I'm playing NEO The World Ends With You.
TLDR: The game is fucking good. Play it.
Not going to talk about the story because i still not done with the game and like original TWEWY, the secret stuff is really important to understand the setting. TLDR; Reaper's game, battle to survive a week , mission each day , survive 7 days and win the game. Blah blah..
The characters and dialogues are something that can be very hit or miss depeding on what you like. It's very cheesy sometimes but there's a certain charm to it.
The main trio are tennagers and feel like tennagers , so that's good.
The Graphics aren't the most detailed but artystle carries hards. Everything works together, there's clear vision and the devs delivers in every stage. Cell-shading graphics looks good in battle, 2d comic style sprites are great, the few 3d cutscenes looks amazing and city literaly bends and twist while you're walking. Feel like playing Jet Set Radio.
The gameplay. It's really adicting.
The gameplay has two parts:
Overworld exploration: Basic stuff, you can run , you have a Dash that gives you Groove meter if you time your dash with the music called Sound Surfing, you complete some fetch quests or kill X type of enemies , sometimes you need to complete a puzzle ,etc. Not amazing but it's good enough. There's also a Time Travel mechanic , sometimes is used really well and others not so much, at least is linked to Main character's devemploment.
Instead of normal armor or weapons , you fight with Pins and your armor are outfit/clothe/etc that each has a brand , a ability locked by a stat literaly called style and gives you Attack , Def or HP. Also there's a Skill three unlocked by doing side quest, ganing points and spend them, it's actually a good Skill three because most unlocks are super useful and change a lot the gameplay. There's barely any Increases +0.000002 here. It helps that most side quest are short and help build the world.
Combat: This game is sequel to 14 years old DS Action JRPG game . The World Ends With You was THE GAME that literaly used everything that DS had it. You played in both screen with two character, using D-pad on Top and with a Stylus making various motions on the lower screen, each pin was a motion or even had you scream to active them. It's was unique and good, you had to multi-task two characters, learning how to play with 4 characters (Neku and a new partner each week) . NEO uses a normal controller , so it's totally different but somehow they manage to capture the spirit of the original.
So far i've 5 pins slots, each one of them grant me control of one character, so basicily you're controling 5 characters at same time. The AI auto-dodge if you aren't controlling a character. And each pins has a input (PS4 input in this case).
Triangle- quick taps to attack at melee range , Y- quick taps but ranged attack, R1/L1- are holding and release , L2/R2 - Only hold. It translate to feeling like you're doing motion like the DS version and there's a lot varitation to your attacks. Sword, Lances, Energy Blasts, Throwing Boulders, Kicks, Fire vortex to lock the enemy down , etc
(A vid about the combat, looks easy here because still early game)
The game can be feel a bit button mashing at the start, but once you complete week 1, the game becomes VERY HARD and you have to actually time your attacks to get Drop The beat , a state where the enemy is vuneable and increase your Groove meter (aka special meter), so you can use Mashups and Killer remixes (basicly ultimate attacks). At one point you unlock a Sweet spot when you active Drop the beat, so the game becomes this weird Rhythm Based game to hit the enemy when the sweet spot is up. It's Great and fucking Chaotic later on all in all.
The Music is amazing , mix of Rock , Heavy metal , Pop , J-rock , J-pop , Rap etc and Soundsurfing stuff actually adds a extra ''Beat'' to the music.
Also a bit of Late game play
on Mary Sue waifu that wouldn't even let simp main character fukk her. Maybe I'll continue playing.
