So when Shiba says “got some red-hot news for ya” it’s cool, but when I write that in my emails at work, it’s unprofessional?
This betrayal of expectations notwithstanding, I loved NEO: The World Ends With You to the point where much of it made me wonder why more games don’t handle things the way it does. It was always a safe bet that it’d have good music, but it deserves just as much credit for how its music is used. My favourite example is how boss themes become standard overworld themes as you progress, which complements the story’s escalation of stakes as well as Rindo’s character development – encounters that were previously difficult for him become routine as his confidence grows. Soundsurfing is another really cool idea, giving you both a movement boost and a head start in your next fight if you can time button presses to the beat of whichever song is playing. Then there’s the Groove system which makes battles feel straight-up rhythmic, rewarding you for stringing your party’s attacks together with the right timing not unlike a band playing together in harmony. The soundtrack would still be amazing even if not for all this stuff, but it’s how it feeds into both the story progression and the gameplay itself that really takes it to another level.
Controlling multiple characters at once has been a trend in action games for some time now, but NEO TWEWY is probably my favourite take on this style of combat so far. The way the Groove mechanic encourages you to sync up your characters’ attacks one after the other rhythmically is enthralling and the little freeze frame that happens when you do it successfully never gets old. Positioning’s refreshingly important since your only movement option’s a dodge, but this isn’t to say that your options are limited overall; there’s great variety between all the pins you can equip. You can build your party to focus on melee, projectiles, healing, parries, specific hit reactions (e.g. splatting enemies against walls), applying status effects or a mix of all of these, and even those which get outclassed damage-wise tend to retain their niche of having less cooldown, so there’s no shortage of team compositions to try out. All the characters have unique dialogue with each other mid-combat too, which is a lovely touch and really drives home the idea that they’re all equally important to the team. It’s a really interesting spin on party-based RPG combat.
I don’t want to give away too much with regard to NEO TWEWY’s plot, but I will say it’s engaging enough that story segments felt more like a reward than exposition dumps. This game’s got one of the most charismatic, expressive casts of characters out there and they feel believable in ways that a lot of games don’t – they talk over each other, leave a lot of their feelings unsaid and make mistakes often enough that turning back time to undo them is a plot device. It probably relies on the latter a bit too often, and its implementation often feels like just sifting through a menu rather than an actually using an otherworldly superpower, but neither of those things were enough to stop me from wanting to see what happened next regardless.
My only other gripe is that I would’ve liked a couple of mechanics to have been introduced a little bit earlier into the game – you’ll probably become well accustomed to the combat long before orange beat drops arrive to spice it up, for example – but that’s pretty minor. All in all, NEO TWEWY’s easily become one of my favourite ARPGs. Everything about it, from the visuals to the combat to the music to even the difficulty design, had me wishing there were more games like it. It's an absolute, unbridled joy.
And with that, I bid you adieu.
This betrayal of expectations notwithstanding, I loved NEO: The World Ends With You to the point where much of it made me wonder why more games don’t handle things the way it does. It was always a safe bet that it’d have good music, but it deserves just as much credit for how its music is used. My favourite example is how boss themes become standard overworld themes as you progress, which complements the story’s escalation of stakes as well as Rindo’s character development – encounters that were previously difficult for him become routine as his confidence grows. Soundsurfing is another really cool idea, giving you both a movement boost and a head start in your next fight if you can time button presses to the beat of whichever song is playing. Then there’s the Groove system which makes battles feel straight-up rhythmic, rewarding you for stringing your party’s attacks together with the right timing not unlike a band playing together in harmony. The soundtrack would still be amazing even if not for all this stuff, but it’s how it feeds into both the story progression and the gameplay itself that really takes it to another level.
Controlling multiple characters at once has been a trend in action games for some time now, but NEO TWEWY is probably my favourite take on this style of combat so far. The way the Groove mechanic encourages you to sync up your characters’ attacks one after the other rhythmically is enthralling and the little freeze frame that happens when you do it successfully never gets old. Positioning’s refreshingly important since your only movement option’s a dodge, but this isn’t to say that your options are limited overall; there’s great variety between all the pins you can equip. You can build your party to focus on melee, projectiles, healing, parries, specific hit reactions (e.g. splatting enemies against walls), applying status effects or a mix of all of these, and even those which get outclassed damage-wise tend to retain their niche of having less cooldown, so there’s no shortage of team compositions to try out. All the characters have unique dialogue with each other mid-combat too, which is a lovely touch and really drives home the idea that they’re all equally important to the team. It’s a really interesting spin on party-based RPG combat.
I don’t want to give away too much with regard to NEO TWEWY’s plot, but I will say it’s engaging enough that story segments felt more like a reward than exposition dumps. This game’s got one of the most charismatic, expressive casts of characters out there and they feel believable in ways that a lot of games don’t – they talk over each other, leave a lot of their feelings unsaid and make mistakes often enough that turning back time to undo them is a plot device. It probably relies on the latter a bit too often, and its implementation often feels like just sifting through a menu rather than an actually using an otherworldly superpower, but neither of those things were enough to stop me from wanting to see what happened next regardless.
My only other gripe is that I would’ve liked a couple of mechanics to have been introduced a little bit earlier into the game – you’ll probably become well accustomed to the combat long before orange beat drops arrive to spice it up, for example – but that’s pretty minor. All in all, NEO TWEWY’s easily become one of my favourite ARPGs. Everything about it, from the visuals to the combat to the music to even the difficulty design, had me wishing there were more games like it. It's an absolute, unbridled joy.
And with that, I bid you adieu.