Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed Review

Truth be told, I’ve never been to Japan – let alone Tokyo – but I get the strange feeling that Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed isn’t an accurate representation of Japan’s capital, or its world-famous Akihabara district. If it were like this I would question a few things, number one probably being why so many girls are walking around shouting the praises of “Boy’s Love” manga every time I walk past.

Akiba’s Trip is essentially a JRPG brawler with the premise that you have basically become a pseudo vampire – you might not be thirsting for blood right now, but you’re certainly thinking about it. With the transformation there are also a couple of usual vampire traits, weakness to sunlight and heightened strength, which complete the package. You’ll quickly learn that the people who made you this way aren’t exactly nice and make an escape with a mysterious girl who whisks you away – and so the somewhat absurd premise for Akiba’s Trip is laid down.

 

Part visual novel, part ridiculous brawler, Akiba’s Trip is a strange game to talk about. A large chunk of the game is spent in conversations, usually just letting the game’s dialogue automatically skip through while half-heartedly paying attention. It should be noted – although it’s unsurprising – that all the male characters here are painfully uninspired. They can be described as two dimensional characters with zero personality and nothing of worth to say, while all the female characters in the game – though not necessarily original in any way – have more detailed, likeable personalities. This may be a design choice, as only your female companions can be taken outside of your home base to assist you in battles and quests; yes, it’s also a waifu simulator on the side.

The whole game takes place in Akihabara, named Akiba here for short. The way Akihabara is portrayed is strange – I doubt the real Akihabara has samey NPCs walking past constantly like there’s a glitch in the Matrix. It’s odd, because the developers have gone all out to recreate some aspects of the city, with real adverts playing on the sides of buildings for that extra realism – but then NPCs look silly and repeat their lines far too often and there’s actually very little to do or interact with. It very much feels like a “pretend city” where nothing is quite as it seems.

If things weren’t odd enough already, I’m about to throw a real curveball: to defeat enemies in battle you must take off all their clothes.

 

Remember the vampires I mentioned earlier? Once you defect them, you’ll have the entire legion of the not-dead hunting you down at any opportunity and the best way to deal with them is to expose their skin to the sunlight, thus the clothes-ripping.

While in combat it’s possible to attack the legs, torso and head to weaken their clothing; once the clothing is sufficiently damaged you can rip it off and even cause a chain of undressing where you take every piece of clothing with some damage attached, all with the press of a QTE. It’s strange, but ripping off clothes is satisfying despite sounding so very wrong. On the upside, the cartoonish, colourful visuals make the whole situation feel comical – and not entirely weird and perverted, as you might have imagined just by reading.

The combat itself, though, is fairly flat and uninspired. You’ll mash Triangle for Head attacks, Circle for Torso and Cross for Legs, while holding any of the buttons will attempt to rip the clothes off that section of the body. It actually feels quite boring and basic with janky animations, but at the same time I found them strangely endearing. I looked at the battles, looked at how very crappy it could be at times, but rarely stopped smiling.

It’s strange, because the game feels so sparse, but then extra detail has been added in other areas. Your mobile phone is in this game (as it is in many titles, nowadays), featuring a menu screen where you can access emails and side quests, but more intriguingly you can access Pitter. Pitter is literally a forum where conversations happen regarding what’s happening in the game – you can’t join by the way, you’ll have to merely lurk and read the conversations. It’s here where things get interesting – you get a genuine idea of the things people in your world might be thinking, like your actions are causing genuine consequence to the people that inhabit that world. I have rarely seen this appear in other games, so it’s unusual that it’s given such a great presence in a game which otherwise ignores subtleties.

 

The conversation threads you can read are great too, with each speaker represented by an avatar and given a custom personality that persists through multiple threads, to the point where it felt like I was reading a genuine forum. It’s a miracle that this came across so very well after localisation.

Away from the strange story, crazy combat and alien atmosphere, Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed is a PS3 game that simply received a resolution bump with no further improvements to functionality or features. The only noticeable difference is that there are more NPCs populating the streets, but the same character models keep appearing and saying the same phrases.