Oh man, this is one of those games where I was super hyped for when it was revealed but also felt skeptical about trying out. As a sequel there were alot of expectations I had and I wondered if it would live up to the first game, but good news everyone, I can gladly say that it does live up and it's so wonderful.
I'm going to be making alot of comparisons between this game and the first, and I'm going to say that neither of them are better than the other and both games aren't perfect.
For those looking to try the game, seriously play the first game first... there are so many hype moments in NEO that are best experienced after the events of the first game (and there isn't much excuse to not play it when it's very easily accessible).
Note that I'm also going to be talking alot about vague events in both games, vague enough so that people who have played will know what I'm talking about but not specific enough where it'll spoil, so if you're not comfortable with that, feel free to stop reading here.


Characters/Story
First, I'd like to discuss the characters, missions, and structure.
In the first game, Neku pairs with partners to do tasks around Shibuya for a week, challenge the game master, and rinse and repeat. Neku gets along with some partners more than others and the way he talks to them changes alot over the course of the game.
Other than Neku the other characters that have dynamic changes are ones who reoccur each week. What I liked about these changes is that it made me genuinely interested about each of these characters and learning about what makes them motivated and what ticks them off.
I also liked the personalities of each game master and how they had their own thing and their way of talking. It would leak into how they assigned their missions for the day and that oozes so much personality. Most missions in this game really take a couple hours at most and felt short and sweet :D

In NEO, Rindo works with a group: Fret, Nagi, and Minamimoto and they become the Wicked Twisters. Groups face off with other groups to score enough points and are "generally" guaranteed survival until the end of the week where the lowest point scoring team gets erased.
Unlike the first game, all missions are assigned through an automated app, The RNS, and it doesn't have the flavorful writing written straight from the game master. This group system is more interesting and changes the perspective of how to handle the Reaper's Game but it also loses a dire sense of urgency to finish the mission.
In the first game, the threat of erasure always felt real, where if any two players finished a mission, everyone survives but if noone does it, everyone is erased. The group system awards groups who finish the mission first so it felt more casual and gave the mindset of "Oh well, I had a bad day today, but we can make it up tomorrow!" and that spirit doesn't feel right.
There's a huge difference between Rindo's group and Neku's group and all characters in both group undergo some form of character development. Rindo's group generally faces loss in some form and causes change (albeit very subtle change, but change is still change). But the real difference between the characters in NEO and TWEWY are their competencies.
Neku, Shiki, Beat, Rhyme, and Joshua are all competent characters and can really hold their own, but I cannot really say the same for Rindo, Fret, and Nagi even far into the game. All I'm really going to say is that, it never really felt like the three characters took charge like Neku did in the first game. It doesn't at all mean they're bad characters, but it definitely gave a different vibe.
Rindo and his pals have certain useful powers as well but they're not really used creatively and are moreso for sidequest related purposes.


Soundtrack
This might seem like a strange direction to take, but I'd like to chat about the games' soundtracks.
Boy... The first game's soundtrack is a masterpiece, there's no doubt about that. Even though alot of music genres are mixed in one, it all gives this one feeling... the feeling of really being in Shibuya. Personally, I think my favorite track from the OST (and picking one is very hard) is Deja Vu which really has that big city feel to it.
Well, I listened to some of NEO before playing the game and I was definitely skeptical about it. There definitely was more of an emphasis towards upbeat and heavier metal, as if they took alot of inspiration from The One Star and Emptiness And.. (which baffles me why it's not in the game), and I definitely wasn't as drawn to it. Like the tracks didn't have as much of that big city vibe and went more for a rock/metal style.
Then I played the game and most of these tracks really grew on me. I don't think I've heard anyone mention this, but NEO's OST goes really well with what's happening in the gameplay and well let's just say there are bigger stakes than the Reaper's Game in this game and the music tries to convey that. The tracks are trying to convey to you a feeling of what you should feel at that moment in the game and it's really cool.
It's also the lyrics in the tracks that go sooo well too. After finishing the game, tracks like Storm, The World is Yours, Scramble, Last Call are really brilliant.

Like for instance, at the beginning of the game, you start with STORM and a closer look at its lyrics talks an awful lot about what to expect from the game... here are some excerpts:
For anyone who has played the game, these lyrics should really nail home what I'm trying to say here.

This side or the other side
You need to make up your mind
D-D-D-D-Do or die it's not a suicide
It's a warrior's mind

It's me
Against the world
So, just let me go against the storm
It's me
Against the world
So, just let me go inside the storm

Life is like a box of chocolates...

And then towards the end of the game, you get Last Call which in the events of what is happening is a total contrast to this track but is excellent for context. Other tracks like Jump Over Yourself, Scramble, and Rockin' Rockin are quite excellent character themes too.


Quotes
There's something that no reviewer out there that I've seen so far have really talked about that feels important for this series and it's the quotes.
Do we all remember Joshua's lines that go something along the lines of "Give up on yourself and you give up on the world" or what about "Only by allowing strangers in can we find new ways to be ourselves?" It's a small detail, I feel but it has a big effect. I think it adds to the relatability of the first game and I feel it shouldn't be ignored.
NEO is no different and I think it takes these quotes and themes the entire game around them.... yknow "Never fear a fight, fight your fear". It's not really a quote but an absolute highlight for me about NEO that I'm definitely going to take with me is Shoka, Haz, and Rindo's dialogues about "what makes Shibuya so special"

Check out this dialogue chain between Rindo and Shoka that really spoke to me:

Shoka: "It wasn't like that for me at first."
Rindo: "You didn't... know who you were?"
Shoka: "Here you can choose so much about what you want to do, who you want to be... And the city just accepts you, no matter what. I didn't know how to deal with that."
Rindo: "I guess I never thought of it that way..."

There are lots of dialogue lines that just click and I feel that that's something worth talking about in TWEWY and well NEO has tons of these if that's what you're looking for.
And how can we ever forget the game's favorite question "I wonder who Swallow is?" followed by Rindo being like "Nahh, I shouldn't ask"


Combat System
Yeesh! I'm already this far down and I haven't even talked about the battle system yet. (Is anyone still reading? hahaha)
The whole novelty of TWEWY is taking the reigns of two characters on different screens and having them fight at the same time. When both characters fight together, you sync together and perform a super move that heals the players and does massive damage. Finally after a couple minutes, the round is over and you move on to the next chain.
Again, when I saw the battle system in NEO, I was a little hesitant and when I first started playing, I was skeptical as well and thought it to be button mashy.
Essentially each party member is equipped with one pin and everyone fights together against the noise, in a way where you want to chain one attack after the other to up your groove meter which will then allow a super move based on the pin (and not on the current partner like in TWEWY). It's really cool in the sense that anyone can just pick up and play and is nowhere as confusing as the first game... it makes this system very accessible.

When I first played the game, I was right! You spam buttons and you win (note, I did my entire playthrough on hard mode)! Battles were practically pretty brain-dead. But when I got to around halfway through the game was when I realized that I'm dieing alot to attacks that wipe out more than half of my health somehow.
You see, the devs were smart, they knew people were going to spam and they programmed a way where enemies will counterattack after it gets hit a bunch and that counterattack damage does a truckload ton of damage than a normal attack would... and if that attack hits multiple party members, then there's no saving that. You're done... erased!
That's where I have one big issue with this battle system. You're at the end of your chain... this is it Chain 15 out of 15 (yes, you get to chain more than 5 rounds in this game... it's so amazing), you get excited and overzealous and take a hit by this counterattack and boom!! You practically get OHKOd... all that effort from the previous 14 rounds were just wasted and you'd have to retry all the way from round 1. With Rindo's ability to time travel, this shouldn't be an issue and should just allow me to pick up on the last round I was at with the same stats I started that round with.

But that's the only complaint I have with this system... everything else about it is really brilliant! You have a dodge button and you cannot control other party members while they're on cooldown but you can control them if you are using their psyche. If you are not controlling a party member, then they will automatically dodge most attacks (unless it's that cursed Maximosaurus Rex in Another Story... that noise just doesn't play fair and will deal damage to more than half of your health because the AI doesn't dodge it even if you did)
So this is definitely an upgrade to the first game, where you can control as many characters as you can at any time you want to; you can hold 3 buttons all at the same time to do tons of damage but you'll also be very vulnerable or you can fight with one player at a time and hold one button!
Once you get the flow of things, it definitely is alot more fun than the original's chaotic battle system.

There is an argument that I see against this battle system where there isn't enough variety of noise in the game. I see where they are coming from, but each new variant of noise adds something completely different to the table. Just like the first game, you encounter roughly about 5 - 10 noise in an encounter, so it can get unwieldy to try to remember where everything is at once... but let me give you an example of how cool these variants are
Let's take the frog noise for instance...
The first time you encounter the frog noise, it practically is almost harmless. It stands there and watches you and then every ten seconds or so, it will do a somersault and do minimal damage.
the next frog noise variant, is practically the same but this time it spits out a bubble in front of it which acts as a mine and of course it somersaults at the players too. The bubble is nothing to worry about but will hurt if you bump into it while fighting other noise or if you attack the frog head on in close combat.
The third frog variant is definitely no slouch. It has the same moves as the prior two, but this time it will hop up in the air and quickly slam down in front of it three times... and if you're being careless, that damage adds up! This is where these frogs are a little more threatening especially when they come in packs.
Believe it or not, but these frog variants get even harder. The fourth variant has the same moves as the prior three, and it has a new move where it spits water in a straight line across the screen... essentially acting like a laser (and these frogs hang out along the walls too). If you stand in its water path, you will take massive damage and it's a huge inconvenience to cross while handling other tougher noise.
And guess what? There's a fifth frog noise variant! this one is bigger and is tankier and has waaaay more HP than the other variants... and it is capable of doing all the moves I mentioned. What makes this variant different is that when you deal enough damage to this froggy, it's going to lash out and counterattack your player... we're talking like at least a 1/3 to maybe half of your health. Yeah... they don't mess around.
And remember that these frogs are to be dealt with in packs with other frogs and much larger tougher and tankier noise. Everything has startup animations and reactable but there's a lot to keep track of.

There is one more thing about the battle system that I have a gripe with. There are quite a few instances in the game where you encounter and fight other group members but different groups have the same attacks... and I don't really like that. The Deep River Society should have standalone pins that are unique to them and the Purehearts and Variabeauties should have different psyches to use to really differentiate them, but alas I guess they all have to blend and use the exact same attacks and the exact same attack patterns throughout the game.


Time Travel/Puzzles
A big big gimmick of NEO is Rindo's ability to time travel.
It's really not remarkable and I think it's the worst part of the game (it's too bad it's like... half of the game). Although, there are some creative instances of it (like the insomnia part), most uses of time travel involve getting in trouble or getting ambushed and then having to time travel backwards to avoid the trouble or to ambush the ambush. This wouldn't be so bad if we weren't time traveling almost every day of the week and we weren't going back and forth so much over every little piece of information gathered (and it gets really bad towards the end of the game).
To put it in perspective, the time travel mechanic takes one day of content and it stretches that one day into two days worth of content while making it kinda confusing (thus a 21 day game feels kinda like 40 days).
It definitely causes alot of backtracking and it's a ton of padding. I think it would've been pretty cool if it was used together with combat or if it was used to explore the events in Shinjuku (or yknow if that was part of another side story which would've been really cool... who knows, maybe it'll be the third sequel).

A part of both TWEWY and NEO are some puzzles that reapers assign and well both games are pretty great at it!
TWEWY and NEO respects the player's intelligence and makes it quite satisfying to finish puzzles.
In TWEWY, I enjoyed finding 777's missing microphone in the phone booth and I really enjoyed the escape room puzzle in NEO alot even though it really busted my brain having to do many brain twisters at once. And even though Rindo is smart enough to contribute to solving and leading the team (not really), he still doesn't have enough brains yet to figure out who Swallow is.
Oh yeah, there are quite a few parts in TWEWY that I didn't reaaally like where I have to do a Reaper quiz and go around town and gather really random information to answer the quiz. A little bit of that is in NEO, but it's not to the same degree of the first game where there were like at least 3-5 of them (at least in NEO they were generally put in in side missions).


Quality of Life Features
And the last big thing I wanted to talk about between TWEWY and NEO are quality of life features.
In NEO there are tons and tons of stuff that makes TWEWY feel like a more natural modern experience (not that the first game felt that old to play). The menu system is soooo good in NEO. It shows you all the objectives I need to do next, all the sidequests I can tackle, which streets have what noise, being able to have the game sort my clothes and equipment for my party, etc. When wandering around Shibuya there are also waypoints that display where to go next so you never really feel lost too.
In the first game, a minor issue I had was the eating system. You go buy food and that food will take up a certain amount of slots in your fullness meter. In order to deplete your fullness meter, you do battles AND you have to wait until the next day to play again to be hungry. In NEO, you just have to do enough battles and you can eat again at restaurants in the same sitting without having to wait a whole day.

In the first game, you would go to shops and you would buy clothes for your party members but party members would need a certain number of style before they could wear that outfit. This is changed in NEO where anybody can wear any outfit but each outfit has a style ability locked to it (health regeneration, stuns enemies for longer periods, increase drop rates) and that style ability is unlocked if the user wearing it has style points that are at or above the assigned threshold. This is pretty great!!

The last quality of life feature, I'll talk about is preetty huge in my opinion and it's NEO's sidequests. To me, half of the missions in TWEWY involved doing required "sidequests" and really getting to know the town of Shibuya. I'm talking about imprinting "fuse" in that one member's mind for 777 or doing reaper creeper or doing even more imprinting for the Don's ramen shop (and don't get me started on Tin Pin). I didn't have a problem doing this stuff for TWEWY but I felt like it was taking a liiiittle bit of the action away from the Reapers' Game. Yknow it's kinda hard to think about erasure when I'm trying to convince the Prince to eat at the Don's place (but an argument can be said against this, so I digress).
In NEO, all of these side missions are all there!! They're all kinda hidden away in different parts of Shibuya and generally involves imprinting and mind diving and they do the same purpose of really being part of Shibuya. They also give out friendship points rewards that can be traded in for items and new battle abilities like being able to tech if knocked backwards from an attack (I guess I play too much Smash hahaha) or unlocking new difficulties and increasing the amount you can chain. What I like about having these side missions separate though is that it doesn't take away from the real task at hand (aka derping around in time travel fluff) and doing the assigned missions.


So this was a very long review of NEO and what to expect without going into spoilers and I feel like I also covered some stuff that other reviewers may have not covered. This game seems to be hit or miss with people but well if you like the original, give NEO a shot! I mean you've already been waiting 10+ years right? If you had time to read this review, you have time to check out the game! Go for it! If anything, it'll be a really nice conversation starter (not that alot of people know TWEWY sadly).

I finally got around to playing this game in 2022.

For a game made like 30+ years ago, this game absolutely still holds up. I love how the story is very character driven and with all the optional sidequest narratives, different endings, and many ways to end the game makes the game feel replayable and very “choose your adventure” kinda feel.
I feel like Chrono Trigger is the kind of game where it is impossible to discover everything about the game in one or two (or three) playthroughs as there’s just that much content to explore, it feels very grand and epic and is really cool. I’m definitely surprised this hasn’t gotten the Secret/Trials of Mana remake treatment yet because it absolutely deserves it!

Something I like alot about Chrono Trigger are that the encounters and boss battles in this game are not generic at all. Bosses in this game are strong and not at all really pushovers (at least they felt that way to me) but they have very specific weaknesses to exploit. I think the fun in these battles are trying to solve the riddles of what you have to do Mega Man style and not really brute forcing your way to a win and it makes me really think and get engaged. Of course, there is something really satisfying to be felt when a weakness is discovered and the battle is won, and I love that so much.

Also, the soundtrack is just phenomenal! Before playing this game, I was already a little familiar with the tracks but did not like it as much as Chrono Cross’s but after playing the game and really feeling the context of even something simple like Rhythm of Earth, Wind, and Sea, the character themes, or even the Main Theme, I have such a newfound appreciation to its soundtrack and Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda (and I absolutely can’t wait to play Xenogears and Chrono Cross)