Unfortunately, this means that any cosmetics acquired and progress made by veterans in the original game do not carry over to BnS NEO Divine Gems. The new release is a separate experience, independent of the original game. The most obvious change is graphical, with Blade and Soul Neo better leveraging Unreal Engine 4. This includes improved texture details, better lighting, and a cleaner user interface (UI). In addition to UE4 graphical fidelity and visual effects, Neo adds new animations.

Blade and Soul Neo will launch with only seven playable classes: Assassin, Blade Dancer, Blade Master, Destroyer, Force Master, Kung Fu Master, and Summoner. Many classes introduced over the years, including Astromancer, Dual Blade, Gunslinger, Soul Fighter, Warden, and Warlock, will not be playable at launch. Advanced class specializations are no more. The current Blade and Soul features three elemental play styles for each class, which can be further customized for PvE and PvP specializations. Blade and Soul Neo streamlines this system to a single skill tree per ability, letting you swap between PvE or PvP variations.

For example, the Blade Master class uses Thunder Drake Slash when in a special stance. This can be modified to hit multiple times for extra damage or to perform a single enemy-stunning strike. The multi-strike variation is optimal when dealing damage in PvE situations. At the same time, the stunning variant is useful in PvP environments where crowd-controlling attacks are key to shutting down opponents.

New to Neo are Soul Cores. Like Wuthering Waves' Echo system and Nioh 2's Yokai Skills, Neo lets you summon a boss' shadow to deal damage with a signature ability. For example, you can summon the ape-like Infernal Lord to perform a flamethrower attack. These abilities are extremely powerful, but have cheap Blade and Soul NEO Classic Divine Gems an extended, 1-minute cooldown that prevents overuse. They also have a considerable start-up animation, making them nonoptimal in fast-paced PvP scenarios. Their ideal use case seems to be boss-crushing attacks that are best unleashed when a target is restrained or stunned.