The NEO: The World Ends With You was announced in 2020 as a spinoff of the original game, serving as both a sequel and a remake in how it expands upon and retells the story. The original game was praised heavily for its combat system, and NEO: The World Ends With You seems poised to follow suit. However, its combat also comes with several unique features that make it stand out as particularly accessible to newcomers to the JRPG genre.
Combat in the original TWEWY was highly dynamic, and changed through the use of pins that players could equip onto their main character. Each pin had a different effect in combat. That, combined with the game's simultaneous control of two characters at once, made for a unique gaming experience especially on split-screen devices. The system was slightly reworked when TWEWY released on the Nintendo Switch in 2018 as The World Ends With You: Final Remix. Given the consoles that NEO: The World Ends With You is set to release on, it's likely that these changes will carry over into the new game as well.
JRPGs such as Square Enix's Final Fantasy series, like many other RPG titles, are often heavily influenced and inspired by the mechanics of tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. This tends to be particularly apparent in how their combat systems are designed. It isn't unusual to have to keep track of classes, attributes, and stat points during RPG gameplay - in some cases, it can come to feel more like a spreadsheet than a dynamic combat experience. NEO: The World Ends With You avoids this problem, creating complex combat out of simple mechanics in a way that's straightforward for new and returning players alike to learn.
NEO: The World Ends With You Creates Fun Combat With Scalable Complexity
Combat in NEO: The World Ends With You primarily consists of just button presses and little else. The complexity is built out of combination, something that players are likely to learn just through repeated gameplay. Beyond that, there aren't many complicated numbers to or classes to pick between. Like the original The World Ends With You, combat abilities are changed through the use of pins, which directly gives players control over how they would like their battles to proceed without making them learn an entirely new system. By keeping the basics of combat simple and straightforward, NEO: The World Ends With You allows players to utilize as much or as little complexity as they want.
Another feature worth noting is that NEO: The World Ends With You offers difficulty settings, just as its predecessor did. There are various different levels of difficulty for players to choose between, and each one adjusts gameplay accordingly. Returning players who are looking for more of a punishing but rewarding gaming challenge might want to play at higher difficulties, which will give them benefits like increased drop rates. Likewise, players who might be struggling with the game's combat can make their pins more powerful so they don't get so drastically out-scaled toward the end of the game. Those who are new to the JRPG genre in particular and don't want to have to adapt their strategy progressively will find it much easier to manage combat consistently using NEO: The World Ends With You's easier game modes, helping to make the game more accessible for all varieties of players.
