When I think of NEO: The World Ends With You there's one word that comes to mind: style. In every regard this game's sense of style is absolutely killer. Very few games feature even 1 piece of clothing where I think "oh fuck I need that," but in NEO TWEWY that thought occurs to me almost hourly. Of course the style extends past the fashion. The character designs are all full of personality, the UI is slick, and even the city itself feels alive due to some interesting graphical effects. Much like the first game the soundtrack here is also filled with banger after banger, even though I don't think every track is great they're all unique within this medium.

Despite all the obvious appeal of the visuals and music the thing that kept me coming back for more was the gameplay loop. This gameplay loop should seriously be in a hall of fame somewhere. There's very few games where I feel like I want to grind when not being forced to, but I lost hours of time here chaining battles together and trying to win them while at level 1 on hard mode. The novelty of this wore out towards the end of the game, but mostly because some late game enemies are just plain annoying.

The biggest thing holding this game back is the pacing. The pacing sucks. You'll go days and days in the midgame without any major plot events happening, just getting strung along by a series of repetitive objectives. It definitely starts strong and ends strong, but the middle just draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags.

It's good! Definitely has some room for improvement, but the stuff that's good is so unique that I can let the weaker stuff slide a bit.