As translated in the subtitle, NEO: The World Ends with You is a JRPG developed by Square Enix for the Nintendo 3DS. It is an intense action game set in a colourful Tokyo, where you play as a special agent named Neku Sakuraba, who has come to the city to seek out the reason behind a mysterious phenomenon that is threatening the city.
In this blog post, I will explain what I play, and show you how you can also enjoy this game.
Neo: The World Ends With You (NEO) is a video game developed by the Japanese video game developer Square Enix. It is a third-person action RPG released on the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable platforms. In contrast to the original Tokyo Game Show 2006 presentation, the game was released in North America on March 31, 2007.
REVIEW – In 2007, Square Enix released The World Ends With You, an action-RPG created by the Kingdom Hearts developers exclusively for the Nintendo DS. Even though the license has been quiet since then, it was resurrected last year with the release of an anime adaptation and the announcement of a new game. Eight months later, the sequel is finally out, and, like its predecessor, it takes set in Shibuya, Tokyo’s fashionable neighborhood. Is the trip still as enjoyable thirteen years later?
Before getting to the heart of the matter, a little contextualisation, in the middle of the 2000s, when Square Enix was struggling with the structure of the PS3, the Japanese publisher decided to focus on titles for handheld consoles. While its significant licences such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest were entitled to their version on these media, it was also the occasion for new titles to be created, such as The World Ends With You. Released in 2007 for the DS and developed by the Kingdom Hearts teams in the graphic style of Tetsuya Nomura, the company’s star character designer, the game had the particularity of setting its action in the heart of Shibuya.
It is the fashion and youth area par excellence of Tokyo, which part of the Western audience found due to this label. It is a real city inside a city in terms of size and significance. Shibuya has been famous in many Japanese themes set in a modern metropolitan setting since then, even though TWEWY has been inactive for almost a decade. Of course, Persona 5 comes to mind, and this neighborhood is a key component of its style. Faced with the current Shibuya craze, Square Enix chose to release a sequel to TWEWY thirteen years after its first release.
Let’s play a game, shall we? It’s the game of the Grim Reaper!
This new episode follows Rindo, an ordinary youngster who hangs around on the streets of Shibuya with his buddy Fret after Neku’s exploits in the first game. Our two companions, however, witness a battle between humans and weird creatures known as Echoes while collecting odd badges by the side of the road. Rindo and Fret realize they are no longer in Shibuya and that the inhabitants of Shibuya can no longer see them, despite the fact that they are still in Shibuya. They are informed that they are now taking part in the Reaper Game, a week-long survival challenge. During this period, they must perform tasks against other teams to collect points, win the game, and return home.
NEO TWEWY manages to provide a scenario packed in twists and turns while staying more approachable than a Kingdom Hearts scenario based on this fairly basic survival game concept. We are more interested in following this storyline since the cast of characters is extremely sympathetic, especially the team of heroes, who profit from exciting events that make them lovable. Unfortunately, the writing suffers further in this approach. The game’s speech takes the form of portraits that respond to one other in a comic book style, and real-time cinematics are uncommon. Time this enables you to appreciate the art team’s visuals, which are faithful to Tetsuya Nomura’s aesthetic, tunnels of speech that are not always dubbed may get overwhelming after a while.
Shibuya is a great place to go for a stroll.
But, beyond its narrative, NEO’s greatest strength is its world. Because the title’s action takes place entirely in Shibuya, the city is explored from top to bottom, and its residents sometimes play important roles in the narrative. Despite the urgency of the situation, we continue to enjoy the delights of the neighborhood, thanks to the creators’ clever use of real-world aspects with RPG mechanics. Restaurants are utilized to boost your team’s numbers, while fashionable clothing are used to replace equipment.
The characters’ clothes, which represent their personalities, have been given particular attention to make Shibuya seem like a trendy and young neighborhood. It all depends on how much you like Nomura’s aesthetic. Despite contemporary features such as cellphones, all of this gives the game a look that smells like the 2000s, somewhere between Jet Set Radio and Kingdom Hearts. Furthermore, the French translation, which manages to properly reproduce the contemporary language of young people by utilizing the colloquial register wisely and selectively, may be highlighted to emphasize the cast’s youthfulness. As a result of all of these features, as well as the meticulous art direction, we get the impression that Shibuya is Tokyo’s fashionable neighborhood.
The music is also quite important in the title’s urban and young vibe. Takeharu Ishimoto, who also created the soundtrack for the previous game, includes both new and remixed songs. At the intersections of rock, electro, hip-hop, and pop, the soundtrack offers a wide range of genres with as much intensity as ever. Because of this diversity, the soundtrack is evocative of Jet Set Radio, with its numerous outstanding songs. Even more than in the environment, music plays an important role in the game since it is an integral component of the battle system’s lexicon.
Maintaining the rhythm
It’s one thing to have an interesting tale and world, but what do you do in NEO? It’s simple: every day, our heroes must accomplish a task before the other teams get points. The goals are usually unclear, requiring you to answer very easy puzzles. You may use your team members’ extrasensory talents to persuade even the most obstinate NPCs and progress: remember memories, imprint a concept in their heads, confront their inner demons, or go back in time… To get out of a terrible circumstance, all measures are appropriate. Unfortunately, as the journey continues, you’ll see that you’re doing the same things over and over again, and that the daily tasks aren’t very interesting. Some of them are just battle tunnels with little thinking put into them.
Because, sure, the battles are the core of the game in an Action-RPG. We combat Echoes with the aid of badges that grant our heroes abilities throughout these fights. Furthermore, the game has a broad spectrum of powers, including hand-to-hand combat, ranged combat, explosives, healing, rays, black holes, and charged bullets. In concrete words, each button on the controller correlates to a character and, as a result, to a discharged badge each time it is pressed. The goal of battle is to mix up the assaults amongst team members and strike the opponents in time to fill the Groove gauge to 100 percent and unleash devastating attacks.
As you can see, the fighting gameplay is very straightforward. The battles seem to be exciting at first sight, due to the barrage of effects on the screen and the sense of strength you receive from rapidly dispatching opponents at full speed. Unfortunately, even though the latter gets a bit more complicated with time due to a few nuances, it’s obvious that after a while, you’re still happy to pound the controller buttons. The boss fights aren’t particularly exciting because of their simplicity, and they don’t utilize the Groove concept described before. The action’s readability is also an issue. Because of the many effects and the camera’s difficulty tracking what is occurring on screen, it is often impossible to comprehend what is going on. Despite this, the game manages to maintain a 60fps frame rate on the PS4 version we played on PS5.
-Zardoz-
Pros:
+ A visually stunning and stylish universe + Combat system that is both simple and dynamic + A plot with many twists and turns, as well as interesting characters
Cons:
– Long-term discussions fall hollow – Repetitive and chaotic fighting – Some game levels are too similar
Square Enix is the publisher of this game.
h.a.n.d. is the name of the developer.
Action-RPG is the genre in which this game is set.
The film will be released on July 27, 2021.
REVIEW – In 2007, Square Enix released The World Ends With You, an action-RPG created by the Kingdom Hearts developers that was unique to the Nintendo DS. Even though the license has been quiet since then, it was resurrected last year with the release of an anime adaptation and the announcement of a new game. Eight months later, the sequel is finally out, and, like its predecessor, it takes set in Shibuya, Tokyo’s fashionable neighborhood. Is the trip still as enjoyable thirteen years later? Before we get into the meat of the issue, a little background information: we’re in the midst of the…
NEO: The World Ends With You is a thrilling action-RPG set in a vibrant Tokyo.
Gergely Herpai (BadSector)
Neo: The Environment Ends With You is a faithful sequel to its predecessor, providing enjoyable, though rather simple and repetitive action, likable characters, and a fantastic world to explore.
Neo: The Environment Ends With You is a faithful sequel to its predecessor, providing enjoyable, though rather simple and repetitive action, likable characters, and a fantastic world to explore.
For those who have played the recent mobile hit, “NEO: The World Ends With You”, you’ll know that the game’s full potential doesn’t really come to fruition until you start using two of its most interesting and powerful tools: the ability to swap between the game’s two characters and the world map’s use of colour coding.. Read more about neo the world ends with you tv tropes and let us know what you think.
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