A Deranged Review of The World Ends With You and TWEWY NEO - Game Storytelling Perfected 

Vagrant Story has similar meditations on the value of a character presently versus their past actions. Joshua’s motivations are also quite similar to Sydney Losstarot.

The interesting thing about those design choices is that they primarily take inspiration from the Three Wise Monkeys proverb (“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”) and the devs have said that if they were to make a third game, they would most likely design the protag of that game around the see no evil part. Another interesting thing is that you can see all three proverbs represented in both protags despite them primarily being designed around one. Neku’s hair covers his eyes in a lot of his sprites, representing his inability to see the people around him as more than just shallow faces in the crowd, and his high collar covers his mouth, representing his tendency to shrink away from the crowd in order to not draw unneeded attention to himself. His NEO design is a great reaffirmation of his growth as a person: his hair is slightly shorter, he doesn’t have the high collar anymore, and most importantly, he doesn’t have his headphones anymore. He’s fully opened up to the world around him. Rindo primarily blocks out the world via the smartphone he practically keeps surgically attached to his hand and a lot of his sprites has his eyes practically glued to the screen and he tends to block out what his friends are saying while they prattle on and try to include him in the conversation and in the ending, he finally puts the phone down to reach out to Shoka, signifying his own growth as a person.

Personally, I think rather than Rindo’s “crutch” being his mask, it’s his phone. It’s something he puts down in the last part of the game for a real friend. Edit: whoops I didn’t read the first reply completely I agree completely

There is also Rindo's jacket, which is patchwork of random shapes and designs, additionally reinforcing that he is not good at making decisions. I just love some good in-the-face unsubtle character design sometimes.

Also tying into the three monkeys motif, Neku's preferred style is literally Jupiter of the Monkey.

​@@dr.velious5411 Rindo's too, going by the label on his chest.

lmfao i get that. personally i related to and obsessed over my guy fret

@@playertoo9730 Do you deal with “triple threats” like Kanon in your daily life as well?

Ha gayyyyyyy

@@mauroalvarenga7002 correct yes

CAT’s outlook on life in the first game helped my entire worldview when I was an impressionable teen.

@Alpha Beta I’ve played through Persona and Final Fantasy and I don’t particularly care for them as much. TWEWY just appeals to me way more.

@Alpha Beta twewy unironically clears them both

@Alpha Beta I disagree. It is in fact THAT deep. It's got subtext that goes far beyond face value and is very reflective of the disenfranchised youth of both the early 2000's when the first game came out and the social media hungry youth of today who are both hungry for meaning and identity in a cynical world that rejects authenticity.

@@thebigchungus4515 opinions, to me the franchise is mostly cringe.

@@Dark-Fenrir_65 And I’m sure that you’re the epitome of what’s cool, huh, pal?

It gives even more PP if you go and meet other people, counted by having DS. Especially if they also have TWEWY on it.

hold up i mentioned this

Lol this was definitely mentioned. Loved the system though. Especially when you consider that certain TYPES of PP were necessary to evolve certain pins in the original. Like if you want this super cool pin you legit have to go touch grass or make some friends first. Great stuff.

The Active Grass Touching System

What is PP?

you see humans always tend to overtake whatever is against and for them. difficult task taking care of these little buggers... they break at every step... like a game would... if you do it right.

yeah kbash is a savant alright, just not in the way you might initially think

If Neo twewy is going to die out, I'll be the first person to take back where it's rightfully heir 😌✋🏻 Don't worry, I hype things up and make sure twewy have a proper game in the future (well, I have a story light novel/web novel based on real life places. Which starts at Yamanashi, Tokyo, every district and prefectures. Luckily, they are perfectly suited for my timeline favorite game like twewy, so it's a rare chance to spice things up after Square gave it a whole bad game rep, I hate how they did that to my comfort game 😭😭💀)

we never seize to find whats beneath or on the horizon! always keep that in mind!

I agree and same, I kept getting distracted singing along to the songs that I like which is most of them lol

*processing It's early

You play TWEWY by blowing.

we dot not say no to experience... only to complexity... beauty lies in simplicity... life is not easy... but if we embrace whats difficult and complex... we can prepare for whats ahead.

man, i wanna 100% the game on ps4 and read those SO BAD!! i beat it on switch, but next time it goes on sale i’d love to experience a better looking, higher quality version

To be fair, you had the benefit of not seeing the second (and last) trailer for Neo, which spoiled a bit of the endgame

@@enrique7925 still I can't say I've regretted seeing them at all tho All the hype leading up to this was unreal. Even though square utterly failed in marketing the game to a wide audience... I still gotta say they were totally on point with what they decided to show and when.

Maybe you're not as in the know as you think you are...pulse man. 🙄

Yeah, Square utterly failed to promote it. They were too focused on that Avengers game as well as Guardians of the Galaxy. At least the latter was good, but it still hurt to see. Especially with such good games.

Yo, this guy knows about every video game. Poggers.

speaking of persona 5 shiki kinda reminds me of kasumi i won’t say why to avoid spoilers for twewy and p5r

You can crank the sound and literally feel the music pulse in your fingertips, I love it

@@starbreaker6441 No, they're not. It's actually better AND more fun than the DS version, including the whole touch screen combat as a whole. It's okay if you're just not good at it, bro

@@amnesiaWTF in terms of gameplay the DS version still takes the cake. Reducing your partner to a just another pin was understandable as we're no longer using dual screen but it's limiting to say the least. It was more fun controlling both characters at the same time and have unique combos depending on the directions inputed on the Dpad

​@@kaos-qc5ho Despite the fact that the combat with pins was always infinitely more fun than pressing buttons on the D-pad, the partner in SR and FR isn't "just another pin", much less "reduced". The fact that you can use the touch screen to control both the partner and pins *at the same time* and combo with them (since pins themselves can only be used one at a time) adds an elevated layer of complexity and fun to the best part of the combat that the DS version didn't have. Of course, the enjoyment of this is subjective and if you had more fun using the D-pad than controlling Neku, that's fine. I played both versions extensively, so I understand each of their appeal - I just personally believe the modern version is way more fun (and vastly superior in practically every aspect of the game).

you can afford two!

i really want to know what you think abou ethics, not in a bad way... since i know youve made it this far.

@@sebastianwardana1527 huh

That's a good friend right there

so you played the game and didn't listen to anything it told you?

Side note: punctuation marks are for nerds

@@indecisiveponderer643 Dang it, I was too Zetta Slow to correct you in time.

Same while I enjoyed NEO I did feel the time travel aspect dragged the story down a bit with how often it was used and I don’t think it was especially used in an interesting way.

Are you serious? The localization is terrible. Games so Japanese should not be this horribly westernized. They absolutely destroyed the scene where Shouka gets erased by translating it incorrectly, thank goodness I played with Japanese audio so I could enjoy the scene the way it was meant to be with that revelation that happened, even with my limited Japanese.

@@eri_noemi1462 You know that people like you are the reason why Weebs are the butt of the jokes of the entire internet almost 24/7, right?