Developer: Acquire
Publisher: Acquire, NISA, XSeed
Platform: Playstation 3, Playstation 4,Playstation Vita
Tested on: Playstation 4
Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed (PS4) – Review
Akihabara is a mythical place in Japan for many anime and manga lovers. Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed manages to bring that feeling to life in a very fun (and ‘Japanese’) way. We previously reviewed the game on PlayStation 3 here, but the next-gen version has some noticeable additions and upgrades, warranting another look.
Story
Story wise, not much has changed. Akihabara is still fully represented as the capital of all things anime, manga and games. You still play a young man coming in to interview for a job, and somehow ending up in the hands of an evil organisation turning you into a Synthesiser, a creature that feasts on the energy and will to live of other Akihabara inhabitants. While the evil mastermind of the bad guys is explaining how you are one of them now and what lays in your future, you are rescued by a mysterious young girl who goes by the name of Shizuku Tokikaze. After a short fight she gives you some of her blood to stop you from turning full evil. From that moment on your mission is to stop the Synthesisers with your friends and Shizuku, by exploiting their only weakness: sunlight.
Evidently this means the only viable strategy is to go out by day and forcefully strip these creatures of their clothes in the busy centre of Akihabara.
Graphics
The Next-gen version of Akiba’s Trip features enhanced 1080p visuals, making it easier to enjoy beautifully designed and drawn characters and busy, authentic city of Akihabara. While this is true for all 2D scenes and the plethora of equipable items, the amount of different 3D models for the NPCs wandering the city is still very small. Combine this with the reported four times as many residents wandering the streets, this results in a lot of identical models in your view at any time which somewhat dulls the great vibrant and alive atmosphere the developers managed to create. And it really does feel special when walking through virtual Akihabara. Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed features over 130 true to life shops from Akihabara, with Japanese advertising for real Akihabara locations and products, which brings this to a whole new level of dedication to realism.
Another exclusive addition for the next-gen version is the Visual Editor. Accessible through your phone/pause screen this allows you to customize a LOT of how the game looks. This very in depth editor has settings like RGB values for things like character and sky color, as well as some pretty presets like ‘Manga Life’, ‘Aki-hell-Bara’ and ‘Vib-Trip Runner’.
Sadly it isn’t all good. Although the good outweighs the bad by a lot, it has to be mentioned that the camera sometimes ends up moving by itself to awkward angles in the narrow streets, and most of all, that the experience isn’t as seamless as it could be. Moving around in the city from district to district is split up in quite a lot of small zones (the main street is 4 different ones alone), making for a lot of loading screens (which aren’t all that long to be fair) ripping you right out of the otherwise very immersive experience.
Sound
The main backing track for the game is the sound of the city itself, with a lot of different noises coming from the stores and people. Which is just fine, since it really adds to the overall feel of city breathing. The (Japanese) voice acting ranges from perfectly cute to stereotypical anime squeaky noises, all by some very talented voice actors.
Gameplay
Akiba’s Trip balances the RPG and beat ‘em up elements that it’s made up from just fine. Well written and sometimes humorous conversations with some choice for your own dialogue here and there manage to get you involved in the story, while not being to lengthy. The actual fighting works pretty well, with up to three pieces of clothing per character to remove, corresponding with three attacks/buttons on your gamepad. The first phase of every fight is about wearing down their clothes, with the second phase being grabbing said clothes, and ripping them clean off. If you manage to wear down multiple pieces of multiple enemies, you’ll get to chain them together. If you manage to get a long enough stripping streak, you’ll even strip off their underwear. Depending on how good your stripping skills are, these pieces of clothing have a chance to be left on the street, allowing you to pick them up and wear them yourself or give them to your sidekick (if she likes you enough to let you dress her up).
This works both ways, since you are basically the same as them (a Synthesiser sensitive to sunlight), so enemies will try to wear down and remove your clothes as well. Although there are a lot of clothes to wear and weapons to wield (guitar! Candy machine! Keyboard! Briefcase! Kebab stick? An anti-material Rifle used as a melee stick? You can use all of these and many more), the basic mechanics are very repetitive, with no special combo’s or anything like that to speak of, except for the ‘push a button to instantly strip an enemy’ combo for you and your partner available after doing a certain amount of damage.
That aside, the next-gen version tries to spice things up a bit with some additions. First of all there is toybox mode, giving you one of every item in the game to play around with from the very start. There is also livestream interaction, allowing viewers of a gamestream to enter certain keywords in the chat to interact with the streamer. Some examples of keywords that probably don’t need an explanation (or do they?) include pantydrop, pantyjump and pantynado. Another next-gen exclusive is this little Easter-egg: when you equip your camera, look at your current sidekick, press R1 and stroke your touchpad, certain body parts will react to your touch, which seems to be very enjoyable for said sidekick, made very apparent by cries of ecstasy coming through your controller’s speaker. While this is pretty hilarious, it actually works on all characters you can team up with. One of these is your sister. Stay classy japan.
Conclusion
Akiba’s Trip is a very well-crafted larger-than-life representation of otaku-central Akihabara which has never felt so close, except when in aforementioned city naturally. With a choice of plenty desirable and strong female companions, missions and items to collect, there is a whole lot of content to enjoy. The only real detraction from an otherwise very unique game are the actual beat ‘em up sections, which become repetitive fast. Once again, the very specific humour and nature of this kind of title means it’s not for everyone, but if it is, the next-gen version has all the stereotypical otaku-goodness and Japanese-weirdness the original had, with enough added content (with even the all PS3 and Vita DLC included) to make this re-release interesting, even for owners of the previous release.
Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed (PS4) - Review,
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