Genre: 3D Beat ‘em up
Publisher: XSeed
Developer: Acquire
System: PS3/Vita
Release Date: 08-12-2014 (NA), 11-07-2013 (JP)
Back in August or so, XSeed localized a video game. A video game whose combat centered around stripping your opponents to defeat them, to be precise. And boy, is it the least erotic video game about stripping your opponents that I’ve played. In a good way.
Unlike something like Senran Kagura, where clothing destruction is very obviously meant to be depicted in a titillating sense and the series will find ways to progressively make things lewder, Akiba’s Trip will turn stripping your opponents into an act so mundane it might as well be like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast every morning. Everything is presented as humorous in a tongue in cheek way. This might just be the least sexy game about clothing destruction I’ve played, and it’s backed by high replayability and robust customization options. In short, it’s fun.
The story isn’t too great, but fits with the game in that it was never intended to be a sprawling epic, and concludes in a very reasonable 10 hours. It has a few parts that got some chuckles out of me, but it takes itself too seriously, which in return makes it difficult to take seriously when you’re experiencing the rest of the wacky side content. Your dialog choices are great, though. I always went for the dumb options. In fact, in my very first time starting up the game, I got a game over without even getting to control my character because I kept asking the obviously evil guy to give me figurines.
You play as an ordinary otaku who signed up for a shady job that promised to pay him in rare figurines. Said job consisted of letting an evil organization modifying you to become a Synthister, a being that feeds on people’s social energies and will (no, you did not read the fine print when signing up). A mysterious teenage girl named Shizuku rescues you out of the facility and makes you into her familiar so that you can maintain your rationality while keeping your increased fighting ability. Together, along with your friends whom you patrol Akiba with, you must defeat other Synthisters around the city. It turns out that Synthisters are weak to sunlight, so you just have to strip them naked outside to defeat them! You are also free to pick fights with regular people, and strip them naked so they run away in embarrassment.
But really, the story is there to give the game an excuse to have a battle system centered on stripping people. That, you will be doing a lot. And probably indiscriminately as well. You’ll have to fight men and women of all professions: from street thugs to businessmen to gothic lolitas to someone’s embarrassing middle-aged mother prancing around in cosplay of a teenage character. The only way to victory is to strip your way through. Each opponent will have a top, bottom, and sometimes headwear for you to strip off, and you can only target one piece of clothing at a time. In order to strip it off, you have to deal enough damage to it, and the opponent will be defeated when all their clothes are stripped off. But wait, hold off on stripping your enemy immediately! When performing a strip, if there is another article of clothing nearby that can be stripped, you can chain your strips by pressing the right button when prompted. Chain together enough strips, and you can execute a finishing strip that will make your opponent drop their rare underwear! …that you can equip, of course.
It’s a beat ‘em up so the combat is simple and not very deep, but it’s serviceable and enjoyable if you like fighting against mobs. The game can get quite challenging on the higher difficulties. When initially introduced to the combat, you might think that the controls are stupidly clunky. While the game isn’t that responsive and suffers from framerate drops more than I’d like, how well the battle control behave are strongly related to your weapon. Indeed, each weapon has its own distinct feel and moveset, and there is no shortage of weapon choiced. From the more orthodox swords and street signs to bashing the enemy over the head with a computer monitor or a body pillow of Neptune from the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, Akiba’s got them all. The best thing is that you can upgrade any piece of equipment to the max stats, so you once you find a weapon that feels comfortable to use, you can stick with it for the rest of the game. You like your anime girl body pillow? Don’t worry, you can upgrade it to be stronger than that sword the final boss drops. My main problem with the core battle system is its auto-targeting mechanic that you can’t adjust, and sometimes it takes the game a while to register that you want to change the guy you’re beating up.
When patrolling the streets, you can take a partner who will help you in battles. Later you get the ability to do a unison strip with your partner, which can be activated when the gauge is full. Stripping someone together is a very useful move, since not only do you deal high damage to a single target, but you also stun surrounding opponents.
The game’s main appeal, of course, is right in its title. You get to freely roam the streets of a virtual Akihabara. You can talk to people on the street, buy things from many shops, visit a maid cafe, or stop by and watch commercials playing on the big screens on the streets. They play trailers of real Vita games, which serves as a little fanservice for those who buy a lot of games for the console (i.e. me). You can collect and equip a huge variety of clothing, and somewhere down the line you gain the option to wear female clothes. Once you beat the game, you can choose to play as another character model. The game does a neat job of simulating Akiba’s lively atmosphere, but the sheer amount of npcs means that the Vita version suffers from performance issues such long loading times and slow loading of npc models when you enter a map. The former doesn’t bother me so much as the latter.