Neo The World Ends With You Demo Review

I played the original The World Ends With You game less than a year ago with the Nintendo Switch remaster, and I thoroughly loved it. The style, the game play, and even the story were excellent. Which is saying a lot for me, because I usually don't care at all about video game stories. There were a lot of concerns about Neo: The World Ends With You that I had. One of the most exciting things about the original The World Ends With You was the touch screen commands to do attacks. Obviously, this probably wasn't going to be a serious part of the game considering it's on Windows and PlayStation 5, both lack touch screen controls. And the motion controls for the Switch version really weren't that good, so even if there was a way to use the mouse or the motion controls in other consoles it still wouldn't be great.

The Style Is There

One of the best things about The World Ends With You was the art style, everything about the game was so polished and exciting, even cut scenes have all sorts of motion and things moving about even though they're really just text bubbles and pictures of characters. They're exciting to watch, and they're entertaining. And as I said, I normally am not a guy who cares very much about the story or the cut scenes.  In fact I usually skip them, but Neo: The World Ends With You makes me want to enjoy them all, not only because the story is there, but because there's so much eye candy going on. You can really feel how The World Ends With You originally being a Nintendo DS game really held back the art and what they wanted to do with the game. But now that it's on PlayStation 5, Windows, and (arguably) Nintendo Switch, those limitations are gone and the game can really, really shine.

Music Is Still Bangin

The World Ends With You had an awesome soundtrack, and in the demo of NEO: The World Ends With You, it's still great. They've managed to bring it up to date with much more modern sounding songs. But a lot of the songs still have little hints and parts of the original songs, even if they are more than a simple remix you'll hear lyrics or parts of songs you'll remember from the original The World Ends With You, it brought a smile to my face.

Battle System Changes

Obviously, without touch screens the battle system has to be different. They've kept the core fundamentals alone, so if you're familiar with The World Ends With You, I'll spare you the details. But, instead of having touch screen controls and tapping, swiping, etc on the screen to do attacks, each member of your team is assigned a button and an action (like rapidly tap X) per pin, and each one is assigned to a pin. So some pins are some keys and some are others.

This makes it a lot easier to control, but not as exciting. To keep things a little more exciting, they've added a bonus timer that fills your percentage gauge before you can do a huge attack.

Sadly, when your gauge is filled up, you no longer get a cool little mini-game to finish the attack. Instead, you just seem to get a buff. In the demo, it was just a 3x damage buff. There are probably more in the final version of a game but this was a big disappointment.

You do get to change it up, a lot, because you'll be changing out for stronger pins and they'll have different inputs. So it definitely will keep things interesting.

Performance Issues On Nintendo Switch

I played the demo on the Nintendo Switch, yes it had some performance issues. One of which is when you enter scan mode, which is a special mode that shows you enemies and other things when you're walking around. It's really important and you'll use it often, but the frame rate definitely suffers. It is made worse by the fact that you'll have enemies coming after you while you drop frames. I don't know if the PlayStation or Windows version has this issue, or if it'll be improved by the time the game releases. I've played far worse on my Nintendo Switch (like Super Neptunia RPG which is painfully laggy and shouldn't even be on the Switch it's so bad). I'd say for Switch it's in the middle of the road. Which is surprising even though most of the 3D graphics are pretty simple and cel shaded.

There are also some pretty bad load times when entering a battle. I don't know if it's just the Nintendo Switch or what, but it usually takes between 3 to 8 seconds for a battle to start. It's a huge bummer and hopefully it can be improved, because the game is overall fast paced, with a quick real time action battle system and cut scenes which fast text and lots of flashy stuff going on (at what looks like a decent frame rate to me).

Characters Are Still Great

The World Ends With You had some really interesting characters. Some which really stood out, but they did an excellent job of making you feel like everyone was different and everyone progressed and evolved through the story. Some of the characters are back, with their really weird quirks, and seeing them brought a smile to my face. The two main characters, Rindo and Tosai (Fret), both seem like really good friends. But playing The World Ends With You it's made me skeptical that there's going to be some sort of major friction or problems between these two. I just can't see it yet. But I'm expecting it and the hints are there, as Tosai (Fret) seems to be one of those types who loves to take control even if they screw it up and Rindo seems to have a little of Neku's "this is all stupid, whatever" attitude, though it's not so strong.

Potential To Be A Great Sequel

Neo: The World Ends With You, from the demo I played and completed, has the potential to really expand on what made The World Ends With You great. My only gripes were performance on the Nintendo Switch in TV mode and the load times. Everything else made me feel like this was The World Ends With You turned up to 11.

I am not a person who likes stories in games, I'll play a game with a horrible story if the game play is great, even if the graphics are bad. But The World Ends With You has always struck a chord with me. I think it has a bit to do with how you have people who weren't so happy with their lives being given a second chance to fix their lives.

Anyways, I don't mean to focus too much on the story and characters. The game play hasn't really changed too much from the original The World Ends With You, and that's awesome. I played the original recently enough to have no nostalgia goggles, and I can honestly say from the demo that they've made an excellent sequel that still does everything right that the original did. But it's obviously been massively upgraded coming from Nintendo DS and a remaster of that. I am looking forward to the full game!