NEO: The World Ends With You has four distinct difficulties that you can play on, each affecting how hard battles are. You begin the game with only Normal difficulty unlocked and this is fine for getting through the game — there is no real need to change that setting whatsoever. Eventually, though, you will gain access to the Social Network feature of the game, which will allow you to unlock upgrades and items based on the social connections you have forged through the story and through side quests.
RELATED: NEO: The World Ends With You Review – Welcome To The UndergroundUsing the Social Network, it's very simple to unlock the Easy and Hard modes. They are attached to Fret and Minamimoto's nodes, which are accessible immediately and cheaply purchased.
NOTE: This guide contains some spoilers for the post-game of NEO: The World Ends With You.
Why Change Difficulty?
Exploring the extent of these difficulties is important for completionists as difficulty affects what Pins enemies drop after a battle. For example, the basic Dixiefrogs drop a 100 Yen Pin on Normal difficulty but drop a 500 Yen Pin on Hard. As you'd expect, the Pins you get on Ultimate difficulty are even better than that. A great example is Garage Wolves dropping Shadow Matter, making them a great option for farming the rare Pin.
When Does Ultimate Difficulty Become Available?
Only in the postgame will you unlock the node that contains Ultimate difficulty. It is attached to Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu's node, which is connected to Neku Sakuraba's node. It costs a whopping 8 FP to buy the ability, but this is well worth the price. Once purchased, you can change to Ultimate difficulty at any point in the field by opening the Difficulty menu.
Ultimate difficulty not only holds the most satisfying challenges that the game has to offer, but grants access to a whole host of new Pins, provided you have to patience to farm for them.
How To Get FP
If you have not been completing many sidequests or find yourself taking too long completing Nagi's dives, you may find yourself low on FP and unable to unlock Ultimate difficulty. Be sure to go over the Chapter tab of your Records menu to find any chapters that you haven't completed yet. Look for side quests that you haven't finished off and Gold ratings for dives that you haven't attained yet.
Alternatively, you could try the Time Trial challenge in the post-game Another Day chapter. This is a marathon of a dive with ten rounds and a huge 15 FP up for grabs. Even getting a Silver rating here will provide more than enough FP to unlock Ultimate difficulty, as each rank grants 5 FP each.
NEXT: Things You Should Know Before Starting Neo: The World Ends With You
