The era of otaku games is definitely upon us. A handful of key publishers have been cranking out the Japanese crazy games and XSEED is one of them. It’s a wondrous time we live in where a game as zany as Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed not only gets released once, but twice! Once for the PS3 and Vita and now this new upscaled version for the PS4. Although lately I’ve been annoyed at the endless announcements of game re-releases, I’m happy a title this niche got one.

The set up of this game is a hoot! You play as an otaku who teams up with a group of otaku to defend Akihabara from synthetic vampires called “Synthisters.” But instead of driving a stake through their heart, you defeat them by beating them up and ripping their clothes off! Naturally!

The game takes place in a very faithfully recreated Akihabara, or “Akiba” for short. Many of the stores in the game actually exist in Akiba. The website has an “Akihabara Life” section that shows comparisons between pictures of real Akihabara and the game. It’s quite impressive. And the game is populated with tons of hilarious NPCS versions of the people you might find there. Anti-Social Otaku skulk around, Playboy++’s hit on girls, female Boys-Love Fans run about, Cosplayers pose for pictures and more. My personal favorite NPC was the Privileged Skank. I randomly came across a Playboy++ hitting on a Privileged Skank, and she slapped him! Overall, it’s a limited, but charming representation of the area.

Aside from the amusing Akiba recreation, the writing and characters are great. Whoever wrote this was either an otaku or has a ton of otaku friends because it feels authentic. And I should know…I have an otaku friend or two (thousand). One of the best-written characters is the main character's sister. She is the classic shut-in otaku that every anime fan knows. Totally scared to go outside. Lives in an anime fantasy world and is delightfully quirky. And her dialogue is a crack-up! In fact, the overall English adaption is great. The localization team should be given a firm pat on the back for their wonderful work on this game. All the characters are well-written and the dialogue is entertaining. It’s the strongest point in the game by far.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem in the game is the combat. And that hurts considering you spend half your time beating people up. The fighting is just plain clunky. Blocking is pretty much useless, especially in crowds. Attacks are slow and imprecise. And even hours into the game, it’s easy to get your butt kicked by a trash mob. Plus, it’s way too easy in a fight to accidentally drag multiple bystanders into the fray, turning a quick battle into a longer one. Luckily, everyone you fight is kinda slow and you can run off and heal yourself if you're quick. Still, that’s not how a good fighting game’s combat should work. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it can get annoying and make battles drag.

Luckily, you can have your “sister” upgrade your clothes and weapons in a very simple upgrade system. Almost anything you find can be used to raise the stats of your outfits, provided you've got the cash to pay for it. But this also has a drawback, because if your clothes get destroyed (Oh yes, you can get stripped too!), you'll have to start rebuilding from scratch. And it also locks you into one set of clothes and weapons unless you take the time to upgrade multiple outfits.

This fancy PS4 version comes with some new stuff including a fresh set of paint, meaning slightly better graphics. It also has the ability to start with everything you can earn in the game at the cost of trophies. You can fiddle with the graphical settings and make the game look as bizarre as you want. You can change colors of stuff, make lines thicker, even add a blur effect to movement. And the game comes with presets like making it look like sunset or a manga. You can also use the share button to stream the game and interact with viewers via secret chat commands like “PantyDrop.”

If you missed this game the first time it came out or just wanna play a smoother, prettier version, the PS4 version will serve you well. This is a hilarious game that should be played by anyone with a taste for wacky Japanese games. 

Hint: Take on a lot of side missions! Not only are they often funny, they'll give you much-needed cash for upgrades! 

by Urian Brown