The World Ends With You

The PC port came out today, for anyone who cares. It's basically flawless from my experience, no issues to speak of supports uncapped framerates and up to 4k resolution. System requirements are also pretty modest. If you don't care about Epic exclusivity it's the best version of the game.

Square Enix better hope it does well on there, because they screwed up so badly with the intitial console versions in terms of getting them sold its beyond stupid.

The lack of any real marketing outside of Japan, whether to get people up to snuff on the series really hurt it, and it did terribly in Japan too, at that.

Which I find really ironic, considering how so blatantly Japanese the game is, what with the sheer amount of Shibuya's fashion scene on display, you'd think the series would have more appeal there.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Sep 28th 2021 at 10:59:08 AM

I finished the game the other day and I thought it wrapped up pretty well. Having the majority of the cast that you've met throughout both this game and the original all come together to take down the Dissonance and save Shibuya was a great way to illustrate the games' themes of expanding your world through meeting with and opening up to others. I especially appreciated how it was conclusive. Obviously there's room to revisit the setting if Square-Enix so chooses (though I'm not personally counting on it), but it's good that the plot concluded without some sort of cliffhanger or a whole bunch of dangling loose ends or sequel hooks that more likely than not will never be followed up on, like a certain other years-later miraculous revival. *glares at Golden Sun* And I also liked how the story deconstructed Rindo's posistion as protagonist; no he does have the Game-Breaker Replay power because he's a prodigy protagonist like Neku was, but because he's actually a screw-up who's the perfect patsy for the Big Bad's plan and the final boss is essentially the physical manifestation of his Fatal Flaw.

The game's not quite as tightly written as the first game was; it's very backended in that it's not until the last third of the game (the end of the 2nd Week starting with the Motoi reveal at the earliest) that you really start getting same sort of driving urgency the first game had, all the more memorable and cooler boss fights are then, and you start getting the more personal, introspective character writing though again, it's not quite on the same consistent level as the first game's. I know a number of people don't like the Replay part where Rindo has to get Shoka to open up but I actually loved that part for the above reasons. We definitely should've seen a bit more of Tsugumi, Hishima, and Ayano; Ayano especially could've benefited from putting in a couple more appearances contextualizing her dislike of Shibuya and feelings over Shinjuku's loss before going off the deep end and having to cram her relationship with Shoka into a flashback.

I somehow went through the whole game up to the reveal without Shoka ever being on my radar for Swallow's true identity. Going into the game I figured if it was a character already known to the audience it was going to be someone like Tsugumi, being more chipper online versus a Rei Ayanami Expy IRL, Joshua, or Shinjuku's Composer. I quickly scratched Joshua off and had gradually settled on it being Shinjuku's Composer, trying to nudge Rindo into stopping his renegade Reapers from erasing another city, but then Shoka admits to it and only after then do we meet Shinjuku's Composer, and it obviously wouldn't've been Hazuki. Now I see that the foreshadowing is all right there in the opening with Shoka holding a phone up in Rindo's face and Swallow stopped responding around the time Shoka got on Shiba's shit list towards the end of the second week. Oh, and Joshua abruptly Thanos-snapping her out of the UG was one of the funniest things in the game.

So, the game does suffer from lightning-in-a-bottle syndrome somewhat, but overall it feels a lot more coherent and thought-out than many of Square-Enix's more recent flagship titles and it's a fantastic demonstration of how to revisit an old, niche IP after so many years and put out a product that still captures much of what made the original beloved. I'm glad that after all these years of sequel teasing and blue-balling that the final product was a satisfactory one. Now to get my ass kicked on Another Day and collect all the secret reports to hopefully illuminate the murkier aspects of the plot.

Edited by ComicX6 on Oct 7th 2021 at 2:49:37 PM

Definitely agree that too much of the important story stuff in NEO happens in the third week, I think they could have spaced it out a bit more.

Still, I was honestly expecting a mediocre sequel, so NEO just being able to reach the knees of its predecessor is already a slapping success in my book.

And now I'm reminded I still haven't gotten 100% completion yet. Drats.

Alright, I took a huge break between Weeks 1 and 2, but did the rest over the course of a few weeks.

To me NEO is an improvement in most respects over the first game, but the original felt more impactful because of where I was when it came out (I was Neku's age then; now I'm twice Rindo's). Though the soundtrack is about a step down, mostly because there's not nearly as much crazy levels of collaboration—most of the lyrical tracks are sung by the same two vocalists. Don't know if that's budget or just because of COVID.

The only thing that really disappointed me was Another Day. I was hype for the whole cast together for a goofy adventure after a super-moody Week 3, but it didn't even last an hour—including the four boss fights!

Personally, I found myself largely satisfied with NEO, but I feel like Rindo´s character arc isn't anywhere as good as Neku´s.

Yeah, AD NEO definitely wasn't as good as AD classic. But there was no Tin-Pin-esque minigame to center it around, so maybe that was inevitable.

AD Neo definitely needed to be longer, and Tin Pin was sorely missed.

I’d say in general the story isn’t as good as the original’s.

Yeah, like NEO is good, definitely worth playing, but it's not as good as the first game.

Too be fair that's a damn high bar to live up to.

the albums Ishimoto made in-between games for TWEWY imply that his preferred vocalists just narrowed down as time went on

Edited by Nouct on Jan 26th 2022 at 7:52:11 AM

IIRC one of the vocalists who didn't return scaled down her singing career after recovering from a broken jaw a number of years ago.

Original had a better-constructed plot, but I prefer the writing in NEO simply because a proper party gave them the opportunity for way more character interactions, and that's the thing I liked most about both games.

Oh definitely. The party banter is excellent from the get go. In particular I like Beat in NEO way more than I liked him in the original. His character works a lot better bouncing off a bunch of different personalities.

The first one had great interactions too but it's mainly between neku and everyone else. This one has better interactions between party members due to the format change of the game and even a few of the villains honestly. The villains in the first game overall were more one dimensional I feel. Also Neo has Shoka which is a huge plus.

Also even now I still adore this soundtrack <3

I sincerely appreciate "the twenty-aughts never ended" vibes of the soundtrack, particularly how there's more Nu Metal than the game from 2007. And it's not even out of nostalgia—I just adore when genres that fells off in the US keep their own scene in other countries for decades longer, like how a bunch of anime soundtracks in the 90s were still heavily disco-influenced.

Neo TWEWY, just got shadow dropped on Steam today.

Well, I finished NEO's main story in (checks notes) late April, but there was a big blackout that day, so I postponed my comments until I got all the Secret Reports and other extra content. They're really nice to have, but otherwise, I don't think this post will be any different from what I would have written on April 21st.

The short of it is that NEO is a game I'm not sure I'd have loved, but I'd have at least liked it if it was its own thing instead of a TWEWY sequel. Having to compare to a near-perfect narrative is troubling of its own accord, but I feel like there are a lot of problems that only came to my attention because what NEO was doing wrong was exactly what the original TWEWY did right.

My main takeaway from NEO was that TWEWY's partner system was absolutely genius in how it defined the game's pacing, characterization, and lore. I need to break down these three topics one by one to explain what felt so lacking to me.

• Pacing: TWEWY was a game with no time to spare. It establishes the stakes of erasure in the first 10 seconds, immediately spells out what Neku is about, and then proceeds to flesh out every partner in one week each while letting them have their influence on Neku's worldviews. Locking each partner to one week leaves no room for slack. The emotional impact of the game starts with Shiki's backstory in the middle of the first week and never drops this momentum. Meanwhile, NEO opens up a whole motivation-killer week of the main trio unaware that the UG is the afterlife and the stakes of erasure (Why?) and only starts picking up steam with the Motoi and Shouka reveals on the 6th day of the 2nd week. It can definitely keep the swing going from there, but the first game did the same for twice as long.

• Characterization: Consider this paragraph just a reflavoring of the paragraph above, because these two issues are intrinsically tied to each other. The most significant difference between TWEWY and NEO is that Neku's partners feel like actual characters while Rindo's partners feel like just party members. TWEWY wasted no effort in fleshing them out, perhaps because the idea that they only had one week each encouraged the writer to make the most out of each week. NEO, however, only fleshes out Rindo and Shouka to the same extent. The best it does for Fret and Nagi is to dedicate one day to each of them in the last week. Even more frustrating, the character moments they finally get after 2 and a half weeks of existing just for banter are excellent in concept and execution but don't really fit as conclusions. The reveal of Nagi's communication skills would work better if done immediately after her first impressions and then given her room to show it off. Fret's mask falling off was already the game's most hard-hitting moment but it would work better as a late Week 2 reveal that gives him the whole of the 3rd week to find himself again.

• Lore: The first TWEWY leaves you off thinking the game is set in an amazingly kind-hearted world. The mechanism of the afterlife is dictated by self-improvement and engagement that get rewarded with second chances. You're temporarily separated from your biggest fixation and required to mutually share your personal world with someone else if you want to come back to life. There are also other players there who are not your enemies, on the contrary, everyone only benefits from helping each other. The whole system is designed to make players reconstruct themselves and return to the RG as more well-rounded persons than they were before. And while the first game suggests that, it's NEO that confirms that this beautiful system of personal growth is only Joshua's set of rules and other places with other Composers are not like that. Shinjuku's Reaper Game is pointless and stagnant. And I'm not saying shouldn't be, that's what the game's themes demanded. But it's certainly frustrating to learn that what I loved the most about TWEWY's lore is actually locally limited to 1/23 of a city.

On a less generalized note, the way Neku learns to connect with others only to spend the next 3 years alone in a spiritual graveyard really left a sour taste in my mouth. Easily the worst writing decision in the game.

That's my general impression of NEO. Gameplay-wise, it's a flat improvement over the first game. No notes. Combat gets very fun when there's only one screen so I can keep track of what's happening a lot more often. I just think it would benefit from cutting the first week entirely or just making better use of its time.