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NEO: The World Ends With You [PS4/NSW]

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    NEO: The World Ends With You [PS4/NSW]

    There's a demo on storefronts for this, but the full game's also out now too.



    To slightly preface this: I thought the original TWEWY was brilliant and massively overlooked, but it has been a long-ass time since I last played it. I do not remember much of the story. Initial impressions on this are good though. Really good!

    Story's intentionally light on clarity at the start, but it's right in at the deep end with some major themes muscling their way in within the first 30 minutes, along with a steady stream of characters who are introduced and then whisked away equally quickly. Technically it's not pushing any boundaries, but the heavily stylised version of Shibuya looks decent in this 3D presentation, and everything moves very smoothly. I tried the English dub really quickly in the demo which was enough to convince me to stick with the Japanese in the full game.

    Battles in the original were a split across buttons for one screen and stylus for the other, which felt a little bit like rubbing your tummy and patting your head. Although there's just one screen this time, it's still looking to get just as hairy - on top of movement, even early on you've already got three characters each with their own pins assigned to different buttons, and some needing different rhythms (some need charging, others want frequent taps etc) that will likely result in mashing away madly while you try and get familiar with things.

    Plenty of callbacks to the original in the visual style, the music, and even some characters, but definitely it's own game too. Only on day 3 so far but looking forward to playing more.

    #2
    Cleared up a few things that took my attention away from this and have returned to it. Really glad I did; I've gotten really into it now, and it turns out I was right on the edge of a couple of really interesting gameplay hooks. Chaining together multiple fights is one thing, but increasing the difficulty and intentionally capping your level to increase drop rates is a whole other. Bringing proper risk/reward stuff into the mix like this makes the regular encounters way more interesting, particularly given the bigger stat increases come from eating out rather than just levelling up. The battle system still feels a little mash-y, but I see it's also starting to introduce more things to make you think about timing, rather than just trying your best to bash each of the action buttons in the required rhythms. Definitely finding that some pins are more useful than others.

    There's lots of small puzzle-y type ideas that are never very taxing but keep a bit of variety going. In general I'd say there's probably a bit too much dialogue, but the story is at least starting to go places; I've nearly got all of Shibuya mapped out now, but at the same time it has a habit of only letting you go where it wants you to at any given moment. Each day's tasks are sufficiently varied, with a decent range of side bits to tackle in each too.

    In all, I'm really enjoying this. Anyone else playing?

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      #3
      Finished it now; wrapped some of the extra bits too and really now just gauging how far on the road to the platinum I can face before it just becomes a total grind. Overall, I've loved it - it works as a follow-up in every sense, with everything from the original expanded on thoughtfully enough to feel new while also being very true to what made the first game so original and fun.

      General story comments, trying to be as vague as I can be but still hidden...


      I think the way the story goes works well, and I liked it a lot, but it does definitely lean on your familiarity with and reverence for the original game and characters. Not that the new characters get pushed out of the way, aren't well written, or don't have great moments, but the second half of the game is very clearly re-aligning your objectives to something that services the overarching story.



      One of my favourites this year for sure.

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        #4
        Walking away from this with 100% story completion, golds in every Dive, maxed out social network, all threads/CDs/meals etc. The remaining grind (level 100, all pins, max 300 of them...) was a bit too daunting, but maybe I'll come back later and feel like finishing that off.

        Definitely GOTY contender for me; easy on the eye, pleasant and quick-moving story, loads to do if you want it, great flexibility around challenge.

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          #5
          I haven't played TWEWY yet but want to play it and this. Really excited to dig into them. Maybe they'll be my Christmas break games. Thanks for the impressions!

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            #6
            I wanted to play the first one before this, but I read the Switch port has some unwieldy controls if you're playing it docked. Has anyone tried it?

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              #7
              The control system was always pretty unique - the DS version basically used every input method going for different pin activations (taps/swipes on the touch screen, d-pad, face and shoulder buttons, blow in the microphone...) which had a habit of getting very hectic. I don't know what they did to adapt it for mobile or Switch, so while it's not a definitive answer I can definitely picture it being unwieldy yet quite faithful at the same time.

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