NEO: The World Ends With You is a JRPG title with a heavy focus on style. Developed by h.a.n.d. and Square Enix, the title is a sequel to 2007’s The World Ends With You, a similarly aesthetic-laden production that received critical acclaim alongside its commercial success. As a follow-up title, NEO shines thanks to its careful navigation of previous plot threads alongside its new cast of characters. Even if it’s a player’s first time in the series’ recreation of Shibuya, however, NEO: The World Ends With You will impress all the same thanks to an eclectic but appealing mix of charm, cool, and excellent gameplay.
Rindo Kanade assumes the reins of protagonist from Neku Sakuraba, joined by teammates Fret, Nagi, and Minamimoto, the latter of whom will be familiar as an antagonist of the first title. NEO: The World Ends With You threatens to overwhelm players initially as it introduces a slew of interesting characters within its first few hours, but the process is handled well, first introducing cast members with a particularly loud personality beat before refining and expanding on their nature as they continue to make appearances. Rindo and friends must engage in the Reapers’ Game and defeat monsters known as Noise, with the entire scenario taking place in an alternate Shibuya within the Underground.
While the story does eventually begin to take on serious tones, it begins as a relatively light-hearted affair, with each character coming to grips with the situation fairly quickly to avoid slogging through lengthy plot points surrounding confusion over the Reapers’ Game. Rindo, Fret, and Nagi all have special abilities granted to them by their roles in the Reapers’ Game: Rindo is able to rewind time to avoid negative outcomes, Fret can prod peoples’ memories to get them to remember key information, and Nagi can dive into peoples’ memories to help them through negative emotions. All of these techniques are interwoven through both narrative and gameplay in a way that makes them exciting whenever they come up.
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Gameplay in NEO: The World Ends With You largely follows a pattern of solving puzzles in Shibuya to gain access to more districts and locales, then fighting through waves of Noise or bosses to advance the team’s progress. There are sidequests and other elements, like Scramble Slam, which shake up the progression system further, but battles are central to the experience of NEO and, thankfully, also one of its best elements. Combat is fluid, with snappy button inputs feeling both responsive and easy to manage. Players will control each member of their team by using the buttons assigned to each of their abilities, all the while moving whichever character they used most recently to navigate the battlefield and dodge incoming attacks.
While it sounds hectic, NEO: The World Ends With You combat is remarkably easy to understand. The one-button presses for abilities makes using multiple attacks at once easy, and strategies begin to emerge almost immediately after discovering how to time attacks to create further opportunities and raise the party’s Groove meter. Once the Groove meter is at 100%, Rindo and friends can unleash a powerful combo attack that is dependent on recently used pins. The whole system is visually and mechanically satisfying, and NEO: The World Ends With You combat is a sublime mix of customization and flair.
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Pins are another key element of combat, determining which abilities each character will have access to. Each character can equip one pin, and pins can be leveled up, with some of them evolving into more powerful versions of their effects. There’s a lot of pins available in NEO: The World Ends With You, and that makes combat feels expansive. There’s also very little pressure from the game to experiment if players don’t really want to – while mixing and matching pins is highly recommended, once the team finds a mix that works for them, it remains viable for a long period of time.
That constant viability reflects something that NEO: The World Ends With You does quite well: malleability. NEO is a game that can be played the way people want, whether that’s as a min-maxing JRPG veteran or someone who just wants to enjoy the story and its sights and sounds. Early on, Rindo will gain access to difficulty settings, which dramatically alter the way battles with Noise go. Easy is accessible and should alleviate any potential frustration from those struggling with combat, while the hard difficulty adds an additional layer of complexity to most battles with a reward of more pin drops and EXP in exchange.
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On top of battle customization, there’s also several systems in place to help further deepen what NEO: The World Ends With You offers to those looking to play their way. Threads are different articles of clothing that provide stat bonuses, with additional bonus abilities tied to either wearing them as a matching set or having a Style rating that exceeds a listed requirement. When leveling up, Rindo and friends only gain HP initially, and they must eat at various restaurants to gain other stats like Attack, Defense, or Style. There are many restaurants to choose from and they provide different stat bonuses, so building out a character to be balanced, offensive, or tanky can be as simply as finding the right food.
While many of the game’s mechanics stand out as excellent, they might not even be the best quality in NEO: The World Ends With You. That’s because the game’s visual and audio design is so instantly recognizable. The soundtrack that plays throughout is one of modern gaming’s best, with a few different songs threatening to get stuck into a player’s head if they’re the last track they hear before turning the game off. Visually, NEO: The World Ends With You doubles down on the trademark aesthetic of the first game, and character and environmental design are both gorgeous.
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There’s little to dislike about NEO: The World Ends With You. The game does run a little long – around 45-50 hours, including a few grinding sessions and a fair few sidequests – but the story doesn’t overstay its welcome at any point and characters are fun enough to engage with that it’s not to the game’s detriment. Enemies can become pretty repetitive in spots, too, and the strategies needed to defeat them can feel pretty simplistic until pretty far into the game. On Nintendo Switch, loading can feel a bit lengthy, with some noticeable lag while transitioning between areas in Shibuya at times.
NEO: The World Ends With You is a unique, eye-catching and entertaining JRPG that prioritizes charm, fun, and accessibility above all. Apart from a few minor stumbles, it’s a smooth experience with a cast of fun, visually distinct characters. NEO: The World Ends With You is must-play for any JRPG fan, and is equally up to the task of providing either style or substance for those inclined to seek out either.
NEO: The World Ends With You releases on July 27, 2021 for Nintendo Switch and PS4, with a PC release planned for later in 2021. Screen Rant was provided with a Nintendo Switch code for the purpose of this review.