Finally! The World Ends With You Gets A Sequel

This week, I have been doing a bit of a deep dive back in time to the era of the Nintendo DS. I was sent a colossal package of games by a friend who had them in a box in their attic. Now I’m surrounded by JRPGs. JRPGs, Zelda, Mario, and just about everything on the DS. I might be doing a lot of retro-reviews in the coming months. In fact, the DS is home to one of my favorite JRPGs (and there aren’t many of them), which is the Square Enix cult-classic: The World Ends With You.

It was released in 2007 and produced by Kingdom Hearts creators and Final Fantasy producers/designers/executives, Tetsuya Nomura and Shinji Hashimoto. Mad-cap, brilliant, perfectly designed for the system, beautiful, and wonderful, I’d play the Reapers’ Game again. Since the news broke, I have gone back to the Shibuya shopping district once again.

Revealed Monday, NEO: The World Ends With You is the upcoming sequel that I, and other sane people, have been waiting on for so long. 14-years on from the release of the first game, NEO: The World Ends With You is set to be expanding into a 3D-open action RPG of the urban fantasy genre, bringing the game to the single screens of the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. The trailer (that you can find above) showcases the beautiful cartoon style, the mad but sensible fashion sense, and the cosmic battles with sharks and emo elephants. NEO: The World Ends With You will release in the Summer of 2021.

The original game was released on the Nintendo Switch in 2018 as The World Ends with You: Final Remix, an expanded port of the iOS and Android versions from 2012. Though, I would recommend picking up the DS version as it captures the panic and hectic nature that the “Developers’ System,” or DS for short, has to offer. I oddly cherish this strange game, and I cannot wait for NEO: The World Ends With You to release next year. Currently there is no word on who will develop the game.