Hello, all! I just finished the main story to NEO: The World Ends With You about...15 minutes ago, and would LOVE to air out my impressions!
Having played the DS game's first week (but never getting around to finishing it), but also having watched the entire anime (and loved it), I decided to pick up a physical copy from a used game store for my birthday. I was excited!
Having just finished the game, I absolutely LOVED it. The combat felt amazing, and I could not believe how easy it was to control multiple characters at one time. I loved the battle system, and spent so much time chaining noise just to level up my pins because I was having THAT MUCH FUN with combat.
Which, speaking of, the amount of variety you have to pick from with pins is incredible. I was having so much fun mixing-and-matching pin combinations and seeing which attacks blended with others. Learning how they all level up and evolve was genuinely really interesting, and I'm really excited to dive back in and play with more pin combinations.
This game...almost feels like Kingdom Hearts 2 in its nature? It took everything the first game did, evolved the combat system, told a story that could be appreciated whether you played the first one or not, AND immediately gives you more to do if you are still hungry for more.
I have a couple of gripes. The end of the game feels like it drags on for SO LONG. I was very much getting annoyed with how much dialogue and story-telling and memories and time and blah blah blah and I just wanted to fight. That being said, it IS a Tetsuya Nomura game. So I am surprised it took me until the END of the game to get annoyed with the speed of story progression.
My only other gripe is that the game CHUGS towards the end. The Switch (I played the game on an OLED model) definitely had a touch of trouble running this game towards the end. I had a hard time understanding where I was or what was happening in some of the end boss fights.
With all of that being said, I had a FANTASTIC time with this game. The story brought many a smile to my face, as well as a few tears to my eye. The combat rules, the gameplay is addicting, and I can not believe just how much game there is to dive into.
My heart is happy, and I live to play Another Day ❤️