NEO: The World Ends With You, much like its predecessor, is a snapshot of Tokyo’s inner city. Japan’s capital has been the focus of countless video games over the years, but few have captured the beautiful chaos of its metropolitan streets quite like Tetsuya Nomura’s underrated classic. Square Enix managed to craft a stylish rendition of Shibuya that felt achingly faithful to the real thing while simultaneously morphing the iconic crossing and its neighbouring districts into an environment that subverted our definition of reality.
This blending of our real world with the unknown enraptured me decades ago, taking me on a journey with a fantastic cast of characters and a biting narrative which played on the fears of adolescence and the expectations that weigh upon young people as they approach maturity. It’s a beautiful game, and one I and several others thought would never receive a sequel. But here we are, with NEO: The World Ends With You acting as a direct continuation of the previous game while daring to expand upon it in so many fascinating ways. Though it falls victim to repetition and some irksome design choices, this is an unexpected gem in a genre that is often far too predictable.
You play as Rindo Kanade, a teenager who finds himself meeting an untimely death as he’s wrapped up in the Reaper’s Game. To put it simply, this is a fight for the death set amidst the afterlife where teams need to work together and amass enough points to prove they’re good enough for a second chance at life. Finish in last place, and you’ll be erased from existence forever. Our protagonist teams up with childhood friend Tosei Furusawa and sheltered otaku Nagi Usui, a trio brought together for their mutual need to survive despite their obvious ideological differences. While the game’s central party is awfully small for JRPG standards, its central characters are so layered with chemistry that it doesn’t matter.
Neighbouring team captains and the cavalcade of villains you encounter throughout the campaign further cement NEO’s dedication to style, with strong writing and a striking localisation effort helping its millennial rendition of Shibuya feel like a real place, and having been there a couple of times, it felt like stepping back into familiar territory as I darted across the scramble and scurried into side streets. The skyscrapers that surround Rin don’t obey the laws of physics, threatening to stretch towards him and swallow his party whole as the streets you walk upon grow more and more claustrophobic.
Our cast having their lives unfairly snatched away is juxtaposed beautifully with their willingness to rebel, since going against the status quo is the only way to reclaim what’s been lost. Nomura’s world is both a bleak expression of death and the wondrous freedom of youth, and there’s nothing else quite like it. While the original game was a commentary on the growing relevance of technology and our dependence upon it, the sequel aims to explore how the general public is enraptured by influencers and capitalism, bowing down to trends instead of striving for a sense of independence. As the player, you are a victim of this system, and it’s only through the narrative that these power structures are disassembled and placed under the microscope.
Rindo and company are young, ignorant, and fail to release the true stakes of the game they’ve been thrust into until people start dying around them. The Reaper’s Game has been rigged for years, the adults at the helm of larger, more established teams fixing the leaderboards and killing off newcomers purely to feed their own egotistical thirst for relevancy. There’s no place for them in the real world, so they’ve taken this unending purgatory and made it their own. While I can’t talk about where things go beyond the opening few hours, it’s filled with unexpected surprises and callbacks to the original game that fans will adore. Don’t let the simplistic environments and repetitive combat put you off, NEO: The World Ends With You is hiding away so many brilliant moments.
Speaking of combat, this is arguably the weakest element of the entire package. Rindo and his friends are able to equip pins, which each possess a distinct ability whether it be melee strikes, long-ranged projectiles, deployable traps, or healing spells that bring your party back to life. There’s so much variety, although the core objective of each encounter is to establish a sense of rhythm by switching moves at the perfect time to help build up a meter housing a devastating special attack. Pull off this maneuver and you’ll emerge victorious within a matter of seconds. With the exception of boss battles and layering multiple monster skirmishes on top of one another for additional experience and loot, combat seldom goes beyond this level of sophistication.
It’s still enjoyable, but being forced through sequential battles can grow tiresome because the key to success is always the same, and if new pins fail to execute on combos as fast as your current loadout, there’s little incentive to swap things out for something new. A few additional mechanics do little to alleviate this tedium, although the customisation that exists outside of battles was more than enough to keep me invested. Shibuya is flooded with shops and restaurants, and I found myself constantly purchasing new threads to jazz out my party and enhance their stats. Restaurants result in a permanent increase to your attributes, but you’ll need to determine the favourite dishes of each party member or risk throwing away hard-earned money. All of these small mechanics contribute to a larger whole that helps NEO feel alive, like you’re existing in a real place with its own consistent heartbeat.
Nowhere is this more apparent in the spectres of citizens that roam the streets. The Reaper’s Game takes place in a different plane of reality, one where the population is present but fully unaware that you exist. So you just walk past, delving into the thoughts of pedestrians and sometimes imprinting ideas into their minds or outright invading them as part of compelling minigames. Rin, Tosei, and Nagi all have supernatural powers, a benefit of their newfound occupancy of the afterlife. The former’s is easily the most enjoyable, having the ability to turn back time and prevent his untimely demise time and time again in sequences that resemble AI: Somnium Files or Phoenix Wright in how they approach logic puzzles and familiar events from an entirely new perspective. It’s an unwinding mystery I was pulled into time and time again, keen to change the fate of these characters because I grew to care about them.
While its abrasive soundtrack and stylized anime aesthetic won’t be for everyone, NEO: The World Ends With You is one of the most visually distinctive games I’ve played this year. Tetsuya Nomura’s signature style is undeniable, with the beloved designer having his finger on the pulse of Japan’s fashion industry and the trends of its capital like few creators do, and it’s a joy to see it expressed once again outside of the usual suspects of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. He manages to tell a tale of displaced youth fighting for another chance at life amidst myriad systems that seek to hold them down so effectively, lining a serious thematic adventure with bright, energetic colours and a soundtrack that channels the discordance of rebellion and how a counterculture is forming in response to each new step we take. There’s nothing else quite like it, even if its weaker components threaten to hold it back from greatness. I was willing to overlook such blemishes, and you should too.
NEO: The World Ends With You is the sequel we’ve been waiting for. While its new cast of characters have a lofty legacy to live up to, they manage to cement themselves as equally memorable even if their own journey begins to intersect with one we know so well. Combat falls victim to repetition, yet the ideas that surround it are substantial enough that such flaws are easy to forgive. If you’re after a vast JRPG adventure, it’s time to surrender yourself to the underground and never look back. TWEWY is back, and I hope it’s here to stay.
Score: 4/5
NEO: The World With You is available on PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC. We tested the PS4 version via PS5 backward compatibility for this review. Review code was provided by the publisher.