I can see why TWEWY gained a little cult following, but it just wasn't up my alley.
Just starting with the positives. There characters were all quite good. Neku in particular made for a good protagonist and seeing his growth throughout the story was the highlight of the whole experience. The rest of the cast was also quite good and simultaneously contributed to Neku's growth while also providing interesting stories of their own. The broad outlines of the plot are also good, though ambiguities at the end held it back from being great.
But what really brough the game down was its gameplay and combat. TWEWY's combat is very unique. Rather than a fixed set of moves, you collect pins. Each pin has a method to activate it (tap, swipe, hold, etc) and an effect (typically damaging enemies in its area of effect) and you can combine these pins in any way you want to build your moveset so long as two pins don't have the same activation method. It's a neat idea, but its one I don't think works very well. First of all, there isn't much reason to choose one pin over another apart from the amount of damage they inflict. Secondary effects are inconsequential and there isn't much tangible difference between pins with the same activation method. And second, all gameplay is conducted through the touch screen alone. You never use buttons or control sticks, just the screen. And while this might have been something that worked on the DS, it was a very poor choice for the Switch. Since all pins are activated by doing things on the touchscreen, its very easy to activate the wrong one. I can't tell you how many times the game registered me swiping from Neku to another part of the screen (which is how you move) as slashing across Neku (the activation method for some melee attacks). Or instead of activating a pin that requires I hold and press a part of the screen, the game will recognize as me tapping the screen and firing a projectile. It just makes the gameplay feel very unwieldy and limits the potential for higher difficulties since you can't reliably perform complex chains of moves.
I kinda wish it was possible to play this on the original hardware without shelling out a lot of money for it. From what I have seen of it, it seems like the gameplay issues I had are much less impactful on the DS since the combat was actually built around the hardware in question. But as for the version I played, it just didn't feel good to play and past the first 1/3rd or so I was just continuing for the sake of the story and characters.
TWEWY is not a bad game, but its a much worse one than it could have been. The story and characters were enough that I don't feel like the whole experience was a wash, but so much of the playtime is spent on a really poorly implemented combat system that I probably spent more of my playtime annoyed than genuinely enjoying it.
Just starting with the positives. There characters were all quite good. Neku in particular made for a good protagonist and seeing his growth throughout the story was the highlight of the whole experience. The rest of the cast was also quite good and simultaneously contributed to Neku's growth while also providing interesting stories of their own. The broad outlines of the plot are also good, though ambiguities at the end held it back from being great.
But what really brough the game down was its gameplay and combat. TWEWY's combat is very unique. Rather than a fixed set of moves, you collect pins. Each pin has a method to activate it (tap, swipe, hold, etc) and an effect (typically damaging enemies in its area of effect) and you can combine these pins in any way you want to build your moveset so long as two pins don't have the same activation method. It's a neat idea, but its one I don't think works very well. First of all, there isn't much reason to choose one pin over another apart from the amount of damage they inflict. Secondary effects are inconsequential and there isn't much tangible difference between pins with the same activation method. And second, all gameplay is conducted through the touch screen alone. You never use buttons or control sticks, just the screen. And while this might have been something that worked on the DS, it was a very poor choice for the Switch. Since all pins are activated by doing things on the touchscreen, its very easy to activate the wrong one. I can't tell you how many times the game registered me swiping from Neku to another part of the screen (which is how you move) as slashing across Neku (the activation method for some melee attacks). Or instead of activating a pin that requires I hold and press a part of the screen, the game will recognize as me tapping the screen and firing a projectile. It just makes the gameplay feel very unwieldy and limits the potential for higher difficulties since you can't reliably perform complex chains of moves.
I kinda wish it was possible to play this on the original hardware without shelling out a lot of money for it. From what I have seen of it, it seems like the gameplay issues I had are much less impactful on the DS since the combat was actually built around the hardware in question. But as for the version I played, it just didn't feel good to play and past the first 1/3rd or so I was just continuing for the sake of the story and characters.
TWEWY is not a bad game, but its a much worse one than it could have been. The story and characters were enough that I don't feel like the whole experience was a wash, but so much of the playtime is spent on a really poorly implemented combat system that I probably spent more of my playtime annoyed than genuinely enjoying it.