The newly remastered The World Ends With You is already available on PC, Switch and PlayStation 5, but there’s also now a demo for those who are on the fence about this notoriously unique JRPG. Actually, if there’s any game out there that’s better experienced via a demo first, it’s this one.

The World Ends With You originally launched for the Nintendo DS back in 2007. Its story and characters were just as flashy and convoluted as any Square Enix game at the time (especially those of Kingdom Hearts), and its controls were also cast in that mold. See, the Nintendo DS’ main gimmick (besides the two screens) was the touch pad functionality of the lower screen.

Just like with the Wii’s motion controls, developers were trying-out the functionality in all sorts of interesting (and often annoying) ways. The same was true of the original The World Ends with You. Fights played out on both screens, with the upper character controlled via the buttons and the lower via touch controls. Players at the time either loved it or hated it, and it seems the same is true for the remaster.

The new version is force to utilize just one screen and control-input, so players can only control one character. Whether or not this is a good, simplifying change or a bad, compromising change is going to depend on the tastes of each individual player So yeah, try the demo first. You’ll either love it enough to get the full game or hate enough to never touch it again.

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What do you think of NEO: The World Ends with You? Did you play the original?

Image is official promo art