How much can I change a NY cheesecakes recipe?
Many beginners in the kitchen get advice along the lines of “you can play around with cooking, but baking recipes shouldn’t be changed or you risk failure” or something similar. This is only partially true. 

Whenever you consider substitutions, you need to consider what the purpose of the given ingredient is. This will help in finding the answer to the “can I substitute” question. A few examples:


Corn starch thickens - potato starch will do the same, plain flour will usually work, but may affect the mouthfeel and flavor a bit.
Substituting one kind of dry biscuit for another will be no problem texture-wise, as the crumbs are bound together with the butter, but of course each kind will give a different flavor - and if you use a recipe that adds sugar to the crumbs you want to compensate the difference in sweetness between the chosen biscuits. Still, crumb crusts are quite forgiving.
Dairy is tricky - especially if it’s the main ingredient. Using a low-fat softer type instead of the rather firm “bricks” of cream cheese in US recipes can backfire badly. Here the different water content must be compensated, which means you need to adjust other binding ingredients. And the flavor will be different.


If in doubt, it’s always a good idea to check lots of recipes for the same dish. The common denominators should become clear as well as the range of variations.