4/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of The World Ends With You: Final Remix.

I had already played The World Ends With You on Nintendo DS earlier this summer, and I had a fairly good time with it, but I didn't really like the dual screen gameplay, despite being an aspect of the game that a lot of people adore. I played the game in order to prepare for the sequel, NEO: The World Ends With You, that launched this summer. But what I did not know was that Final Remix held an epilogue story that directly ties into NEO. So upon learning that Final Remix would have it's own Nintendo Switch Online Game Trial, I decided I would give the Reaper's Game another shot, and see how it fared during a second playthrough. Firstly, I enjoyed this version of the game much more this time around, specifically in terms of gameplay, which is certainly a hot take when considering that Final Remix’s main complaint by reviewers was “poor gameplay”. And while I agree that the docked controls are not the best, playing the game as if it were a tablet worked excellently in my opinion, after all, this is specifically a remaster of the Solo Mix port on smartphones. So, with this new gameplay setup, the old dual screen controls are no more, so instead of having Neku controlled by the stylus on the bottom screen and his partner with the face buttons on the top screen, we have one large screen mainly occupied by Neku, playing essentially the same as he did before. The difference being his partners, now acting as a summon using their own unique pin, with different kinds of screen taps or swipes utilizing their attacks. Once the partners’ Sync Gauge is filled, you can perform an ultimate attack that utilizes the same card combo special that the original game’s top screen used. With the gameplay, all in all, I personally feel like this is the definitive version of the game, to my preferences at least. Because of the new controls, the game feels much more comfortable and relaxed in my opinion. This in term makes the battles much shorter, and to a further extent the game as a whole, as it ends up being much shorter, with the main story taking around 15 or 16 hours to complete. My familiarity with the game certainly added into this as well, not needing to figure out all the somewhat complicated clothing, food and pin systems. One thing I found myself appreciating a lot more this time around was the soundtrack, there are so many good tracks loaded throughout that are so memorable and fun to just listen to, to the point where I actually added 12 tracks to my personal playlist. Speaking of the story, I also felt more appreciative towards it this time around, not being annoyed by Neku or Joshua’s annoying character traits, but instead understanding the conflicting emotions or egos they are portraying, realizing just how realistic they truly are. For instance, Neku dealing with the emotions they feel when having to go through the Reaper’s Game again and again, or Beat’s desperation to try and revive Rhyme back to normal. Speaking of story, the epilogue unique to Final Mix, titled A New Day, kind of fumbles the bag when it comes to replicating what made the characters of the main story so special. A New Day has Neku and Beat thrusted into an illusory Shibuya haphazardly constructed by a new character, a Reaper named Coco. And while Neku and Beat for the most part speak and talk as they otherwise would, it's the emotions they face when in certain situations that I have a problem with. Before I continue, Coco is definitely a fresh and original character amongst the rest of the cast, with her bright, colorful and bubbly design being drastically different, yet not too unfamiliar, from the rest of the main characters. She mainly speaks in modern slang and abbreviations that add a lot of slight comedy and flare to the conversations held. Back to my issues with A New Day, when Neku and Beat are thrusted into the game, instead of being essentially traumatized by their arrival back into the game, something that they would definitely have some amount of slight PTSD from. But instead they take it like it's nothing, essentially being unphased by the situation, and delving right back into the game. The same goes for their trust in Coco, as Neku usually has the intellect to detect when something fishy is on the go, but this time around, he doesn’t suspect Coco of anything, despite the numerous, numerous making of clues that she gives off leading to her being behind everything. Lastly, when Beat basically is forced to reenact Rhyme’s erasure that had transpired in the main story, he cries about it for a few seconds, and then proceeds to never think about it again. I feel like they definitely could’ve played with this much, much more; same goes with Neku not feeling too phased by Shiki’s “erasure”. Other than the story inconsistencies, A New Day provides fun gameplay challenges when it comes to Noise battles, that really shake up the gameplay in unique ways, and provides a lot of EXP to allow you to easily level up Neku and his pins (with some of the new pins from A New Day being very useful, powerful and versatile). To conclude, The World Ends With You: Final Remix, is in my opinion the definitive way to play the original game, especially if you’re interested in playing its sequel, or if you didn’t like the dual screen controls of the original. Otherwise, the game as a whole is a really good experience, and I definitely recommend you check it out if you get the chance.