Some say that the second parts were never good, something that Square Enix will try to disprove next month when it goes on sale in all stores NEO: The World Ends With You, the sequel to its RPG that originally debuted on Nintendo 3DS. and later it ended up coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.
This week we had the opportunity to play the first two hours of this second part of the saga that this time will not be exclusive to Nintendo consoles, since it will also go to PS4 and PC through the Epic Games Store. Whether the game is worth it or not is something that we will not know until we thoroughly test its final version, but for now we are going to talk about our first impressions.
Participating in the Game of Reapers, once again
With the argument of NEO: The World Ends With You we are not very clear if Square Enix liked the original title too much and that is why it did not want to modify it excessively or is that later it will present us with some radical change that makes us really feel which are two completely different games beyond the characters and some specific details.
The point is that the plot of this RPG will return us once again to the streets of Shibuya, in Japan. There our protagonist, Rindo, maintains a very normal life until one day one of his best friends gives him a most mysterious pin that he had found. Unfortunately for them, both will be fully immersed in the Games of the Reapers, a parallel reality in which they will participate in a life and death contest.
In this deadly game, no passerby can see our characters and the rest of the participants, so only the players themselves and the Reapers will be the ones who will maintain contact with each other. The couple of protagonists will have no choice but to pass a series of tests during a whole week if they want to escape from this alternative world and thus return to normality.
As you can see, those of you who have played The World Ends With You have not told anything new so far and that is one of the aspects that has not convinced us too much. Not for the fact that the plot is bad, because it is not like that at all, but we would have loved to see something more different or some more significant change in this regard.
It is true that all the characters are new, the missions to be completed have nothing to do with the previous ones and the dialogues are undoubtedly one of their strengths , due to the colloquial and crazy language that all the characters use at all times, with enough touches of humor that make the adventure more entertaining and not heavy at any time, despite the enormous amount of text sequences we witnessed, which of course was what we saw the most during the two hours.
While our characters are forced to participate in this game and try to unravel the secrets that it hides, the conversations will take place as if it were a comic , with bubbles coming out of them and sometimes showing vignettes. Along with this, there is also no lack of animated sequences that make us want to see the anime series that is being prepared from the saga, because it gives the impression that they have been extracted from it.
Using the anti-noise pins
The argument has not been the only thing that is broadly maintained from one game to another, because its playability also resembles what we saw last time. This is because in the streets of Shibuya we can use an ability that will allow us to detect Noise , the name given to the enemies that will appear around and marked on the minimap.
The combats were not especially numerous, at least in these first hours, but the truth is that they are the sea of entertaining . Personally, I had doubts about how Square Enix would adapt them in this installment, because in the previous adventure the touch screen was used for everything, something that in this case is not possible, at least on PS4 and PC.
This is why the controls have been simplified even more and there was no need for a tutorial to learn how to play. Basically, each of the characters is assigned a pin with a specific effect / ability and a button on the controller that must be pressed to use it. Its use is limited and once the energy is exhausted you have to wait a couple of seconds to use it again, which means that in the long run it becomes a kind of button masher .
The reason is because as soon as you press the corresponding button, the character automatically attacks the enemy that is selected at that moment, so that moving around is only used to avoid some impact from the adversaries and little else. Of course, I will not deny that on most occasions that I won the victory I dedicated myself to hitting the different buttons without further ado and the enemies did not even touch me, but sometimes you also have to think a little what to do.
These confrontations give out experience points to raise the level of the characters, although the pins also have their own experience bar, so that they will become more powerful the more they increase their level. Even so, there are more than 300 different pins and in the time we play we barely find a dozen of them, which makes us think that either the game will be quite long or later there will be other ways to obtain them, because the The few we got was by defeating enemies.
And if anyone is looking for more motivation to give rise to some impressive fights, these will give us a score based on the combinations of attacks we make or if we manage to avoid being hit. In fact, in the battles themselves, the combination of attacks will increase the pace, a percentage that will be marked on the screen and with which we will unleash a definitive movement with which we will wreak havoc.
On the other hand, something that has also surprised us is the point of view of the camera in some sections of the stage , pointing from the ground up and giving a huge sense of depth in the surroundings, especially in the fighting. At the same time, we have also come across places where the camera was pointing from the side or a top point of view. So in this aspect the game has varied more compared to its predecessor.
But not everything will be talking and fighting without more. The tests that will challenge us to complete will leave us with puzzles in which we will have to locate hidden clues around Shibuya and we have liked the ones that this first section has presented to us, although they have been a bit easy to solve.
In any case, we insist that we will have to wait for the final version of NEO: The World Ends With You to see if this sequel is really as continuous as it seems (something that is not necessarily bad) or if it hides more news than at the moment we have not discovered. On July 27 we will leave doubts when it arrives on PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Platforms: PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC
- Multiplayer: No
- Developer: Square Enix
- Company: Square Enix
- Released: July 27
- Pc
- RPG
- Analysis
- PS4
- Nintendo switch
