE original ideas, but the execution fails to create anything deep. Yeah, the Angel and Devil system is cool, but it hinders combo creativity when one of many angel/demon enemies appear and require you to use only one or two weapons. The grapple system is cool, but there is nothing else to them, nor is the areal combat interesting in the slightest.

Hell, I'll even go out on a whim and say that Vergil could have been an interesting character. He's always dealing with problems from the background, using others to achieve his greater goal while sitting in relative safety. Him being a coward deep down, culminating with him desiring to control others for his goals instead of joining them in freedom, could have been interesting. Hell, it could even justify his piss-easy boss, as he was never really fighting like Dante was. But not only is he, like every other major character, bland at best, but he also never establishes why he doesn't trust humans, or why he even wants to control them in the first place. He is a twist villain who exists solely to have an "equal" as the final boss. Because that's what Devil May Cry 3 did, and everyone liked it then, so why try to create something original when you can reuse ideas from older games without thinking about why those original ideas worked?

Dante is just lame in this game. It's not even that he makes jokes likely written by a 7th grader who just discovered porn, he's just so fucking dull. He has his very sparring funny lines, but that's it. He's not even cringy. He's just boring. Kat is just the token girl, and gets little characterization when she's not being useful. Mundus is probably the "best" character in this game, and only because he actually manages to have a fucking stage presence. He feels like an actual character instead of some college students the director found at the last minute.

The gameplay itself is... fine. Absolutely fine. Hell, I can consider it good or better than the other games in some areas. For example, I like having all weapons be available at all times without a menu. No need to only carry two at a time, just select a toggle, maybe press a direction on the D-pad, and bam. But what does this mean when the combat provides no new weapons in the second half? Or hell, no interesting challenges? The game has a really cool idea where the world itself shifts to impede Dante's quest, taunting him, and having the potential to create unique battle scenarios. But this game almost never takes any advantage of it. Nearly every battle is on flat, unmoving ground. Verticality doesn't exist, you will never find an enemy above you attacking from a range that you can grapple to because there is no land above to begin with. Wanna know what also doesn't exist? Enemy variety. The game rarely introduces a new minor enemy. Combine the repeats with the uncreative level design, and you have a recipe for battles blending in. The combat itself though is fine. It's just DMC3, but with slower, less fun enemies, and low challenge. I had my fun with it in the first half, but they never throw any fun new gimmicks into the game to keep the variety high. It is completely passable, and that's it.

The best part of this game is probably the soundtrack. It's not even that amazing, but it is at least a shining piece of bronze in the pile of tin foil. Not much I would listen to outside the game, but it's different from the mainline games in a way that provides genuine positive uniqueness instead of trying and failing to imitate the original.


This game is not bad. From an objective standpoint. A robot will give this game a 6/10. But I'm not a robot. I really started getting sick of this game by the 2/3rds point. I stopped caring about style or score because I realized I am never coming back to this game. The gameplay is fine. It can be mildly fun. But there is nothing else going for this game. The script fails to even be funny bad at its most tryhard, it's just one of the worst AAA scripts I've seen. I love games that try so hard and fail so hard. This game does neither. It barely tries and it barely fails. I feel like this game needed a sequel badly, something to cook on the few good ideas from here. But am I glad that we just got DMC5 instead? Absolutely. This game doesn't deserve heaven or hell. It deserves to rot in limbo.

4/10. There are some parts that are good, but the painful sub-mediocrity of everything else drags it down.

As a sidenote, a lot of people judge the game poorly on how it's an insult to the old games. Honestly, I don't care about how the old games relate to this. I didn't make any mind of Inafune because I didn't need to. This game is trying to be new, I'll judge it as if it's new.

Also thanks for the code, Josh

Most series, when they don't get a new game for 14 years, end up feeling quite different and weird when they finally get that new chance of life. I mean, look at Duke Nukem Forever, Star Fox Zero, and everyone's favorite piece of media, Dumb and Dumber 2. However, this doesn't always have to be this case. Sometimes, it can just strike a chord just like the original. Baulder's Gate 3, Doom 2016, Shenmue 3 (for better and for worse), and Streets of Rage 4 came swinging out the gate feeling like a true sequel to the original like they released not long after. And I gotta say... Neo: The World Ends with You falls in neither camp. And that's not a bad thing at all.

Name: Rindo. Occupation: Player in the Reaper's Game. It's been 3 years since Neku and the gang did their thing in the first game, and in that time, everybody went from 2006 flip-phones to buttonless, widescreen smartphones. Either they're all using flip-phones in 2018 or technology is really good in 2010. One day, as Rindo and his best friend Fret are vibing in Shibuya, they get dragged into the Reapers Game. They have to survive a week and make it to the top of the leaderboards if they want out, and if they're at the bottom they get erased, like the first game's budget near the end. Along the way, Rindo's team, known as the Wicked Twisters, fight Noise and acquire new blood, with some not being so new.

The characters are what made the plot of the first game, and I gotta admit, that one did characterization noticeably better. Not that Neo falters in this too much, but rather the original excelled at it. Neku was just a more interesting protagonist with a much more distinct personality, and all his partners each had interesting backstories and motivations. In Neo, they had to juggle a lot more characters and relationships, so while they're not at all bad for the most part, they lack a lot of the depth the original cast had. Even the returning characters, while entertaining, don't really have much to them outside the current Reapers' Game. Some of them have good twists and ideas (I really liked Fret's arc, as well as some of the Reapers), but then there are some that are straight up flat, with few defining character traits that aren't used exclusively for jokes. All that being said, however, at the end of the day they went from "Amazing" to just "above average." As stated, there are no shortage of great and/or entertaining characters. It's not like everyone needs an arc, and it's understandable that a game with more characters would have less time to characterize each.

However, the story itself is a different story. It's pretty damn good. The original had a plot that's a lot more character driven. Neo, however, has a story that, while sometimes pretty predictable, was overall one I really wanted to see through to the end. I mean, I fucking played the game for 24 hours straight (though with some minor breaks) to see it to the end. There were some good twists, especially with Rindo, and there's some really neat foreshadowing. I'd rather not get into spoilers, so I'll just say I feel that the story is on par with or even better than the original, especially since I felt the original's final week felt quite rushed and padded. B8ut even standing by itself it's still a pretty good JRPG plot.

But here's the interesting thing about this series: it's one of the few JRPGs a lot of players play for the actual gameplay instead of the story. And this game's attempt to turn the DS idea of multiple people fighting at once to be great on paper, but have some pretty heavy flaws in execution. I will admit that I played the game on Hard and whenever I reasonably could would do fights at level 1, so my criticism of the difficulty may be a bit unfair. (For those unfamiliar, both games have this really cool mechanic where the more you hold yourself back by being low-level and playing on harder difficulties, the better your loot is) Every member of your team can equip one pin with one combat ability, and you can control all of them at the same time. It sounds like it'd be just chaos with up to 6 people on the board at once that you have to manage... and it is. But for the most part it's great. It's really fun testing multiple combinations of pins to see which ones deal the most damage while effectively filling out the Groove Meter, which can allow you to do a super move once filled. This doesn't mean the system is without criticism, however. Dodging makes everyone dodge and cancel their currently active attacks, which is annoying but makes sense on a balance level. What is even more annoying and less excusable, however, is that people not being controlled don't always do what you want, and aren't very consistent. The game gives them an autododge if it feels like you would not have reasonably dodge an attack, but sometimes you'll run away from an enemy attack and your allies don't get the memo to follow you, causing you to take damage. When playing on level 1 this can get really annoying, as enemy attacks can hit like the GUN Truck on crack. You can call this a skill issue, sure, but on some encounters it really is bullshit (especially if you decide to look at optional content). This game is really hard at times, but it usually feels mostly fair, and is always satisfying to beat a tough boss. I'm not sure if I prefer this over the DS gameplay, but I can at least say it's an improvement over Final Remix. Though that bar is not very high.

I've been pretty negative, lets turn down the heat. The game retains the same great art style of the original, though it may be ever so slightly less exaggerated than the original. Often these very 2D styles don't tend to work in 3D, but this game doesn't exactly like to follow conventional logic. Every nook and cranny looks great, especially for a game designed to run on the Switch. The framerate also mostly stays above the 45 FPS line (on PS4), and usually runs at a solid 60. Crisp 1080p on PS4 as well. Switch version is worse but I'm not playing the Switch version, am I? You can't tell me what to talk about, goddammit, if I wanna talk about how I found the soundtrack to be better than the original, then I will! Yeah, it's got a respectable level of genre diversity, from rock, to hip-hop, to J-pop, and everything in and out between. Well, except maybe noise music. It's a bit less pop than the original, though in style the overall soundtrack is similar. It just has some more intense tunes this time around. Music taste is subjective, so I don't feel entirely comfortable saying that Neo's soundtrack is outright better than the original. I will say that I prefer it tho.
On a related note, this game takes great advantage of surround sound. All the pre-rendered cutscenes are fully mixed with it in mind, and it sounds great! It's also helpful in combat, as you can hear shit happening behind you. Since most people won't have the setup to even utilize it, I won't go on too long, but if you have a 5.1 or 7.1 system, expect a great auditory experience.

After 14 years of wait, the TWEWY fandom got the sequel they desired. Like the original felt extremely 2007, Neo feels extremely 2021. The gameplay is quite different. The plot mostly revolves around new guys. It's been 14 years and it feels like it. And yet, despite that, the game comes out on top, embracing it instead of ignoring it, creating a game that knows what it is, and comes out on top. It's not a perfect game, but it's a sequel the first game absolutely deserved. Also helps that it released pretty much completely finished, which is old-school in the best way possible.

High recommendation to fans of the original, but even by itself it's a really great game that ties itself to the original just enough to keep both newcomers and existing fans happy, with a new gameplay style that, while sometimes frustrating, is still a very good transition from DS to modern consoles.

9/10

Also, for your sanity, do not attempt the platinum for this game. That sounds like hell.