NEO: The World Ends With You review

Tokyo is the biggest metropolis on the planet, and for my first few journeys there, it additionally felt just like the busiest. I imply busiest within the sense of the sheer quantity of visible info that lives round you once you stroll round Shibuya: indicators, screens, lettering, graffiti, municipal mascots. It is a full delight to soak up – maximalist and overwhelming. I am certain it settles down the longer you spend there, however I’ve all the time been out and in. In a method, I do not need it to cool down. And it is this sort of factor that NEO: The World Ends With You is so sensible at capturing.

The sequel to an excellent DS oddity, Neo is one other RPG set within the Shibuya space of Tokyo, fanning out from the enduring Scramble Crossing to soak up skyscrapers, crooked procuring lanes, freeway underpasses and rather more. Tokyo, a sure type of Tokyo; this metropolis is huge and multifaceted, is captured in its hectic splendour. This is identical turf that Jet Set Radio explored – at instances you possibly can recognise the paving or the cant of a well-known constructing – and it is the identical emotional territory too: a world of teenagers and vogue and types and procuring and friendship and telephone messages and popular culture references.

However that maximalist visible onslaught! You get it twice, I reckon: firstly as you navigate the streets the place the sport’s story and missions play out, and secondly once you’re battling – the a part of the sport the place its fiery soul lives. The place to look! The primary recreation on DS had you air-hockeying your consideration between the highest display and the underside as you managed totally different fighters with totally different enter strategies – button faucets on one, stylus swipes on the opposite – and took on a wide range of tattooed frogs and hawks and different wildlife. Neo retains a number of this in play. A whole lot of the enemies are acquainted, notably upfront, and a number of the assaults you acquire and stage up, delivered within the type of pin badges, have come throughout from the sooner recreation too. However no two screens. No stylus. What to do? The place to look?

It might really feel topsy-turvy going into the fight system earlier than speaking of the story and all that different jazz, however Neo stays a splendidly topsy-turvy recreation. So right here goes. In Neo you management a gang of fighters at anyone time in fight, every with a distinct badge powering their assaults. Badges include distinct inputs, so by the point you have got 4 individuals to regulate, you will have a triangle man, a sq. man, and a few bumpers or triggers. I like to steer with the triangle – usually sharp repetitive faucets that blast out strikes or slashes of a glittering blade, maybe. Sq. backs them up with lightning, or magical arrows say, after which I can hit the bumpers and triggers to heal, if I am feeling cautious or boring, or to carry an iceberg spearing out of the bottom, the larger the berg the longer I cost the button.

Throw in dodging, and the truth that the spiky menageries you face off towards wish to assault in mix-and-match packs, and you’ve got already acquired sufficient to consider. However Neo is simply getting began. On the high of the display is a Groove meter that builds up as you lay down assaults. Here is the way it works: hit baddies with one transfer till you get a combo timer, after which swap to a distinct transfer and maintain the combo going till you get one other combo timer telling you to modify once more. When the Groove meter fills you get to tug off a particular transfer, and as that erupts – fireballs, ice shards, roving Prime of the Pops lightning strikes – you could be constructing your meter afresh. It by no means has to finish.

What you are balancing – and this is the place the query of the place to look actually is available in – is the cooldowns for every badge and its assault. So whilst you’re jabbing with the triangle you are working your method nearer to a cooldown. Are you able to time it with a swap to a distinct get together member and a distinct assault earlier than you break the chain? And may you retain switching to maintain forward of the recharge intervals? And may you do it whereas maintaining a tally of incoming assaults, on which get together member has been incapacitated by a jellyfish, and on what your groove meter is doing?

I really like the battling, which solely continues so as to add gleeful complexity because the story chugs onwards. And even from the off, it seems to be so lovely. Neo’s artwork fashion is visible extra: thick black strains, anime heroes, trend-wave haircuts and splendidly detailed youth fashions. Inevitably, your assaults slot in: huge laser blasts, torrents of flame, glittering magic. And the enemies! I notably like a shark from the sport’s early phases who likes to swim about underneath the sidewalk after which erupts. Jellyfish are all the time an indication that you’ll be busy – they like to separate in two – after which there are bosses, one of the best of which I can not discuss, however one in every of which left me sobbing with laughter. By the top of the sport’s first act, goal prioritisation is one in every of many extra issues you must take into consideration, after which come enemies who must be attacked from a sure angle. Oh sure, and there are the enemy groups.

That is the place the story is available in. As with the primary recreation, you and your staff of pals are mainly dropped right into a form of metaphysical actuality TV recreation present. Marooned on an interdimensional island of Shibuya landmarks, you’re on the mercy of a bunch of Reapers, hipster video games masters who divide your life into days after which weeks as you battle different groups to return out on high. Every day there is a new mission – a sequence of puzzles, maybe, a cryptic instruction to realize some activity, or a territory seize recreation that sees you racing everywhere in the map battling monsters and different groups. On the finish of the week, one staff wins and, nicely, the staff on the backside actually loses.

What this quantities to is a gleeful excuse to pitch one gloriously odd stereotype towards one other. Rival groups are common intruders within the soapy plotline that rapidly builds up round your makes an attempt to know the Reapers’ recreation and keep alive. I notably love the staff who’re obsessive about rivers – however what sort of rivers? – and the massive meany who sees all of life as a recreation of Reversi. The plot works exhausting retaining you angled towards different groups whereas feeling a sure empathy, as they plot and counter-plot towards you, everybody determined to not be on the backside by the top of the week. Your cellular is consistently pinging with updates on different groups’ progress, and although it is tightly scripted, it feels very alive, like there is a trendy world on the market continually altering round you.

It isn’t simply the groups. Regularly a activity will contain you exploring Shibuya and influencing the lives of passersby, who cannot see you or discuss to you whilst you’re enjoying the Reapers’ recreation. Some are affected by unhealthy feelings, which you obligingly battle for them, taking out the monsters that prey on their souls. Some want an ethical immediate or a reminder, which you are able to do by popping into their minds and establishing primary ideas for them one phrase at a time, or fixing puzzles to implant reminiscences. At instances – one second particularly – the sport actually struggles with the implications of these items, however simply as typically it is heat and humorous, and gives to gamers like me a welcome glimpse of preoccupations in a distant metropolis.

Tokyo! If battling is one in every of Neo’s trumps, town is the opposite biggy – it is only a deal with to discover Shibuya and environs, carved into neat little sections, all slotting collectively whereas retaining their very own identities. Merely trying round is gorgeous – the sport has highly effective tourism cred – however then there are the pedestrians, whose ideas you possibly can learn by moving into one other realm, the place you may also chain monsters to tug collectively some huge battles. There are outlets to purchase gear that improves your stats (you possibly can stage up the outlets to get higher stuff) and eating places that enhance your stats completely, however require cooldowns in case you over-eat. Every of those institutions has its personal character and its personal items obtainable. I’ll by no means tire of consuming the scrumptious trying cheese burgers at Scramble Crossing, and I spent twenty minutes the opposite day simply making an attempt to recollect the place a particular bookshop was situated. I did not even want a guide – I simply needed to browse.

Neo is surprisingly big, even if its map is sort of cosy. There are all these pins to search out and stage up, in fact, with their totally different assaults and totally different synergies. There are the rival groups to struggle towards and steadily come to know. There’s various grinding once you hit problem spikes, after which there are all of the intelligent bits of enterprise – time journey, remedy dives – which might be employed to spin battling and puzzling and travelling round into totally different missions. Sure, Neo could be fairly repetitive, however for me its two trumps come to avoid wasting the day. For one factor, backtracking throughout Shibuya, taking a look at all of the outlets and the individuals and the landmarks, by no means grew previous as it’d if I used to be backtracking throughout a generic fantasy world – and it opened up loads of alternatives for puzzles that contain trying fairly exhausting on the city setting, one middle-act instance being notably amusing. For one more factor, these battles are simply such huge enjoyable, bordering at instances on rhythm-action as you turn between one get together member’s assault and one other, retaining the groove constructing, and listening to the healthful encouragement of every of your staff as you go. The hit-pause right here is an absolute dream. You chew gloriously to every victory.

A setting like this could make every thing new. Even a sequence of unlockable perks feels a bit particular when it is dressed up as an online of your rising social networks, with nodes you unlock by feeding in pal factors to individuals you have got met. These badges unleash sensible assaults and may stage up and evolve, however in addition they simply look extremely collectable, extremely fascinating. And whereas the storytelling could be fairly verbose at instances, the characters are neatly drawn and every thing chatters together with the ping of incoming texts and standing updates.

Often I get a beautiful twinge, too. I’ve been to Shibuya personally, stayed for one go to in a resort throughout from the Scramble Crossing, and I get the odd shock of recognition enjoying Neo. However extra typically I get that sense of worlds glancing towards worlds – the world of Neo shuffling previous the world of Jet Set Radio. I do not assume I might ever get to know a spot as huge as Tokyo, however in video games you get a beautiful angled view of it. It is a beneficiant recreation certainly.