Post-Mortem: Akiba’sTrip

 

Akiba’s Strip is a weird game. I should preface this by stating that if you’re expecting high octane fan service, look elsewhere. I’d liken this game more to Yakuza if it was set in Akibahara and involved stripping random people and taking their stuff.

Sure, there’s moments of cheesecake if you’re into that, I suppose,  but the real meat of the game is how painstakingly accurate the recreation of Akihabara is.

I was fortunate enough to visit the real deal in 2014, and I recognized several businesses’ actual location, right down to the layout of the staircases. It’s clear the devs did their homework.

Gameplay? Oh, right.

Akiba’sTrip is basically a simple beat’em’up. Use Triangle/Square/Circle as high/med/low attacks to take out a target’s garments one at a time until all three are gone, and they disappear. This is in between just wandering Akihabra, buying cool stuff, and taking in the sights.

With all the real world arcades, you’d think they’d let you actually play arcade games much like Yakuza did, but it likely wasn’t in Acquire’s budget or even possible since they aren’t owned by a company that has several arcade game rights just waiting in a dusty closet somewhere.

So what salvages this romp through Akihabara from mediocrity?

XSeed.

They gave what was clearly a run-of-the-mill plot utterly hilarious dialogue, and a high polished script. I enjoyed all the random interactions with NPCs and the not-twitter app just to see what random insanity would get said next.

Did I mention that Nana is awesome? I lost count of brother puns about halfway through the game, broseph.

So yeah, if you can get the game for ~$5(digital) like I did, it’s well worth the trip. Just don’t take it too seriously.