Neo The World Ends With You is a sequel to the original game, The World Ends With You which was released in 2008. It takes place 3 years after the events of the original game and focuses on a new cast of players, The Wicked Twisters.
Rindo and his friend Fret are dragged into the U.G and are forced to take part in the Reapers game hosted by Shiba where they must survive a week completing objectives and have to team up with other players like Nagi and ex-reaper Sho Minamoto to survive. They are not the only ones, other groups of players like the Ruin Bringers, Deep River Society, Purehearts and the Variabeauties are all competing to survive.
The edgy atmosphere makes a comeback and it feels fresher than ever with the modernized look of Shibuya with the use of smartphones instead of flip phones.
The artstyle looks attractive as ever and every single one of the character designs is unique and stylish. The animation looks really incredible and I really appreciated the return of comic book style cut scenes.The graphics were stunning with detailed cel shaded style. The user interface was both stylish and very easy to navigate through. Shibuya has been modernized to reflect the current look Shibuya in real life and its really well done.
As in the original game, you can scan peoples' thoughts to look for clues and to also look for noise to fight and you can also form chain battles. Instead of tapping, you have to move near to the noise and then they’ll chase you. You can also dive into peoples minds with Nagi to go through multiple rounds of noise to eliminate the negative feelings the target has and the better you perform, the greater the rewards. You can imprint “memes” into peoples minds but instead of one word, you have to imprint two words to change their thoughts.
Fret has remind, which is used to help people remember certain things. Rindo has replay which is the ability to change time but the story still plays out the same and you can revisit the places you visited on “replay” as much as possible to tie any loose ends. There is a sizeable number of pins, old and new to customize and collect and it gives you a large array to experiment with. Instead of using the touch screen, it is using the buttons on your PlayStation or Switch controller.
The combat is in 3D instead of 2D and instead of it being 2 players, it’s now 4. There isn’t any sync system or changing party members having different effects for the main player like in the last game.