YMMV / NEO: The World Ends with You

• Abandon Shipping: Rindo was frequently shipped with Nagi after the pre-release videos. The game itself reveals she's a college student who instantly falls for Minamimoto while making a very bad first impression on Rindo, which may have killed this, particularly given Rindo's chemistry with Shoka and longer term friendship with her as Swallow.
• Accidental Innuendo: In the prologue, visiting the ramen shop will result in Fret asking if you're "in the mood for 'men".
• Adorkable: Almost all of the main characters are this in some capacity.
  • Rindo is a socially-conscious, awkward young man with a tendency to keep people at arm’s length but when push comes to shove, he shows himself to have a heart of gold and genuinely cares for the people around him even if he isn’t always the best at showing it. He’s also a huge fanboy of social media guru An0ther and constantly quotes them and shows himself to be easily flustered around his implied crush Shoka.
  • Fret is a lovable chatterbox of a young man with a love for spouting memes and fashion who often makes incredibly lame puns and gets adorably tongue-tied around his crush Kanon.
  • Nagi is incredibly socially awkward and highly self-conscious around others but still does her earnest best to try and support the people around her, all the while speaking in ye olde English and being incredibly hammy while doing so.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Motoi have a change of heart and seek redemption on Week 2 Day 7, or were his attempts to help the Wicked Twisters defeat the Ruinbringers because doing so was the only way left for him to survive?
• Award Snub: Despite having a universally acclaimed soundtrack that ranks among 2021's best, NEO was conspicuously shut out of the Best Soundtrack/Score category at the 2021 Game Awards.
• Awesome Art: The game retains the art style of its predecessor, which was one of the highest points of praise for the game. It even manages to possibly be even more impressive due to having a larger screen to work with than the original DS, allowing it to not only have the more slick polish of the Remix ports, but also allowing even more art to be present at once.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Sho Minamimoto, just like in the first game. While he’s less prone to being egocentric and has humbled himself a bit, he is well aware that he’s one of the most powerful characters in the series and his intro and post-battle quotes showcase this.
    "I don't have time for uninspiring integers."
    "Perfect calculations...deliver perfect results!"
    "Heh, naturally!"
  • Shiba Miyakaze is no slouch in this department. Not only does he take the position of both Game Master AND Conductor all for himself, his boss fight even plays into this aspect as well, as he fights the main characters with nothing but the most basic Psychs and clones of himself in order to showcase his superiority even more. His clones will even nonchalantly pose in the air, showing off his self-confidence quite nicely.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • Both of the fights with Mr. Mew dolls can qualify as this, both for their surprisingly relentless assaults and hilariously cute gimmick of having to fight multiple Killer Teddy Bear at once. On top of that, as a fun Call-Back to the original game, their attacks incorporate multiple aspects of Shiki’s Fusions in different phases.
  • Motoi's boss fight has the Catharsis Factor of coming after he's revealed as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and the hilarious yet fun gimmick where he crowdfunds powerups for his team.
  • Tsugumi’s Grus Cantus form on Week 2 Day 7 also deserves special mention. On top of it serving as an incredibly effective Plot Twist, it also has several powerful Beam Spam moves, can clone itself to barrage you with attacks, and even sends a storm of fireballs at you, making for an intense yet engaging boss fight. All the while SCRAMBLE blares in the background.
  • The boss fight on Week 3 Day 4 has the grand return of Minamimoto, after spending a week or so absent from the game. He returns to seize the power of the Dissonance Noise that's been building up throughout the game, only for it to take over his body and give the Wicked Twisters one hell of a boss fight in Leo Cantus Armo, complete with the NEO remix of Transformation playing. A powered up version of the boss also serves as the game's Superboss.
  • Shiba himself is often cited by players as one of the best bosses in the game, primarily because he's quite challenging without being a giant Damage-Sponge Boss. He goes down fairly quickly if you exploit his weakness to wind, but all the same, good luck actually hitting him. Between his speed, teleportation, and aggression, he's a boss that forces players to be a bit more tactical on higher difficulties. Then couple it with his incredibly badass boss theme, the fact that he Fights Like a Normal as opposed to going One-Winged Angel like every other Reaper, and that his Reality Warper powers twist and contort the Scramble Crossing into something that just outright looks cool as hell, and you have a proper winner in this category.
  • The Final Boss, Phoenix Cantus is the culmination of everything that's been building up the entire game and it makes for one wicked finale for the Wicked Twisters. Made especially amazing by its rocking boss theme World is Yours, which is the full version of the intro theme. It's a multi phase boss fight typical for any JRPG, but the icing on the cake is that one, you can Soundsurf to dodge one of its attacks, and two, the finishing blow that the Wicked Twisters deal is similar to Neku's final Fusion from the first game where all of his partners power him up. Here, the Wicked Twisters all charge up for a Killer Remix, necessitating you to hold all six inputs, and the Groove goes off the charts, reaching 999%.
• Breather Level:
  • Day 5 of Week 2 starts with some Reaper missions that are so easy the party wonders whether they're going easy on them, then undergoes an Unexpected Gameplay Change into a Hidden Object Game and it's one of the shortest chapters to play through. The boss (a T-Rex Noise) can be a bit troublesome, but otherwise this is one of the easiest Days to complete, especially in comparison to the battle-heavy Days 3, 4 and 6 (the former and latter being Scramble Slams). It's justified, as it's heavily implied Shoka is pulling strings to make the day's mission easier for the Twisters.
  • Day 5 of Week 3 also isn't all that hard, with the objective simply being to make it to Cat Street so that Neku can get in touch with Coco. Each area has a necessary battle against Plague Noise, which while troublesome, are nothing you haven't been accustomed to since the start of the week. The boss is a Plague Pachy (a Mammoth) which is predictably hard-hitting yet easy to read. It helps that, with Neku finally in your party, you now have access to six pins for use in combat.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: It's not hard to figure out that the Ruinbringers are cheating, given that they're always at the top of the rankings even on days where they don't complete missions, they finish missions unrealistically quickly when they do decide to compete, and are bailed out by Shiba on technicalities any time it looks like they might lose. The real twists are how and why.
• Catharsis Factor: Immediately after Motoi's duplicity is revealed, you get to fight against and defeat the person in question in a boss battle.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Light affinity pins are pretty much a must for anyone's mid-to-late game pin decks. While there do exist dedicated recovery pins, these come with significant downsides. ^note The instant-heal pins, like in the original, have a limited number of uses before they shut down for the fight; regen-inducing pins require the button (ZL, R2, et al) be held but are capable of being rebooted. Light-type pins let the player keep using one of their units for offense and are overall still very practical recovery choices. Heartthrob Launcher in particular covers a wide area, and while it might not seem like it's recovering much, post-battle HP counts will show you just how effective it is.
• Complete Monster: Tanzo Kubo, seemingly Shiba's obnoxious right-hand man, is in truth the mastermind behind the events of the game. An Angel from the Higher Plane known as "The Executor", Kubo is tasked with erasing cities when requested by the Composers, having previously done so to Shinjuku and ripping out the soul of Tsugumi Matsunae when she tried to stop it. After the Shinjuku Reapers move to Shibuya, Kubo corrupts Shiba's mind and has him create Plague Noise to steal the souls of countless Players, Reapers, and regular civilians. Kubo also illegally drags living humans into the Reaper's Game by having Player Pins distributed in the RG. When a fellow Reaper, Shoka Sakurane, is discovered to have been helping the Wicked Twisters, Kubo has Shiba force Ayano to infect herself with Plague Noise to get her to rejoin the Reapers, knowing that Ayano will die from it. Upon Shiba's defeat, Kubo reveals his true intentions: to use the Noise created by Rindo's Replay to erase Shibuya and all of its inhabitants, solely to amuse himself.
• Continuity Lockout: A bizarre instance where an Updated Re-release causes this. While events from the original game are alluded to frequently, they are mostly incidental and can be taken at face value even without having played the original. However, many key plot developments and revelations, especially in Week 3, bank heavily on the player having seen or played through the events of "A New Day" in The World Ends with You: Final Remix, a port that was dismissed by many fans due in part to "A New Day" being considered too short and confusing. It is still possible to piece together what happened through context clues and it isn't totally necessary to know the specifics to understand how it ties into NEO, but many reveals lose a lot of weight if you only played the original DS or mobile versions and skipped Final Remix.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Shark Noise are a terror to face if you aren't familiar with their attack patterns, or if your pins aren't strong enough. They spend most of the time hiding in the ground, taking severely reduced damage until they jump out to bite. Said bite deals horrifying amounts of damage, and can easily tear off half the party's health in one go. And even when they do jump out, you have to hit them with a knockback finisher to force them out of the ground without diving back in. Consider bringing a pin with the Gale Force psych before you dedicate yourself to shark hunting; it can force the sharks out of the 'water'.
  • Chameleon Noise use potent AOE shockwaves, tongue snares and eye beams to damage you, and all of which can inflict large amounts of damage. This might be sufferably nasty if it weren't for the fact that they're invisible (and thus cannot be targeted) half the time, and with how hectic fights can get, the eye-mark over your character may be the only indication that they're present in the arena at all.
  • While Wolf Noise are typically mere Goddamned Bats, the Alterna Wolves in Week 2 are a much greater threat due to their speed, heavy damage output on higher difficulties, and leaving trails of fire when they run. They can appear in groups of up to 5 and have a habit of pinning party members right as other enemies (either more wolves or something strong like a Grizzly) are about to dogpile them, which can easily take your HP from full to near zero.
  • All Rex Noise are this to some extent, but the worst is the Maximizaurus Rex, who can power itself up by devouring one of your party members. When it does, its roar can become a devastating One-Hit Kill if your HP isn’t high enough, which is extremely hard to dodge due to there being no indication of its range.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • The first time you play through Week 2 is a massive one compared to the relatively tame first week, and it's not only because Minamimoto has left the party by then. The Day 1 boss, for example, will easily kill anyone who doesn't bother paying attention to fights and think they can just brute force their way through. Replaying these days after getting Beat, Shoka and/or Neku does make them easier, but replaying Week 1 before Beat joins, especially Days 4 through 7, does make them a little harder due to the fact that you would only have 3 party members instead of the 4 you originally had.
  • Both Ayano boss fights are unlike anything faced before them, featuring a barrier of rotating swords that massively punishes any attempts to attack in melee, and a special attack used at low HP that disables half your party and forces the rest to either free each member before they take a lethal blow, or deflect it with a perfectly timed shield. The Another Day version starts the battle with this attack, and if you haven't done any endgame grinding it will one-hit kill you from full HP even on Easy mode.
  • Another Day in general is designed to be this, as the source of most endgame content, but Felidae Cantus completely takes the cake compared to the other high-level challenges. He's insanely fast, hits hard, outright nullifies all of your attacks unless he attacks first, has a ridiculous amount of health, armor that soaks up much of the damage you try and inflict on him, memorizes the last pins you used on him effectively, nullifying their damage and instantly countering them, capable of hitting inactive party members, and has a few instant-death moves he'll occasionally bust out. Oh, but he does have a weakness to water. In short, if you want to win even on easy difficulty, you'll need to go over-the-top with HP and defense buffs, from food to threads, be at least level 80, and an over-reliance on the Year Long Ensemble pin set. And if you want the last pin of the Black Cat Ensemble set, you'll need to set the difficulty to at least normal and crank your level all the way down to 1 to set the drop rate to an acceptable margin. Good luck.
    Youtube commenter: mfw youre struggling with a superboss so you look up how other people have fought him and its... in the exact same way you're doing it
• Ending Fatigue: The Final Day involves you going through the same day three times, having to talk to the same people multiple times with slight differences in each conversation each time. It takes a long while to get from the beginning of the first Final Day to the actual Final Boss.
• Epileptic Trees: After Neku's design for the game was revealed, many began assuming that it wasn't actually Neku, citing his differently-colored hair and the seeming insistence on concealing his face. The most common theory which turns out to be in fact the case is that it's actually Beat, based on the aforementioned hair color and fashion sense.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: A possible interpretation. Although Shibuya is saved once again, several characters are left with unresolved problems in the aftermath. Neku, for instance, gets to return to the RG and reunite with his friends, but the Secret Reports confirm the gaps left by the three years he was in Shinjuku have been filled by memories of a Neku from a parallel universe, meaning he's essentially coming back to someone else's life. On top of that, both his friends and the world around him have continued on with their lives in the time he's been gone, and the official ages indicate he may not even get to finish high school. None of this is addressed directly.
• Fanfic Fuel: We don't get much elaboration on what happened during the three years where Neku and Coco were stuck in the ruins of Shinjuku, other than knowing that by the end of it, Neku had come to see her as a trusted friend and was able to forgive her for killing him, which leaves the fans free to fill in the blanks themselves.
• Genius Bonus: When you first meet Motoi, he assures you that despite his foreign vocabulary, he's "as Japanese as curry rice." Curry rice was not originally a Japanese dish, which hints that he's a fraud and a liar.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Wolf and Raven Noise can pin down teammates, taking them out of the action unless you have someone else on hand to free them with an attack, which may not be possible if your other Psychs are rebooting.
  • Pufferfish Noise don't immediately die when they reach 0 HP, but instead continue to exist until they complete their attempt to selfdestruct in your face. They can move over half the arena very quickly while charging the attack, the explosion hitbox is both wider and longer-lasting than its animation, AND can do enough damage to end your chain in one hit, especially if you're holding multiple party members' buttons at the time. If that wasn't enough, because you can still attack them ineffectively while they're on the death march, you can potentially waste a lot of psyche charges on them before realizing they're down.
  • Rhino Noise can become this especially in small areas due to it blocking attacks on its front side, forcing you to maneuver around to its back to do any damage.
  • The Jelly Germanic Noise stands out from the other Jellies thanks to its cloning technique. While other Jelly Noise are easy to decipher from their clones due to the marking on their bodies, this Jelly has no such distinction, making it easy for them to overwhelm you if you don’t kill them first.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Grus Cantus has a set of tools that make it very hard to build up significant momentum without the ideal pin setup. It can obscure the arena with darkness, making you unable to target and thus attack it. It can send out slow-moving orbs that trap whoever they hit, delaying your attacks as you free the victim. It can engulf the arena with Beam Spam, not only necessitating that you fully focus on dodging but also making it impossible to hit it during the move's startup. All while continuously having multiple clones fire at you. These attacks can end up really stifling your Beatdrop combos, while getting a Killer Remix on this fight is so sorely needed.
  • The second fight against Tsugumi and Mr. Mew isn't particularly challenging, but fits this trope due to the difficulty of getting all the pin drops, most notably one of the Yearlong Ensemble pins and one of the Black Cat pins. In order to get these rewards, you'll want to refight this boss... problem is, the fight occurs at the very end of Week 2, Day 7, and the game doesn't give you the courtesy of a blue Noise symbol to rematch it at your own convenience. This requires the player to replay the entire day at least two times (once on Normal or Hard for St. Ver's Uppercut, and once on Ultimate for Black Cat Comet) and face off against two other bosses just to fight Mr. Mew again. And if you don't get Black Cat Comet due to the low drop rate, even at level 1 and with optimal Threads? Hope you remembered to save ahead of time, otherwise you're out of luck!
• Good Bad Bugs: Felidae Cantus can become stuck in a T-pose if you activate a Killer Remix right as he’s attacking, allowing you to essentially cheese the rest of the fight.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Rindo getting the angriest about Shoka temporarily going back to the Reapers at the end of Week 2 becomes this when you realize that Shoka is Swallow.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Rindo and Shoka’s relationship is this with the reveal that Shoka is really Rindo's online friend Swallow. Also, Shoka was secretly helping the Wicked Twisters. Especially in Week 3 Day 2, where Rindo was essentially there for his online friend when they most needed it just like they have been there for him for years, without knowing it.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Andy Hirsch's voice acting credits are minuscule, with Sho being pretty much the only thing he's known for. And despite the memetic status of his voice lines in the original game, he didn't get much time to actually give much of a complete performance. NEO's more extensive use of voiced dialogue gives him the chance to fully bring the character to life, and the manic, condescending energy of his original performance is now fully realized.
  • This is also true of pretty much every member of the original cast. Aside from Neku, most of their voice lines in story moments came at the very end of the game. Jesse David Corti's Neku makes him sound way more mature, fitting his new mentor role, Aaron Spann's Joshua is just as conniving and mysterious as you'd expect, Heather Hogan's Shiki fully realizes her true personality while remaining in sync with her original performance, and Crawford Wilson as Beat proves to be a particular standout. Despite keeping Beat's somewhat awkward slang from the original intact, he still manages to make him feel just as upbeat, tough, and caring as before while moving his character forward in terms of maturity.
  • Paul Castro Jr's Rindo spends most of the game pretty subdued, but his Broken Pedestal moment with Motoi is a powerful performance, being equal parts heartbreak and Tranquil Fury. Same for his heartfelt reaction to Shoka’s temporary betrayal and despair after being the only one of the Wicked Twisters to survive the assault of the Dissonance Noise.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Shiki was falsely accused of being a Reaper spy in the first game. This time there really is a Reaper spy and she's decked out in Shiki's clothing brand.
• Ho Yay:
  • Fret is both extremely supportive of Rindo and always seems annoyed or slightly jealous whenever Rindo talks to Swallow, whom he gives his entire attention to whenever they text each other(not entirely unfounded, since Rindo's Social Network entry notes that he only really lets his guard down around Swallow). And that's not getting into him fanboying over Oji.
  • Shiba and Hishima were once best friends that have grown apart ever since moving to Shibuya, however, their dialogue and relationship as depicted in the Final Day can easily be interpreted in a manner similar to a pair of ex-lovers.
  • Joshua continues to be as flirtatious with Neku as he was in the first game. Their long-awaited reunion is incredibly fond, with the two smiling softly at each other while Neku calls him "partner", and the Secret Reports even clarify that Joshua showed up on the Final Day just to help Neku, his mere presence stabilizing Neku's mind. After the battle, Neku waits for him alone at Udagawa, and they have a private conversation reminiscent of their old back-and-forth teasing. It's notable that Neku acts more like his old self here than his does for most of the game.
    • Joshua himself explains that he sent Neku to Shinjuku to save him after he was shot by Coco. The Secret Reports go on further to clarify that Joshua's actions were to protect Neku from those who would harm him for his abilities, and to have him handle the situation there. In the Japanese version, Joshua even says that because it was Neku, he knew he could trust him.
    • During the beginning of the first week, an anonymous speaker is seen talking to someone while overlooking the Scramble, stating that they hope this other person will wake up soon so they won't miss all the action. The game files reveal the speaker to be Joshua, and given the context, it's highly likely he's talking to Neku. This not only calls back to Neku's monologue to Joshua at the end of the first game, but also begs the question of how often he's done this in Neku's three-year absence.
  • The new CAT graffiti introduced in the anime, featuring Neku's headphones and Joshua's wings, is now canon to the games as of NEO, and is visible at Udagawa.
  • Shoka and Ayano have been rather close ever since Shoka joined the Shinjuku Reapers and Ayano took her under her wing. Ayano is the most upset after Shoka permanently leaves the Reapers for the Wicked Twisters and takes the Noise inside herself in an attempt to get Shoka back, while Shoka gets herself killed in the initial timeline of Week 3 Day 2 while attempting to save Ayano.
  • While Shoka has a close bond with Rindo due to being Swallow, she appears to have a soft spot for Nagi, since she's nicer to Nagi than to the male Wicked Twisters. Meanwhile, Nagi is rather considerate of Shoka especally when it comes to Ayano.
• I Knew It!:
  • In the release date reveal trailer, 'Neku' was shown, but some fans believed that it wasn't Neku, but, in fact, Beat due to how he dresses. Come the second day of the second week, it ends with the very scene shown in the trailer, but it includes the part where Beat reveals himself and tells the Twisters that he's not Neku, something which the trailers did not show.
  • Some fans had already guessed that Shoka would pull a Heel–Face Turn and join the Wicked Twisters before the game's release due to how often she'd appear alongside them in official art and the fact the final trailer included a clip of Rindo trying to get her to join the party.
• Iron Woobie: Shoka is forced to deal with her best friend initially hating her despite her actually secretly helping him from the sides, having to turn against and face down her former True Companions in order to save Shibuya, having to Mercy Kill her big sister figure Ayano to prevent her from suffering a painful death via Plague Noise, be forced to take down a ghostly image of Ayano a few days later, die in two separate timelines (one of which involves her performing a Heroic Sacrifice in order to save Rindo), and do all of this while living with the knowledge that even if she helped the Wicked Twisters ultimately save Shibuya, she won’t be around to see it due to the rule of Shinjuku dictating that she either get Erased or stay a Reaper at the end of the week. Yet, despite all of this, she still presses on, all the while snarking the entire time. It’s quite telling that when Rindo finds out about her upcoming Heroic Sacrifice, she’s more concerned about how it will affect him rather than her inevitable demise.
• Love to Hate:
  • Tanzo Kubo is a completely irredeemable Jerkass who earns the ire of every single character in the game, and yet, he's such an unrepentant sleazy jackass that he also steals the show whenever he's on screen. His over the top expressions and voice acting certainly help.
  • Shiba, the Game Master of this iteration of the Reaper's Game, hounds the Wicked Twisters every single day with the same old tired catchphrases and fire related word play for his broadcasts. It's no wonder then that the heroes get tired of him, and yet, his performance is just so delightfully smug that you can't help but also like it just as much as you want to fight him.
• Magnificent Bastard: Sho Minamimoto makes a return, see The World Ends with You's page for details.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "This game was clearly influenced by Persona 5." ^note Immediately after the game was announced, social media was full of people comparing NTWEWY to Persona 5. Many found this comparison ridiculous, considering that many of the things that the games have in common are found in multiple other games, and that the first TWEWY game was released nearly a decade before P5. The comparison was widely mocked by pictures of other, totally unrelated games or real-world locations being posted by people sarcastically claiming that those things took influence from P5 as well.
  • The opening and closing lines Shiba always gives in his daily updates of the Reaper's Game, to the point the player will likely grow mad from hearing them over and over.
    • "Greetings, sheeple of Shibuya! Got some red-hot news for ya!"
    • "And with that, I bid you adieu."
    • "But the Ruinbringers remain on top." ^note No matter how well the Wicked Twisters or any other team perform, the daily end results will always have this same message reminding (read: "mocking") them and the player that they are eternal losers, thus it has become a synonym to failure and futility.
  • Susukichi posting ^note At a few points in the story, the Wicked Twisters have to chase after Susukichi who's hiding all over Shibuya. He sends clues to the heroes by lieu of a blurry selfie and some horribly misspelled words on account of how big he is and how small phones are. The shot of Susukichi has been ripe for edits, putting him in places like a McDonalds or Silent Hill.
  • Tanzo Kubo? Who's that? ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Kubo's ultimate fate later in the game is to be permanently erased from existence by Haz, causing everyone to completely forget who the disgusting bastard is. Naturally, fans rolled with it.
• Moe:
  • Nagi Usui, a college-aged (despite looking like a middle schooler), very excitable cute young woman who loves to go on about her Otaku interests. She has a tendency to become tongue-tied and awkward in social interactions that don’t immediately involve said interests, and she completely gushes any time Minamimoto is on screen. She also speaks like she stars in a fantasy RPG and is pretty over the top with it, which is pretty endearing and just helps emphasize what a giant nerd she is.
  • After she joins the Wicked Twisters, Shoka Sakurane gradually begins to show off more and more of her Moe qualities, whether it’s acting like a Tsundere in her Ship Tease with Rindo or having to deal with the incredible amount of emotional pain she undergoes throughout the game.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Xander Mobus voicing some two-bit Reaper? Who wouldn't suspect that he's The Man in Front of the Man?
• Play-Along Meme: Tanzo Kubo becomes the subject of such a meme, where players don't acknowledge that he exists. Tanzo Whobo? This is because of him being completely Ret-Gone by the game's end, and he's not just simply erased or dead, he's explicitly exorcised, and Rindo and Shiba both have a hard time remembering he ever existed.
• Polished Port: The PC port supports uncapped framerates, runs the game up to 4K resolution, and has very modest hardware requirements to run, making it the best-looking and performing version of the game.
• Preemptive Shipping, After the first trailers dropped, fans begun shipping Rindo with Nagi, owing to the previous game featuring Ship Tease between the protagonist and their first female ally. This one was abandoned when the game released and it turned out Nagi was a college student, has a massive, transparent crush on Minamimoto and Shoka's Ship Tease with Rindo made that pairing the vastly more popular one.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Joshua has gained a lot more respect and popularity when he finally shows up to support Neku and shows that the week he spent time with the latter really changed him for the better by supporting the survival of Shibuya. Even when he trolled Rindo by resurrecting Shoka without telling him, a lot of people find that as mean spirited it seemed, it was pretty funny.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The reminders to eat. Anytime you approach a restaurant with 0% Fullness, some dialogue pops up about how the party is hungry which stops you from entering until they're done talking^note  but can be quickly skipped through with the A/X button like normal dialogue. For whatever reason, these chats only trigger right at the door which just interrupts people who don't need the reminder and doesn't help anyone forgetting to eat.
  • Scramble Slam and its hazy, confusing, barely explained points system.
  • If your current character gets stunned, the game doesn't automatically switch to another, and hitting the attack button of a stunned character will do nothing. This becomes incredibly frustrating when it reverses the value of the Anti-Frustration Feature whereby having any player controlled character dodge an area attack will cause all AI characters to do so too. For example, in the Cervus Cantus boss fight, where it's possible to have your current character picked up by a Raven Noise just as the boss is charging his lightning burst, and be left frantically thumping the attack buttons to select a character who is able to act in order to move behind cover in order that the A.I.s do so; if you don't, the whole party will be hit which because of the shared HP system is an almost certain One-Hit Kill.
• Scrappy Weapon: Kinesis-element Psychs are reliant on randomly-appearing "large objects" for their best damage output and for Beatdrops, making them one of the most awkward types to use.
• Tainted by the Preview: The announcement of a PC version caught everyone by surprise, only for it to cause backlash after it was announced to be an Epic Games Store exclusive, especially after the whole Kingdom Hearts franchise being released as an exclusive to the service. It however would later make a surprise launch on Steam a year after its initial release.
• That One Attack:
  • The chameleon Noise's electric shockwaves can strike with very little warning and do a lot of damage if you attempt to attack them when they're not actively targeting someone, making approaching the thing itself a rather risky endeavor.
  • Grus Cantus flying into the background, summoning multiple clones and launching a barrage of fireballs. The fireballs are slow-moving but with all the lasers and trap spheres to dodge it can be easy to lose track of them until it's too late, and if someone gets trapped it can easily turn the move into a One-Hit Kill. Making things worse, she can use it when her health is nearly depleted.
  • Wolf Plague Noise have an attack where they howl then turn into a fireball then pinball round the field at blistering speeds. They move too fast to dodge effectively and can hit you multiple times in succession by bouncing off the walls in smaller arenas.
  • Ayano is an easy boss fight to play keep-away against, but she has Last Chance Hit Point protection which lets her always use her Last Ditch Move: trapping every party member except Rindo and Shoka while she slowly walks up to slap each of them in turn for massive damage. They can be freed by dealing enough damage, but that entails knowing in advance to give everyone ranged DPS pins for the fight and that the order they're attacked is Nagi, Fret, then Beat. It's even worse when you fight her in Another Day — she opens with this move, and while she only does it once, you're given less time to free the victim(Shoka) before Ayano reaches them, and it's an HP to One attack now.
• That One Level:
  • Week 3 Day 2 is held in a lot of contempt for two key reasons. The first is that the time rewind portion of the chapter involves gratuitous Trial-and-Error Gameplay where Rindo has to ask Shoka the right questions in four different time periods, with the wrong questions requiring the player to sit through the same dialogue repeatedly until they get it right (and the game does not bother giving any hints about what to ask). The second is the boss, Ayano, having a specific Last Ditch Move that's incredibly difficult to counter (might even be unwinnable depending on your pin set and the characters holding them), can lead to instant defeat if not stopped and is only utilized in the last legs of the fight, so if the player ends up dying, they will have to fight the boss from the start all over again.
  • Two words: SCRAMBLE SLAM! Special turf war mission days that consists of nothing more than running around the city and getting into fights, fights and more fights (did we mention fights?), while generally having little plot relevance, making them akin to filler content (though at least the final one doesn't take up the entire day). Getting the prizes is fairly easy with knowledge of the point-scoring mechanics^note Points are rewarded based on the damage from a Beatdrop, so pins with single massive hits like Pink Matador and Bolt Boar will rack up hundreds of times more points than multi-hit psychs like Shockwave, but very difficult otherwise, particularly Week 2 Day 3 which is by far the longest. The reward is ultimately worthwhile, as the pins from the Slams form the main campaign's Infinity -1 Sword, but the grind to get there is substantial.
• That One Sidequest:
  • An optional Dive in Week 3, Day 4 pits you against every type of Dive effect in one single, cramped arena, and the effects are all on the most fitting enemies: two wolves with attack boosts, two jellyfish with HP drain, two ravens with Healthy Erasure (i.e the one thing that heals you likes flying out of reach) and a giant bear. This is an incredibly chaotic fight and your only hope may be to rush for a Killer Remix.
  • While Scramble Slam is easy enough to clear normally, hitting the point targets can be rather difficult for the reasons mentioned above. The second Scramble Slam is the worst since it has the highest point targets and the most territory to fight in, while the third and final Scramble Slam is mercifully short.
  • The last sidequest involving a Dive takes place in Week 3, Day 6 and despite recommending you be Level 50 or above and also giving 7 minutes (more if you unlocked the Social Network skill that increases it) for the Dive itself, with you needing at least one minute left for the Gold award, you're gonna need every second and be at an even higher level to even survive. The first three reductions aren't too bad though they can be time-consuming since they all involve Big Noise. The real challenge comes in Reduction 4, where you have to deal with an HP-Draining chameleon who can take out a good chunk of your health if you don't take it out ASAP. And if you still have time and health left for the final reduction, you have to deal with 3 Big Jellyfish, who can (and will) make clones to drag out the fight. Hope you saved your Killer Remix or knew which pins to bring from the start.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • For as much as Minamimoto has been advertised, he reveals little about himself and disappears after the first week. He only shows up afterwards as a Boss Battle, for a Big Damn Heroes moment, and in Another Day.
  • Hazuki "Haz" Mikagi only has a small (albeit important) role in the endgame despite being Shinjuku's Composer, and thus Joshua's peer.
  • Some were disappointed that Mr. Hanekoma from the first game didn't fill Haz's role.
  • Some feel this way towards Tsugumi, as a consequence of the hype built around the character since they were revealed in a secret ending scene in Solo Remix. While her role is far from small, Tsugumi is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, existing more to shine some light about certain background topics like Shinjuku's ultimate fate. This is apparently because NEO's plot went through major changes between the tease in Solo Remix and its release — she was intended to play a much bigger role in earlier drafts.
  • The Shinjuku Reapers in general don't have that much characterization and seemingly just exist to move the plot along, which is unfortunate as they have good designs and at least some basis for personality. Ayano's characterization is mostly just centered around Shoka, and despite apparently being Shiba's second in command before he dissolved the hierarchy, she doesn't really do much to affect the Reaper's Game. Hishima has a history with Shiba, but outside of being The Stoic, not much is known about him either. Finally, Kaie, despite his unique manner of communication and him occasionally helping out the heroes, nothing's really known about him either.
  • Fuya also doesn't have much in terms of personality or role, and only really shows up to be an obstacle for the heroes to take down, and his subsequent erasure is just to show how serious the Reaper's Game is. Motoi and Kanon get at least enough story presence and depth, but Fuya doesn't really have any.
• Tough Act to Follow: Inevitable considering the build-up from the Sequel Gap, but the game has somewhat fallen into this. Though generally well-received and effective at following in the footsteps as its predecessor, its story and characters aren't quite as resonant or groundbreaking as the first game.
• Unexpected Character:
  • While Minamimoto came back to life at the end of Final Mix, him being a playable character and part of the main cast for this game was not something the fans saw coming.
  • Rindo himself qualifies as this. Longtime fans were anticipating the formerly unnamed Tsugumi Matsunae or Neku to be the protagonist of NEO: The World Ends With You prior to its announcement with the reveal of a new character as the protagonist coming off as a surprise.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Basically everybody in-universe hates Kubo, but he has proven to be rather popular in the fanbase.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Hand in hand with Awesome Art, but the games use of Cel Shading allows it to still look like it's a 2D work rather than full 3D. The backgrounds in particular still look like 2D backdrops even though they're obviously 3D models. The characters naturally also benefit greatly from this. The final shot of the trailer with Rindo really shows off how impressive the textures are in conveying this idea.