izigame.me

I have quite a lot to say about NEURODIVER. Some of this could be considered SPOILERS so I wouldn't recommend reading if you want to play blind.
ND feels like a shell of a game, with an underdeveloped story, puzzles, and characters.
The story mostly revolves around ES88 helping people, most of which are characters from the first game, with fixing gaps in their memories. As several other steam reviews have pointed out, you do not need to play the first game as this game has it's own story. However, I strongly recommend playing the first ROM game before ND, both because it's a better game and because you will have a better understanding of and attachment to what is about half of ND. The use of the first game's characters is a bit of a double edged sword, causing both high and low points. Probably my favorite thing from ND was being able to see Jess again, but their inclusion in the plot feels strange and irrelevant. As previously stated the plot of ND is completely unrelated to 2064, which causes several chapters to feel like playing through a fanfiction. The chapters in general do a poor job at advancing the plot, which usually consist of helping a character fix their memories (which are entirely unrelated to the main plot), see Golden, and then hallucinate slightly more than before you used your powers (which you assume are just due to a lack of sleep, ignoring that Golden supposedly lives in people's minds). This cycle loops until the last chapter when the game decides to end. Most of the side characters in the chapters themselves are references to other games or developers, which impacted the overall worldbuilding. A story that involves diving into people's clouded memories to solve the mystery of a mental ghost sounds very cool, but unfortunately that isn't how I would describe this game's story.
The puzzles you must complete when fixing memories are the main "gameplay" of ND, and they are not fun. Most of them are trial end error between the clues you have, with very little feedback on what the solution should be. ND does not include any minigames like 2064 did.
The characters do not get a lot of time to develop or grow, and are mostly one note. Interestingly this includes NeuroDiver, who is in the center of the box art, the name of the game, and an important part of every case. It is an extremely important and described as invaluable, but is mostly reduced to a cute eldritch squid thing that is lugged around by ES88. For such an important character, it feels odd it does not have a voice despite the two being so mentally attached that ES88 can interpret the intentions of its blubs. ND also surprisingly lacks plot relevance, as its main purpose is helping ES88 fix memories that have nothing to do with the plot. Overall I wish ND served more as a partner character than a pet.
I saw someone causing a scene in the steam discussions over the stability issues of the first game, but I can thankfully say I did not experience any technical issues in ND besides some occasional missing lip flap animations.
The music and art were good overall, but no specific track or scene particularly stood out to me. The voice acting was good overall.
Also, the game feels really short. The "neurodiving" itself usually only requires fixing a couple of memories, and there is not a lot of time between chapters to allow the characters to grow. I finished one ending of the game in 5 hours, and probably wont play more to get the others because they require making obviously immoral choices. It is hard to understand where a lot of the development time went for this game, but it seems safe to assume entire years worth of production were lost to covid.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend ND unless you really enjoyed 2064 and want to see more of its characters. It's a shame as I really enjoyed 2064 and was looking forwards to ND. I hope they continue to make games in the ROM world.