The DEMO for NEO: The World Ends with You dropped on the 25th of June and the Game once again started anew! Join the Player ranks and survive or face erasure!
With that in mind, I couldn't possibly NOT put out some kind of review/general thoughts and opinions about the Demo itself on the Switch. Of course this shall not be shaped like my other game reviews, but I do hope it will be an okay first impression~!
Everyone, including me, had the anxiety levels sky high when the gameplay kept releasing for the PS4 version and not the Switch, afraid that frame drops would be high, annoying and the performance lacking. Yet, the game pushed through and proved us wrong. I played through all the Demo, the length of which I will touch later on, and no apparent frame drops bothered me. The only buffering it ever did was on loading area to area for barely seconds and that was it! The combat went on smoothly with no lagging even when a lot of enemies or combos were done on screen, the overworld runs smoothly and the performance was excellently optimized, well done Square!
Let us touch upon something crucial here, the length of the Demo. According to what it is said the game will have more or less 50 hours of total gameplay, therefore the Demo including 2 of them with a level limit of 15 but also giving the player the opportunity to pass his save on to the actual cartridge is amazing. Would I love a bit more of gameplay? Hell to the YES I would.
But those 2 hours were more than enough for you to grasp a general idea of the gameplay that NEO has in plan for the player-base. Fun puzzles, chain battles becoming smoother than ever before, areas you have and haven't visited now in 3D for you to explore and remember the old times, characters returning, plus a well sprinkled gameplay and boss fight. All that in those 2 days of the 1st week in the game were perfectly placed, making sure that it would either make you interested in buying or not the game.
The existence of a Demo for such a high anticipated game was surprising on its own, it was given one month before the release, enough time included to have a grasp of the game and VERY fun combat. Translating the original TWEWY mechanics on NEO must have been hard and yet it was very well done so, sure the hold down and charge pins got in my nerves a bit, but it is all a matter of getting used to! My starting combats were instantly B ranked but soon I found myself adjusting and getting A ranks in chain battles, so even if the controls are different and kind of annoying for the first time, they do grow on you as you keep grinding for those nice pins and level ups! Even Fret's 'Remind' ability slowly becomes easier the more you do it, so I believe the game has some learning curves but not impossible, just adjusting ones.
Now, as this little review comes to an end, I wanted to touch upon something that TWEWY is famous for; Its characters. The World Ends with You is all about you, your development as a person and the bonds you make as you progress though the hurdles the Reapers chuck at you. That glory of character introductions and development still exists in NEO even in those 2 hours of peeking into the world of this new Shibuya!
Rindo is an exiting protagonist, a similar but also different feeling from Neku, our last protagonist. He is a breath of fresh air alongside familiarity! On the other hand, his classmate and pal Fret is a complete crazy house! Random, cheerful, bright personality even in the clutches of the Reapers and a little bit of an airhead, you either will end up hating him and finding him annoying or love him and find him precious to be around.
The Demo introduces some of the Reapers too, like the mysterious Shoka, the Game Master Shiba, the taunting Reaper Kubo and the enigmatic programmer Kaie. You even get a brief introduction to the leader of the Variabeauties, Kanon. But I let the best for last and no, I am not talking about the Prince Eiji! Let me take the cat out of the bag, I am talking about your 3rd teammate in the Demo and the guy who saves your ass more than once! The one, the only, the Math Man, Pi-face, Math Genus, Grim Heaper HIMSELF! Minamimoto Sho! (Yes I am biased and I love the guy so I left him for last.)
I was very scared the minute I saw Sho returning as a player nevertheless, it felt as if it was just done for the popularity the guy has, but boy was I wrong. Although still loud, full of math puns and taunts, Sho takes your hand and helps you through Shibuya, showing you the ropes and explaining that you NEED TO SURVIVE or get deleted in seconds. He looks tired, he has experience but he also has completely different problems to solve than yours. Since he is the character returning that you meet with the most, I felt obliged to just write a small paragraph for him and his E-XCE-LENT introduction in the game! He enters the team beautifully and it is quite obvious you have to solve many equations to reach the answer of who is Sho and what he is after.
TLDR: Go to your Switch or PS4 and download the Demo. It is a blast to play through and once you get used to the controls you will be having so much fun! It really gives you a good heads up of what there is to come from the actual release, making your decision easier on if it is worth for you to pick it up... Which I may or may not have personally caved in and pre-ordered... No judging, go download the Demo already!
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